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The eternal notion of truth, conformity of thought with reality,
impels us to say: This displeases me and annoys me, but it is none
the less true. Still, human interests are so strong that Pilate's
question often reappears: What is truth? One answer which we must
here examine is that of pragmatism.
I. Pragmatism And Its Variations
There are two kinds of pragmatism, one historical, [1365] the
other theoretical. In England, at the end of the last century,
Charles S. Peirce, aiming at unburdening philosophy of parrotism
and logomachy, sought for a precise criterion whereby to distinguish
empty formulas from formulas that have meaning. He proposed to take as
criterion "the practical effects we can imagine as resulting from
opposed views." A starting-point is found in a remark of
Descartes: [1366] "We find much more truth in a man's
individual reasoning on his own personal affairs, where loss follows
error, than in those of the literary man in his study, where no
practical result is anticipated." Equivalent remarks were often made
by the ancients.
This form of pragmatism, which still grants much objectivity to
knowledge, is also that of Vailati and Calderoni. Subsequently,
however, with William James, pragmatism becomes a form of
subjectivism, thus defined in the work cited: "A doctrine according
to which truth is a relation, entirely immanent to human experience,
whereby knowledge is subordinated to activity, and the truth of a
proposition consists in its utility and satisfactoriness."
[1367] That is true which succeeds.
Hence arise many variations. We find a pragmatic skepticism, similar
to that of the ancient sophists, where success means pleasure to him
who defends the proposition. Truth and virtue give way to individual
interest. A profitable lie becomes truth. What is an error for one
man is truth for his neighbor. "Justice limited by a river," says
Pascal. "How convenient! Truth here is error beyond the
Pyrenees!".
An opposite extreme understands success to mean spontaneous harmony
among minds engaged in verifying facts held in common. At the end of
his life, James approached this view, which endeavors to uphold the
eternal and objective notion of truth.
Between these two extremes we find many nuances, reasons of state,
for example, or of family, where interests, national or private,
defy objective truth and even common sense. Or again, opportunism,
for which truth means merely the best way to profit by the present
situation. Seeing these inferior connotations of pragmatism, as in
course of acceptance by public usage, Maurice Blondel [1368]
resolved to renounce the word which he had previously employed.
Edouard Le Roy writes as follows: "When I use the word
'pragmatism,’ I give it a meaning quite different from that of the
Anglo-Americans who have made the word fashionable. My employment
of the word does not at all mean to sacrifice truth to utility, nor to
allow, in the search for particular truths, even the least
intervention of considerations extraneous to the love of truth itself.
But I do hold that, in the search for truth, both scientific and
moral, one of the signs of a true idea is the fecundity of that idea,
its aptitude for practical results. Verification, I hold, should be
a work, not merely a discourse." [1369] .
Yet Le Roy [1370] proceeded to this pragmatist conception of
dogma: In your relations to God, act as you do in your relations
with men. Dogma, accordingly, is before all else a practical
prescription. Dogma, speaking precisely, would not be true by its
conformity with divine reality, but by its relation to the religious
act to be performed, and the practical truth of the act would appear in
the superior success of that religious experience in surmounting life's
difficulties. Hence the following proposition was condemned by the
Church: "The dogmas of faith are to be retained only in the
practical sense, i. e.: as preceptive norms of action, but not as
norms of belief." [1371] Thus the dogma of the Incarnation
would not affirm that Jesus is God, but that we must act towards
Jesus as we do towards God. The dogma of the Eucharist would not
affirm, precisely, His Real Presence, but that practically we
ought to act as if that Presence were objectively certain. Thus we
see that the elevated variations of pragmatism are not without danger,
both in maintaining truth in general, and in particular dogmatic
truths, defined by the Church as immutable and as conformed to the
extramental reality which they express.
In opposition to all forms of pragmatism, let us recall the
traditional notion of truth, in all its manifestations, from highest
to lowest, including the truth in prudential arguments, which are
always practically true, even when at times they involve a speculative
error absolutely involuntary.
II. The Two Notions Compared
Adequation of intellect and object: that is the definition of truth
given by St. Thomas. [1372] He quotes that of St.
Augustine: Truth is that by which reality is manifested, and that of
St. Hilary: Truth declares and manifests reality. The first
relation of reality to intellect, St. Thomas continues, is that
reality correspond to intellect. This correspondence is called
adequation of object and intellect, wherein the conception of truth is
formally completed. And this conformity, this adequation, of
intellect to reality, to being, is what the idea of truth adds to the
idea of being.
