TO LEARN TO SPEAK THE TRUTH

Peter J. Riga

The mind of man is made for truth so that his actions may be in conformity with that truth. Truth is above all a relationship both to reality and to others. Just as the stomach is made to receive and digest food and the eye is made to receive light and transmit images to the brain; the human mind is made to receive and transmit truth so that the person may act on it accordingly. In fine, the mind is made for truth. If you put rotten food in the stomach, it is regurgitated and if the flash of light is too great, the eye will go blind. To deny that the mind is made for truth in any way for whatever reason, secular, or religious, is to corrupt the human person at his very core and his life is forever perturbed with little possibility of arriving at any solid destiny.

That is one of the great criticisms of the legal profession. We deny the truth as the most important element of the legal system in order to win. This corruption directly influences the way we treat evidence at trial. A truthful witness whom we know to be telling the truth, we try to trip up to make him-her not credible in the eyes of the jury. What is this but a species of fraud which comes to corrupt the one who practices it and the system that tolerates it? We try to exclude a piece of evidence which we know to be truthful and authentic so we can win. The criminal defense lawyer’s job is precisely to get his client off by any legal way available to him, even if it means discrediting a truthful witness or excluding truthful evidence which he-she knows tends to prove that his client committed the crime. Whatever the reason, we corrupt the truth and so corrupt ourselves.

In the following essay I should like to give a prolonged meditation on truth and its meaning. When this is deliberately frustrated by the lawyer in the courtroom, this spells trouble down the line even if it sounds like success in the short term. I should like to develop this theme with emphasis on legal consequences.

The title of this paper means that truth telling-speaking is not a natural process. It is a learned trait like everything else in life. We are born tabula rosa and we must learn to speak the truth just as we must first learn to speak. We are taught truth by mentors, parents, teachers, relatives. It is the value they put on truth that influences us most.

To speak truthfully we must have both the truth and the word because one never goes without the other. What is a true word except that it speaks the truth, expresses and communicates the truth? The word gives a physical body to the truth. It is rather foolish to ask what the truth is outside of its spoken word because truth is contained in the spoken or written word. In fact truth does not exist except in and through the spoken word. To limit the truth to the object of a true word which it describes (a thing) is always partial and therefore inexact.

At the same time, truth is not a simple reality as suggested by the multiplicity of vocabularies used to express truth: true, exact, genuine, authentic, real, evident, certain, veracity, verifiable, sincere, honest, impartial, objective, truthful, veritable, etc. Sometimes the truthful word refers to things, sometimes to thought and its enunciation, sometimes to action and sometimes to the person himself As strange as it might seem, a person can also be said to be true and this is not limited just to his sincerity. A person can be sincere and repeat a lie. A truthful person is one from whom truth comes out of his mouth, he is of or in the truth. The truthful lawyer is one who not only never lies or permits his client to lie; he is also one who does not use tricks to exclude truthful witness or evidence, no matter how detrimental to his case. Such lawyers are rare indeed. They are becoming rarer because that is never taught in law schools today.

What therefore is the reality which is said in a true word? A person in whom we have confidence? A fact which imposes itself? A meaning which gives us life? An evidence that cannot be disputed?

 

The true is not necessarily the truth. Truth is not reduced to correctness of facts which is factual truth: it is raining - that is a factual truth. Nor is it a logical chain of reasoning: If all x’s are a’s, at least some a’s are x’s whereas not all a’s are necessarily x’s.. The truth of a statement is not sufficient to give the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. it is the whole truth that must be told, not a part of truth. That is why most cross examination is an exercise in twisting, confusing even the witness who we know to be truthful. This is what we mean when we say "it’s true, but..." Such reticence suggests, in spite of the incontestible necessity of the true, an inadequation, an error, an insufficiency "It is true but its not important,’ or "that does not mean much," "It is true but cui bonum?", "It is true but it does more evil than good." We cannot deny it: there are useless truths, encumbering truths, even pernicious truths about which it is better to keep silent. It is not good to utter every truth. That is why the courtroom is not really the arena for truth finding in spite of all contestations to the contrary. We do not seek truth there with all our hearts. We seek to confuse in order to win.

