Editorial: Truth and Justice

WE expect to hear big words from today’s Guest of Honor and Speaker, and rightly so. Truth and justice are two of the strongest foundations of the moral and social order in any human civilization, and the National Bureau of Investigation’s mission statement itself avows that it will “provide quality investigative and forensic services to the people through advanced methods and equipment in the pursuit of truth and justice.” This writer is thus inspired to reflect about truth and justice, especially in light of the events unfolding in the Philippines that use these two as crutches for another ideal called accountability.

Truth is distinct from fact although they are cousins once removed. Facts are verifiable, measurable, concrete, and unchanging realities not founded on subjective belief. That it did or did not rain this afternoon is a fact, no matter whether one slept through it. Truth, however, requires a subject consciousness to assert it. And it can change over time, such that before Copernicus and Galileo, it was true that the Earth was the center of the universe, and thereafter, it became the Sun.

Nonetheless, human consciousness does not dwell singly on facts. The fact that water boils at 100 degrees Celsius achieves its best expression when a cook is able to serve hard-boiled, soft- boiled, and poached eggs as required. Truth therefore provides the “why” to the “what” of facts and, as human consciousness gains a deeper understanding, be it from experience or education, truth becomes the framework for the assignment of meaning and a rendering of reality.

The problem with truth is that one’s truth may be different from another’s. Friedrich Nietzche, in his work Thus Spoke Zarathustra, wrote: “By many ways and modes I have come unto my truth… This – is my way – where is yours?” Are we thus consigned to relativism, with each individual asserting his or her own truth, unassailable by virtue of its utter subjectivity?

In this writer’s humble opinion, Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthazar provides the best description of truth when he wrote that truth is symphonic. Each and every ‘truth’ put forward by anyone is akin to an instrument of a symphonic orchestra, not one instrument able to claim it is better than the others because each one has its part in the symphony. The orchestra itself may at times seem cacophonous, such as when the musicians tune up before the conductor takes his podium. But once he taps his baton and conducts, the composer’s design and the raison d’être for the inclusion of each instrument become undeniably clear.

In the same manner, the plurality of cultures, multiplicity of worldviews, broad range of backgrounds, and variance in philosophies make for many truths, such that the totality of them would be difficult for one person to grasp. However, by actively listening and openly interacting with this plurality, one may get to appreciate a huge part of The Truth while humbly accepting that it is bigger than one person can handle.

Justice is a bit more straightforward. Aristotle defines it as ensuring “a fair mean” – a sense of proportionate fairness that treats equals equally and unequals unequally – both in an individual’s conduct and in society’s socio-political arrangements. Our seminary professor, himself a theologian from the Dominican Order, used me and my classmate who was much slimmer than me to illustrate this. “Equality,” he said, “is giving Senen and Rodolfo equal lengths of leather, say 30 inches, for a belt. Senen will find the belt too short and Rodolfo will say it’s too long. Justice is giving each of them, unequal as they are, unequal lengths of leather.”

It can also get complicated, however. Affirmative action in the United States, for instance, is supposed to dispense justice by favoring African Americans, Latinos and other minority groups in, say, university admissions, for the purpose of correcting perceived racial imbalance in the student body and deep inequality in society. But in two affirmative action cases brought before it, the US Supreme Court contradicted itself. In the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, decided in 1978, the Court ruled that rigid racial quotas violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The ruling allowed a white student with the right qualifications to be admitted to the medical school despite racial quotas. In Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) the Court ruled that the University of Michigan Law School could consider race as a factor in admissions and denied a white student’s appeal to be admitted because giving underrepresented minority groups more is a compelling state interest. It was a case of ensuring, as the cliché goes, that those who have less in life should have more in law. Was there justice in either case?

Whatever criticisms may be labeled against state policies and legal instruments for failing to encompass the totality and multiplicity of truths, and whatever failings there may be in the dispensation of justice in our country, it remains clear as day that we need both to ensure moral and societal order.

I hope our GOHAS will give our members a clearer insight into truth and justice as he sees them, and that he, in turn, will gain from what I expect to be a very lively Q&A session after his remarks.