“Tum enim bonum, tum verum convertuntur cum ente. (Qq dispp. De Ver., q. 1, a. 2.) Ergo ipsum bonum convertitur cum vero, seu bonum et verum idem sund secundum rem. Ea tamen differre ratione patet ex eo quod bonum respicit appetitum, verum autem cognitionem. Hinc sequitur ut verum secundum rationem sit prius quam bonum; cognitio enim naturaliter praecedit appetitum. (In lib. I Sent., Dist XIV, q. V, a. 2. ad 2.) Circa hoc effatum S. Bonaventura advertit ipsum intelligendum esse circa idem. "Unde si res est vera, est bona; et si signum sit verum, est bonum; sed tamen non sequitur quod, si signum sit verum, signatum, sive res sit bonum; et ideo hic est fallacia accidentis; omne verum est bonum, sed illud furari est verum; ergo illud furari est bonum: ex variatione minoris extremitatis. Verum enim praedicatur de illo dicto ratione compositionis, cum sit dicto modalis, bonum verum ratione attributionis."
Translation: [For both Good and Truth are convertable with being. Therefore Good itself is convertable with Truth, or the Good and the True are the same according to the matter. It is clear, however, that they differ in reason from the fact that good regards appetite, but truth regards knowledge. From this it follows that according to reason truth is prior to good; for knowledge naturally precedes appetite. Regarding this emphasis, St. Bonaventure warns that it is to be understood about the same thing. "Hence if the thing is true, it is good; and if the sign is true, it is good; but still it does not follow that if the sign is true, the signified, or the thing is good; and therefore here is the fallacy of accident; all truth is good, but to have stolen something in truth; therefore to have stolen something is good: from the variation of the lesser extremity. For truth is predicated of it by reason of composition, while it is said to be modal, good is true by reason of attribution."]
Relevant: Distinctiones V - I Veritas in Essendo - in Cognoscendo - in Significando ; Distinctiones B - I Bonum Entativ - Naturaliter - Moraliter
Truth and Good are convertable. That is to say, what is to be thought and known is the same thing as what is to be willed or desired, only considered from a different point of view. This is at times more difficult to see concerning lower things. To know some fact to be true, like that Roger Bannister was the first recorded human to run a four minute mile, its not obviously clear how this does one any good, or why this knowledge is to be desired. But consider a more consequential truth, like the whether or not Saudi Arabia helped organize the 9\11 attack on the World Trade Center. This is the sort of truth that is consequential, there is some evidence for it, but most americans don´t believe it, and a good portion of the wars fought by the US over the past 20 years were based on this not being true. Thus, finding the truth about this might change what is desireable politically, but deeper than this, being the sort of person who wants to know the truth, regardless of the consequnce is closely related to being the sort of person who desires what is good, come what may. Being the sort of person who thinks getting to the truth of things, historical events, even one´s own character, is inconsequential for what they want or desire, this is also the sort of person who is going to find desiring the right things equally inconsequential in terms of details.
But the ancient philosophy assumed by the Church Fathers was one where there is a great harmony between what one aught to know and what one aught to desire. That the truth and the good were the basic features of the universe we live in, and applied to all men equally and in the same way. And the higher the thing, or person, the more important to know the truth about it. So obviously God is in the highest place of all. To know God is a precondition to desiring Him, and no one can enter heaven without desiring God. Thus the highest truth is the most consequential. The truth that is the most worth contemplating is also the good that is the most worth desiring. This philosophy taught that small speculative errors in thinking about the highest things would lead to large practical errors in pursuit of this thing. This philosophy taught that the slightest knowledge of the highest things was more precious than the most extensive and certain knowledge of mundane things. And though our knowledge of the highest things be slight, the ancient philosophy couldn't fathom a total collapse of the harmony and unity observed in the ordering of the universe would crumble into discontinuity and disunity at the most sublime point.
In contrast, one of the great heresies of our time is indifferentism or relativism. This says the opposite. Relativism says that concerning the highest thing, God, there is no one singular truth about him, but rather different mutually contradictory interpretations from various religions or ideologies that are equally true. Despite these contradictions the message is the same, love God and neighbor, be nice and dont be a bad person. What is true is only true for you or for me, but not the Truth for everyone. The ancient philosophy asks, wouldnt a truth that was true for you and everyone else be much much more useful? wouldnt it be better than a truth that was simply for you? Even relativists seem to cringe and admit this would be very useful and good. But indifferentism also exists within Christianity, which says that, yes, its important to accept the Trinity and Incarnation and Divinity of Christ, but the various interpretations of this, whether Catholic or Protestant or any other sect are inconsequential. What matters is that people love Jesus, but doctrines and proper authority do not matter. It is no suprise that people who do not think its important to get the specifics concerning knowing who God is, and what He wants from us, are also slothful in terms of meditating about and contemplating God, and also negligent in desiring Him, obeying him, or loving Him. The loss of faith in the west started with sceptism about whether we could know God, whether he existed, or whether it was important, but the secondary consequence of this is the total relaxation of the devotion and morals that corresponded with the ancient picture of God.
