Abstract
This paper examines the Scholastic thesis that truth is a transcendental property of being, and its relevance to debates in contemporary analytic philosophy. The paper begins with a brief survey of analytic views about truth. Then, after setting out the Scholastic doctrine of the transcendentals in general, it explains how truth in particular fits into it, with special attention to the Scholastic distinction between logical truth and ontological truth. The paper then considers the light these Scholastic ideas shed on debates about realism and anti-realism, skepticism and conceptual relativism, the Principle of Sufficient Reason, the Augustinian theistic argument from eternal truths, Trinitarian theology, and other controversies.
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Notes
- 1.
In the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989).
- 2.
- 3.
For a basic overview of the main theories, see Part I of Blackburn 2018.
- 4.
Though only more or less. White makes it clear at pages 13–15 that he objects to some of the ways philosophers have used the term “proposition.”
- 5.
All quotations from the Summa are taken from the translation in Thomas Aquinas 1948.
- 6.
The points summarized in this paragraph are often made in manuals of Thomistic metaphysics. Particularly useful is the discussion in Coffey 1970, 32–36.
- 7.
All quotations from De Veritate are taken from the translation in Thomas Aquinas 1994. For the passage referred to in the text, see Volume III, pages 13–16.
- 8.
E.g. see the diagram proposed in Koren 1955, at page 52. My diagram was inspired by Koren’s, but is significantly different.
- 9.
- 10.
For discussion of the attitudes toward PSR of these and other Thomists, see Fitz Gerald 2002.
- 11.
- 12.
As Kretzmann points out, though Aquinas does not put forward the thesis in his own voice, he does discuss the use others have put it to without seeming to disagree with the thesis itself even when he disagrees with that use (e.g. in De Veritate I.1).
- 13.
For comments on an earlier version of this paper, I thank audience members at the Tenth Annual Aquinas Philosophy Workshop on the theme Aquinas on Knowledge, Truth, and Wisdom at St. Mary’s Campus, Greenville, SC (June 23–27, 2021).
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Feser, E. (2023). Truth as a Transcendental. In: Hochschild, J.P., Nevitt, T.C., Wood, A., Borbély, G. (eds) Metaphysics Through Semantics: The Philosophical Recovery of the Medieval Mind. International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 242. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15026-5_11
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