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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

Dr. Mortimer J. Adler's 

Six Great Ideas

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In dealing with truth, and in response to an extreme skepti-
cism that treated truth as if it were totally subjective and rela-
tive to the individual's opinions, we distinguished an objective
aspect in which truth is universal and immutable from a sub-
jective aspect in which individual claims to have a hold on the
truth vary from individual to individual and from time to time.

In addition, we separated the sphere of truth from the sphere
of taste. In the former, agreement is to be sought and engaging
in argument can serve this purpose. In the latter, differences of
opinion should be tolerated and there is no point in arguing to
overcome them.

In dealing with goodness, and once again in response to an
extreme skepticism that treated goods as if they were totally
subjective and relative to the individual's desires, we found a
parallel to the objective and subjective aspects of truth.

Real goods, we found, are relative not to individual desires,
but to desires inherent in human nature and so are the same for
all human beings. To the extent that human nature is every-
where and at all times the same (that is, as long as the species
persists in its specific characteristics), real goods have the uni-
versality and immutability that gives them objectivity. The
sameness of human nature at all times and places is usually
concealed from us by the overlays of nurture and culture, but
these can be stripped away and the common underlying nature
laid bare.

Another way of making the same point is to say that, while
many value judgments belong in the sphere of taste, some be-
long to the sphere of truth. Prescriptive judgments about the
real goods that ought to be desired because they fulfill our nat-
ural needs have a truth that differs from the truth of descriptive
judgments about the way things are in reality. About these
value judgments, we should seek agreement, and when we dis-
agree, we should try to overcome our differences by resorting
to argument—by appeal to evidence and by reasoning. The
evidence will be drawn from and the reasoning will be about
our knowledge of human nature and our understanding of it.

The subjective aspect of goodness falls on the other side of
the line that divides real from apparent goods. Apparent goods
are relative to individual desires and are, therefore, subjective.
When, wanting something, the individual calls it good, that is
an expression of taste on his part, not a judgment that he should
expect others to agree with or about which he should engage in
argument with others.

Two things emerge from this review of ground we have been
over. One is the sovereignty of truth in relation to goodness
and, as we shall soon see, also in relation to beauty. The discov-
ery that oughts can be true enables us to draw the line between
the objective and subjective aspects of goodness. It places our
judgments about real goods in the sphere of truth, and our
opinions about apparent goods in the sphere of taste.

The other thing to emerge is the reason there is an objective
as well as a subjective aspect of both truth and goodness. It is
not the same reason in both cases.

The objectivity of truth derives from the existence of a reality
that is independent of our minds and of our thinking about it.
Since we attain truth by bringing our thought into agreement
with the reality we try to know, that reality provides the stan-
dard whereby our thought is measured and is found true or
false. The subjectivity of truth derives from the fallibility and
deficiencies or inadequacies of human thought.

Goodness does not have objectivity in the same way, for our
judgments concerning the good do not have truth by agreement
with the reality we seek to know. With regard to real goods,
what takes the place of objectivity is the intersubjectivity of
human needs, which is to say their sameness for all human
beings because they are inherent in human nature. Here it is
human nature (which, of course, is a reality to be known) that
provides the standard whereby our value judgments—our
oughts—can be found true or false.

When we come to beauty, the same interest persists—the
concern with what is objective and what is subjective in our
attribution of beauty to things. That is the focal concern with
regard to all three of these great ideas, but we can anticipate
encountering greater difficulty in our effort to treat beauty in a
manner that parallels our treatment of truth and goodness.

The reason for this should be immediately apparent. In the
case of truth, one and the same reality measures our success in
trying to arrive at true judgments about what does or does not
exist or about the characteristics of that which does exist. In
the case of goodness, one and the same human nature meas-
ures our success in trying to arrive at true judgments about the
goods everyone needs and therefore the goods that everyone
ought to desire. But, in the case of beauty, where shall we look
for the common measure of our success in trying to arrive at
true judgments about what is or is not beautiful?

There is still another reason for puzzlement! "Beauty is truth,
truth beauty," it has been said; "that is all ye know on earth
and all ye need to know.” We have also been told, "Take care of
truth and goodness, and beauty will take care of itself."

These remarks suggest that beauty is so related to truth and
goodness that these other ideas should be able to guide us in
our consideration of beauty. Despite the poet's vision of the
matter, beauty is not identical with truth, at least not in the
sense in which we have considered truth so far—as a property
of propositions or statements.

Beauty would appear to be more intimately related to good-
ness. The reason for thinking so lies in the fact that beauty, like
goodness, is a quality we attribute to things because of a rela-
tion they have to us. Both the good and the beautiful please us.
Beauty may be a special type of goodness or it may be radically
distinct from goodness.

We must find out which is the case. Only after we have dis-
covered how the reason for our attribution of beauty to things
differs from the reason for our attribution of goodness to them,
can we proceed to the more difficult question about the objec-
tivity and subjectivity of beauty.