Truth, then, is the intellect's conformity with reality. Change in
this universal notion of truth brings with it total change in the domain
of knowledge. The modernists, says Pius X, overturn the eternal
notion of truth. [1373] .
Without going to this extreme, Maurice Blondel, [1374] in
1906, one year before the encyclical Pascendi, wrote a sentence
that would lead to unmeasured consequences in science, in philosophy,
and in faith and religion. In place of the abstract and chimerical
definition of truth as the adequation of intellect and reality, thus he
wrote, we must substitute methodical research, and define truth as
follows: the adequation of intellect and life. How well this sentence
expressed the opposition between the two definitions, ancient and
modern! But what great responsibility does he assume who brands as
chimerical a definition maintained in the Church for centuries.
[1375] .
Life, as employed in the new definition, means human life. How,
then, does the definition escape the condemnation [1376]
inflicted on the following modernist proposition: Truth is not more
unchangeable than is man himself, since it evolves with, in, and
through man. [1377] .
Change in definition entails immense consequences. He who dares it
should be sure beforehand that he clearly understands the traditional
definition, particularly in its analogous quality, which, without
becoming metaphorical, is still proportional. Ontological truth, for
example, is the conformity of creatures with the intellect of the
Creator. Logical truth is the conformity of man's intellect to the
world around him, which he has not made but only discovered. Logical
truth is found both in existential judgments, e. g.: Mont Blanc
exists, this horse is blind, I am thinking, and in essential
judgments, e. g.: man is a rational animal, blindness is a
privation, the laws of the syllogism are valid.
Truth, then, like being, unity, the good, and the beautiful, is
not a univocal notion, but an analogical notion. Thus truth in God
is adequation in the form of identity, God's intellect being
identified with God's being eternally known. Truth in possible
creatures is their correspondence with God's intellect. Truth in
actual creatures is their conformity with the decrees of God's will.
Nothing that is not God, not even created free acts, can exist
except as causally dependent on God.
Truth, then, is coextensive with all reality. A change in defining
truth, then, brings corresponding changes, not only in the domain of
knowledge, but in that of willing and acting, since as we know, so do
we will.
III. Pragmatic Consequences
In sciences, physical and physico-mathematical, those facts which
exist independently of our mind are considered certain, as laws which
express constant relations among phenomena. Postulates, hypotheses,
are defined by their relation to the truth to be attained, not as yet
accessible or certain. To illustrate. On the principle of inertia,
many scientists hold that inertia in repose is certain, meaning that a
body not acted upon by an exterior cause remains in repose. But
others, H. Poincare, for example, or P. Duhem, see in this
view a mere postulate suggested by our experience with inertia in
movement, which means that "a body already in motion, if no exterior
cause acts upon it, retains indefinitely its motion, rectilinear and
uniform." Experience suggests this view, because as obstacles
diminish, the more is motion prolonged, and because "a constant
force, acting on a material point entirely free, impresses on it a
motion uniformly accelerated," as is the motion of a falling body.
But the second formula of inertia, as applied to a body in repose, is
not certain, because, as Poincare [1378] says: "No one has
ever experimented on a body screened from the influence of every force,
or, if he has, how could he know that the body was thus screened? "
The influence of a force may remain imperceptible.
Inertia in repose, then, remains a postulate, a proposition, that
is, which is not self-evident, which cannot be proved either a priori
or a posteriori, but which the scientist accepts in default of any
other principle. The scientist, says P. Duhem, [1379] has
no right to say that the principle is true, but neither has he the
right to say it is false, since no phenomenon has so far constrained us
to construct a physical theory which would exclude this principle. It
is retained, so far, as guide in classifying phenomena. This line of
argument renders homage to the objective notion of truth. We could not
reason thus under truth's pragmatic definition.
Let us look now at metaphysical principles: The principle of
contradiction or identity, [1380] that of sufficient reason,
[1381] that of efficient causality, [1382] and that of
finality. [1383] These principles, we say, are true,
because it is evident that they are primary laws, not only of our mind
but of all reality. They are not merely existential judgments, but
express objective and universal impossibilities. Never and nowhere can
a thing simultaneously exist and not exist, can a thing be without its
raison d'etre, can a non-necessary thing exist without cause, can a
thing act without any purpose. Metaphysical principles admit no
exception. But they all disappear under the pragmatic definition of
truth.
