THE THOMIST
A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW
OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY

EDITORS: THE DOMINICAN FATHERS OF THE PROVINCE OF ST. JosEPH
Publishers:

The Thomist Press, Washington, D. C. 20017

VoL. XL

JANUARY, 1976

No. 1

-A BICENTENNIAL ARTICLE -

PHILOSOPHICAL PRE-SUPPOSITIONS OF THE
FOUNDING FATHERS: MYTH AND REALITY

1

ULIAN BOYD has suggested that the era of the Founding
Fathers was to government what the Age of Pericles was
to art, the Age of Elizabeth to exploration and discovery. 1
On the threshold of the nation's bicentennial, it would be
advisable to separate this myth from the reality that is the
great experiment that is America. For so much myth surrounds
the Founding Fathers that the reality often disturbs the placid
conviction that our heroes were unmoved by the base passions
and the turbulence characteristic of contemporary life.
The word, myth, of course need not be used pejoratively.
Mircea Eliade has revealed how pre-scientific mythic visions of
reality did at least give the ancient world a cohesive world
1 Fundamental, Testaments
Washington: 1973, p. 3.

of the American Revolution, intr. Julian Boyd.

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ROBERT PAUL MOHAN

view, even if the deeds of the gods were somewhat capriciously
invoked, and the vision itself destined to yield to more precise
scientific explanation. The mytho-poetic vision of Homer and
Hesiod bore little resemblance to consequent Platonic or
Aristotelian visions of the universe, but the power of myth
seems less determined by inner structure than by the extent
to which it is given credence.
For instance, it has been comforting to us to see Puritan
forefathers, harassed by the motherland, blazing new trails
in an exciting new world, seeking freedom above all else. It
has been said more accurately perhaps that they wanted to
worship God in their own way and to force everybody else to
do the same. The Puritan mind was as sternly conservative
in the new world as it was in the old. In the 17th century it
was theocentric and family oriented, paradoxically committed
to the establishment of a theocracy and suspicious of the
political realm. Faith, not reason, was to be man's guide, and
the Convenant of Grace was more important than rational
arrogance-especially since reason was and is an integral part
of a nature vitiated by primal sin. The Puritans indeed
rejected the formalism of establishment Anglicanism and
Catholicism, were suspicious of an Anglican religious establishment allied to an inevitably unholy state, and they chose
simplicity over what they considered a quasi-popish ritual.
Although James Madison was later to see a vital link between
liberty and learning, the 17th century Puritan of the "Holy
Commonwealth " was not tolerant theologically, not democratic politically, nor inquisitive intellectually. 2 A native
toughness of mind did pose questions that Puritan mysticism
was to avoid. 3 The attempt to understand the world of the
2 Cf. Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness, New York:
1956, Ch. V, "The
Puritan State and Puritan Society," pp. 141-153. Alan Hemert has best described
the complexity of the eighteenth century religious mind in his book, Religion and
the American Mind, Cambridge, Mass.: 1966.
8 John
Bentley disagrees. He sees "democratic ideals embedded deeply in
Puritan hearts," and "with matchless wisdom they joined liberty and learning in a
holy alliance." Outline of American Philosophy, Patterson: 1963.

PHILOSOPHICAL

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OF FOUNDING FATHERS

3

Founding Fathers will not be satisfied as much by a study of
their political institutions, social conditions, and economic
situation as by a study of their manner of thinking. Gordon
Wood, in his monumental work, The Creation of the American
Republic, cites Joel Barlow's observation that the mind of man
is the only foundation for any system of politics. If this be so,
it becomes increasingly necessary to study the .evolution of a
mentality, rather than limit oneself to empirical data. This
is but another way of expressing the primacy of the logos over
the deed, if we really want to understand the deed. 4
It is also probable that we see here the power of myth and
the limitation of fact. If men think that they are unequal in an
Aristotelian political sense, they will not be disturbed by their
consequent inequality of status; but if the colonists were
convinced that all men were equal in their rights, then the
Revolution was indeed made and sustained by the basic
conviction.
It is another question to ask what the basic convictions of
the colonists were. Were they egalitarian in the first place?
Are they the transplanted ideas of the philosophes of the French
Enlightenment, 17th century English jurists, Puritan theologians, or of Locke and the Commonwealthmen? Were the young
Americans stimulated by the indigenous pamphleteering in
the colonies, or were they reacting by way of " brute pragmatism" to the American scene?
In accepting Barlow's thesis, one can still see something
valuably formative in the colonial experience itself that possibly
led to a habit of thinking discernibly different from the original
thinking that produced the experience.
There is indeed an emerging pattern of belief in 18th century
America, complex in structure, and sometimes imprecise in
terminology, dependent to a degree upon classical and medieval
sources, but growing out of all of them to express a new
• One thinks here of Goethe's line in Faust: "In the beginning was the deed,"
as contrasted with the opening words of St. John's gospel, "In the beginning was
the logos."

