Reality and Judgment According to St. Thomas by Peter Hoenen, S. J.

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 131 understood apart from the natures, they are properly considered in the same science which treats of natures. Therefore, it seems that the distinction between an ontological and an empiriological analysis of natural things is arbitrarily drawn. This distinction appears insufficient to support the claim that there is need for natural science distinct from the philosophy of nature. It seems unnecessary and unnatural to cut short the philosophy of nature as conceived by Aristotle and St. Thomas, and to admit an empiriological science which does not manifest essential natures and is not stabilized or illumined by them. Mr. Maritain rejects the integral and unified view of the philosophy of nature which the ancients held. He points out how desperately modern science and natural philosophy need each other, but he has juxtaposed them rather than united them in inner continuity and harmony. Instead of reducing the philosophy of nature to the skeleton of its former grandeur and admitting a science of nature which is not philosophical, would it not be better to agree with St. Thomas that the essences of natural things are sufficiently manifested by their sensory appearances, and that natural philosophy can and should attain to the specific details of natural phenomena? Albertus Magnus Lyceum for Physical Science, River Forest, Ill. WILLIAM H. KANE, O.P. Reality and Judgment According to St. Thomas. By PETER HoENEN, S. J. Appendix by Charles Boyer, S. J. Translated by Henry F. Tiblier, S. J. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1952. Pp. 395, with notes and index. $6.00. The book is divided into two parts: I, The Phenomenological Theory of Judgment, and H, The Justification of the Judgment. In the first part the author maintains that every judgment is preceded by a reflection on a previous act of simple apprehension, a thesis taken over from Boyer, and that it is· the function of this reflection to affirm or deny the content of the apprehension. The content or data of the apprehension is already composite before the judgment, that is to say, the nexus of the future judgment is already present in the apprehension, and even in the phantasm and the data of sense perception. The content is called the Sachverhalt, a term employed by the followers of Brentano, and this term is likened to St. Thomas's dispositio rei, an expression that has a technical meaning in St. Thomas and that has been unduly neglected according to Father Hoenen. The reflection on the content enables the mind to find the motive justifying the judgment, for the mind then knows that it knows by reason of the fact 132 BOOK REVIEWS that it knows truth, the proportion of the apprehension to the thing. Thus, the reality or objectivity of the data of apprehension is known in the judicial act. This reality or being is not always actual existence. " Rather what is necessarily involved is the essential relation of the quiddity to existence; by reason of this relation the quiddity is being." To say otherwise is to make the mistake of Brentano whom the author discusses at some length. The first part then concludes with two chapters on the proposition which are very well done. This is especially evident in his treatment of the formal and material functions of the subject and predicate. Both subject and predicate may have functions other than their ordinarily respective ones, i. e., material and formal. Of great interest is the effect of reduplication on the subject's function. A special chapter is devoted to the per se proposition, while the conditional proposition is thoroughly explained by comparing it with the formal and material implications of logistics. However , the central thesis of part one is that reflection is the prerequisite of judgment, and this means of every judgment, not merely a philosophical or scientific one. Hence, the mind is naturally critical and justifies its knowledge of reality in its pre-scientific state. This is the thesis of Boyer and Hoenen makes it his. But to show the essential role of reflection he adduces other Thomistic texts, and endeavors to show that the judicial act does not involve the synthesis of concepts; for the apprehension, phantasm, and sense data are...