Cultural critic bell hooks is in agreement with Aquinas who, as we saw yesterday, says that truth and justice lie in the heart. hooks tells us that “the heart of justice is truth telling.” One cannot build justice on falsehoods. Those who are engaged in lies cannot also be engaged in justice-making.
The current election in America is very much about the “Big Lie” and the many implications of it including the 400+ laws to curtail voting for the disenfranchised to supposedly combat election fraud that never happened.
Our culture seems to be going through a truth crisis with “fake news,” incendiary news, denial of facts like climate change, very often cold indifference to the truth and excitement over crazy conspiracy theories.
There must be a reason why Satan is called “the father of lies.”
Why does Aquinas say that truth and justice reside primarily in the heart?
This underscores how biblical a thinker Aquinas is, for in Jewish thought the intellect is in the heart, not the head. It is a distinctly modern consciousness that has abandoned such understanding and instead rationalized all cognition—as if we don’t learn from our guts and heart as well as our heads. Descartes’s definition of truth as “clear and distinct ideas” is a good example of this modern philosophical bias.
Of course if we live in a myth (as the modern era did) of a “value-free” approach to truth, then the idea that the truth is in the brain alone buttresses such an empty concept of “value.” Science and the HeartMath movement are learning today that the brain is not restricted to the head, but actually operates within the heart itself.
For instance, the heart sends more signals to the brain than the brain sends to the heart. The heart, therefore, directly influences emotional processing and higher cognitive faculties such as attention, perception, memory, and problem-solving.
For Aquinas, moral decision-making resides not in the will but in the passions! This was a very controversial position by Aquinas in the Middle Ages, and it is still controversial today, but it parallels Rabbi Heschel’s teaching on the central role that passions play in the prophetic consciousness. It also explains the emphasis Aquinas puts on compassion as when he says “compassion is the fire that Jesus came to set on the earth.” Compassion, after all, is a kind of passion. It also supports Aquinas’s thinking on anger, that moral outrage is an energy that can be put to very good use.
That truth and justice reside in the heart therefore is biblical, as Aquinas knew well.
Do they also reside in our voting decisions? The mid-term elections may give us answers to that question.
Adapted from Matthew Fox, The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Wisdom for Hard Times, pp.101-108, 112-116, 131-136.
Also see bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions (Love Song to the Nation #1) (NY: HarperCollins, 2001), pp. 40ff.
To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video teaching, click HERE.
Banner Image: A Section of Plate 3 from the Papyrus of Ani (c. 1250 BCE) depicting the weighing of the deceased’s heart against the feather of Ma’at, goddess of order, truth and justice. Wikimedia Commons.
Queries for Contemplation
Is there room for moral outrage in your spirituality? And for compassion? And for truth and justice? How are you putting it all to work in this election season?
Recommended Reading
The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Wisdom for Hard Times
A stunning spiritual handbook drawn from the substantive teachings of Aquinas’ mystical/prophetic genius, offering a sublime roadmap for spirituality and action.
Foreword by Ilia Delio.
“What a wonderful book! Only Matt Fox could bring to life the wisdom and brilliance of Aquinas with so much creativity. The Tao of Thomas Aquinas is a masterpiece.”
–Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit
7 thoughts on “bell hooks and Thomas Aquinas on Truth and Justice”
It is the heart that empowers the mind and the center of creative spirituality. Beautiful, the mind is nothing if the heart won’t supply the blood to the brain. The Holy Spirit resides in the heart. Thank you.
Matthew, Today you tell us that cultural critic bell hooks, is in agreement with Aquinas, who says that truth and justice lie in the heart. For Hooks says that, “the heart of justice is truth telling.” One cannot build justice on falsehoods, and those who are engaged in lies cannot also be engaged in justice-making. You say that, “Our culture seems to be going through a truth crisis with “fake news,” incendiary news, denial of facts like climate change, very often cold indifference to the truth and excitement over crazy conspiracy theories.” Once again I say, it sounds like the Trump presidency and the Joseph Goebbels propaganda war (read: “fake news”) on the public during the Nazi reign of terror. Now we might see why Satan is called “the father of lies.” Then you share with us three interesting ideas that Aquinas had: First, he said that truth and justice reside primarily in the heart. And second, he said that moral decision-making resides not in the will but in the passions! Then thirdly, this explains the emphasis Aquinas put on compassion, as when he said, “compassion is the fire that Jesus came to set on the earth.” You conclude that compassion, is a kind of passion. It also supports Aquinas’s thinking on anger, that moral outrage is an energy that can be put to very good use. “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven…”
May God’s Spirit of
LOVE~WISDOM~TRUTH~PEACE~JUSTICE~SORROW~STRENGTH~MERCY~COMPASSION~
HEALING~TRANSFORMATION~CREATIVITY~JOY~ONENESS…
be and grow in the hearts/minds/spirits of All our sisters and brothers around the world, especially within the US voters on Nov.8….
🔥💜🌎🙏
Thank you Mathew and the website team, for the beautifully powerful message in today’s DM, and all the references to Bell Hook’s penetrating, truth-telling, insightful, revelatory words of wisdom and the vision of truth, justice, love and compassion that we can choose to participate in, in nonviolent ways… within our relationships with ourselves, each other and in response to the heirarchal, patriarchal society in which we find ourselves living in. I pray that this light, be that which we carry within our hearts as we continue to traverse this labryrinth of the shadows of lies, as we navigate the valleys of this collective Dark Night of the Soul. I pray that we may become the unfolding, evolving emergence of this light, birthing forth and manifesting this wisdom and vision of truth, justice, compassion and love… nonviolently, consciously and co-creatively. I pray that we continuosly choose daily, again and again, to participate in the individual and collective transformation of resurrecting our true soul sense of self… reclaiming our divinity seeded and sealed within our humanity, responding to the promptings, leadings, guidance, comfort, consolation and wise counsel offered to us all… through trusting the movements of Spirit, whom is in us, with us, for us and desiring to move more freely through each one of us and our lives… for the greater good of everyone and the sacredness of the all and the everything of creation. Amen.
Thank you for your comment, Jeanette !!!
These valuable comments of power over, domination, and lies, draw me again back to the economy. Low wage Employees are said to be valued like at a place like Amazon when in truth they are dominated and exploited just like the earth. I wonder if this leads to lies and domination at home where they can transfer the abuse.
Edward, Today you write in part, “Low wage Employees are said to be valued like at a place like Amazon when in truth they are dominated and exploited.” As we near the holiday season, I keep hearing commercials saying amazon will hire anyone as a seasonal worker–no interview necessary–they will only be tempts. But maybe for them something is better than nothing…