Anselm’s theory of truth, presented chiefly in his De veritate, illustrates remarkably well the heterogeneity of medieval theories of truth. Anselm analyzes the notion of truth under several different facets, as applying to different kinds of entities; but ultimately, only God is the real Truth for Anselm, and all other truths emanate from Him. As such, his theory is representative of the neoplatonic-Augustinian approach, which emphasizes the truth existing in things but ultimately emanating from God (see Hopkins (2003:148) for the influence of Augustine over Anselm’s notion of truth).
The core of his conception of truth is the notion of rectitude (see Visser et al 2004); something is true if it does what it ought to do, that is, if it conforms to God’s design for it. As such, it can apply to literally all of God’s creation: a friend is a true friend if she does what a friend is expected to do (to be supportive, loyal, etc.); an action is a true action if it fulfils its purpose; and so forth. Anselm’s notion can be schematically formulated as follows: an entity A is true iff it corresponds to God’s concept of A. Notice that truth is a relational property for Anselm, but the second relatum is not a portion of reality as in standard correspondence theories of truth; rather, it is a divine concept, while the first relatum (the truth-bearer) is any object of God’s creation, linguistic as well as nonlinguistic entities.
In De veritate, which is written in the form of a dialogue between Teacher and Student, Anselm starts by examining the truth of propositions, as this is (he recognizes) the most commonsensical use of the notion of truth (chap. 2). He presents what we could call a correspondence notion of truth for propositions: they are true if they state that what-is is and that what-is-not is not (a terminology borrowed from Visser et al 2004); but for Anselm this position is not a primary thesis. It is derived from the notion of truth as rectitude applied to a fundamental aspect of propositions: their purpose is to state that what-is is and that what-is-not is not, and therefore if they fulfill this purpose (if they do their job), then they are true. The same holds with respect to thoughts: ‘‘for the power of thinking that something is or is not was given to us in order that we might think that what-is is and what-is-not is not.’’ (De ver. 3). Similarly, truth with respect to will (De ver. 4) and actions (De ver. 5) is defined as rectitude, as willing and doing what one ought to.
As for the truth in the being of things (De ver. 7), Anselm’s conception of truth is clearly teleological. Every entity in God’s creation has a purpose according to His design, and if it fulfills this purpose, then it is true. But given God’s omnipotence, all things are (presumably) as He intends them to be, and thus ‘‘whatever is, is right’’ (Visser et al. 2004:211). Here it becomes patent that, according to Anselm (following Augustine), truth equals to being.
And thus, just as much as God is the cause of all being, all truth comes from God and He is the supreme Truth. However, rectitude does not apply to Him in the same way as it applies to His creation, since He ‘‘owes nothing to anything.’’ In other words (and this is something of a paradox, which Anselm deals with in De ver. 13), truth properly speaking pertains only to God, even though truth in God does not correspond to rectitude, as it does in His creation.
One of the upshots of Anselm’s conception of truth is that he is able to account, in a unified way, for uses of the predicate ‘‘true’’ that are often neglected by more restrictive theories of truth, such as in ‘‘true friend,’’ ‘‘true world,’’ etc. This also reveals the essentially metaphysical character of Anselm’s theory: what makes something true are properties and states of things (the very things which are said to be true, insofar as they conform to God’s design for them), and not semantic properties of linguistic entities (even when propositions are truth-bearers).
World History
