A Little More on the Insanity of Relativism

Once again, Schall.

...What might a polity be like in which truth was a “structural category?” First, it would be a polity that used names correctly. The opposite of truth is a lie. The worst thing that can happen to us, Plato memorably said, is to have a “lie in our souls about the things that are.” Plato recognized that we could lie to ourselves to enable us to do what we want.

The second structural principle is that truth is not something we simply create for ourselves. Truth is not the conformity of our minds to what we want. Rather it is the conformity of our minds with what is. Much modern thought teaches us that if anything is “out there,” we cannot be sure of it. Certainly, it has no order that implies a source. Even more certainly, we cannot find out what we are or what we ought to be from a reality that we did not ourselves create.

But we are not the cause of our own creation. The truth of what we are is for us to discover, to encounter, not for us to fashion what we are. Our end consists not in what we choose for ourselves, but in whether we choose the purpose implicit in our being. On this basis, truth and politics belong to one another.

Giving rise to the question: Aquinas or JPII? Is philosophy from nature, or essence?