The truth in the formulas of faith is their conformity with the
realities which they express; the Trinity, the Incarnation, eternal
life, eternal pain, the Real Presence, the value of Mass.
Although the concepts which express subject and predicate in these
formulas are generally analogous, the verb "is" (or its equivalent)
expresses immutable conformity to the reality in question. I am the
truth and the life, says Jesus Though "truth" and "life" are
analogous notions, Jesus added: "My words shall not pass away."
The same holds good of all dogmatic formulas. They are not mere
"norms of action." They do not express mere "conformity of our
minds with our lives." They express primarily, not our religious
experience, but divine reality, a reality which often transcends
experience, as, for instance, when we believe in heaven or n hell.
Who can claim to experience the hypostatic union? Or the infinite
values of Christ's death? We may experience indeed, not these
mysteries themselves, but their effects in us. The Spirit Himself
giveth testimony to our spirit that we are the sons of God.
[1384] The Spirit, says St. Thomas, commenting on that
sentence, evokes in us a filial affection which we can experience.
But even this experience we cannot absolutely distinguish from a mere
sentimental affection.
Faith, therefore, both by its divine object and by its infallible
certitude, transcends our experience. This is true even when faith,
under the special inspirations of the gifts of knowledge and wisdom,
becomes ever more savorous and penetrating. [1385] These
gifts, far from constituting faith, presuppose faith. The same holds
good of all religious experience. It holds good likewise of the
certitude of faith and of the ardor of charity. Hope and charity
presuppose faith and the act of faith itself presupposes credibility in
the truths to be believed.
Dogmatic propositions, too, derive certainty from their conformity to
the reality which they express. When God's revelation employs the
natural notions of our intelligence, the natural certainty we have on
all truths deriving from these notions is supplemented by a supernatural
certainty, deriving from that revelation. Thus, when God says: I
am He who is, our philosophical certainty of the attributes that
belong to self-existent being is supplemented by theological
certitude. When Jesus is revealed as truly God and truly man,
theology deduces, with a certitude which transcends our experience,
that Jesus has two wills, one belonging to His divine nature, and
the other to His human nature.
Under the pragmatist definition of truth, on the contrary, we would
have to say, and it has been recently said, that theology is at bottom
merely a system of spirituality which has found rational instruments
adequated to its religious experience. [1386] Thus Thomism
would be the expression of Dominican spirituality, Scotism that of
Franciscan spirituality, Molinism that of Ignatian spirituality.
Hence, since these three systems of spirituality are approved by the
Church, also the theological systems, which are their expression,
would all be simultaneously true, as being each in conformity with the
particular religious experience which is their respective originating
principle. This position, if we recall that at times these systems
contradict one another, is itself a painful illumination of the
contrast between the traditional and pragmatist definitions of truth.
The question arises: Can a system of spirituality be true if it is
not objectively founded on true doctrine? We, like many others, look
on these ingenious theories as false spiritualizations of theology,
reduced to a religious experience, wherein we look in vain for an
objective foundation. Spiritual pragmatism may lead at best to
prudential certitude which arises, not directly from objective
conformity with reality, but from subjective conformity with a right
intention. But it would then have to descend still lower, because
prudential truth and certitude presuppose a higher certitude, an
objective certitude, without which even prudential certitude would
vanish.
The certitude of prudence, as explained by Aquinas, [1387]
following Aristotle, contains that which is true in limited
pragmatism. Prudence is a virtue, even an intellectual virtue, in
the moral order, a virtue which transcends opinion, and reaches a
practical certitude on the goodness of the act in question. The truth
of the practical intellect, Aristotle [1388] has said,
differs from that of the speculative intellect. Speculative truth
means conformity with objective reality. But since the intellect is
limited to the necessary truths of reality, it cannot attain infallible
conformity with the contingent and variable elements of reality. The
contingent, as such, cannot be the subject matter of a speculative
science. Truth in the practical intellect, on the contrary, means
conformity with good will, with good intention. When for instance,
presented with an unsuspected poisoned drink, a man proceeds to
partake, his speculative error does not prevent his having a true
prudential judgment based on his intention to obey charity and
politeness. Practical truth can coexist with speculative error.
Pragmatism can claim this partial truth.
