Truth is the property of being that the intellect reaches toward. It is the claim that reality is knowable, that things are what they are and can be apprehended as such. It is not something we impose on the world but something we discover in it. What that discovery actually looks like, and what it means to live attentively to truth, is what this section explores over time.
"τὸ μὲν γὰρ λέγειν τὸ ὂν μὴ εἶναι ἢ τὸ μὴ ὂν εἶναι ψεῦδος, τὸ δὲ τὸ ὂν εἶναι καὶ τὸ μὴ ὂν μὴ εἶναι ἀληθές." (To say that what is is not, or that what is not is, is false; but to say that what is is, and what is not is not, is true.)[1]
Aristotle wrote that in the fourth book of the Metaphysics, and it is the root from which the entire later tradition grows. Aquinas's treatment of truth in the Summa Theologiae, Isaac Israeli's definition, the scholastic formula adaequatio rei et intellectus: all of them descend from this. What I find compelling about Aristotle's formulation is that it does not tell you what truth is so much as describe what happens when it occurs. Truth lives in the relation between saying and being. That leaves the question open in a way that a one-line definition does not, which suits a project of discovery better than one of assertion.
References
- Aristotle, Metaphysics IV.7 (1011b25)Source
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