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ROBERT PAUL MOHAN

political outlook that will find only partial expression in the
Constitution.
The American Revolution was one of the least revolutionary
of revolutions, if we would calibrate revolutions by the violence
they exhibit. But however articulated, the conviction was
there. Camus, in The Rebel, says "Rebellion is born of the
spectre of irrationality, confronted with an unjust and incomprehensible condition .... Man is the only creature who refuses
to be what he is." 5
The colonists perhaps were not always capable of defining
injustice, but they eventually saw themselves as unjustly
treated victims, and they indeed refused to be what they were.
The loyalists, who possibly numbered about one-fourth of the
population, on the contrary, saw the Revolution as madness
and fury beyond comprehension. 6 However sympathetic we
may be to the much neglected Tory point of view, the scope of
which has been examined by that knowledgeable scholar of the
period, Bernard Bailyn, the American Revolution was primarily a revolution of the mind rather than a series of convulsive acts of passion committed by a desperate and tyrannized
people. The colonists seem to have been more exercised by
the idea of being dictated to than they were to de facto
dictation. When Edmund Burke had thf' colonists sniffing
tyranny in every tainted breeze, he was aware that the
colonists were intellectually concerned with the problems of
equality, right and justice, long before they had been to any
great degree deprived of them. 7
Albert Camus, The Rebel,, New York: 1956, pp. 10-11.
Cf. William N. Nelson, The American Tory, Oxford: 1961; Wallace Brown,
The King's Friends, Providence: 1966; Bernard Bailyn, The Ordeal of Thomas
Hutchinson, Cambridge: 1974; Pauline Maier, From Resistance to Revolution,
New York:
and Mary Beth Norton, The British Americans: The Loyalist
Exiles in England, 1774-1789. The war, of course, was, in a real sense, a civil war
whose combatants were not divided by geographical borders.
7 Samuel Eliot Morrison
calls them " the freest people in the world," not to
obtain freedom, but to confirm it. The Oxford History of the American People,
New York: 1965, p.
5

6

PHILOSOPHICAL

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The historian often laments the poverty of his sources. But
when one consults the writing of the period, especially the
sermons and pamphlets, one wonders if the colonists ever had
an unexpressed thought.
As Gordon Wood observes:
It seemed to be a peculiar moment in history when all knowledge
coincided, when classical antiquity, Christian theology, English
empiricism, and European rationalism could all be linked .... To
most of the Revolutionaries there was no sense of incompatibility
in their blending of history, rationalism and scripture. 8

But perhaps most theoreticians of the Revolution found the
inconsistencies of eclectic politics easier to bear, both because
of the casualness of their exposure to the contradictory traditions, and because of the adaptiveness that became so much
a part of the American character after more than a century
of struggle in an unrelenting primitive environment.
And perhaps the comparative absence of violence in the
struggle could be found, not in the moral superiority of the
colonists themselves, but in the colonists' sympathy for the
Constitution of the British they were fighting. As late as
January 1776, John Adams expressed himself against independence from Britain. The colonists seemed to feel in some
vague way that divine ordinance, nature, and rational legal
refinement were felicitously combined in the Constitution of
Great Britain. From Montesquieu to the Adamses, no praise
was too great for the " perfect " Constitution, although hostility could simultaneously be directed against an insensitive
Parliament and a remote monarchy which were thought to be
perverting that very Constitution.
THE EARLY YEARS

It is customary to begin our colonial philosophical history
with a consideration of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), but
8

Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787, Chapel

Hill: 1969, pp. 7-8.

