Four Truths that All Can Know

Observando

First, the four truths about man from the philosophical wisdom that all can know, regardless of religious beliefs or lack of them. The first and perhaps foundational truth of all is the metaphysical truth about humility. Reality is such that man must be humble before it. Man should be like a child before anything--truth or meaning or value or design or mystery or intelligence--that transcends him, even if this is not God, and even if this is such a mystery that it can never be known. Even some so-called humanists can sense that man is not the supreme reality, and that we are taller when we bow. Even atheists who refuse to adore can be wise enough to have awe and wonder.

Imagine a teenager or young adult who has been raised in a religious environment but who has never personally internalized it, never experienced the basic humility and awe and wonder that is the psychological basis for all religion. This is quite common, for familiarity can breed contempt, and that's true especially of religion, if it doesn't take deeper root. Such a person often experiences religious awe and humility for the first time only after he has repudiated religion and become an atheist or an agnostic. He learns, for instance, about the incredible mysteries of the cosmos. Or he is shattered and shuddered by a haunting piece of music, or by a beautiful woman's face. He has his first religious experience as an atheist. Sometimes that is a necessary beginning for his deeper return to God. God planned it. The prodigal son has to leave home in order to appreciate home.

The second truth is the epistemological truth about honesty and open-mindedness. This flows from the first point, the metaphysical point about humility before reality. We do not know everything. Even if there is no God, we are not God. Our beliefs about anything, therefore, should be revisable in light of future facts, future light, future knowledge. Socrates' lesson number one is to know that we do not really know most of what we think we really know. In other words, there are two kinds of people in the world, fools who think they're wise, and the wise who know they that they're fools. The moral equivalent is Jesus' lesson number two: there are two kinds of people in the world, sinners who think they're saints and saints who know that they're sinners. Without lesson one, we might think that we know it all already, and we won't bother very much with lesson two. Or else we'll limit lesson two to corollaries that we can deduce from our own lesson one, which is not Socratic humility and open-mindedness, but only whatever prejudices we have and refuse to examine.

This point about open-mindedness can threaten a believer's faith whenever that faith is fragile and shakeable. But I think only a faith that has been shaken and has endured can be a faith that is unshakeable. And open-mindedness more often changes unbelievers to believers than it changes believers to unbelievers. It changes atheists to agnostics, and makes them open to future revisions, including religious ones.

I think if everyone in the world, believers and unbelievers alike, became much more open-minded seekers of truth, everyone would eventually become a believer. For we have been assured by the very highest authority that all seekers find, eventually. But those who do not seek do not find. Finding does not just happen by accident, anymore than eating does. As mouths need to be opened to be fed, so do minds. Minds cannot be force-fed; there is no intravenous wisdom. As the Koran says, there can be no compulsion in matters of religion.

A corollary of this epistemological point could be called the truth about truth. That truth is an absolute, even if there is no God, no absolute being. And even if there is no other absolute moral law except the law of absolute honesty before truth, man is made for truth. Without this there can be no integrity, no human wholeness. The rest of the things in the universe do not need to have that kind of integrity. Stones have integrity and hold together by merely physical forces, by the integrity of electromagnetism. Plants and animals hold together by their organic unity, by the living, active co-operation of all their organic parts to the single end of growth and health; by the integrity of their DNA. But man becomes one, becomes himself, attains integrity, only by the free fundamental choice to stand in the light of truth, by a fundamental honesty and will to truth, which is the foundation for all communication that is not manipulation. In that word communication we find the word common and the word unity. Man lives in community only by communication, a communication in truth, a common respect for truth.

By the way, in light of this point, I honestly believe that the single most destructive, dehumanizing and dangerous philosophy in the entire history of the world, the only philosophy I cannot see the slightest glimmer of value in, is deconstructionism, which is the denial of truth, and the reduction of all communication to power. Even the Nazis had a sense of truth. Some of them actually believed their strange ideology, unlike the post-war communists. That's why the Nazis had to be defeated by war, while communism simply imploded by itself. And the Nazis even had some sense of honor, even how horribly perverted. But deconstructionism has none of this. Deconstructionism is nothing more than a very sophisticated and scholarly sneer. Deconstructionism's hero is Nietzsche, a Nietzsche I think they make in their own image. And Nietzsche was the first philosopher to explicitly call into question the will to truth. He wrote, "Here is the most dangerous question: Why truth. Why not, rather, untruth?" This is not a mere mistake; this is deliberate. This is demonic. The Nazis may be have been mass murderers, but the deconstructionists are mass sneerers. Murderers may do more harm to their victims, but I think sneerers do more harm to their own souls. The heart of a murderer is nearer to repentance than the heart of a sneerer. A murderer enters the stadium and plays the game of good and evil, though he plays on the evil side. A sneerer refuses even to enter the stadium or play the game. He just stands outside and sneers at both sides.

Third comes the anthropological truth about the intrinsic value of every man. Man is not junk, not trivial. Not absurd, not waste matter. Every thing and every enterprise in human life, including medical enterprises, must serve man, rather than man serving things or enterprises. We eat to live, not live to eat. Even atheists can believe Kant's categorical imperative: Never merely use anyone as a means; always respect everyone as an end. And this can be the basis for a worldwide humanism that is genuine and profound, even though not explicitly religious.

Fourth is the ethical truth about love. Love – the love that is not a mere passing emotion, but a resolved choice of the will, the will to the good of the other, good will, altruism – this kind of love is the highest value in human life. Because only love makes man fully human. Love is not only good ethics; it is good anthropology and good metaphysics, too. It is the way to become more human and more real, as well as more good. A lover augments not only his doing, but his being. Even though love sometimes entails sacrifice, that always pays, deep down in the long run. On your deathbed, you will not regret loving too much. And you will always regret loving too little. He who loses his life for love finds it, even in this life. Even if there is no next life, no resurrection, and no God.

PETER KREEFT in CERC, 2011.02.03