My “Truth” versus True Truth

How often do we hear someone today in the news, speaking “my truth?” Too often, and yet, “my truth” may not be “the truth.”  What exactly does this phrase “my truth” mean?  In a nutshell, “my truth” is a personal opinion that is fixed; a self-determined one-way street, if you will.  Because of this narrow interpretation of truth, “my truth” may be true or untrue or even quasi-true, but not 100% true 100% of the time.  “My truth” is a popular phrase for relativism which makes truth subjective.

In the Metaphysics, Aristotle wrote, “What is true says of that which is that it is, or of that which is not it is not.”[1]  Basically, reality is defined as what is, is.  Reality is truth and truth is reality. Now for thousands of years this definition of “what is, is” was common sense for humans, but during the “Enlightenment” (which is a partial misnomer because it actually put certain knowledge in the dark), great thinkers such as Descartes, Hume, Locke and Kant, began to turn the tables on the process by which knowledge is gained and also how objective truth is derived. 

Descartes started the ball rolling when he questioned the validity of general knowledge based on sense perception, by saying if we can’t trust what we see, how can we consider it to be real.  Kant took reality to a whole new level when he said not only can we not trust our senses, we can’t trust our intellect either to know what is and is not objectively real.  It’s not a little ironic that the Age of Reason issued in an era of unreason by identifying conclusions (based on both sense and intellect) as subjective, but how can that be a true statement if we cannot trust our senses or our intellect to guide our ability to even subjectively know?  If I am unable to discern, how am I thus able to discern that I am unable to discern? That’s a mouthful, but if you reread it again you will be able to see how it makes no sense whatsoever, yet because this “great thinking” has exploded in popularity, chaos has ensued. Western culture, in particular, has been placed in the impossible position where gaining objective knowledge that leads to universal truth is no longer possible. And if that form of thought is correct, and it isn’t, it means that things such as real justice don’t exist.  For in denying that we can know what justice is the same as saying it does not exist. As such, justice is subjectively interpreted.

In spite of these faulty metaphysical developments, there is absolute, definitive and objective truth, according to God, the Apostles, Aristotle, Aquinas, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI; and frankly I will keep company with them every day of the week over Hume or Kant.  It is true that man’s natural intellect is somewhat darkened.  The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Corithian Church stated (I Cor. 13:12), “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I also have been fully known.” We are only able to know “in part” due to our fallen human nature, but we are still able to know.  Just because our intellect or sensory perception is limited does not mean there that absolute truth is undiscernible. Even fallen humans can know, and have concluded, that there is a One and Absolute mind behind creation. And through divine revelation, true enlightenment, we know that that One and Absolute mind is God in Three Persons. Now many of these same Enlightenment men will say there is no God, or that if he exists, he cannot be “proven,” but we as Catholics believe in God (through both faith and reason) and are grounded in his certain knowledge in the revelation of both Sacred Scripture and the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

“My truth” is nothing more than a celebrated impersonation of relativism and a metaphysical error if it does not correspond to objective truth. Natural truth is grounded in the law of non-contradiction, a rule of logic, and when so-called “truths” contradict each other, confusion ensues. If humans cannot rely on our senses or our intellect to lead us to what is true, then we are hopelessly lost from the most practical standpoint.  Law and order, morals and conduct, and fact and fiction become subject to individual interpretations because “my truth” is able to say “your truth” is invalid, and yet neither has an absolute leg to stand on.  Denying absolute truth exists or that it can be known for certain, pulls the rug out from under all humanity leaving us in a free-for-all that looks more like intellectual cage-fighting than a community of rational beings created by God, the Author of truth, life, love, and justice.

[1] Aristotle, Metaphysics, 4.7, at Classics MIT, www.classics.mit.edu.