This chapter maps the overall picture of transitional justice in Rwanda and the former Yugoslav countries, which shapes how the future has been imagined. Since reflective narratives do not always align with the local, national and international actors’ understandings of post-atrocity realities, this chapter explores which mechanisms, policies and practices have sought to contribute to the transitional justice goals of truth, justice, healing and reconciliation. The chapter highlights that studies driven by goals of transitional justice can help identify complementary and contradictory aims and extend the wealth of research that focuses on specific transitional justice mechanisms.

This concluding chapter returns to the aim of the book to locate the conceptual contribution of reflective narratives in the field of transitional justice. It discusses the implications of the case study chapters, reiterating the ways in which the reflective narratives that imagine futures can help rethink existing conceptualisations and challenges of transitional justice. It explores the relevance of the findings to practitioners and policy makers. The chapter also identifies thematic connections of agency, silence, listening, and death or the dead that emerge as a web of spaces and touchpoints across the different chapters and goals of transitional justice. This contributes towards possible future research avenues and leads towards returning the focus on the individual human beings who live with the complex and evolving legacies of genocide and war.

This chapter examines truth, foregrounding the shared characteristics of different types of truth. The chapter brings together Boris Boubacar Diop’s novel Murambi, The Book of Bones and the ICTR case Prosecutor v. Simba alongside Goran Vojnović’s Yugoslavia, My Fatherland and the ICTY case Prosecutor v. Mrkšić et al. Building on insights from narratology, this chapter traces the dialogicality of truth through analysis of the construction of truth in dialogue, the ways in which truths are obscured in dialogue, the impact of the absence of dialogue, and truth that emerges in dialogue with objects and documents. The literary texts offer certainty that remains absent in the ambiguous and open-ended accounts is the legal narratives. Revising the dominant focus on differences between personal, social, legal and forensic truth, the chapter argues that these types of truth are social and partial.

Protagoras, the sophist of the fifth century BCE, has long been associated with relativism. This chapter examines what claims Protagoras may have made and whether these claims amount to some kind of relativistic worldview or not. It examines historical evidence, namely his famous “Measure Thesis” (DK 80 B1=LM PROT. D9), which is often supposed to be the first declaration of relativism, and Plato’s critical examination of it in the Theaetetus. Although it is important to consider the difference between relativism and relationalism or relativity, the example used in the Theaetetus, that “the wind is cold for me / is not cold for you”, can be understood in either way, so we find that Protagoras’ thesis was too vague and ambiguous to determine its original meaning. The ambiguities in the thesis are probably due to the author’s intention, and this blurring between relational and relativistic may also be part of his original plan. If so, Protagoras has contributed to philosophy by undermining the traditional view of truth and raising important and stimulating questions about relativism in the history of philosophy.

In what respects can Epicurean philosophers be described as relativists? After an initial survey, this chapter focuses on their defence of the view that all sense-perceptions are true. Other philosophers associated with this thesis, such as Protagoras, are often taken to be committed to some form of relativism. At first glance, the Epicurean position appears to be quite different: they provide accounts of the mechanics of perception that purport to show that the reports provided by the senses are invariably faithful to some aspect of objective reality. But Plutarch alleges that Epicurus and his followers are in fact relativists in this context. I investigate this claim and argue that this is to some extent a fair characterisation—on the Epicurean account, many perceptual properties do turn out to be relative, in that an object that possesses such a property does so only in relation to some perceiving agent (and may lack it in relation to other agents at that time, or that agent at other times). But other perceptual properties are taken to be non-relative, and on the Epicurean view, sense perceptions are all true tout court, rather than merely in relation to some relevant agent.

