Disputed Questions on Truth

Context and Structure

Thomas Aquinas’s Quaestiones disputatae de veritate (Disputed Questions on Truth) is among his earliest major works, composed during his first teaching period at the University of Paris (mid‑1250s). It belongs to the genre of disputed questions (quaestiones disputatae), a standard scholastic teaching format in which a master publicly debated a focused topic, gathered objections, and then offered a determinative response.

The work consists of 29 questions, each divided into multiple “articles” that address precise problems. The first 20 questions form the core, treating truth, knowledge, intellect, falsity, and divine ideas. The remaining questions broaden out to issues such as faith, prophecy, and the will, while still circling back to the overarching theme of truth. The first question, “On Truth,” is itself extensive and programmatic: it asks what truth is, where it is found, what its causes are, and how it relates to God.

A typical article follows the classic scholastic structure:

1. Objections (argumenta in contrarium) – arguments against the position Aquinas will ultimately defend;
2. On the contrary (sed contra) – a brief authoritative citation pointing toward the opposite view;
3. I answer that (respondeo) – Aquinas’s own, more systematic treatment and resolution;
4. Replies to objections (ad obiecta) – responses showing how the earlier objections can be answered or limited.

This method makes the work not only a repository of Aquinas’s own teaching on truth, but also a window into the intellectual debates of the 13th century, including newly translated Aristotelian texts and concerns about how to reconcile them with Christian doctrine.

Central Themes and Arguments

At the heart of Disputed Questions on Truth is Aquinas’s account of truth as a kind of correspondence. Drawing on Aristotle and Augustine, he famously defines truth, in one key formulation, as the “adequation of thing and intellect” (adaequatio rei et intellectus). This adequation means a fitting match or proportion between how things are and how they are understood.

Aquinas distinguishes several senses and loci of truth:

• Truth in the intellect: For Aquinas, truth is most properly in the intellect, because a judgment is true when it correctly “says of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not.” This is often called a correspondence theory of truth, though Aquinas emphasizes the act of judgment rather than mere verbal statements.
• Truth in things: Things are called “true” in a secondary but real sense, insofar as they are suited to be known and conform to the divine intellect. A thing is “true” insofar as it realizes the nature it was intended to have.
• Truth in God: Aquinas argues that God is Truth itself, the highest and most perfect truth. All other truths depend on the divine intellect, which eternally knows all things and serves as the measure of created reality.

Across various questions, Aquinas explores truth in related domains:

• In questions on knowledge and the intellect, he considers how the human mind knows, what kinds of objects it can grasp, and how abstraction from sensory data yields universal concepts. He distinguishes between speculative and practical intellect and examines the reliability and limits of human cognitive powers.
• The questions on falsity and error probe how untruth is possible if being and truth are convertible in some sense. Aquinas locates falsity in the misalignment of judgment, rather than in things themselves, while still allowing that things can be called “false” analogously when they fail to realize their nature or appear other than they are.
• Several questions link truth to the will, goodness, and moral action. Because the will follows the intellect, a defective grasp of truth can lead to moral failure. Aquinas explores how freedom, sin, and grace interface with the pursuit of truth about God and the world.
• The later questions take up faith, prophecy, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit under the aspect of truth. Faith is “a habit of the mind by which eternal life is begun in us,” and it involves adherence to divine truth beyond what natural reason can attain. Prophecy concerns extraordinary knowledge communicated by God, raising questions about the criteria and certainty of such truth-claims.

Throughout, Aquinas grapples with tensions between Augustinian illuminationism and Aristotelian empiricism. He accepts that all truth ultimately depends on God as first truth, but resists the view that humans need a special, continuous divine illumination for every true judgment. Instead, he affirms the integrity of natural cognitive powers while situating them within a broader theological framework.

Influence and Interpretation

Disputed Questions on Truth has been viewed as a key expression of early Thomistic thought, showing Aquinas at a formative stage working through conceptual tools that will later reappear in the Summa theologiae and Summa contra Gentiles. Its detailed analysis of truth, intellect, and divine knowledge influenced subsequent scholastic philosophy, especially within the Dominican tradition.

Historically, the work played several roles:

• In medieval epistemology and metaphysics, it became a reference point for discussions of truth’s nature, the relation between truth and being, and the status of propositions, concepts, and things as bearers of truth.
• In theology, Aquinas’s notion of God as “First Truth” shaped later Catholic teaching on revelation, faith, and the credibility of doctrine. His approach offered a framework in which philosophical truths and revealed truths are distinct yet ultimately harmonious.
• In the early modern and modern periods, direct engagement with this specific work waned, but many of its themes—especially the correspondence definition of truth and the emphasis on judgment—echoed through Thomistic revivals and neo‑scholasticism.

Modern interpreters disagree over how to classify Aquinas’s account. Some read it as a largely correspondence theory, stressing adequation between intellect and reality. Others highlight its semantic and metaphysical dimensions, noting that Aquinas links truth to being, intelligibility, and divine ideas in ways that complicate simple classification. There is continuing debate over:

• how tightly Aquinas identifies truth with being,
• whether divine truth is fundamentally the same sort of property as created truth,
• and how his view relates to contemporary accounts such as deflationary, coherence, or identity theories of truth.

Despite these disagreements, Disputed Questions on Truth remains a central source for understanding medieval approaches to truth, knowledge, and God, and an important text for contemporary philosophers seeking historically informed perspectives on the nature and scope of truth.