The aim of philosophical knowledge certainly does not consist in the knowledge of being, in a reflection of reality in the mind of the person who knows. Its aim is the knowledge of truth, the discovery of meaning, its purpose is to give an intelligible sense to reality. Philosophical knowledge, therefore, is not passive reflection, it is an active break-through, it is victory in the conflict with the meaninglessness of world reality. What I want to know is not reality but the truth about it, and I can recognize this truth only because there is in me myself, in the knowing subject, a source of truth, and union with truth is a possibility. The fact that there is in front of me a writing-table and I am writing with a pen on paper is not truth. It is something received by the senses and a statement of fact. The problem of truth is already posed in my writing. There is no truth of any sort of object; truth is only in the subject.
[Nicolai Berdyaev, The Beginning & The End, Harper Torchbook, 1957, p. 42]
Berdyaev (1874-1948) was a Russian philosopher usually grouped with Christian existentialists. I got to know him in the 1950s. He is also sometimes called the philosopher of creativeness. In the following sixty some odd years, I’ve never had occasion to question his intuition. All harmony. He has this to say on the next page:
Truth is a creative act of spirit in which meaning is brought to birth. Truth stands higher than the reality which exercises compulsion upon us, higher than the “real” world. But still higher than truth is God, or to put it more truly—God is Truth.
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