Aquinas Lecture 1984 Truth: Anselm or Thomas?

Extract

Given at Blackfriars, Oxford, on 16 February 1984.

Anselm, called doctor doctorum by those who came after him, died in 1109, 116 years before Thomas Aquinas was born. So the sort of distance in time between them was something like that of Byron, or Napoleon, or even Kant, from us. In the writings of Thomas his name seems only less weighty than that of Augustine. It was not Thomas’ way to express disagreement much with revered authorities; so he does this little or not at all with Anselm. Indeed, it looks as if he had found him very valuable and some things he certainly took from him.

Let me first give a brief sketch of the most significant early parts of Anselm’s dialogue On Truth. He proposes to his pupil that they look through the various things that are said to have truth in them. They will begin with propositions, where, he also tells us, most people stop too; in any case, we rather often call propositions true or false. It is clear that he does not mean ‘abstract propositions’, but vocal utterances; and he remarks that the nature of truth in these can be equally considered in any signs that come about to signify something’s being the case or not being the case, e.g. writings or speech with the fingers. .

The striking things about his discussion are two. First, the identification of truth with rightness of assertion. What is assertion for—i.e. what has it been created for? Answer: to signify as being the case what is the case.