Year: 2013
Type: article
Abstract: In The Confidence-Man by Herman Melville, the pursuit of truth emerges as an endless self-cancelling process, resting ultimately on the will to believe, thus heralding Charles S. Peirce’s and William James’s insights. The final scene, the would-be moment of truth, brings confusion to a climax by pointing to baffling paradoxes such as the potential advent of the Savior under the guise of a crook. The paradoxes inherent in such a dubious revelation call into question the usual definition of truth in terms of logical consistency and adequacy to facts.
Author: Michel Imbert
Institution: Université Paris Diderot
Language: French
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W1581882379