From the Editor’s Desk

Issue No. 8 of Kaveret, the journal published by the Department of Behavioral Sciences, delves into Truth. Its discussion of Truth forges another link in the chain of concepts reviewed in previous issues: Love (Kaveret No. 1, January 2000), Leadership {Kaveret No. 2, March 2001), Freedom {Kaveret No. 3, June 2001), Justice (Kaveret No. 4, January 2002), Happiness (Kaveret No. 5, June 2002), Beauty (Kaveret No. 6, January 2003) and Passion (Kaveret No. 7, June 2003).

In the Sapir Hebrew dictionary, Truth is defined as the faithful and reliable correspondence between a statement and an actual fact. In other words, Truth captures the qualities of honesty, justice and loyalty. The post-modernists nonetheless challenge the unqualified absoluteness of terms such as reality, correctness, reliability, honesty and justice. Instead, they prefer a different interpretation, the "narrative" constructed by the viewer from these concepts. Hence, can we conclude that Truth is total? And is there only one Truth?

The articles before us explore these issues from a multidisciplinary perspective, combining aspects of philosophy, sociology and psychology. The first nine articles (1-9) examine the essence of Truth from philosophical and psychological perspectives. The next five articles (10-16), probe into the absoluteness of Truth as it appears in art, drawing, literature, theatre and statistics. Following are four articles (17-19, 22) investigating the presence of Truth in our daily lives, in politics, couplehood and therapy. Two stories (20-21) relating to Truth from a personal perspective complete the issue.

In the tradition of its previous issues, Kaveret explores Truth according to the four basic tenets of its credo:

1. Consideration of the concept (one per issue) is to be,as comprehensive as feasible, touching on diverse points of view: philosophical, psychological, sociological, economic, legal, religious, geopolitical, literary and artistic (short stories, verse and drawing).

2. The discussion is to range from the general to the particular: from macro-level relations focused on society to micro-level relations focused on individual human beings, their thoughts, feelings, disappointments and hopes.

3. Contributors are to include students, graduates, teaching assistants and lecturers from the Academic Studies Division and other institutions.

4. The format is to be compact, focused, and aimed at as broad an audience as possible.

Kaveret No 9, to be published in June 2004, will focus on the concept Self-sacrifice. As always, articles, creative works and comments will be accepted, following review, if they abide by the Kaveret credo. Manuscripts are not to exceed 2,000 words in length, accompanied by a 40-word abstract and 6 bibliographical references but free of footnotes. Submissions are to be received no later than 29 April 2004.

Dr. Rachel Pasternak, Editor

Department of Behavioral Sciences

Academic Studies Division

The College of Management