Pragmatism Must Return to Tradition
One chief difficulty, proposed by the philosophy of action, appears
in St. Thomas [1389] in the form of an objection. The
thesis is: Goodness in the will depends on reason. The objection
runs thus: The reverse is true, because as the Philosopher
[1390] says, truth conformed to right appetite is the goodness
of the practical intellect, and right appetite means good will In
other words, each man's judgment follows his fundamental inclination,
bad or good. If this fundamental inclination is bad, the judgment
will be wrong. But if the inclination is good, the judgment too will
be right and true, just as spiritual pragmatism maintains.
The saint's answer runs thus: The Philosopher is speaking here of
the practical intellect, as engaged in the order of means, to find the
best road to a presupposed goal, for this is the work of prudence.
Now it is true that in the order of means the goodness of the reason
consists in its conformity with the will's inclination to the right end
and goal. But, he adds, this very inclination of the will
presupposes the right knowledge of the end, and this knowledge comes
from reason. [1391] .
Prudential certitude, then, does presuppose right intention in the
will, but this right intention itself derives its rectitude from those
higher principles of reason which are true by their conformity with
objective reality, with our nature and our last end. To reduce all
truth to prudential certitude means to destroy prudential certitude
itself.
To this extreme we seem to be led by those who, abandoning the eternal
notion of truth as conformity with objective reality, propose rather to
define truth as conformity of spirit with the exigencies of human life,
a conformity known by a constantly developing experience, moral and
religious. Here we are surely near the following modernistic
proposition: Truth is not more immutable than is man himself, since
it evolves with him, in him, and through him. [1392] .
The pragmatism we are here dealing with is not, we must acknowledge,
the grovelling pragmatism of social climbers or politicians, who
utilize mendacity as practical truth, as sure road to success. It is
rather the pragmatism of good and honest men who claim to have a high
level of religious experience. But they forget that man's will,
man's intention, can be right and good only by dependence on the
objective and self-supporting principles of man's nature and man's
destination, as known by reason and revelation, principles which
impose on him the duty of loving God, above all things, man himself
included. This truth, the source of man's good will and intention,
rests on its conformity with the highest levels of reality, on the
nature of our soul and our will, on the nature of God and God's
sovereign goodness, on the nature of infused grace and charity, which
are proportioned to God's own inner and objective life.
The consequences, then, even of this higher pragmatism, are
ruinous, though unforeseen by those who meddle with the traditional
definition of truth. We noted above [1393] the remark of M.
Maurice Blondel that the abstract and chimerical definition of truth
as "conformity of intellect to reality" should be abandoned in favor
of "conformity of mind with life." That was in 1906. Though he
later attempted to draw near to St. Thomas, he still wrote:
[1394] "No intellectual evidence, even that of ah solute and
ontologically valid principles, is imposed on us with a certitude that
is spontaneous and infallibly compelling; not more than our objective
idea of the absolute Good acts on our will as it would if we already
had the intuitive vision of perfect goodness."
To admit parity here would be a grave error, because our adherence to
first principles is necessary, [1395] whereas our choice to
prefer God to all else is, in this life, free. Here below God is
not known as a good which draws us invincibly, whereas the truth of the
principle, say of contradiction, can simply not be denied. He who
knows the meaning of the two words "circle" and "square" has
necessary and compelling evidence of the objective impossibility of a
square circle.
The higher pragmatism does not, it is true, sacrifice truth to
utility. But to abandon the traditional definition of truth is to
unsettle all foundations, in science, in metaphysics, in faith, in
theology. Prudential truth rests on an order higher than itself. The
enthusiasm of hope and charity, if it is not to remain a beautiful
dream of religious emotion, must rest on a faith which is in conformity
with reality, not merely with the exigencies of our inner life, or
even with our best intentions Nothing can be intended except as known.
Unless the intellect is right in its judgment on the end to be
attained, there can be no rectitude in the will. The good, says
St. Thomas, [1396] belongs first to reason under the form of
truth, before it can belong to the will as desirable, because the will
cannot desire good unless that good is first apprehended by the reason.
Our view is supported by Emile Boutroux. [1397] He writes
as follows: "Is it the special action of the will which is in
question? But the will demands an end, a purpose. Can you say that
you offer an intelligible formula when you speak of a will which takes
itself as purpose, that it has its own self as proper principle? That
which these men search for by these ingenious theories is action,
self-sufficient action independent of all concepts which would explain
or justify action.
