BOOK REVIEWS 681 Le mystere de l'etre: L'itineraire thomiste de Guerard des Lauriers. Preface de SERGE-THOMAS BONINO, 0.P. By LOUIS-MARIE DE BLIGNIERES. Paris: Librairie PhilosophiqueJ. Vrin, 2008. Pp. 454. 48 €(paper). ISBN 987-27116 -1965-8. This book is the first monograph on the thought of French Dominican LouisBertrand Guerard des Lauriers (1898-1988). Although he vigorously took part in the philosophical and theological debates of the 1950s and 1960s, his name has became almost exclusively connected with the "Cassiciacum Thesis," an idea he developed in the 1970s which has come to be called Sedeprivationism. It is therefore laudatory that author Louis-Marie de Blignieres, founder and prior of the Fraternity of St. Vincent Ferrer (France), has chosen to direct the reader to the philosophical rigor and systematic insight with which Guerard des Lauriers discusses a pivotal question in contemporary Thomistic metaphysics: the discovery of the subject of metaphysics and the apprehension of being. (For a recent contribution to this debate see R. Mclnerny's Praeambula Fidei: Thomism and the God of the Philosophers.) De Blignieres's study intends to do three things. First, it gives an exposition of Guerard des Lauriers's thought which, in its mature form, is contained in a single dense and concise manuscript. Second, it examines to what extent the "synthesis" of Guerard des Lauriers is rooted in Aquinas's works, whether explicitly, implicitly, or virtually. For this reason the book offers three appendices (323-424) containing a chronologically and thematically ordered list and French translation of all the places in the corpus Thomisticum containing ratio entis, natura entis, actus entis, and their variations. Third, it aims at a systematic elaboration of Guerard des Lauriers's thought with the help of the insights of contemporary scholars, among whom the author mentions explicitly Tomas Tyn, Jan Aertsen, Pierre-Ceslaus Courtes, and Leo Elders. The central feature of Guerard des Lauriers's thought lies in his development of an approach towards the ratio entis with respect to a threefold division of the mind (mens). The main part of the book is therefore divided into two parts: part 1 (43-135; chaps. 1-2) contains the psychological analysis and metaphysical foundation of the threefold division of the mind while part 2 (139-315; chaps. 3-5) discusses in depth the three approaches towards the ratio entis. Two of three functions of the human mind are well known and correspond to what traditionally is indicated by the terms ratio and intellectus. Guerard des Lauriers however finds in the intellectual life of thinkers from various disciplines-here he mentions, among others, Maritain, Einstein, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Poincare, Bergson-a third component of the mind which he calls "pneumatism ." This component manifests itself in "the spontaneous inclination to ask 'why"' (57) and is more intimate than reason or intelligence for it orders the rhythm of the life of the mind. Although it operates secretly for most, it exists in every human being and reaches its summit in the genius, whether he is a poet, a scientist, or an artist. At this point Guerard des Lauriers develops a psychological analysis of the stages of the act of discovery, particularly within 682 BOOK REVIEWS mathematics, which enables him to list the following features of "pneumatic knowledge": a "negative choice" which directs the mind away from insignificant hypotheses, a "special esthetic sensibility" for perceiving harmony, and "positive intuition" or intuitive anticipation of the known object which shows the hidden leitmotiv: the connaturality of the mind with being. Chapter 2 examines the roots of this pneumatic knowledge within the nature of the mind. The central theme here is the communicability of being (mens capax entis). Guerard des Lauriers proposes, next to the real actualization of this communicability which is the object of Thomistic epistemology, a "virtual actualization" which anticipates the direct apprehension of the proper object of human knowledge. While through direct apprehension the mind is entirely centered on the object and apprehends the form of things, the "pneumatic" or confused apprehension is a reaction by the subject to the presence of the object and apprehends the "form of the intellect." The confused apprehension "expresses and includes partially an...