One of the great philosophical errors of a line of thinkers starting with Thrasymachus (an interlocultor of Socrates), but picked up and exemplified by Martin Luther, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Michel Foucault is not an indifferentism towards but a total separartion of the truth from the good. Thrasymachus argues in the Republic against Socrates that in Truth, Right is Might, that the morals in a society are simply put there by the powerful to maintain their own power, really there is no morality, there is no good or moral law that applies to all humans and produces happiness in them. This is his sort of crude realism, what is truly going on behind the curtain so to speak. He doesnt think the common people have the courage to face this picture.
Martin Luther makes a similar break betwen truth and good in his book, Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenchen, where he claims the true Christian is justified by faith alone, or by knowing or confessing the truth about Jesus Christ, and that this salvation is in no wise dependent on good works or pursuing or desiring the good. To be saved by faith alone is really to be saved by knowledge or truth alone, or knowledge separated from action, truth separated from good. That one need desire the good or perform good works is for Luther a sort of popish slavery, where the radical freedom he thinks one finds in Christ is a freedom from law, not a freedom for law and obedience, a freedom from being claimed by the Good, or worthy of punishment because of one´s failure to perform the good. In his time, Luther´s doctrine of sola fide was called a “whorehouse doctrine,” due to the affinity of this way of approaching the matter by prostitutes and their patrons. In Catholicism, Christ gives, yes forgiveness, atonement, but also a new, more severe law to be followed, articulated on the Sermon on the Mount for example. Christ frees us not from the good but to be good, not from law but for law, washed of original sin, and to be constrained by a higher law, the law of Charity. Its interesting that Luther also said he would be willing to lie for the sake of “the Church.“ In a sense proving what to reject the Good is to reject the Truth, because they are convertable.
Friedrich Nietsche also says something very similar in his work Jenseits von Gut und Böse, where he says the common people in Christendom engage in a slave morality, placed there by the powerful men who rule society to keep them in a state of slavery. This Christian morality, he says, does not track with what would make them truly powerful or vital as a human, instead it makes them weak, resentful, superficial, liars, and not desiring or achieving greatness. He too says morality or the good is an invention of the powerful, and should be disregarded by noble people who are seeking to a vital, magnanimous way of living. He says philosophers must invent noble lies to control the masses, and that the Christian morality is nothing more than this. Thus he dismisses the whole of Christian morality and replaces it with his own idea of the will to power which is fundamentally beyond morality, beyond good and evil, but about making actual the latent powers and vital potencies in man. The ancient philosophy, even before Christianity appeared, taught something different. That the Truth can be known, e.g. the ideal form of Justice, Happiness, etc, also the structure and character of God and the universe, and that knowing these things is a precondition to desiring well, and that desiring well was tantamount to having good habits, and to have good habits would secure happiness. The basic narrative here is the human finding his place before God and creation and society. The narrative of Nietzsche is that the human breaks out of the artificial constraints and obligations placed on him by a dead god, a false philosophical notion of nature, and of the artificialities of society. What he says is seductive because, even the Christian must admit, in many societies it is true. To be Christian means to break out form these false constraints of the world and the expectations of society in many cases.
What Nietzsche misses is the extraordinary power of a pure intention, and a pure intention can only have as its object the Good. And thus, when you say there is no good, everything is artificial, there can be no pure intention. People who accept his thinking will always in a sense be weak and frustrated, like bows that were never given straight arrows but instead wishbones. They´d end up despising the bow they were given but could never use properly, just like Nietzscheans and their will and conscience. The fact is our spiritual organism is made to will the Good and the Good alone. This gives great strength to those who will the good in truth. The pure strength of will found in of virgins has always been equated with the heroic strength of martyrs. To say the good doesnt exist at all, is to invite a great weakness upon the human soul. For it will still need to will, and still seek to will with a pure intention, it will therefore oscillate between various idols, the self, society, nation, or fall into total scepticism and confusion about what is to be willed. But this scepticism always produces self-will as a default, for lack of other options and given the tendency of man. And the ancient philosophy, also stoic, and christian philosophy teach that there is no surer recipe for unhappiness as self-will.
