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• Literature of Liberty a Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought
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• Editorial
• Bibliographical Essay: Henry B. Veatch, Natural Law: Dead Or Alive?
• I: Natural Law
• “nature” and “law” In Natural Law
• The Anatomy of Natural Rights
• Egoism and Rights
• The Is/ought Chimera
• Deriving “ought” From “is”
• Facts Vs. Value-laden Whims
• Is/ought and Probable Reasons
• Does Righteous Anger Imply Rights?
• Why Be Moral?
• Truth As an Objective Value
• Was the Revolution Objectively Necessary?
• Natural Law and State of Nature
• Natural Law and the State
• Natural Rights and Anarchism
• Dworkin On Rights
• Liberalism, Rights, and Abortion
• Rights and “mercy Killing”
• Rights and the “brain Drain”
• The Natural Law Right to Work
• Grotius: Contract and Natural Law
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• II: Autonomy, Privacy, and Authority
• Bureaucracy and “the Organization Man”
• Autonomy and Anarchism
• Autonomy and Taking Responsibility
• Autonomy, Motivation, and “buck-passing”
• Schooling For Conformity
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• Obedience to Authority
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• Privacy and Autonomy
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• III: The Ambiguities of Liberty
• Clarifying Freedom
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• Experiencing Freedom
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• The Danger of “dangerousness”
• Freedom, Motivation, and Government Programs
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• Negative Vs. Positive Freedom
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• Freedom, Existentialism, and Innocent Victims
• Does Censorship Harm Freedom?
• IV: Slavery
• Slavery, Ideology, and Subordination
• Slavery and Imperialist Ideology
• Enlightenment Liberalism Vs. Slavery
• The Anatomy of a Slave Revolt
• Colonial American Slave Law
• Jefferson On Slavery
• Slavery and the Poor
• V: Planning
• Regulation and the Warfare State
• Mail, Privacy, and Social Control
• Corporate State Capitalism: Coal
• French War “planification”: Chlorates
• Bureaucracy and British Regulation
• British Foreign Policy and Stagnation
• Political Decisions and the Economy
• Government, Labor, and Multinationals
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• Regulation Vs. Academic Autonomy
• Government Schools and Social Control
• The Economics of Charity
• International State Planning and Inflation
• Competition and Individual Knowledge

Truth as an Objective Value

M.J. Finnis

• University College, Oxford

“Scepticism, Self-Refutation, and The Good of Truth.” In Law, Morality, and Society: Essays in Honor of H.L.A. Hart. Edited by P.M.S. Hacker and J. Raz. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977, pp. 247–267.

In The Concept of Law (1961) legal theorist H.L.A. Hart argues that the most fundamental human value is survival and that all other values are instrumental means to that value. Questions of the ultimate source and ground of value are crucial for any discussion of a particular value (such as liberty) and for establishing an objective morality. Since many recent discussions of value assume the truth of something similar to Hart's claim, it is important to critically examine that notion.

Against Hart's position, Finnis argues that survival is no more basic a value than truth. Indeed, the Aristotelian-Thomist notion maintains that the bios theoretikos (life of the mind) is as fundamental as any human value, if not more so.

The value of truth emerges by using a retorsive argument. Resembling intellectual boomerangs, retorsive arguments show that one cannot assert certain sceptical propositions without selfcontradiction (e.g., Aristotle's rebuke to the sceptic: “let the man who denies the law of contradiction speak first”). In a similar vein, one who denies that truth is a value worth knowing ends in self-contradiction. In other words, one cannot under any circumstances deny that truth is a good. This places truth on as fundamental a level as any other good (such as survival).

Essentially this argument boils down to the position that one must assume the very value of truth in order to deny that truth might not have value. Whether Finnis's argument demolishes the notion that life is the ultimate value remains to be settled.