It may be worth pointing out that Leela’s view is much closer than JD’s view to Aquinas’ teaching about truth: When Leela says truth is found in sentences, this is what Aquinas means when he says that the primary locus of truth is in judgments (division and composition) (=sentences) made by the intellect.
However, St. Thomas (and Augustine) insert carefully the manner in which the truth is presented to a cognitive entity. Aquinas changes the three-fold direction of said cognition in the
Summa theologiae from the direction he gave in
De veritate. He did this because he understood that Truth and the true are essentially ways by which the intellect is confronted by Truth, and thus, Truth and the true have
being in an ontological sense.
Jacques Maritain says, “The True is being inasmuch as it confronts intellection, thought; and this is another aspect of being, thus revealed, a new note struck by it. It answers to the knowing mind, speaks to it, superabounds in utterance, expresses, manifests a subsistence for thought, a particular intelligibility which is itself. An object is true – that is to say, conforms to what it thus says [about] itself to thought, to the intelligibility it enunciates – to the extent that it is.” - Jacques Maritain,
A Preface to Metaphysics, Sheed and Ward, 1939.
Thus,
ens, or, that-which-is is first to confront the mind, then Truth and the true, then knowledge. Lawrence Dewan says, "We have a presentation of the very roots of definability. The concept expressed by the word
ens is the concept first conceived, is indeed most known, and all other intellectual concepts are “resolvable” into
ens. Thus, all other conceptions of the intellect are constituted through
addition to
“ens” It is a lesson on our conceptions and their basis in the concept of
“ens,” and asks
how we can be said to “add” to it. The first point is to steer us clear of the idea that we add some different
nature. Everything we add must have the
nature of
“ens”. Accordingly, the additions are presented as “modes” of
“ens.” One sort of addition is a
special mode, and thus the conceptions of the
categories of
“ens” are seen to add to it: for example, says “
ens per se.” Such additions result in
grades of entity. -
Is Truth a Transcendental to St. Thomas Aquinas?
He distinguishes human truth and divine truth, but obviously(?) we’re all just humans here, so the human kind of truth would seem to be the appropriate one to discuss (especially with an atheist/agnostic such as Leela).
And all along, I thought this was a thread about metaphysics.
jd
)
Pretty good poem. I hope you learn from it.