Protagoras is often mentioned in discussions of relativism about truth, on the strength of the position Plato attributes to him in the Theaetetus: “as each thing appears to me, so it is for me, and as it appears to you, so it is for you” (152a). Many consider him the first truth relativist, and Plato’s famous self-refutation argument against him is mentioned in virtually every general discussion of truth relativism. I distinguish a number of possible positions about the content of appearances which Plato might be attributing to Protagoras, only some of which are forms of relativism about truth. I argue that the textual evidence is most consistent with two of these positions, which I call Relational Properties and Moderate Relativism. However, it is not clear whether Plato had the means to distinguish between these positions. I go on to suggest that, far from rejecting Protagoras’s view of the contents of appearances, Plato shares it. Either Protagoras is not a relativist about truth, or Plato is one too.

One of the many fascinating ideas explored in Plato’s Sophist is the Stranger’s explanation of being relative-to through his account of the kinds being and difference in conjunction with the notions of capacity and combination, as well as what he invokes as the “forms” “itself by virtue of itself” and “relative to.” The discussion is remarkable in its clever use of an array of characters including Parmenides, the Pluralists, the Earthborn materialists, the Friends of the Forms, and the Late-learners to sort through a variety of challenging philosophical concerns, retaining what works while leaving behind what does not. The Stranger understands being as an intrinsic functional and structural dimension of all beings that makes them beings. Being just is capacity and the concurrent active “realizing” of capacity in “combinings” of forms with themselves and perceptibles. In lieu of an ontology of relations, there is an ontology of realizations of capacity relative to something. I show how this innovative account of a dynamic constellation of interwoven kinds and forms, where being and difference “go through all and each other,” provides a foundation for meaning, truth, and falsehood.

The Persian invasions are one of the main subjects of the Histories. This chapter examines how Persian conventions craft a culturally mediated conception of the truth – one that reinforces both despotism and empire. This promotes a practice I term “despotic inquiry”: a practice of inquiry and judgment that insulates the inquirer’s own perspective from interrogation. This practice of inquiry – a sharp contrast from Herodotus’ own methods – limits political debate and spurs a restless expansion of empire. Despotic inquiry, however, can also harm the inquirer – from Cyrus’ inability to rest to the madness of Cambyses, the consequences of the psychology of despotism are manifold. Herodotus’ multigenerational account of the Persian despots allow for a more nuanced and careful account of the various ways the convention of despotism interacts with human nature.

The Stoics were temporalists: they relativised the truth of propositions to time and held that propositions vary in truth-value over time. On their view, to say that a proposition is true is to say that it is true now (where now is understood as the time at which the truth of the proposition is being assessed). It has further generally been agreed that this must entail that they think that any proposition, including those about the past or the future, is true by virtue of some present state of the world. This chapter suggests that this needn’t be the case and offers an alternative to views that appeal to present truthmakers for past and future truths by way of causal chains of events. I do this by means of a reconstruction of the Stoic theory of tense. I show that the Stoics had developed a tense logic far more sophisticated than usually recognised with tense operators which themselves relativise the truth of a proposition to the time at which it is evaluated. This removes the need for present truthmakers and saves the Stoics from biting unnecessary bullets.

This chapter discusses the importance of the phenomenon of epistemic relativity for Plato’s metaphysics and conception of truth. The argument from epistemic relativity, applied to attributes in the phenomenal world, is Plato’s favored strategy to highlight the need for a separate ontological domain of intelligible essences exempt from relativity. It is also a starting point for his metaphysical conception of truth. After a general discussion of the Platonic perspective on relative attributes, I introduce a set of terminological distinctions that help to categorize his various uses of the truth terminology. I then turn to the Phaedo, as it is the first dialogue to provide a broad exposition of Plato’s new metaphysical vision. I trace the various characteristic aspects of his truth terminology, as they emerge throughout this dialogue, and link them to his idea of philosophy and the underlying metaphysical conception. The last section discusses how a passage in the final proof of immortality qualifies the stark metaphysical dichotomy of truth and appearance by pointing to the possibility of certain kinds of determinate truth pertaining to objects in the phenomenal world.

