The will to know, and to know freely, corresponds to the idea of creation. The created world is rational, and this means that we can know it. Its rationality is a harmony that one contemplates: theory comes from theorein which means to contemplate: the truth draws to itself like the good and the beautiful. Indeed, creation is the work of a transcendent author, thus infinitely complex, the comprehension of which is never exhausted. Hence the idea of a truth always to be sought and mined. It cannot be contained in a single book, as totalitarianisms (Stalin) or total utopias (Orwell) or fantastic literatures (Borgès) would want.
The regime of truth, under which we live, implies two essential consequences or characteristics:
Truth implies universality, because a true proposition is everywhere and for all. While a myth is only valid for a group, a tribe, a culture.
Truth implies freedom, because in the regime of freedom an arbitrary authority cannot impose dogmas according to its good pleasure: the human mind is at the same time subject to truth and free because of it.
Chantal Delsol, "L’idée d’Université" (my translation).
