Either there exists no objective truth, or man is not the measure of all things. In other words, reality is either fundamentally objective, or it is subjective. Reality cannot be both true for all and only for some at the same time. That is impossible. Nor can it be once true for all and then true for certain people or in a different manner to different people, for reality’s essence does not change.
So is reality objective or subjective? Modern-day philosophy has centered around this question, with varied interpretations populating libraries around the world. But the search for the answer to this question need not be so laborious. Indeed, humanity had the answer for millenia, articulated by such great philosophers as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and embodied by the Catholic Church. The prevailing views of the Enlightenment, by denying God’s existence, or at least attempting to limit Him to humans’ perception of reality, seem to have been a cry of despair. Unable to find purpose in reality, these philosophers and scholars sought to make a fantasyland, where anything they want goes.
The fact is, reality does not change, even if our perception of it does. One need not know how the world came to be round to know that it is round. Likewise, one need not know how he knows something to know that thing. From the time we are young children, we know things. A child can easily know what rockets are used for, but he will have a hard time understanding how they work.
As we have knowledge that certain things exist, we have an intuitive knowledge that certain things are right or wrong. Objective morality has gotten a bad rap the past several decades, as society continues to become increasingly disillusioned with any and all rules or authorities. It is common to hear claims such as: “that’s your truth, but not mine,” or “I find [such and such] religion to be best for me.” These claims implicitly or explicitly deny objective truth and propose subjective truth: what is true for one person may not be true for another.
Some truths are subjective. Someone may like playing soccer, and another basketball. Some people have different temperaments and act differently in different situations, even if their conduct is all good.
But the type of truth people are usually referencing when they make the aforementioned claims are universal truths: is there a God? Is some action moral or immoral? To claim that the answers to these types of questions are subjective is to deny that objective truth exists. “As long as I feel that something is right, it’s true.” If we argue from strict moral relativism, then, the Holocaust, slavery, Gulags, all become permissible, as long as Hitler, slave owners, or Stalin felt good about what they were doing.
In response to this argument that Nazism, slavery, or Communism are a-okay if reality is subjective, the moral relativist will often dismiss it as merely child’s play, as though answering such an argument is beyond their pay-grade. Some will try to answer it, but end up contradicting themselves sooner or later, because there is no way to validly conclude something to be objectively evil, when there is no objective truth.
For example, some people may set certain parameters on their moral relativism, presuming that murder and rape, for example, are not okay, but that other things are. But how can they make those objective claims when they claim moral relativism? Well, perhaps they may say that there is some objective truth, but it is very limited. But then how did they reach the conclusion that certain actions were always impermissible? Some may say that that is just how things are, and that all people have always had a repulsion to these things. But what about rampant cannibalism in Papua New Guinea, vast harems in pagan cultures, or hunts for gold inside albino Africans? The claim that humans are inherently repulsed to certain things seems implausible, unless we interpret morality in light of natural law.
Natural law is not a religiously-based law, but, as the name suggests, is predicated on nature: things ought to function the way they are meant to function, according to nature. If we abide by natural law, that means that abortion and euthanasia are impermissible. Artificial contraception is also illicit because it puts an unnatural barrier between man and woman, and is intended to prevent the principal purpose of the sexual act: the procreation of children. (Something such as Natural Family Planning is in accordance with natural law because there is nothing unnatural done to delay the procreation of children (because of financial situations, housing situations, etc.). Likewise, cannibalism is impermissible because eating our own species does not respect the dignity of the other. It is contrary to human flourishing for people to eat each other. Polygamy is not okay because the wives are inherently not treated as equal to the husband. The husband is unfaithful both on a biological level and on a mental level (each wife gets part of his time, while he gets more time from his “wives” combined).
Moral relativism attempts to reduce universal truths to a hobby. Not everyone needs to enjoy playing soccer. Maybe someone likes basketball, and another chess, etc., and that’s fine. But we cannot apply this same concept to universal truth. Religion is not a hobby, nor is it merely “a way of life.” Religion is “voluntary subjection of oneself to God” (Catholic Encyclopedia 1907-1912). It is a virtue. To be religious, therefore, we must continually and voluntarily surrender ourselves to the Lord. As Catholics, that means striving to do God’s will at every moment of our lives to death.
If we deny objective truth, we deny God’s existence, and thus cannot do His will. If truth were only subjective, nothing would be true. But to claim that nothing is true is absurd. That would mean that we do not exist, we only perceive that we exist, and everyone can perceive that he or she exists more or less, according to his or her own definition. But neither could we know that we perceive that we exist. We would only perceive that we perceive that we exist. Nor could we necessarily know that we perceive that we perceive that we exist, because having knowledge is dependent on one’s perception of whether he has knowledge or not, which is in turn dependent on one’s knowledge of his perception of his knowledge. We inevitably go around and around in a circle of meaningless doubt and absurdity. We can conclude, then, that there is objective truth, not just simply because assuming the contrary would lead to our insanity, but because relativism has no basis in reality.