This chapter shows that Aristotle’s discussion of being as truth and not-being as falsehood in Metaphysics Δ, E, and Θ is a sustained reflection on the Sophist’s account of falsehood and its analysis of categorial sentences; and that the Metaphysics responds to the Sophist on whether Motion-Itself and Knowledge-Itself exist among separate intelligibles, a point on which Plotinus would later defend the Platonic position against Aristotle.

The paper discusses Plato’s understanding of ontological truth (alētheia) with reference to the etymology of the Greek word as a noun deriving from lanthanein, ‘to escape notice’. Taking its start from Heidegger’s characterization of alētheia as Unverborgenheit, the paper reviews passages from the Homeric poems and key passages from Plato’s Republic, Phaedo, Phaedrus, and Philebus. The result of this analysis is that Plato’s understanding of ontological truth does not depend on etymological considerations but rather relies on archaic views of the correspondence of being and thought.

This chapter focuses on the expressive functions of tears, the face and the body on the early modern stage, to probe the deep relation between drama and the law, including their entwined but distinct investments in natural self-evidence and the rhetoric of presence. Through an interdiscursive approach, it shows how drama mines the complexities of hypokrisis through an engagement with the radical performativity at the core of law, and offers the provocation that law’s disknowledges are turned into a poetic condition of theatrical knowledge, and a forging of subjecthood and inwardness that complicates the distinction between the fiction of theatre and the reality of the law court. It ends with the suggestion that the theatre looks at, as well as beyond, the vivid invisibilities of judicial encounters to unpack the epistemic, affective and ethical impulses structuring the ‘scene’ of law.

Defamation is different from many of the other torts, not only because it contains concepts that do not arise elsewhere, but also because in no other tort do the defences play such a significant role in litigation. As a figure in the chapter illustrates, the elements of the tort set a wide circle of protection that shields a person’s private interest in their reputation –but this protection is cut down to a large extent by the defences, most of which reflect the importance of a countervailing public interest in free communication of information and opinion. To succeed in a defamation action, the plaintiff must be able to bring their case into the central zone (shown in the figure), but note that the balance between the two zones has varied over time.

A hallmark of wise deliberative spaces is their commitment to truth-seeking, in contrast to “post-truth” contexts where emotional appeals and personal beliefs are more important than objective facts. Chapter 5 explores how post-truth thinking has been fueled by cognitive elites across the political spectrum and traces its roots to postmodernist ideas. The chapter reviews philosophical definitions of truth, contrasting idealist and coherentist views with realist theories, specifically correspondence, semantic, and pragmatic approaches. It draws on Hilary Putnam’s concept of natural realism to argue that objective truths do exist – depending on the domain of inquiry – but only if we distinguish between what is true and what is merely believed to be true. Postpositivism supports this by recognizing an external reality while acknowledging that our knowledge is fallible and evolving. Biases, though inevitable, can be countered through reflexive and communal inquiry. Ultimately, the chapter argues that wisdom lies in understanding the nature of different kinds of inquiry – scientific, moral, or otherwise – without falling into the trap of relativism.

Despite some notable similarities between the scientific realisms of Sellars and Peirce (such as both being anti-representationalist and future-directed), in his mature work Science and Metaphysics, Sellars explicitly critiqued Peirce’s account of truth as lacking “an intelligible foundation” (SM: vii). In this paper, I explore Sellars’ proposed remedy to Peirce’s purported lack, in his complex and enigmatic account of picturing – a non-discursive ‘mapping’ of the world. I argue that although Sellars’ development of this idea is largely sound, much of what he charges Peirce’s philosophy with missing is actually present there. By means of his semiotic icon/index/symbol distinction, Peirce manages to develop a philosophy of language which effectively coordinates the real order and the order of signification within the very structure of the proposition as he understands it, by contrast to Sellars’ claim that the two orders are merely connected by ‘analogy’. I also argue that in between Sellars’ ambitious account of veridicality, which appears to anticipate a form of scientific self-mensuration, and the dismissive ‘anti-truth’ quietism of neopragmatists such as Rorty, Peirce’s “contrite fallibilism” (Peirce CP 1.14) charts a wise middle path.