The Passion for Truth

We finished off class yesterday by going over the list of intellectual virtues listed in the Philosophy Toolkit handout. Dr.J brought up the question of which virtues are the most important; I felt this was a very important question. The first idea that came to my head was the importance of the first virtue listed which is the passion for truth. I stated my opinion about the importance of this virtue during the class period, but I feel that I could expand on this idea greatly.

Each of the different virtues helps prove the importance of the passion for truth. Critical thinking is an important part of Philosophy because it is a process involved in almost all parts of Philosophy. The interesting idea about critical thinking is that it is difficult to come up with an example of critical thinking that does not relate to the passion for truth. Anytime a person uses critical thinking, either they are on the search for truth, or they need to have an idea of what truth is in order to use accurate thinking. Critical thinking would not be important if no one cared about truth because the process of critical thinking would not accomplish anything without a basis of what is true. Furthermore, even if we were not completely sure what is true, we could still use critical thinking, but we still would need to know what we think is true; without a passion for truth, we would not care enough to have a basis of what we think is true.

The ideas that prove the importance of the passion for truth in the critical thinking example remain very similar throughout all of the other virtues; each virtue remains similar because they all depend heavily on the passion for truth. Judgment is an obvious example of the importance of the passion for truth because it is difficult to have a capacity to make useful distinctions when the truth is not important. It does not seem possible for someone to make useful distinctions when they do not care about what is true because how could they even know what is useful and what is not.

The rest of the virtues listed seem to show the importance of the passion for truth because they all relate to a person’s views and opinions; this is because it seems difficult to have views without a passion for truth. A person could not have views that were important to them if they did not care whether their views were true or not. In addition, deciding between two different views seems impossible because if you do not know which view is true, both views seem to be the same. The passion for truth seems to be the only virtue on the list that can exist without all of the other virtues; therefore, the passion for truth is the most important intellectual virtue because all of the other virtues depend on it.

Can we know what a useful distinction is without a passion for truth? And, Can the passion for truth exist without any of the other intellectual virtues?