Does it really serve truth, respect the truth or be faithful to the truth, to abandon it totally all bare, nude in a public place, to throw it out here without discernment or in context in the face of the whole world, in the brutality of indifference or even of hate? That is exactly what cross examination seeks to do. In fact, truth and the lie are not opposed in simplistic fashion because the truth twisted in half measure is itself a species of a lie. The attorney who cuts off the witness with a simple ‘ye’ or ‘no.’ There is more. What also counts is the way we speak the truth, that is, the way we give body to the truth from the same reality about which we speak. That is why truth finding is such a delicate endeavor and not the sledgehammer approach of cross. Certain ways of claiming or proclaiming the truth are more lies that some outright lies. Truth cannot consist in saying whatever to whomever in whatever context. Such "truth" destroys rather than builds up. It is important to know how the a pronouncement is articulated, its objectivity and its meaning for the listeners. The question of truth presents an epistological dimension, that of knowledge in relating to the good life. It does not suffice to know in order to live well, still less to know a lot or even everything. Knowledge is a necessary but not sufficient dimension for truth to exist at all.

There remains the problem of determining the way of speaking the true. The question is therefore about a ‘true word.’ A positivist conception of the truth reduces it to an exact announcement and to a verifiable proposition and forgets an essential element. The word is not content with representing the real as adequation (adequatio rei et intellectus says Thomas Aquinas.). The classical definition of truth of Aquinas no longer suffices because it lacks the relationship to others. As we shall see, truth relates to things but above all to people. To both, really. What does truth mean anyway? In each word, there is a double relationship, one with someone ("the other") and the other with something ("the thing"). A word that relates to no-thing is nothing; it does not contain truth a word that does not relate to someone has no real meaning but simply pure information which, alone, is never truth. Information without discernment within a whole is misleading and can be an outright lie.

It is here that we see the essential difference between thought and word. Thought in itself does not necessarily relate to others but only to something because it does not speak. When we speak, it is always to someone. A demand by others for me to say what I think is never justified because it relates to no-one because I speak to no-one. To speak, I must be authorized to do so and be engaged by my neighbor. The word is not only the something which is said about something. The word is first of all the word of someone who addresses someone. A reductionist approach to the truth does not see the truth arise in a situation or in a process of dialogue where there are always persons who communicate about things. When an attorney elicits facts at trial these are important but not determinant as to the truth of a situation. These facts must be put into a context of some form of relationship to someone to ring true. Truth is heard and understood as a condition which puts into play the quality of interpersonal relationship. Truth is that very quality itself. We then cease centering exclusively on the exactness of discourse or rather its exact facticity and seek to put it into relationship. If truth consists in taking account of the real, it is and must be of all the real of which a great part is to whom the true word is addressed, a relationship.

Therefore the relationship which is tissued between the speakers is constitutive of the truth or of the lie as much as the exactness of its facticity. This is extremely important in discovering truth. The relationship between me and others which it expresses will alone be true or false. The contrary of truth may very well be violence, that violence of which certain forms of pretended truth are flagrant examples, particularly among those people who feel obligated to speak the truth to all they meet. This cannot be understood by these others because they-we are not in relationship. They establish no relationship. Therefore they can utter no real truth.

We know well from poignant and sometimes terrible experience that the truth is the best or the worst of things according to the way by which we make use of it among ourselves. There is a perverse use of the truth, indeed a homicidal view of truth by which we can literally kill people with the truth in a variety of ways. The truth in the Gospel is sometimes in the mouth of the devil. The truth can sometimes be prostituted in and by a spirit of evil. We must always see the truth which gives rise to life because the truth can only give rise to life, never death. Truth today has lost its corrective or its ethical regulator which determines whether in uttering this word, it gives rise to life or to death, to killing up or destroying, to truth or to the lie.

