Compromise is a result of negotiations; truth is not.

This has become an oft-repeated dictum. It is very much in vogue. 

One can hear people uttering this statement as they refer to a conflict between two parties. Indeed, this sentence is applied to a scenario involving a dispute between two contending parties.

It would seem as though this sentence is automatically identified with an enlightened intellectual position. If one says that the truth is invariably somewhere in the middle, then one is deemed to be a fair, dispassionate and rational spectator.

We wish to contend that this statement lacks any logical validity. Although it is semantically understandable, this sentence is logically meaningless.

To begin with, it identifies the truth in advance with a geometrical position which can hardly be proven in advance. It does not refer to a particular case in which a concrete truth could be allotted its position in the spectrum of the dispute concerned. Rather, it advances a general proposition which applies as a rule to "faceless" cases.

How can the truth be determined in advance in a dispute involving two sides without knowing the facts?

How can the truth in this context be so easily equated with a pre-determined geometrical position?

This statement is advanced under the belief that finding a balance between the subjective truths of two contending parties will invariably lead to the objective truth which, almost as a scientific rule, will be found to be "somewhere in the middle."

Indeed, it would seem that anyone uttering this sentence is thus expressing an enlightened point of view which eschews the rigidities of flag waving for one side or the other. The truth thus becomes a fashionable manifestation of moderation, rather than a rational interpretation of the facts.

To be sure, in a quest to find the truth one may have to listen to both sides of the dispute and assess the arguments advanced by each side. This is the process which one would have to follow. This ipso facto negates the validity of the statement concerned. For how can it be said in advance where the truth is to be found prior to undertaking the investigative process aimed at finding precisely where the truth is located?

The process aimed at finding the truth invalidates the truth of the proposition under discussion.

The truth is not a compromise between two contending parties. A distinction ought to be drawn between compromise and truth. Compromise may or may not lead to a result whereby the sides concerned agree to satisfy their demands in a point somewhere in the middle. Compromise is a result of negotiations; truth is not. Compromise entails agreement; truth may exist beyond and apart from any agreement.

Some may argue that truth can never be objectively proven; that truth is, and can only be, subjective in nature. If such were the case, then certainly the dictum under consideration would become meaningless. 

Thus, whether one believed that the truth could be objectively established or only subjectively proven, the statement under consideration would be equally invalid.