Medieval Philosophy

by Peter S. Adamson

We might assume that truth is a pretty straightforward notion: a sentence is true if what it says matches the way that things are. Anselm would agree with that, but he would insist that affirmative sentences also need to be understood as serving some purpose. They are, as it were, trying to do something. Their goal is to describe the world, or as Anselm puts it, “to signify that what is, is” (On Truth §1). So the truth of an assertion is an example of what Anselm calls rectitudo, meaning “correctness,” or if you prefer to stick closer to the Latin word, “rectitude.” In light of this, Anselm feels free to apply the concept of truth much more widely than we would today. If truth is the same thing as correctness or rectitude (§2, 11), it can turn up wherever rectitude is at stake. And for Anselm, that’s just about everywhere. A right action is a “true action” (§5). God, being purely good and the source of all other good, is the ultimate example of something that is as it ought to be, so Anselm concludes that He is nothing other than Truth itself (§10). Moreover, we can apply this concept of truth or rectitude to the human will. Since we can will what we ought to, as when we love God, or fail to do this, as when we sin, the will can be “true” or “false.” In other words, it can have or lack rectitude.