THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

2.3) The Degrees of Truth Ascribed to Objects of a Single Species
An object is true insofar as it fulfills or fully instantiates its essence, norm, or
telos. This conception of truth ascribes truth to objects in the world, and it recognizes
truth as something that comes in degrees. An object can achieve its telos or norm with
varying degrees of success. Hegel suggests that our ordinary ways of speaking contain
hints of this conception of truth. When we speak of someone as a “true friend” or a “true
athlete,” or when we describe a particular mineral specimen as “true gold,” we use the
term “true” in a sense that approximates Hegel’s more technical sense of the term. In
such phrases, truth consists in the degree of correspondence between the actual existence
of a thing and the nature, essence, telos, or norm that constitutes the thing. A “true
friend,” for instance, is someone who lives up to the notion of friendship. In relation to
this notion or principle, we can speak of a friend being more or less true, and we can
place friends on a kind of graduated scale in accordance with how genuine they are. So a
friend is true to the degree that she reconciles the various particulars of her behavior with
the norm or principle that defines friendship.
In the first passage about the nature of truth that is quoted above, Hegel provides
further examples. He speaks of “a true work of Art,” and an “untrue state.” With regards
to such cases, he makes the further point that the meaning of “true” more or less
corresponds to what we normally mean by “good.” Likewise, the meaning of the term
“false” corresponds to what we mean by “bad.” Thus Hegel says a bad state is an untrue
state – i.e. a state that fails to achieve the immanent norms that constitute it as a state.
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