By DONALD DeMARCO
Aristotle, in his Metaphysics, declares that “it is right also that philosophy should be called knowledge of the truth.” This statement contrasts sharply with Pontius Pilate’s famous assertion, “What is Truth?”
If we cannot know truths, there is nothing to build on and philosophy is a vanity. Pilate, on the other hand, cannot be commended for being tolerant or broadminded. He is, as Jacques Maritain contends, “not a tolerant man but a betrayer of the human race.”
He stands at the threshold of reality and has nothing of real significance to offer. He is like the fisherman who abandons his trade, not because there are no fish in the water, but because he has not been able to catch any.
The mind is naturally ordered to truth just as the eye is naturally ordered to perceive color. Skepticism is an anomaly. The fact is that we are so eager to find truth, that we often believe we see it in what turns out to be a mere trend.
In his book, The Unity of Philosophical Experience, the distinguished historian of philosophy, Etienne Gilson, presents a stunning example of a multitude of people mistaking a trend for a truth. In the 17th century, René Descartes presented to the world a novel image of man. His “conception of man as an angel,” writes Gilson, “swept Europe, and was soon received as immediate evidence by the greatest thinkers of his time.” Descartes’ eager followers were slow to see the fallacy of man as a disembodied spirit who is in no way indebted to his body for his ideas.
After a few decades had passed, however, the general consensus had rotated full circle. Descartes was dismissed by the intellectual collective as a dreamer. What was once enthusiastically adopted as a truth soon melted into a private illusion. Dreams must be made of sterner stuff. Philosophy is the knowledge of truth, but it must continuously endeavor to distinguish truth from competing trends.
The 1967 film, Elvira Madigan, gained widespread popularity not because of its cinematic excellence, but because of the background music which was taken from the slow movement of Mozart’s 21st piano concerto. The recording of the background music quickly became a best-seller.
Time magazine, in what must have been a candidate for the understatement of the year, reported that the music, written in 1785, apparently “has staying power.” Beauty, like truth, survives time, which is lethal to trends.
Trends wear thin and give way to new trends that suffer the same fate. Trends fade, while truth abides. The difference between literature and news, it has been said, is that literature is news that stays news. Novelty soon becomes old hat; excitement quickly becomes boredom; what we once eagerly sought, becomes fodder for garage sales.
The wet head is dead, and so, too, are Nehru jackets, straw hats, sideburns, Cabbage Patch dolls, swatches, Beanie Babies, and VCRs.
Webster’s Dictionary could not have defined a trend more pointedly and accurately: “a practice of interest followed for a time with exaggerated zeal.”
Man naturally desires to know truth. He does not want to be deceived. Nor is he satisfied with trends. Yet his eagerness to know what is truth can be marred by his capacity for gullibility.
Docility, a virtue that is commonly misunderstood, is the virtue that allows a person to be teachable. It is a virtue that is congruent with his desire for truth.
Gullibility, on the other hand, renders a person exploitable. It inclines him to accept an untruth as if it were a truth. The docile are educated; the gullible are manipulated.
Scholar and columnist Thomas Sowell is being more truthful than cynical when he states that “mystical references to society and its programs to help may warm the hearts of the gullible but what it really means is putting more power in the hands of bureaucrats.”
Too often politics does not inform the docile, but panders to the gullible. Political conventions are better understood a gullibility fests. Our impatience to know often runs ahead of the patience required to achieve its proper end.
The Italian word prima vera has a host of interesting meanings. It refers to spring (primavera). It also refers to the first greens that go into a delicious salad. Pasta prima vera is made from the first harvest of fresh peas, onions, tender green peppers, zucchini, and delicate herbs. But it also refers to the “first truth,” or one’s true love, as well as the engagement ring that pledges enduring love.
Love, like the intellect is selective. One’s “true love” represents a unique heart-to-heart relationship. In the words of the poet Petrarch, “Che sola me par donna” (who alone for me is woman). One’s true love stands apart from all the false loves, just as the winner stands apart from the mere contestants. Truth stands apart from trends, just as beauty reigns over sham and love triumphs over infatuation.
The truths that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness, were regarded as self-evident by America’s Founding Fathers.
New “rights,” especially those involving abortion, euthanasia, and same-sex marriage, which compromise life, liberty, and personal happiness, have obscured these unalienable rights.
Trends are being substituted for truths, a phenomenon that can only bode ill for American society. The Declaration of Independence proclaimed independence from England.
The new Declaration of Independence proclaims, though tacitly, independence from fundamental truths. What was once believed to be self-evident is being overshadowed by an unofficial declaration that is self-serving.
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(Donald DeMarco is a senior fellow of Human Life International. He is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, and an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Cromwell, Conn., and a regular columnist for St. Austin Review.
(Some of his recent writings may be found at Human Life International’s Truth & Charity Forum. His latest book is In Praise of Life [En Route: 2016].)
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