The First Truth as The Source of All Truths

Analysis of I Questio de Veritate of St Thomas Aquinas

To the question, “What is truth?” St. Thomas Aquinas gives a clear, concise, yet simple answer: truth is the expression of real correspondence between being as such and its conception in the intellect. It is perceived that the truth consists in the correspondence between the intellect and the existing thing. Thus, truth exists, properly, in the intellect and, improperly, in things. One thing is said to be "true" because its appearance naturally produces a correct understanding of what it is and is said to be "false" when the opposite occurs.

St Thomas distinguished truth in two senses: Ontological truth: It's the adaptation (adequatio) of the 'created being' to divine intellect, whereby it fulfills that for which it was ordained according to Divine Intellect. When this happens, we say that the created thing is true. The other truth is logical truth: It's the adaptation (adequatio) of human's intellect to the being of the created thing. In this relation, contrary to the ontological truth, no real relation is created when something is understood by a man, i.e. a dependence of the being on the man's understanding, but just a 'logical relation'/'relation of reason' is created. In fact it is human intellect which is dependent on the being of the thing, and not the other way around.

And in this sense Thomas affirms that all things are intelligible to the human intellect, since the reason for its intelligibility, as well as the inexhaustibility of its truth, is the fact of its being a creature. The fact that things are creatively thought of by God, according to Aquinas, grounds his intelligible being, as well as his inexhaustible being to the human intellect. Thus, by conceiving things as the thought of God, he infers that nothing is false, for God is conceived as the eternal truth, from which all truths have their foundation. Therefore, the truth, for St. Thomas, is as such independent of any human condition. Man may even cease to exist, but the truth will continue to exist, for its foundation is being in itself, understood as God, the foundation of all existence. Thus, truth understood as a formality does not run the risk of falling into relativism, the fruit of subjectivism - denying reality as the foundation of all human knowledge.

Truth is determined not only by an act of the intellect in agreement with the form of a being (the specific form), as Aristotle thought, or the act of inspecting some ideal exemplar as Plato thought, but rather, truth is the measure of a thing read by the intellect, and by this reading the intellect becomes perfected, and thereby measured.

Things are termed true because of their conformity with the divine intellect. And since being and knowing are identical in God, the beings He creates are known by Him and are thus true. The being and the truth of creatures are therefore convertible. Just as there is a hierarchy in being, there is also a hierarchy in truth.

The natural thing, the created being lies between two intellects, the divine intellect and the human intellect. The divine intellect is the first measure, because, in creating, it grants the mode of being, the measure, the thing. This, measured by the divine intellect, constitutes the second measure by measuring the human intellect. The human intellect is measured by natural things, and measuring only the artificial ones. From this, we can affirm that truth in man is not "less truth" than that of God. Truth is properly in the human intellect, as in the divine intellect. However, it is first in the divine intellect, whereas, in human intellect, secondarily.

If the created intellect did not exist, there would be no truth (in the intellect), but there would still be created truth. The truth of things would still conform to the divine intellect. However, if, the divine intellect did not exist, nor would the veritas rei exist, for there would not be an intellect to suit. In this way, the truth of being is assumed as measured (mensurata) by the divine intellect. On the other hand, it is capable of measuring (mensurans), of being intelligible, and of producing veritas intellectus in the human intellect.

As the highest being, absolute unity and the essence of all ideas, God himself is the supreme truth and truth in the full and proper sense. And just as the created things possess the divine being only as an image and divided into multiplicity, so too is the one divine truth in the individual things. All truth, both the truth of being (veritas rei) and the truth of the intellect (veritas intellectus), goes back to God as its ultimate source. And that any "adaequatio rei et intellectus" can come about is conditioned by the fact that both, things and the human intellect, are naturally attuned to each other as images of divine truth. Things are made to fit the cognition of the intellect; the intellect is created so that it can absorb the truth of things. The adaequatio rei et intellectus is thus ensured by a God-given "pre-established harmony" between things and the intellect.

Along with Thomas’ understanding of truth there appears a specific understanding of cognition. Cognition is first and foremost a perfection of a personal being. This is because the truth is not the result of cognition, but rather, cognition is the result of the truth “cognitio est quidam veritatis effectus”. If there were no truth in things, there would not be any cognition. Thomas also avoids any "reification of truth", which is treating truth like a being unto itself. He avoids also the instrumentalization of truth, that is, treating truth exclusively as a means of liberation, or the logicification of the truth, whereby truth would be treated merely as an effect of cognition. For this reason he specifically described truth as a measure, thanks to which the natural thing is measured and measuring (mensurata et mensurans). The truth that we know is the measure by which our intellect is measured and directed to the cognition of a being. The truth is then a consequence of the measure of a being’s existence. As St. Thomas says: Veritas sequitur esse rei. Thus the truth that is given to man is not merely derived from cognition or thought, as is commonly accepted today, but together with things it is given to man.

Finally, it must noted that the most important consequence of Thomas’ understanding of the truth is the discovery of the foundations for the intelligibility or rationality of the world. The world is like a book, but not like a blank notebook, in which each really existing thing bears within itself the thought and intention of the Creator, and perhaps that of a human artisan as well.