This tendency of Luther and Nietzsche emerges in a purer and almost more perverse form in the contemporary philosopher Michel Foucault. Like the others, he thinks he can somehow see through morality or the Good, in contrast to the blind sheep, the people participate and obey the moral norms of society with a simple naivete. Like Nietzsche he advocates a prideful, demonic, sideways on view of the moral life and society, one where people actually trying to be good, or righteous in a simple way are naive fools and slaves who actually work to oppress others. This sideways on view lays claim to a deeper truth, it pridefully says, this is how it really is, all these righteous Christians are really just thirsting for power and to control our sexuality.
For Foucault all thought is politics and all politics is of course about power. He encourages resisting power wherever it is, and trying to overthrow the structures of power and thereby oppression in a society. Thus the ideal is a sort of anarchism, but in practice produces tyrannts of the worst degree who say they are anarchists, but basically despise freedom and most of all freedom for those they deem ideological enemies, who are seen to be the agents of oppression and power. But here again, Foucault says his picture is the Truth, this is how it really is, everything is a game of power, there is no objective morality, there is no right or wrong. He says if you get down to the molecular level, all you see is power, its what explains everything.
Unsurprisingly, and in a more impoverished form than Nietzsche, who at least has some positive ideal of unleashing the vital, dyonesian forces in man, Foucault has no positive ideal, his focus is entirely negative, to oppose power or oppression, to tear down the structures of power, this means to destroy moral vocabulary itself. Thus rather than create liberation from oppression or the abuse of power, the disciples of foucault simply imitate the only thing they claim to know or admit that has existence: evil, abuse of power, oppression. But, in fact, we see the ancient rule holds true for Foucault as well. His philosophical works were almost always both historical investigations, into madness, into the history of sexuality, and these works are rife with gross factual errors, and when confronted with these errors he felt no need to apologise. He said he was simply telling a story. He rejects the good in the name of the truth, and then jetissons the truth afterward: A common pattern of the opponents of Christianity. To choose the truth and reject the good, as he does, is to reject how humans are wired. We are wired to know the truth and desire the good. We are wired basically assuming that these things are the same thing. To reject the Good in the name of the Truth, leads also to rejecting the Truth outright. Because they are convertable, they are the same thing considered from different points of view.
One could tell a parable about a man who thought all fences were oppressive, as Luther, Nietzsche, and Foucault think moral norms are oppressive. And this man went around everywhere tearing down fences without permission. When questioned by home owners who relied on their fences to keep animals out of their garden, or countries who had walls to keep invaders out. He could only say that all walls or fences oppress and that wherever he found a wall he would tear it down. This parable gives a clue to the easy undoing of this point of view. This man would be practially ruining peoples gardens, lives, cities, countries by removing all walls. And thus would be the agent of oppression on the masses. Where does he get the power to remove our fences? Who authorizes this? Who is paying for him to do this? How is he convinced that tearing down walls isnt itself oppressive? He cannot know the harm he is doing! To seek to tear down all law or morals is likewise oppressive. It invites a great disorder and criminality on people, families, cities, and nations. It makes it impossible to keep a beautiful and fruitful garden. It invites a greater tyranny than the tyranny of the fence or wall and certainly reminds everyone what walls were for, had their use been forgotten or taken for granted.
The proper response to the skeptical sideways on point of view, is to say, so is this view itself, a view that separates truth from good, fact from value, freedom from morality, how do you know this view isnt itself the work of the powerful to control the masses? How do you know this viewpoint is any less of a tool of control than the Christian morality? And if everything is a construction of the powerful to oppress, then why don´t you think this picture of the universe is as well? Basically, how do you look at the sideways-on view from the side? You cannot. Its a reduction ad absudum, you´d need to look for a new sideways-on view until infinity if thats the proper philosophical approach, and even then, it would still be self contradictory to the extent it tried to assert itself as if the viewpoint wasnt part of the oppressive work of the powerful. And of course to rob people of the good, of the truth that is convertible with the good, this is the highest form of oppresion, it is the strongest agent of weakness in a person. At bottom, its projection. Luther, Nietzsche, Foucault accuse their opponents of behaving in exactly the sort of ways they are themselves. Luther destroys Christian Europe in the name of a purer faith that saves without need of works, only to make this faith itself a good work, and the only saving good work in the end, and a good work of exactly the sort he despises in his writing. Nietzsche throws out the entire basis of morality in the notions of good and evil in the name of restoring vitality and courage to humanity, only to himself exhibit in his life and produce in his pupils a pathetic weakness and instability of mind, a resentful cowardliness characteristic of those who cannot will with a pure intention. Foucault seeks to liberate sexuality by removing all strictures that could harness it and guide it towards beauty. Thus he offers a liberation unto ugliness, to the extent he finds form itself oppressive, and unto unhappiness, as the mental conditions for enjoyment itself, whether obedient or trangressive are removed: standards, norms, laws. All these men produce the very disease they say they aim to oppose. They do this because they put forth as true something that has no connection with the good, and thereby must be false. The root of the problem can be explained this simply.