"Is not this to return willy-nilly to pragmatism? Human
pragmatism, if the action is human, divine pragmatism, if the action
is divine: action, conceived as independent of intellectual
determination, which ought to be the source (and supreme rule) of
human activity. Action for action's sake, action arising from
action, simon-pure praxis, which perhaps brings forth concepts, but
is itself independent of all concepts—does this abstract pragmatism
still merit the name of religion?
"... And do you not enter on an endless road if you search in a
praxis isolated from thought for the essence, for the true principle of
a life according to religion? ".
Let us, then, return to the traditional definition of truth. Action
can never be the first criterion. The first criterion must be
ontological, must be that objective reality from which reason draws
first principles. The first act of the intellect is to know, not its
own action, not the ego, not phenomena, but objective and
intelligible being. [1398] The exigencies of life, far from
making our thoughts true, derive their own truth from the thoughts that
conform to reality and to divine reality. [1399] .
Difficulties
But surely we know our life, our will, our activity, better than we
know the external world.
The question is not what we know best, but what we know first, and
what we know first is not individual differences, not even specific
differences, but external intelligible reality as being, as giving us
first principles, without which we could not even say: "I think,
therefore I am." Further, the intellect knows what is within it
better than it knows what is in the will, since we can always have some
doubt on the purity of our intentions, which may be inspired by secret
selfishness or pride. Man knows first principles with an incomparable
certainty. But he cannot know with certainty that he is in the state
of grace, in the state of charity.
As regards E. Le Roy, we hear it said that what is false is not
his notion of truth in general, but his notion of the truth of dogma.
We reply, first, that this defense is itself an admission that
pragmatism in its proper sense leads to heresy. Secondly, Le Roy
maintains pragmatism, not only in the field of dogma, but also in that
of philosophy. "All ontological realism is ruinous and absurd:
anything beyond thought is by definition unthinkable. Hence, with all
modern philosophy, we must admit some kind of idealism."
[1400] .
Thirdly, the phrase "anything beyond thought is unthinkable" holds
good indeed of divine thought, but not of human thought, which
distinguishes between things as yet undiscovered and things which we
know, the extramental reality, e. g.: of this table on which I
write. Common sense knows evidently the objective validity of the
sense knowledge here exemplified. And even idealists, forgetting that
they are idealists, often speak the language of common sense.
[1401] .
As regards Blondel's philosophy of action, we find that he still
maintains in his latest work, these two positions: first, concepts
are always provisional, second, free will governs the intellect, not
only in the act of attention, but also in the act of admitting the
validity of first principles. [1402] Thus, though he has
turned back to some traditional positions, he is still far off. He
gives, as P. Boyer says, [1403] too much imperfection to
universal concepts. This is the least one can say. But Blondel
rises at times above his own philosophy and affirms the absolute truth
concerning God, truth which is conformity of our intellect to
extramental reality, to Supreme Reality. [1404] .
In the 1945 volume of Acta. Acad. S. Thomae (no. 226)
the statement is made that I was obliged to retract what I had said
concerning Blondel. That statement is false. My position is still
what it was in 1935 [1405] and 1944. [1406]
The propositions there quoted, [1407] I held and still hold,
are untenable. The philosophy of action must return to the philosophy
of being, must change its theories of concept and judgment, must
renounce its nominalism, if it is to defend the ontological,
extramental validity of first principles and dogmatic formulas.
But did not Blondel [1408] retract the last chapter of
l'Action? He did. But he still holds [1409] that concepts
have their stability only from the artifice of language, not only in
physics and biology, but also in mathematics and logic. He still
maintains that the free will intervenes in every judgment, not only as
regards attention, but also as regards mental assent, even in first
principles. [1410] Hence first principles are not necessary
only probable. [1411] .
The immutable judgments of faith, then, cannot be preserved inviolate
unless we cling to the immutable concepts of being, unity, truth,
goodness, nature, and person. And how shall these concepts remain
immutable if "they have their stability only from the artifice of
language"?
The philosophy of action is true in what it affirms, false in what it
denies. It affirms the value of the action by which the human will
raises itself to the love of God. [1412] But in denying the
validity proper to the intellect, It compromises the validity of
voluntary action. [1413] Depreciating intellective truth, we
cannot defend our love of God.
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