In his painting La Condition Humaine, the Belgian surrealist René Magritte observes that what we see is not a precise representation of truth, but an approximation.
The closest we get to the truth is what we see in our minds, not the representation of it with which the painter or author provides us.
In Magritte’s words:
“Which is how we see the world, namely, outside of us; although having only one representation of it within us. Similarly we sometimes remember a past event as being in the present. Time and space lose meaning and our daily experience becomes paramount. This is how we see the world. We see it outside ourselves, and at the same time we only have a representation of it in ourselves. In the same way, we sometimes situate in the past that which is happening in the present. Time and space thus loose the vulgar meaning that only daily experience takes into account. Questions such as ‘What does this picture mean, what does it represent?’ are possible only if one is incapable of seeing a picture in all its truth, only if one automatically understands that a very precise image does not show precisely what it is”
In sum, what we see is verisimilitudineous…it gives us only the illusion of truth
For further insight into Magritte’s perspectives, see also his painting The Treachery of Images https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images in which he declares “This is not a pipe” immediately below his painted image of…a pipe.
Questions
- If words and images can only approximate truth, where is truth itself?
- Can we find truth in Bhagavad Gita, Tao Te Ching or the Bible…if words are not truth itself, as Magritte observes?
- Does the world in fact exist at all outside our minds?
- What are the implications of Magritte’s observation for theism, atheism, Christianity and Buddhism?
R&I – TP
Verisimilitude
Article URL : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Condition_(Magritte)