Love and Truth

In his book Man Against Mass Society, written (in 1952) in the shadow of the horrors of the Nazi and Soviet death camps, Gabriel Marcel describes a degraded "mass" man, passive, un-free, susceptible to fanatacism through manipulation by propaganda and demagoguery, the kind of degraded human that supported and furthered the horrors mentioned.

The antitdote? According to Marcel, it is the "universal," and "the light," which he describes as mind, or spirit, and "the identity at their upper limit of Love and Truth" (p. 262) "[W]e should have to add that a truth which lies below that limit is a pseudo-truth and conversely that a love without truth is in some respects a mere delirium." He identifies this with the "light" in the first chapter of John.

Benedict XVI his encyclical likewise links truth and love. In par 2, he says, "Truth, in fact is logos, which creats dia-logos, and hence communication and communion." Without truth, relationship, love, degrades into "using", sullenness and, ultimately, hatred. Without love, truth likewise degrades to a "pseudo-truth" that harms rather than helps man. This is both Marcel's and Benedict's core message.

We tend to think of truth as standing "out there," objectively, on its own. In point of fact, it is only "truth" to the extent that we are bound to it (be"troth"ed to it), that is, to the extent we exist in a relation of respect and obedience to it and to each other through it. Relationships, including those of "love," without truth, are degraded, degrading the "lovers".

This is a most important truth for our day and age in which truth divorced from love leads to the horrors, among others, of abortion, the mass killing of family members, gang violence, terrorism, and many other forms of lesser violence that no less degrade and demean us.