A defense of Thomas Aquinas' definition of truth

• Main Author: Lam, Justin Jing Wei
• Other Authors: Christophe de Ray
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2024
• Subjects: Arts and Humanities; Truth; Thomas Aquinas; Conformity; Correspondence
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/180878
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

In the first question of the first article on one of Thomas Aquinas’ work, On Truth (De Veritate), he proposed a definition of truth as follows: Truth is the conformity between the thing and the intellect (Adequatio rei et intellectus). This definition hinges on the notions of what is truth but more fundamentally, the notion of being in truth. The concept of “being” for Aquinas is that “being” is anything that exists. A tree is a being, a human person is a being and even non-material concepts are being, like the idea of triangles or dreams because they exist, not materially but conceptually in the mind. In this paper, I will be attempting to defend Thomas Aquinas’ definition of truth. I will further ground that it is heavily intertwined with “being” and its existence as a real property of things, as extra-mental. I will zoom in more precisely on Aquinas’ idea of truth as con-formity, what it means and how it translates to truth, rather than a correspondence as some might suggest his theory to be. I will mention a few key criticisms against this definition of truth as conformity and rebut them, concluding it reasonable to accept his theory.