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ROBERT PAUL MOHAN

despite the curious blendings of Calvinistic theology and Lockean empiricism, it would seem that dissenting theologians in
general rather than Edwards in particular were of more
importance.
It has been suggested that the philosophical
origins of Congregrational Puritanism go back to the Platonic
humanism of Peter Ramus (1515-1586) whose anti-scholasticism and anti-Aristotelianism would be compatible with the
Founding Fathers' humanistic deism-although Jefferson was
no admirer of Plato either. Almost a century before the
Declaration of Independence, Platonism had a base in Cambridge, and one of the Cambridge Puritans, William Ames,
provided the philosophy texts of early New England. 9
Thomas Hooker is another name that was to be famous in
the convenant theology of New England, and his influence
was to become both religious and philosophical. Schneider sees
convenant theology as a secular variant of social contract
theory, directed against religious formalism as the compact
is directed against excesses of the Crown.
Although it is questionable that the Puritan Platonists were
more philosophical than Biblical, the transition to deism and
r.eligious naturalism does seem to have been a gradual and
almost inevitable development.
Not only were Locke's
Treatises widely read in the colonies, but Locke was a hero to
Edwards all of his life.
Quite simply, the greatest ideological influence on the
Founding Fathers of our nation-before and after the revisionist theory of the past fifteen years-is the towering figure of
John Locke
.
There is considerable interest in philosophical influences to
which Locke was subjected, and the odd way in which his
libertarian theory weaves in and out of the thought of the
Commonwealthmen and pro-American Parliamentarians.
Those influences would he the classical study of his Westminister years, the Scholastic philosophy which, like Descartes,
9 Cf. Herbert W. Schneider, History of American Philosophy, New York:
p. 6.

1963,

PHILOSOPHICAL PRE-SUPPOSITIONS

OF FOUNDING FATHERS

7

he knew and disliked; the libertarian ethics and theology of
Ralph Cudworth, the Cambridge Platonist; the Christian
humanism of Richard Hooker; the rationalism of the great
Descartes; and the cautious scepticism and empiricism of
Gassendi, which he probably knew best through his discussions
with Gassendi's disciple, Bernier.
Caroline Robbins sees Locke as a "determined Whig," but
exposed to many friends of varying beliefs at home and abroad. 10
At least in his earlier years before the return to Oxford in
1666, he does seem to be more the involved politician than
philosopher, although he began to write his philosophical ideas
down as early as 1660. His long association with Lord Ashley,
later Earl of Shaftesbury (for whom he was both secretary
and physician) was to sharpen his taste for political theory.
Especially pertinent was his association with Shaftesbury in
the 1669 writing of a constitution for the colony of Carolina,
and his developing distaste for political and religious intolerance.
Although involved almost all 0£ his life in practical affairs, he
nursed at times a Cartesian aloofness, and a caution possibly
born of his successful fight against extradition before the
Glorious Revolution.
Not only was the work of Locke known to the more literate
colonists, but his 1690 Essay Concerning Human Understanding
provided much 0£ the basis for the French philosophes' faith
in Reason. His Second Treatise of Government, written between
1679 and 1681, was perhaps a more direct influence on social
contract theory among the Founding Fathers. 11
1 ° Caroline Robbins, The Eighteenth Century Commonwealthman,
Studies in the
Transmission, Development and Circumstance of English Liberal Thought from the
Restoration of Charles II until the War with the Thirteen Colonies, Cambridge:
1961, p. 58.
11 The best available version of the Essay is edited by Peter H. Nidditch.
It
is the first volume of the Clarendon Edition published at Oxford. Peter Laslett's
Two Treatises published by Cambridge in 1960 is the best edited version of that
important source. In 1960, Mr. Paul Mellon purchased the Lovelace collection of
Locke's works and presented them to the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Cf. R. I.
Aaron, John Locke, Oxford: 1955; Maurice Cranston, John Locke, A Biography,
London: 1957; and J. W. Gough, John Locke's Political Philosophy, Oxford:

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ROBERT PAUL MOHAN

Scholarship has, within recent years, challenged the view
that Locke was, in Merle Curti's words, America's philosopher,
or in Morton White's, the father of American Philosophyor indeed, one of the Founding Fathers by adoption. Although
these claims cannot be lightly dismissed, the case for Locke as
the greatest single philosophical influence can be sustained.
First of all, what does Locke actually say in the Two
Trea.tises of Government? Because of the comparative recency
of Peter Laslett's critical edition (1960), one can determine
better what Locke actually believed.
The lesser First Treatise, as is well known, is simply a disdainful evaluation and critique of Sir Robert Filmer's Patriarcha,
the celebrated defense of the divine right of kings. The ridicule
Locke heaps on the unfortunate Filmer would, of course, be
most sympathetically received by the colonists, especially by
the more literate, who were less than ardent admirers of
George III.
The more important Second Treatise begins with a treatment
of the common state of nature into which all men are born.
The state of nature is not meant to be an actually existing
primitive historical condition, but the pre-state situation of
men, who, though not involved in Hobbesian warfare, live
according to reason " without a common superior on earth
with authority to judge between them." In short, it is the
absence of civil society. Pre-state man, guided by reason, is
destined to endure in benevolence and good will; but because
of the regrettable tendency of some to seek power and violate
the rights of others, civil government by the consent of the
governed comes into being. There is no compact here between
ruler and ruled, but between individuals of equal status. And
if any become tyrants, they are enemies who may be punished
by the community at large.
1950. John Dunn emphasizes the influence of Locke's religious commitments
in the formation of his political theory and minimizes the influence of Locke on
American political theory in the eighteenth century. The Political Thought of
John Locke, Cambridge: 1969.

