What Is Truth?

In June 2004, a Belgian jury found Marc Dutroux guilty of murder; he had kidnapped,
imprisoned, and repeatedly raped six girls—all children—and murdered four of them: two 8-
year-olds who starved to death in a dungeon in his basement and two others whom he buried
alive. The Dutroux case had dragged on for almost ten years amid numerous charges that
government officials were protecting Dutroux. Dutroux, who made videos of himself raping the
children, claimed he was part of a network of pedophiles that included government officials in
Belgium and around Europe for whom he procured children. A young woman, Regina Louf,
subsequently came forward and said that as a child she had been sexually abused and tortured by
the pedophile network to which Dutroux belonged. She identified several members of the
network including Belgian and European police officers, bankers, doctors, businessmen, judges,
politicians, and members of the nobility. Then, several other women came forward with similar
stories. Faced with an outraged public, the government appointed the Dutroux Inquiry
Commission to get to the truth about the Dutroux case.

The meetings of the Commission were televised and often heated. During a Commission
meeting, two witnesses, a policeman named Lesage and a judge named Doutrewe, were
questioned about an important fi le on Dutroux. Under oath, the policeman testified that he had
sent the fi le to the judge who must have received it. The judge, also under oath, asserted
vehemently that the fi le was not sent to him and so he never received it. The next day Professor
Yves Winkin, a well-known professor of anthropology, was interviewed by Le Soir, a Belgian
newspaper:

Le Soir: The confrontation [between Officer Lesage and Judge Doutrewe] was stimulated by an
almost ultimate search for truth. Does truth exist?

Winkin: I think that all the work of the Commission is based on a sort of presupposition that
there exists, not a truth, but the truth—which if one presses hard enough, will finally come out.
However, anthropologically, there are only partial truths, shared by a larger or smaller number of
people: a group, a family, a fi rm. There is no transcendent truth. Therefore, I don’t think that
judge Doutrewe or officer Lesage are hiding anything: both are telling their truth. Truth is always
linked to an organization, depending upon the elements that are perceived as important. It is not
surprising that these two people, representing two very different professional universes, should
each set forth a different truth.

Winkin’s statement about the Dutroux Commission has significant implications about the nature
of truth. First, it implies that what is true in relation to one person need not be true in relation to
another person. Truth is relative: Whether a statement is true depends on who makes the
statement. Second, it claims that there is no such thing as the truth about whether there were
government officials who were pedophiles protecting Dutroux. That is, in Winkin’s view there’s
no such thing as the real “objective” truth about whether there’s a ring of powerful people in
Europe who kidnap, abuse, and torture children, and whether they protected Dutroux from
prosecution. If your group “shares” the belief that there is ring of pedophiles operating
throughout Europe, then it’s true that there is; but if your group doesn’t share these beliefs, then
it isn’t true that such a ring exists and we should not look for it. Third, in Winkin’s view we can’t
even say that it’s either true or false that Lesage sent the fi le to Judge Doutrewe. If you’re
Lesage, then because you just believe you sent the fi le, it’s really true that you sent it. And if
you’re Doutrewe, then you don’t believe

Lesage sent the fi le, so it’s really true that he didn’t. Both beliefs are really true even though
they contradict each other. Winkin’s view of truth is one that many philosophers also hold. Some
theories of truth would at least partially support Winkin’s views, including, as you will see, some
versions of the pragmatic and the coherence theories of truth. But there is at least one theory that
firmly rejects Winkin’s views, and that is the correspondence theory of truth.