The ancient world was familiar with various forms of skepticism and relativism.
Skepticism is the view that it is doubtful whether human beings have knowledge, either
in general or in a particular domain.
Relativism is the view that what is true is relative to what people think or believe is true.
Truth is nothing other than what is true for you or true for me.
Sound familiar?
The human race has always had some people who voiced these sorts of views.
Skepticism and relativism have pervaded various societies, more or less.
In ancient Athens, for example, there were people known as Sophists, and the Sophists
worked diligently to promote skepticism and relativism among the population.
They did so for political purposes.
One of the best ways to understand the figures of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle is to realize
that the form of life and thought they took up and called philosophy was precisely a form
of opposition to the Sophists, and at bottom of form of opposition to skepticism and relativism.
In the philosophical tradition that comes down to us from Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle,
one of the fundamental convictions is that there is truth.
There is eternal truth.
Human beings do not invent the truth, but discover it.
Human beings are capable of just that--discovering and knowing truth.
These very points are good news to us, since human beings are made for truth,
and we long to understand it.
Skepticism and relativism are really forms of despair.
Contrary to many philosophies of recent centuries, it is neither realistic acceptance nor courageous
in any way to embrace the despair or resign ourselves to skepticism and relativism and
dwell on the darkness they propose.
One of the essential features of human beings is that we are
capax veritatis, capable of truth.
Thomas Aquinas provides a common sense understanding of
how the formation and development of our knowledge works.
First, knowledge begins in the senses.
If we did not have sensory experience of the world around us, our minds would be empty.
We do have a wealth of sensory experience of the world around us.
Thomas is confident that our senses tell us the way the world really is.
The same conviction underlies all the modern empirical sciences.
Second, knowledge is more than just sensory experience.
All our experience is potentially intelligible.
That means what is given in experience is able to be brought to light on a higher level,
the level of understanding and explanation.
Experience is like a treasure chest.
It contains many truths of a higher order than experience itself.
Third, in addition to experience, human beings have intelligence or rationality.
Intelligence is essentially the ability to read our experience
and bring to light what is intelligible within it.
For example, each one of us has a finite experience of a few particular dogs or cats.
From our finite experience of particular dogs and cats, we're able to understand something
of what a dog or a cat essentially is.
That is why we feed them differently, for example.
Another example, each of us has experienced a few triangles or triangle-like
things, such as a sketch on a piece of paper or a rack used in billiards.
From out of that experience of a few triangle-like figures, we know something about all
triangles as such, a set extending to infinity.
We can determine the area of a given triangle according to a universal formula.
Intelligence is precisely this ability to ask about what things are.
To see what they are to some extent, and to form judgments and reason about what things
are, their properties and their causes from out of what we see of the essences of things.
Furthermore, through the act of intelligence reading experience, we're able
to arrive at truths higher than ordinary knowledge of cats and dogs and triangles.
For example, we know that there is truth.
For the contradictory opposite assertion--there is no truth--is a self-defeating assertion.
Similarly, with the claims that it is impossible for human beings to grasp
any truth, or it is impossible for human language to communicate truth, rational reflection
upon the implications of these statements reveals that they're self-defeating.
Using our intelligence, we can know that there is truth.
It is possible for us to know or at least grasp truth to some extent.
It is possible for us to communicate it through language.
Skeptics and relativists of all ages emphasize moments of deception in human life and the
fact of widespread disagreement between human beings.
They overlook the fact of solid insights into truth that humans have already accomplished.
Let's get more specific about how these solid insights come about.
For Thomas Aquinas, our intelligence is a gift of God.
It is not a transitory or passing gift, but it's built into our very nature as human.
Our intelligence has two sides to it.
One side is the potential to understand our experience, and the other side is the active
power to understand our experience.
Human beings do not start out life fully grown or developed, but we grow gradually into full
flourishing humans.
Similarly with our intelligence, it does not start out in a state of full understanding
of things, but starts out with the potential to understand them.
In order for this potential to understand things to develop, it is necessary for us
to experience the world.
Experience is not sufficient to develop our understanding.
Because our experience is only potentially intelligible, we also need an active principle
or source that brings to light what things or the natures of things are.
Aquinas thinks that God has endowed all human beings by nature with the active power to
understand our experience in a higher way, to seek out and discover the natures and causes
of things.
This inquiry leads all the way up to asking after the ultimate cause and end of reality, God.
Aquinas calls this active power agent intellect.
He compares it to a light.
Just as the light of the sun makes visible for our eyes the things in the world around
us, so too does the light of the agent intellect make intelligible for our minds the natures
and causes of the things around us in the world.
We need to make two qualifications.
First, the power of agent intellect is finite.
Human beings can know and understand the truth up to a point in a limited way.
Perhaps it's best to say we can catch a glimpse of the truth of things.
Since the power of our agent intellect is finite, we are in no way omniscient or
able to be omniscient or comprehend all things.
We must humbly accept the gift of a finite light and use it with awareness of our limits.
Second, for Aquinas, the light of our reason comes from God.
The very light of our reason is a reflection of the eternal light of God himself.
Reason is a first or original form of participation in the divine light.
In his gracious love for us, God gives us more and additional light.
For example, he gives us the light of faith and the Spirits gifts of understanding and
knowledge and wisdom.
For Aquinas, all light and all knowledge and all understanding, even in the
natural order, comes ultimately from God.
It is important to point this out, since one of the principle characteristics of enlightenment
philosophy is to deny any essential connection between reason and God, and suppress the awareness
of our constant metaphysical and moral dependency on God in the project of coming to know and
understand the truth.
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