“Truth, Beauty, and Goodness” are often called the “three transcendentals.” But while we use these terms frequently, their meanings are not obvious, especially in a political and legal culture that either denies one (or all) of these terms or redefines them in unrecognizable ways. So, how do Catholics define and understand truth, beauty, and goodness as transcendentals? I cannot provide an exhaustive answer in a short column, of course, but this is an appropriate opportunity to introduce brief definitions of these terms. The better we understand the three transcendentals of truth, beauty, and goodness, the better we understand God and ourselves.

Transcendence

In everyday parlance, transcendence has the typical connotation of overcoming or exceeding. To transcend one’s limitations, for example, is to perform some extraordinary feat. It might be considered the proverbial exception that proves the rule. It connotes going above and beyond the typical or usual situation to something greater. As a theological term, transcendence means all those things, and much more.

St. Thomas Aquinas identifies three fundamental aspects of what he calls “natural law.” The first two are shared by all living animals, he explains, including human animals. These are the natural impulses to self-preservation and propagation. All animals act in such a way as to try to preserve their lives and extend their species. The third principle is unique to the human animal: to know the truth about God. This natural impulse and desire to understand is an aspect of transcendence. Put another way, the human person is unique among creatures in our capacity and inclination to think outside ourselves. We don’t merely exist and survive, we think about existing and surviving. And of course, we think about much more. What is our nature? What is the nature of society? Is there a God, and if so, how do we know Him? Our inclination to ask these questions and our ability to understand their answers are aspects of transcendence.

Truth

Philosophers identify various theories of truth, a discussion that exceeds a short column. For our purposes it is sufficient to name two, one deficient and one not. The deficient one is sometimes called the “coherence” theory. This reduces truth to an internal consistency of assertions of truth, but without any regard for whether the assertions actually correspond to anything outside the system. We hear people use the phrases “your truth” and “my truth.” This is a crude form of the coherence theory. And of course, it is tantamount to saying that there is no such thing as truth. “Truth” is produced by the individual in this theory.

The Catholic Christian understanding of truth, in contrast, can be called a “correspondence” theory. This means that assertions of truth are intended to say something fixed and objective about the world, without regard to our acceptance or rejection of it. A correspondence theory of truth means that truth exists outside our assertion of truth. We do not create coherent systems of “truth,” but rather stand in relation (for good or ill) to the truth about the world. Truth is received by the individual. This proper understanding of truth contributes to our sense of transcendence. The quest for truth is meaningless if no truth exists to be embraced.

Beauty

Similarly, we can identify two broad ways of thinking about judgments of beauty. The first is completely self-referential. In this theory, observations of beauty are nothing more than personal preference. This is characterized by the popular phrase that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” This is precisely the same thing as saying, “There’s no such thing as beauty.” Rather, “beauty” simply means “something I like.”

In contrast, we Catholic Christians believe that beauty exists outside the judgment of any particular person. A beautiful painting, song, poem, play, sculpture or story is one that holds a mirror to the truth about God’s creation. Beauty reveals God. A statement of beauty is an assertion about the objective correspondence (that word again!) to the real world around us. People of good will might disagree about what constitutes beauty. And even then, we can acknowledge a broad range of aesthetic tastes and preferences. But this discussion must be in the context that beauty is more than mere assertion of personal preference. Beauty either transcends our assertions about beauty, or it doesn’t exist at all.

Goodness

“All that is . . . is good.” So utters the empress Theodora in Handel’s oratorio by the same name. This echoes the medieval philosopher Boethius, who explained that existence itself is good. This is fundamentally a statement about God. If God created all things, and God is all good, then all that God creates is good. Good, therefore, is everything that exists in its proper state. In this context, evil is the word we use to describe the privation of good or the perversion of good. And, it almost goes without saying: all that is good is from God and reflects the very goodness of God. Thus, goodness, like beauty and truth, transcends our statements about it, and contributes to our ability to answer the questions, “Who am I, and why do I exist?”