Chapter 2 examines three problems in Heidegger’s interpretations of Plato: the impasse of dialogue and dialectic, Heidegger’s disastrous and putatively Platonic politics, and the reductive approach to Plato’s metaphysics. First, I question his critique of Platonic dialectic by showing that it is already built into the matter as well as the way of writing in Plato’s texts. Second, I show that Heidegger’s ontologizing of political themes in Plato’s writings leads him to a catastrophic “ontological politics” wherein ethics and politics in their concrete sense are completely eclipsed by or absorbed into ontology. Third, I show that the interpretations that Heidegger offers to show that Plato allegedly occluded the original sense of truth and distorted the question of Being. A closer look at the relevant passages as well as other passages that Heidegger overlooked reveals a much more dynamic ontology than what Heidegger sees in Platonism understood as metaphysics. The concluding remarks of the chapter sketch the post-Heideggerian directions leading from these three problems to the Platonism of Gadamer, Strauss, and Krüger.

Chapter 6 concerns the contentious issue of the role of the concept of life in the Logic and its consistency with the artifact-centered conception of teleology defended in chapter 5. There is a common tendency in the literature to think that the Life chapter implicitly imports references to the biological domain in the Logic itself. It is here argued instead that Hegel’s Life chapter must be read in “topic-neutral” terms: in a way that requires application neither to the natural or cultural domains. Once it is read in this neutral way, we can see that “logical life” is simply the notion of a self-determining purpose. However, the concept of life as developed by Hegel is not at all opposed to the artifactual domain; this is especially because the social and cultural domain (social ontology) give us prime examples of “living artifacts,” the kind of artifacts that can be based in a process guided by thought.

Drawing from critical realism and building on previous academic studies and writing theories and practices, the author advances approaches to academic writing that are both human and humane, by situating academic writing within the broader critical realist project of furthering human flourishing and emancipation; of what it means to be human; and of why things matter to people. Addressing what counts as human(e) in academic writing has become pressing, as concerns about machine-generated texts, such as Large Language Models like ChatGPT challenge understandings of truth, knowledge, and justice. Underlying the argument in this chapter is the assumption that writing in the academy is a social practice (specifically, a method of enquiry) that should be oriented towards epistemic virtues including commitment to truth and socially just standards of excellence. For academic writing to fulfil such commitments, the author argues that it needs to be human(e). For it to be human(e), it requires a writer–agent–knower to rationally judge between educative and harmful academic writing theories and practices, in the interests of human flourishing and emancipation.

Stephen Engstrom argues that judgments that amount to knowledge constitute the end of the faculty of understanding. This implies that true judgments and false judgments are not on par in relation to the attainment of this end. False judgments are incomplete realizations of the understanding whose explanation requires reference to a factor that prevents it from attaining its end. Engstrom takes this to show that truth is essential to judgment (and belongs to its form) whereas falsity is not. This is reflected in our original, a priori understanding of judgment, according to which the capacity to judge is the capacity to know (rather than the capacity, say, to judge either truly or falsely). In an appendix, Engstrom relates this account to the notion of objective validity.

This chapter lays out two key tasks in reading Scripture that Augustine identifies in the Confessions, and especially in his exegesis of Genesis: “the task of grasping meaning” and “the task of grasping truth.” The first task is that of discerning authorial intention; the second is that of “seeing for oneself that what the author is saying is in fact the case.” The task of grasping meaning is difficult in part because of the peculiar character of the Scriptures; they are both accessible to all, using ordinary language (which is open to misinterpretation), and yet full of profundities that only the wisest readers can come to appreciate. It is also difficult because we cannot really know what is in another person’s mind; any judgments about authorial intention are provisional at best, and only pride would claim to have identified the uniquely correct interpretation. The task of grasping truth is likewise difficult. When it comes to intelligible realities, Truth speaks inwardly, not through any text, even that of Scripture. When it comes to historical realities, including the central truths about the life of the Incarnate Word, we cannot have knowledge in the fullest sense.

The Afterword recalls the importance of “emphatic experiences” throughout Emerson’s thought, especially in Nature, “The Over-Soul,” “Circles,” and “Spiritual Laws.” It also registers the many oppositions discussed in Emerson, the Philosopher of Oppositions: Reality and Illusion in “Experience,” “Unity” and “Variety,” “rest” and “motion,” in “Plato”; dead language and living poetry in “The Poet,” nominalism and realism in “Nominalist and Realist,” fate and freedom in “Fate.” Emerson “accepts” his “contrary tendencies” by building them into his essays, one after the other: “‘Your turn now, my turn next,’ is the rule of the game.” Skepticism pervades Emerson’s thought, as he registers doubts about knowledge, other minds, freedom, or meaning. But skepticism can also be understood as a way of life, as in ancient Greek philosophy and in Montaigne’s Essays, and Goodman argues for the attractions of Emerson’s own version of the skeptical life, what he calls a “wise skepticism.”