One can see the effects of a culture that rejects objective morality, most of all in the transgender movement. There have long been people here and there who have claimed to be transgender in one manner or another, and societies throughout history have continuously rejected their claims as illogical. But recently, society has accepted transgenderism en masse. No one in their right mind would say that a man who thinks he is a woman is a woman, unless they were lying.
However, some people, it seems, have convinced themselves that this change is possible.
This widespread acceptance of transgenderism has its roots in widespread rejection of objective morality, for if objective morality is not true, a man is not necessarily a man, nor is a woman necessarily a woman, nor are genders limited to two. Wikipedia, operating from a morally relativistic point of view, now claims there are now 106 genders (“List of Gender Identities” Wikipedia). To deny objective truth is to deny reality and make excuses to do what one wishes.
But before widespread acceptance of transgenderism and other absurdities, proponents of subjective morality sought primarily to disprove the possibility of God’s existence. They knew that without God, people could do whatever they pleased, with no guilt or sense of duty to others.
The dawn of widespread acceptance of moral relativism goes back to the 14th century, when William of Ockham, a Franciscan Friar, espoused the philosophy of Nominalism, whose essential tenet was that the simplest solution to any problem was always the correct one. This was the beginning of widespread rejection of the existence of purely objective truth, for this type of philosophy attempted to subject truth to man’s perception of simplicity. About 200 years later, the Protestant Reformation operated on this principle espoused in Nominalism – that the individual could determine truth. Luther and other “reformers” rejected the use of reason, and so fell into the error of fideism (faith alone). Following this line of thought meant that there was belief without limitation, zeal without order. Fallible humans often overstep the bounds of right faith and zeal, but with no Church to correct or guide them, they gradually adopt subjective truth to be objectively true. Today, there are hundreds of Protestant denominations, many of which claim to be the one, true congregation, but none of which are (“Just How Many Protestant Denominations Are There?”, National Catholic Register, Oct 31, 2017).
In the decades and centuries following the Reformation, Enlightenment philosophes began a reactionary movement against the fideism of the Reformation with their promotion of rationalism, which sought to discard faith in favor of reason alone. The adoption of rationalism led to a distortion of religion by philosophers such as Immanuel Kant, who claimed that religion was only good insofar as it caused its adherents to live upright moral lives. But if this characterization of religion is true, religion is fundamentally false, merely a human invention, and is reduced to a hobby for some other end than the love of God.
In today’s world, we often hear objections to any faith, asserting that having any faith is archaic nonsense that modernity has defeated once and for all. Instead of having faith, we can look to modern science, which contains the answers to all the questions we may ever want to know. Having faith in general, regardless of whether or not it is in God and His Church is often discarded as belief without evidence. But having faith is essential to mankind. For if we do not have faith, we cannot trust empirical science. Surely, no one has done his own research to discover the Big Bang, garner sufficient evidence for evolution, develop a system for monitoring earthquakes, discover DNA and all the roles it plays in the human body, discover what role genes play in our lives, and develop the field of organic chemistry. Rather, we take these things for granted because they seem at least potentially plausible, there is considerable consensus on their existence or behavior, and we trust the scientist or scientists who discovered them, the person or people who teach it to us and those others who also believe these things. We have faith in science, scientists, and in our culture’s approval of a given scientific fact. It does not seem as though many of those denying the reasonability of faith would deny the reasonability of science, but that is what one must do if he is to be consistent with his attacks against faith.
“Still,” the skeptic may say, “we can trust science because these exist tangible things which directly reflect scientific realities. It is not so with religion.” True, religion usually entails more of a leap of faith from the individual than does something such as science, because religion’s object is the supernatural, the invisible, while science’s object is the natural, the visible. But if this were not the case, then religion would be false – at least religion that believes in One, Omnipotent God. For nothing tangible can be omnipotent. How can something in creation have power over all creation at all times?
Science may one day discover some precursor to the Big Bang, but then the question will arise: what caused that precursor. Empirical science – biology, chemistry, physics – can never figure out the definitive beginning of everything because it always interprets things in light of another cause. In other words, it only addresses things within creation. Science can interpret things in light of the principle of conservation of matter, but it cannot say what created matter, for it does not possess the tools to answer such a question.
Only philosophy (and theology), the queen of the sciences, can answer such a question as: “what is the origin of existence?”
We want to know the truth. We have now seen that truth exists. Let us then search for it, and not stop until we find it. For the “truth will make [us] free” (Jn 8:32).