Thursday, January 7, 2021

What is Truth?

 From Catholic Stand:

Maybe one good result of our polarized politics is that we as a society are getting out of the Relativism, or Subjectivism, which had become entrenched since the 1960s. One typical expression of Relativism is “You have your truth, and I have my truth.”

Relativism is the philosophy which says that a thing is whatever someone thinks or feels it is, that there are only points of view and opinions. According to Relativism, not only beauty, but all reality is in the eye of the beholder. U. S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy once wrote in a majority opinion, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”  You cannot get more Relativist than that.

The opposite philosophy is Realism, or Objectivism, which says that a thing is what it is  – regardless of what someone thinks or feels it is. Realism is the elaboration of the common sense possessed by every two-year old. There is an objective difference between a wall and a door, a piece of candy and a vegetable, walking and falling, getting attention and being ignored.

We all think philosophically, whether we want to or not, know it or not. As St. John Paul the Great said, “The human being by nature is a philosopher” (Fides et Ratio, 64). At the bottom of all our thoughts are assumptions about reality. Human beings cannot not philosophize just as they cannot not breathe in order to live. The question is not whether each of us has a philosophy; the question is whether each of us has a good philosophy or a bad philosophy.

Relativism is tempting because it is rooted in the common phenomena of two different people, who are experiencing the same thing, but in different ways, having different perceptions, and having different tastes or preferences. For example, it is no surprise when two people like different ice cream flavors. This is subjectivity. Everyone agrees that human beings can be subjective.

The opposite of subjectivity is objectivity, which is experiencing or seeing something as it really is. For example, seeing that a scoop of ice cream is not a scoop of mashed potatoes is being objective about that scoop. What people have disagreed about is whether, or about what, or to what degree human beings can be objective.

Have you heard “You have your truth, and I have my truth” or “different people think different ways” when the topic is racism, climate change, Donald Trump, lockdowns and masks to avoid Covid, or any other current hot-button topic? I haven’t. We are not hearing “One person’s racism is another person’s justice, and who’s to judge?” Or “You don’t want to follow the science, and I do want to follow the science, but it’s all good.” Those who believe in climate change and systemic racism propose them as objective truths. These proponents do not allow “climate deniers” and the “biased” to define their own “concepts of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life” in ways that exclude climate change and systemic racism. (Read more.)


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2 comments:

julygirl said...

The cause of our polarized politics is embedded in the various forms of media which have taken over what we are to think and believe. Because of our schooling where we were taught to believe what we read in our school books, we have become conditioned to believe what we read in newspapers and cable TV. But what we read in newspapers and see on cable TV is usually opinion and rarely fact. For some reason people are incapable of discerning the difference.

elena maria vidal said...

Well said!