For me, philosophy is not about discovering THE TRUTH. Philosophy is about giving voice to the many different voices of life and reality. So last night I was delighted to find the following passage in the masterpiece novel Wolf Solent by John Powys (1872-1963), the English philosopher and novelist (page 79):

“I’m afraid I’m hopeless expressing myself”, she said. “I don’t think I regard philosophy in the light of ‘truth’ at all”.

“How do you regard it then?”

…”What I mean to say is,” she went on… “I regard each philosophy not as a ‘truth’ but just as a particular country, in which I can travel – countries with their own peculiar light, their Gothic buildings, their pointed roofs, their avenues and trees… But I’m afraid I’m tiring you with all this!”

“Go on, for heaven’s sake!” he pleaded. “It’s just what I want to hear.”

“I mean that it’s like the way you feel about things,” she explained, “when you hear the rain outside, while you’re reading a book… You know what I mean?… When you get a sudden feeling of life going on outside, far away from where you sit…”

Wolf bit his lip to suppress a smile. At that moment he could have hugged the nervous little figure before him.

“I know perfectly well what you mean,” he said eagerly. “Philosophy to you, and to me too, isn’t science at all! It’s life winnowed [=throwing up grain in the air to clean it] and heightened. It’s the essence of life caught while in motion. It’s life framed – framed in room-windows, in carriage-windows, in mirrors…”