Should we be true to ourselves—or is this a meaningless cliche? In the great Hamlet, Polonius advises his son: “This above all—to thine own self be true” (I, 3). Oftentimes this kind of talk is used to justify the subjective view of reality that we truth-lovers oppose: “If I should just be me, then you have no business telling me what to do.” I remember having a conversation with an elderly gentleman a few months before entering the Order of Preachers. After telling him of my desire to be a Dominican and what about the Order attracted me, he told me: “I’m glad that you’re doing what will make you happy. Everyone has to do what they think is important.” I was also glad that I was doing what would make me happy, but it felt like a let-down to chalk my vocation up to “what I thought was important.” Following Christ to the full is not just “something I think is important” but it is important.

So, when he tells his son to be true to himself, is Polonius simply being “the tedious old fool” that Hamlet says he is? Shall we be true to ourselves? It all depends on what “ourselves” means. For many today, “ourselves” means our spontaneous feelings in opposition to exterior strictures. Although it is true that we are not defined by the opinions of our neighbor, it is a great mistake to identify our true selves with our feelings. Aristotle took a different tack to answer this question—he thought that “ourselves” meant our reason. Aquinas quotes Aristotle saying that “that seems to be each man’s self, which is best in him” (ST I-II q. 3 a. 5). Reason is the best thing in man, and, therefore, he is most himself who is reasonable.

In using reason, a person has the ability to know his origin and his ultimate purpose, and then to direct himself to that purpose. The German philosopher Martin Heidegger thought that man was thrown from nothing into existence. Anxiety was the symptom that betrayed the fact that we are slipping back into that nothing: man is meant for nothing. “Selfhood,” thinks Heidegger, is only possible when we know the nothing toward which we slide (What is Metaphysics?). In reality (which is not the same as Heidegger’s nightmare), however, God is the origin and goal of human existence.

Only by knowing God, man’s source and goal, is man able to know himself. Saint Catherine of Siena declares “I point you to the cell of the side of Christ where you will find knowledge of yourself and his goodness” (Letter 36). For after all, man is made in the image and likeness of God, and what could be more like the portrait than the subject himself? If you wish to know the man in the painting, you must go to find him. Luckily for us, we need not go far, for God is everywhere.

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Republished with gracious permission from Dominicana (September 2025). 

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Image: Titian, The Tribute Money (detail)