Idaho Lay Dominicans
SUMMA THEOLOGICA
QUESTION 109: OF TRUTH
ARTICLE 1: Whether truth is a virtue?
OBJ 1: It seems that truth is not a virtue. For the first of virtues is faith,
whose object is truth. Since then the object precedes the habit and the act, it
seems that truth is not a virtue, but something prior to virtue.
OBJ 2: Further, according to the Philosopher (Ethica Nicomachea iv,7), it
belongs to truth that a man should state things concerning himself to be neither
more nor less than they are. But this is not always praiseworthy - neither in
good things, since according to Proverbs 27:2, "Let another praise thee, and not
thy own mouth" - nor even in evil things, because it is written in condemnation
of certain people (Isaiah 3:9): "They have proclaimed abroad their sin as Sodom,
and they have not hid it." Therefore truth is not a virtue.
OBJ 3: Further, every virtue is either theological, or intellectual, or moral.
Now truth is not a theological virtue, because its object is not God but
temporal things. For Tully says (De Inventione Rhetorica ii) that by "truth we
faithfully represent things as they are were, or will be." Likewise it is not
one of the intellectual virtues, but their end. Nor again is it a moral virtue,
since it is not a mean between excess and deficiency, for the more one tells the
truth, the better it is. Therefore truth is not a virtue.
On the contrary, The Philosopher both in the Second and in the Fourth Book of
Ethics places truth among the other virtues.
I answer that, Truth can be taken in two ways. First, for that by reason of
which a thing is said to be true, and thus truth is not a virtue, but the object
or end of a virtue: because, taken in this way, truth is not a habit, which is
the genus containing virtue, but a certain equality between the understanding or
sign and the thing understood or signified, or again between a thing and its
rule, as stated in the FP,Q16,A1; FP,Q21,A2. Secondly, truth may stand for that
by which a person says what is true, in which sense one is said to be truthful.
This truth or truthfulness must needs be a virtue, because to say what is true
is a good act: and virtue is "that which makes its possessor good, and renders
his action good."
Reply OBJ 1: This argument takes truth in the first sense.
Reply OBJ 2: To state that which concerns oneself, in so far as it is a
statement of what is true, is good generically. Yet this does not suffice for it
to be an act of virtue, since it is requisite for that purpose that it should
also be clothed with the due circumstances, and if these be not observed, the
act will be sinful. Accordingly it is sinful to praise oneself without due cause
even for that which is true: and it is also sinful to publish one's sin, by
praising oneself on that account, or in any way proclaiming it uselessly.
Reply OBJ 3: A person who says what is true, utters certain signs which are in
conformity with things; and such signs are either words, or external actions, or
any external thing. Now such kinds of things are the subject-matter of the moral
virtues alone, for the latter are concerned with the use of the external
members, in so far as this use is put into effect at the command of the will.
Wherefore truth is neither a theological, nor an intellectual, but a moral
virtue. And it is a mean between excess and deficiency in two ways. First, on
the part of the object, secondly, on the part of the act. On the part of the
object, because the true essentially denotes a kind of equality, and equal is a
mean between more and less. Hence for the very reason that a man says what is
true about himself, he observes the mean between one that says more than the
truth about himself, and one that says less than the truth. On the part of the
act, to observe the mean is to tell the truth, when one ought, and as one ought.
Excess consists in making known one's own affairs out of season, and deficiency
in hiding them when one ought to make them known.
(C)