THE TRUTH HURTS: VERA SCHWARCZ'S HEARTFELT QUEST.

Vera Schwarcz offers a penetrating examination of the concept and meaning of 'truth' in China (antiquity to contemporary) and elsewhere (primarily in the Jewish tradition, from the Hebrew Bible to contemporary thinkers). Highly critical of the sharp turn toward cultural relativism which abandons the search for truth in the name of everyone having his or her own situated truths, she examines in particular how scholars, philosophers, and writers living in dark times have sought to cut through the enforced amnesia of oppressive regimes, especially that of post-1949 China. This broad-ranging search brings numerous great minds into a kind of transtemporal, transcultural conversation, voices rarely, if ever, discussed between the covers of the same book. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]