Contributions to the history of the classical truth-definition

This chapter discusses the contributions to the history of the classical truth definition. Although truth belongs to the family of crucial philosophical categories, writing its general history still remains a serious challenge for historians of philosophy. Also historical accounts of particular truth-theories are rather fragmentaric. As the classical theory of truth has become the most popular and influential among all hitherto proposed answers to the philosophical problem of truth, a lack of its written history is especially strange, more than in the case of its various rivals; this theory maintains, roughly speaking, that truth consists in a relation of correspondence that holds between so called bearers of truth and reality. The chapter presents a sketch of how the gap could be filled with respect to the classical concept of truth (CCT). It is just a sketch that by no means pretends to any completeness. The history of the classical theory of truth requires taking into account at least four points—namely, statements that have been explicitly intended as definitions of CCT; formulations which could be interpreted as definitions of CCT, independently of the intentions of their authors; the philosophical environment of formulations; and criticism of CCT and its defenses against raised objections.