One interesting thing about scholasticism in its Thomistic or Scotistic form is that the focus is on the intellect and will, on the True and the Good. But there are different variations of actually three transcententals. Plato adds the Just as a third. And others the Beautiful. St Catherine of Sienna and other saints add the memory as a third spiritual organ. And this third spiritual organ and its correspondent transcendental is largely undeveloped speculatively in the philosophy of St Thomas, yet perhaps thats what his songs and poems achieved. What is interesting is that Our Lord Jesus Christ and Our Lady, seem in modern times to very much desire one specific development in action, but also likely in thought. And its not difficult to see the direction in which it should be developed, what is amazing is that no one has yet taken the message quite literally to heart and extended the ancient theology in the desired direction. So what is this desire? The object of the intellect is the Truth, the object of the will is the Good. So is there a third spiritual organ or capacity unique to the human? Are we simply beings with minds and wills like angels or is there something else. What Our Lord and Lady seem to say, truly they seem, over the past few centuries to wish to take us by the neck and force our attention on, is: “what about your flesh, what about the heart! the heart! Please Catholics do not forget to give us your hearts!” they seem to cry to us. In the 17th Century Our Lord appeared to St Margerite Marie Alcocque and revealed to her his desire that His Sacred Heart be an object of devotion and gave her the task of spreading this devotion. Our Lady as well, told the children at Fatima, My Immaculate Heart will triumph at the start of the 20th Century. These are really the most powerful new signs given from heaven to the Church for our edification over the past 400 years, the two hearts, the Heart of Our Lady and Our Lord. Its no surprise that it fits perfectly with this lacuna, not an error, in the highest of scholastic theology. So it could or perhaps even should be said: that the true, the good and the beautiful are all three convertable, and convertable in being. The intellect seeks the truth, what should be known by faith. The will seeks the good, what should be desired by hope. And the heart is moved by beauty, what should be recollected or attended to by love.
When you say that some truth is simply very consequential, it seems to me that what you arguing is more that truth matters, which I think is different than truth is good. The good effects of something are evidence that that something is good, maybe the effect of its being good, but it is (I think) not the reason. I don’t know how I would talk about that instead. I’m just criticizing with no better ideas of my own, as people do.
The tie-in with Luther is very good. Saved by truth alone, no good required.
It’s true it’s easy to be tempted by Nietzsche. It’s funny how seductive the idea is, when in reality, the picture of a man apart from God is almost always pitiable. Who out there is using his Nietzschean superpowers to become really vital? What of God’s law do you need to throw off to become vital? How come as we stray further from God, we become even more like the bent-over slaves Nietzsche was so dismissive of? I wonder what Nietzsche would think if he were alive today. Godless humanity has worked out to be a lot things but vital is not really one of them.
Foucault always makes me laugh. He and his modern day disciples have this canard you mention about their enemies wanting to “control others’ sexuality” or “control women’s bodies”… hahahahaha. On some level, sure, we all want to control everyone, a little, because we’d like others’ actions to dovetail more nicely with our expectations, and would like for our neighbors’ actions to allow us to still procure nice things. We definitely want to “control” the sexuality of people so that we can have faithful relationships, avoid generations of parentless children, etc., but seriously, if you were someone who just got a rise out of controlling people’s sexuality for NO REASON, you would make something more like Islam, definitely not Christianity where the most powerful figures are all… celibate for life. It makes no natural sense. Men want women to like them WAY more than we want unlimited opportunities for free rape. Duh. But I don’t think Foucault could have been expected to understand that.
Your last paragraph is beautiful. The heart, the heart! Let me be transfixed by Your beauty, Lord!