Truthfulness

Definition

Truthfulness is the virtue by which a person manifests himself truthfully to others through words and actions, presenting things as they really are rather than making himself or his affairs appear other than they are.

Aquinas associates truthfulness with justice because human beings owe one another a certain truthfulness in social life. Human community depends upon people being able ordinarily to trust what others communicate.

Nevertheless, truthfulness is not justice in the strict sense. Justice concerns a legal or strict debt owed to another, while truthfulness ordinarily concerns a moral debt arising from what is fitting for human life together. For this reason Aquinas treats truthfulness as a virtue annexed to justice rather than as a species of justice.

Truthfulness also observes a mean: a person should neither falsely magnify himself nor falsely diminish himself.

Primary reference: Summa Theologiae II-II, q.109.