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Relative And Absolute Truth In Janet Cherry's 'Historical Truth'

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Janet Cherry, in “Historical Truth: Something to Fight For”, establishes that the role of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in South Africa was “to uncover and acknowledge that truth, so [our] society could at last be free and move forward.” (Cherry, 134) More tangibly, she cites an additional objective of the TRC to investigate and “make known the fate or whereabouts of victims.” (Cherry, 135) Cherry’s decision to emphasize these objectives proffer a curious dichotomy of relative and absolute truths. Abstractly, one may consider the simplicity inherent in selected TRC cases: investigators conduct an interview, a survivor tells the story of a killing, and families achieve resolution through the exhumation of a corpse. This presents …show more content…

Nonetheless, Cherry concludes here argument by asserting the significance of absolute truth, the existence of only “one reality” (Cherry, 143). Similarly, she maintains a concern that by focusing on reconciliation and amnesty, that many of the distinctions within the South African story have been abandoned, and in their place is an acquiescence to partial truths. Furthermore, she states that the truth, although imperfect at the time of her writing, is a “continually unfolding process” which facilitates continued restorative justice. Gutman and Thompson, in “The Moral Foundations of Truth Commissions” propose three justifications for truth commissions. The authors frame these justifications through the thesis that “these commissions sacrifice the pursuit of justice… for the sake of promoting other social purposes” (Gutman & Thompson, 22). First, the authors state that truth commissions should be moral in principle; commissions “should explicitly appeal to rights… that are moral and therefore are comparable to the justice that is being sacrificed.” (23) They also claim that truth commissions “should be moral in perspective” in that those commissions should maintain a

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