| Title: | Eternal truth |
| Original Title: | Vérité éternelle |
| Volume and Page: | Vol. 17 (1765), p. 71 |
| Author: | Louis, chevalier de Jaucourt (biography) |
| Translator: | Abby Kloppenburg [University of Richmond] |
| Subject terms: |
Logic
Metaphysics
Ethics
|
| Original Version (ARTFL): | Link |
| Rights/Permissions: |
This text is protected by copyright and may be linked to without seeking permission. Please see http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/terms.html for information on reproduction. |
| URL: | http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0002.903 |
| Citation (MLA): | Jaucourt, Louis, chevalier de. "Eternal truth." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Abby Kloppenburg. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2013. Web. [fill in today's date in the form 18 Apr. 2009 and remove square brackets]. <http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0002.903>. Trans. of "Vérité éternelle ," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 17. Paris, 1765. |
| Citation (Chicago): | Jaucourt, Louis, chevalier de. "Eternal truth." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Abby Kloppenburg. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0002.903 (accessed [fill in today's date in the form April 18, 2009 and remove square brackets]). Originally published as "Vérité éternelle ," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 17:71 (Paris, 1765). |
Eternal truth is a general and certain proposition, which depends on the congruence or incongruence occurring in abstract ideas.
The resulting propositions are called eternal truths , not because these are propositions that have in fact always been true and that have existed before the understanding that forms them in all times; nor because they are etched in the mind, according to a model that would exist somewhere, and existed before: but because these propositions were once formed from abstract ideas, in such a way that they are true, so they cannot but be in fact true, at any time, past or future, when we assume they were formed at a different time by a mind within which are found the ideas of which these propositions are composed; because names are always supposed to mean the same ideas, and the same ideas constantly have the same relations with each other, so it is clear that the propositions being formed on abstract ideas are once true, and must necessarily be eternal truths.
Thus having the idea of God and of myself – even the ideas of fear and obedience; this proposition: men should fear God and obey him, is an eternal truth , because it is true for all men who have existed, exist or will exist.
These are eternal truths that the relationships of prior equity to the positive law that establish them, such as for example, that assuming that there were societies of reasonable men, it would be fair to comply with their laws; that if there were intelligent beings who had received some benefit from another being, they ought to show gratitude; that an intelligent being that has harmed another intelligent being deserves the same evil, and so on in the same way.