Replete with documentary artefacts, traceability systems, forensic testing, and inspections, organic certification is emblematic of technomoral aspirations and material interventions undertaken in the name of transparency. Based on research conducted in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, this chapter explores how organic certification becomes established as a regime of truth through semiotic technologies mobilized to make agricultural production transparent and legible. Probing a question I have frequently encountered – “Is it really organic?” – the chapter attends to what such a question reveals about transparency’s contemporary power. By examining how paper and digital record-keeping, as well as tags and traceability, come together in organic certification, it shows how transparency projects work to make real and to establish thresholds of truth for the objects that they purport only to observe.

The Introduction locates transparency in the global governance of agriculture and mineral supply chains. It proposes an analytical focus on the mediations of transparency to tackle the paradox of transparency, a process of mediation that incorrectly understands itself to be a process of disintermediation. This helps to investigate transparency beyond the normative and substantive assessment of its implementation. Rather than assuming that transparency is itself transparent, we ask: What are the technological practices, material qualities, and institutional standards producing transparency? How is transparency standardized, regimented by “ethical” and “responsible” businesses, or valued by traders and investors, from auction rooms to sustainability reports? Acknowledging that transparency is a global value, we question how transparency projects materially organize and semiotically regiment the global production and circulation of commodities across local settings. Focusing on moments and processes of mediation toward disclosure, immediacy, trust, and truth, we introduce how the chapters render transparency observable across sites, actors, institutions, and technologies.

Alexander of Aphrodisias included Aristotle’s first principles of rational thinking, in particular the principle of non-contradiction, in the domain of metaphysics, as would Syrianus. In this chapter I discuss this principle as it was understood by Syrianus, in particular with regard to its roots in divine Intellect, where the unity of intellection and its objects grounds the principles of reasoning in human intellection and the truth of its objects.

A new reading of the making of Matthew Paris’ contemporary history, known as the Chronica maiora.

This chapter provides brief conclusions drawing together the threads of the story and its wider analysis, the political and religious context, its transnational significance and the insights a single document and event have provided. Returning to some of the themes raised in the introduction, reflects on the role of truth and secrecy amid the practicalities for ministers of upholding an ideological cause.

Chapter 4 explores the central role of Huguenot ministers in maintaining and nurturing this confessional network as part of an international collaboration with the Calvinist church, noble leaders, scholars and other agents. Considers the refugee experience and establishment of stranger churches abroad, the navigation of theological differences and the part played by cooperation and conflict, especially in the French church in London. Focuses on connections to cardinal Châtillon and Regnard/Changy as well as other ministers involved in, and identified through, the correspondence, such as Pierre Loiseleur de Villiers. In particular, establishes the pragmatic day-to-day challenges that Huguenot ministers faced in serving their communities at home and abroad alongside bonds of faith and amity and the handling of disagreements. The varied experience and careers of the ministers are also compared and contrasted, as are the roles of other agents, particularly scholars and diplomats. Diplomacy and the negotiation of alliances were vital to the upholding of the Protestant and Catholic causes as was the identification of plotting by the other side.

Chapter 6 focuses on fears of espionage and treachery, but also the extensive use of information and intelligence-gathering by all sides, and the fine distinctions between these. The close connection with ambassadors and their contacts is discussed, alongside how spies and spying were viewed by contemporaries, through correspondence and judicial records. Explores extensive fears of plots and foreign intervention and how this affected diplomatic and confessional relations; the execution of experienced courier, Jean Abraham, secretary to the prince of Condé, exemplifies this. Looks in detail at contemporary English concerns about a Franco-Scottish alliance in support of Mary Queen of Scots, making links from these concerns to the activities of Norris, cardinal Châtillon and to the network exposed by the letters carried by Tivinat. Attention is given to the role of female agents and especially to double agents, such as Edmund Mather, whose career and connections to Norris, Regnard/Changy and the wider network are explored in detail.

If rights are at stake in the health of the body, it is now increasingly second nature to think they are in the aftermath of violence conflict or immense wrongdoing. Memory of violence is one way rights politics have been made meaningful. Bonny Ibhawoh observes that memory – including a right to memory – has been a focal point of rights mobilizations around the world. At the same time as recasting collective understanding of the past is itself an object of contemporary politics, competition over memory – including who is entitled to narrative privileging and why – has followed suit.