Not content to say what is true, people exaggerate thereby turning the true into the false. Three examples from sober philosophers.
Martin Buber, who is certainly no Frenchman, writes that “a melody is not composed of tones, nor a verse of words…” (I and Thou, p. 59) His point is that a melody cannot be reduced to its individual notes, nor a verse to its constituent words. But he expresses this truth in a way that makes it absurdly false. A melody without tones would be no melody at all. The litterateur exaggerates for literary effect, but Buber is no mere litterateur. So what is going on?
For a second example, consider Martin Heidegger. Somewhere in Sein und Zeit he writes that Das Dasein ist nie vorhanden. The human being is never present-at-hand. This is obviously false in that the human being has a body which is present-at-hand in nature as surely as any animal or stone. What he is driving at is the truth — or at least the plausibility — that the human being enjoys a special mode of Being, Existenz, that is radically unlike the Vorhandenheit of the mere thing in nature and the Zuhandenheit of the tool. So why doesn’t he speak the truth, and nothing but the truth, without exaggerating?
And then there is Ludwig Wittgenstein, who, according to J. N. Findlay, “took every wrong turn a philosopher can take.” (Personal communication) Wittgenstein’s fideism involves such absurd exaggerations as that religions imply no theoretical views. But when a Christian, reciting the Nicene creed, says “I believe in God the Father, almighty creator of heaven and earth…” he commits himself thereby to the metaphysical view that heaven and earth have a certain ontological status, namely, that of being creatures.
Of course, the Christian is doing more than this: his ‘I believe’ expresses trust in God as a person and not mere belief that certain propositions are true. But to deny that there is any propositional content to his belief would be ludicrous. And yet that appears to be what Wittgenstein is doing.