Self-evident Truth
In his play Dom Juan, Molière's title character is asked what he believes. He answers that he believes that two plus two equals four. Belief is the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true. A belief is separate from knowledge. Were certain absolute knowledge to exist, belief in an existential claim would be unnecessary. Molière seeks the freedom to believe that two plus two equals four. Orwell seeks the freedom to say that two plus two equals four, as an objective fact which the Party cannot touch.
René Descartes' realm of pure ideas considers that self-evident ideas such as two plus two equals four may in fact have no reality outside the mind. According to the first meditation, the standard of truth is self-evidence of clear and distinct ideas. However, Descartes questions the correspondence of these ideas to reality.
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Famous quotes containing the words self-evident and/or truth:
“It is self-evident that at sixty-five a man has done all that he is fit to do.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“The secret of genius is to suffer no fiction to exist for us; to realize all that we know; in the high refinement of modern life, in arts, in sciences, in books, in men, to exact good faith, reality, and a purpose; and first, last, midst, and without end, to honor every truth by use.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)