The Dethronement of Truth
A handbook for the restoration of truth to its rightful place at the throne of human reason. In the essays presented here, Dietrich von Hildebrand dismantles the various intellectual and political movements that have worked to undermine truth over the last century: relativism, skepticism, materialism, historicism, psychologism, Communism, and Nazism. He shows the utter insufficiency of such arguments and reveals their common root in the denial of God and people’s attempts to be like gods themselves.
To anyone who has looked at the modern world and wondered how did we get here? and how do we get out?
This book shows the way.
The role of truth in human life is so predominant and decisive, the interest in the question of whether a thing is true or not is so indispensable in all the domains of human life, ranging from the most humble everyday affairs to the highest spiritual spheres, that the dethronement of truth entails the decomposition of man’s very life. Disrespect for truth, when not merely a theoretical thesis, but a lived attitude, patently destroys all morality, even all reasonability and all community life.
Dietrich von Hildebrand
Reviews & Commentary
From scholars, students, and readers
In this volume, Hildebrand shows how this dethronement through false propaganda, old and new, cuts off man from the very basis of his spiritual existence. Consequently, salvation now can only come through a counter-propaganda of truth. The scope for this propaganda is unlimited and is essentially the work of the Universities and Schools. There must, therefore, be a great renewal of dialectical enterprise comparable to that of the Academy, the Lyceum and the Schools of the thirteenth century.
This book will likely challenge most readers. In that, it will hopefully help readers grow in understanding of the Truth and why it is life-giving and ennobling to those who embrace it.
Anthony Bosnick
Amazon ReviewHildebrand outlines how it is that even previous philosophical skepticisms hinted at the existence of objective truth, whereas in Nazism and communism there occurred an “intimate link between the dethronement of truth and terrorism.” This is his prominent and propelling thesis, clearly fueled by his personal outrage over the cruelty he had witnessed in his own lifetime.
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