A teacher, for example, makes a student say that his father often arrives home drunk. It is true but the child can do nothing but lie. On what side is the truth? On the side of the child and not of the teacher whose demand is diabolical because the "truth" here, while factually true, destroys.. There is truth only in context, in a specific situation, in a relationship. To speak the truth changes meaning according to the situation in which we find ourselves. Each time we must take into account the condition in which we must speak the truth. We must pose the question of knowing if and in what way a man has the right to demand from another a true language, the truth. it is not in principle but concretely that our language must be true. An abstract veracity is not true before God. It is above all a relationship which gives rise to life and not to evil or death.

Truth is good or bad to say according to context, the persons concerned and intentions of those who utter the word. Prudence as a supreme virtue governs all other natural virtues. This means that we must take into account the effects of an indiscrete truth, given without discernment on who this will affect for good or for evil. Prudence is another word for discernment.

He who holds to the formal principle that to always tell the truth in every circumstance would be irresponsible because there is much more to truth than mere facticity.. Such is the case of the cynic. When truth is detached from life and from concrete relations with others, when one speaks the truth without taking into account him to whom the truth is told, the word has only the appearance of truth. The cynic wants to justify’ his word by saying that what he believes he recognizes is the truth, making abstraction of reality in its wholeness. Doing this, he destroys the real as well as his word, in spite of its appearance as just and as such, becomes a lie.

In order for a word to be true, it is necessary that it be just and responsible. Responsible in the way that it is received and understood as well as used. It does not suffice that things be as I say they are and that I can furnish verifiable proof for these "things.". It suffices even less that I am sincere and of good faith. In determining a word which is just according to justice, the least verifiable dimension is that of intention. The real questions to be answered by the one who is about to speak are: by what right can I say this? Who engages me to speak and who authorizes me to speak? What are the reasons for my silence or my speaking up? Should I keep a secret or not? Do I have an obligation to make it public? To whom is the obligation owed and why? And to whom is this "true" information directed? Have I taken into account the ones to whom the truth is told? Can they accept it, integrate it, understand it and how? My word must be intelligible, without ambiguity, without duplicity, without reference to a code. My listener has the right to ask me what I am saying, what I mean by what I am saying and why I an saying what I am saying. I must justify my speaking to him in the first place.

A true word invites the speaker and the listener to an existential engagement, a dialogue and is not content with intellectual bantering. We are in an entirely different order than that of a purely informative truth. The truth of information or facticity. Pure information means nothing. It must be placed in context, in relationship. Why do we inform? Information is not its proper end but expands by reflection for understanding. Without reflection, information is an ambiguous pretension and sometimes dangerous, a curiosity without conscience. This is the stuff out of which tabloids are made. Capable of handling cold information through the sifting of discernment, only then does truth makes sense and has thereby authority and becomes salutary truth for the one whom it is addressed.

We must learn to speak the truth, the truth which demands an appropriate and just knowledge which takes into serious consideration real data. The just word is that which renders justice and thereby brings life and not death. Often a matter of style, the art of speaking which takes account of all these reasons, takes account of even those of the heart: "love and say what you wish" to paraphrase St. Augustine because it is your heart, enlightened by the spirit of intelligence, which knows how to distinguish the part of what gives life and what gives death. When we love, we have fulfilled the law.

When truth is detached from life and a concrete relation with others, when we speak the truth without taking into account the one to whom we speak, our word has only the appearance of truth.

All this makes the courtroom a very poor arena for discovering and developing the truth. That is why truth and justice are so inter-related but so seldom matched. That is also why the legal and justice seem so k apart in any judicial system. Ours is about one of the best systems of justice around but we ought not to take too great a pride in it. We must be sanguine in our hopes for great justice because our method of discovering the truth is so weak and flawed in the context of a courtroom.

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