"The unexamined life is not worth living"
Socrates
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Visualizzazione post con etichetta doctrine. Mostra tutti i post

mercoledì 13 novembre 2013

DOES TRUTH EXIST?


In the contemporary society there is often the tendency to doubt of the truth's existence  and to affirm that truth is relative because it is linked to one's own opinion or to the one of others and to the historical circumstances where it is stated. This is the result of some philosophical currents of the last two centuries  that, instead of denying the truth's existence as the skeptics did, decided to redefine the truth as something relative depriving it of its essence.


Therefore it is right to ask first of all what the truth is. Man has always had the tendency to  transform a doctrine or external theory (that is not coming from the subject's experience) into the truth and, starting from it, to judge the reality. This attitude make us state the truth's relativity because in it the subject accept other's opinion without verifying the factual reality, so as a person can accept a doctrine he could as well accept the opposite one. Therefore one needs to start from the personal experience of reality. But if this experience is based only on the observation of the things and even more if it is not compared with other's experience,  it ends up becoming the simple opinion of a person which has nothing in common with the objective truth. Even in the case of scientific knowledge, which is based upon a series of observations that are experimented through math's objectivity, subsist a certain 'relativity' which makes the scientists doubt of a theory as soon as it has been stated as true.


This doesn't mean that in all these types of knowledge there is no truth, but it means that it is necessary a critical spirit that tries to anchor these knowledges to the reality as it truly is, that is the essence of the things. The latter can be known through an intuitive process  which requires not only particular intellective capacities, but also a respectful attitude towards the being, sincerity, scrupulosity and thirst for the truth. Only an essential knowledge can get us to the truth. Therefore we define the truth as adaequatio rei et intellectus (adequation of the intellect to the thing)  because are the things in themselves, as expressed in their essences, that determine the truth or not of a knowledge.


A knowledge which is based on the essence of a thing will always be valid, because the essence never changes (if this had to happen, the thing would stop existing); so it brings to a universal truth which is valid in every place and time. Examples of universal truth are the aristotelian difference between the efficient cause and the final cause, and the fact that the human being was born to love and to be loved  because of his essence as 'being in relation' (as alredy said in the article "Because of love you will live eternally").

Instead we call particular 'truth' that knowledge which is relative because it is not based on the essences of the things but it is linked to a specific condition and historical period. This is for example the case of homosexuality, both in the opinion of the gay movement and in the one of the different religions, because none of those cases is based on the essence of the homosexuality which remains still unknown. In spite of this, both opinions on  homosexuality are sold as universal truth. The same thing has happened many times in history and an example is that of slavery considered right and advocated as true by many, included Aristotle, but considered unacceptable nowadays because freedom is part od the essential dignity of the person. So it is necessary to doubt of what is offered as true and to ask oneself if it is really based on the essence of the object.