Thomas Aquinas Concept Of Truth Analysis

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Mies's interpretation of Thomas Aquinas's concept of truth: truth is the significance of facts The study of Thomas Aquinas concept of truth led Mies to understand that truth emanated from a 'truth relation', from a coherent and harmonious relationship between intellect and thing, subject and object.1 Indeed, Thomas Aquinas argued that the intellect and a thing were true when they conformed to each other. The intellect was true when it formulated a thought that conformed to a thing as this thing existed or had existed in external reality. On the other hand, a thing was true when it fulfilled the purpose to which it had been ordained by the intellect that had originated this thing, be this intellect human or divine; and when this thing had …show more content…

Scheler defined truth as 'an idea ... which is fulfilled when the meaning-content of a judgement (formulated in a proposition) coincides with the facts of a state of affairs'.17 This view of truth as something more than facts was reinforced by another of Mies's favourite authors, Romano Guardini, who argued, 'Truth does not mean mere lifeless accuracy of comprehension, but ... the intrinsic value of existence in all its force and fullness'.18 Similarly, Alfred North Whitehead challenged the scientific materialist view of facts as senseless, valueless, and purposeless things abstracted from the complete circumstances in which they occurred, when he argued that relationships were constitutive of a thing and formed the thing's

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