Absolute and relative truth are important categories in the conceptual apparatus of dialectical materialist doctrine.
They serve as a reflection of the dialectical nature of knowledge, interpret the attainability of objective truth.
The world surrounding man, which opens in cognition and is subject to transformation, is distinguished by the properties of inexhaustibility and infinity.
The peculiarity of its structure is in extreme complexity.
His interactions, relationships and connections are endless.
When trying to describe and cognize these properties and features, problems arise that are already many millennia old.
They are connected with the fact that not one researcher was able to express all the wealth of the world in any description from the beginning of time.
At the same time, in many vivid and deep testimonies one can find magnificent descriptions of the partially known side of the world.
Dialectics recognizes that truth is, without a doubt, objective. It is in this capacity that it (the truth) is known.
However, a very specific question arises on the path of cognition: "What is the ratio of the two types of truth to be known: absolute and relative?"
The answer should give an idea of how the truth is known: instantly and holistically, immediately and completely, or, on the contrary, settled down in time, in parts, gradually and progressively?
Providing such an answer, philosophy recalls that the human mind in various situations penetrates the understanding of reality at different depths. Knowledge is true with varying degrees of accuracy.
Some types of knowledge reflect reality in a holistic way. Others do this only in part.
Each individual person, as well as an individual generation is limited in knowledge. The limiting factors are historical conditions, a certain level of development of engineering and technology in experiments, science and production at various stages of their formation.
For these reasons, human knowledge in any arbitrarily taken segment of historical development appears in the form of relative truth.
Relative truth is knowledge that does not fully correspond to reality.
Such a truth is only a relatively true reflection of an object that is independent of humanity.
Absolute truth reflects reality very accurately. It is not only objective, but fully objective.
Relative truth, in principle, cannot claim to reflect the world in its entirety.
Is it possible to demand from the absolute truth such cognizability that relative truth is incapable of?
In order to correctly answer this question, one must remember that many of the provisions of materialist dialectics contain a contradiction.
On the one hand, absolute truth could be known as an integral and complete phenomenon in all its manifestations and in its full diversity. After all, things are fully knowable, and the ability of human knowledge is unlimited.
But on the other hand, the very existence of relative truth complicates the possibility of knowing the absolute truth. Indeed, the relative truth is ahead of the absolute whenever knowledge is placed in certain, specific conditions.
However, in this case, can the knowledge of absolute truth even take place?
At the same time and comprehensively, completely and in all multifacetedness - no.
In a cognitive process that is endless - surely yes.
Mastering more and more new sides, links, elements of the absolute truth occurs in approaching it as scientific advances.
The relativity of truth is the driving force of cognitive processes in history.
In the knowledge of relative truths, people learn the absolute truth. This is precisely the essence of progress.