PHILOSOPHICAL

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OF FOUNDING FATHERS

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It is interesting to note that Locke here .espouses an optimistic rationalism which recognizes tyranny to be a behavioral
aberration from normative appropriate behavior. And yet his
odd and indefensible def.ense of slavery is not seen in this
context of aberrant behavior. H is doubtful, however, that
Locke's espousal of slavery contributed greatly to that institution's prospering in the new world. The concern of the slave
owners was more financial and practical than ideological.
It will be remembered that the status of the slave and prohibition of the slave trade were discussed but consciously
omitted before the American Constitution was drawn up, and
Congress was specifically prohibited from abolishing the slave
trade for twenty years. 12
The colonists certainly realized that slavery was a painfully
obvious denial of liberty, but they realized too that its abolition would spell financial ruin.
Few even of the most enlightened Virginians were willing to
declare, as Jefferson did in the instructions he wrote for his colony's
delegation to the First Continental Congress, that ' the rights of
human nature (are) deeply wounded by this infamous practice.' 13

In general, it may be said that the colonists had a qualified
interest in equality (except for those cited occasions when
equality would entail a significant financial loss). But they
were aware, as was Locke almost a century before, that those
free men of superior gifts and industry would inevitably acquire
preferential status. And as Charles Lee was to observe, the
honors would be obtained " without court favor or the rascally
talents of servility."
12 The colonists were certainly
aware of the Lockean justification of slavery,
and the literature of the period reveals that they thought themselves victims of a
British effort to reduce them to the position of slaves. Cf. Bernard Bailyn, The
Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Cambridge: 1967, pp. 282-246.
13 Ibid.,
p. 286. Patrick Henry too agonized over this inconsistency, and
hoped for a future opportunity to get rid of this " lamentable evil." This does not
appear, however, to be a widely shared sentiment among 18th century Americ1m
plantation owners,

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ROBERT PAUL MOHAN

The question of property was of considerable concern to
Locke, Although no one had natural and exclusive rights to the
goods of the earth, man was represented as having a right to
seek and acquire the goods of the earth for his own well being.
It is by the labor of man that the goods of nature are transformed into property, and the state is obliged to safeguard
property in its acquisition, maintenance and transference.
Locke rather interestingly articipates the labor theory of value,
and suggests that man's acquisitive powers be limited to that
which can be transformed by his personal labor. He takes for
granted the" just precedency" of some over others.
Power is to be employed by the people for " the mutual
preservation of their lives, liberties, and estates." Sovereignty
remains with the people, although they may designate one,
the few, or the many to represent their interests. It is significant to remember in this context that Jefferson objected to
being ruled by Parliament, not because its rulings were unjust,
but because Parliament had no right to make the rules in the
first place.
The colonists' suspicion of the metastasis of power was not
limited to the excesses of Great Britain. In later years it
would be directed against their own representatives.
The pervasive Whig mistrust of power had in the years since
Independence been increasingly directed not only against the
traditional rulers, but also against the supposed representatives of
the people, who now seemed to many to be often as distant and
unrepresentative of the people's interests as Parliament once had
been. 14
Locke himself seemed to prefer an executive constitutional
monarch, and an elected parliament, and there would seem to
be considerable pro-monarchy sentiment even among those
who would refuse George Ill's claim to this position. Professor
Wood suggests that the hostility of the colonists was not
"Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787, Chapel
Hill: 1969, p. 598.

PHILOSOPHICAL

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directed against aristocracy as much as against a crownappointed aristocracy.
But of interest to the colonists particularly would be Locke's
justification of rebellion under extraordinary circumstances.
He was not interested in hobbling the executive power, but
he did recognize the necessity of rebellion when lesser means
of redress failed. It is human reason that judges the gravity
of governmental injustice, and it is that same human reason
that prompts man to refrain from hasty precipitate action
when less drastic measures suffice.
Rebellion is aimed, not at anarchy nor at a return to the
individualism characteristic of the state of nature, but toward
the just government of the many. And when the prince rules
arbitrarily and unjustly, ignoring constitutional or legal restraints; when he dissolves the legislature or impedes its work,
sovereignty returns to the people. 15
In general, Locke's philosophy is open, liberal, sympathetic
and forward-looking.
He is the believing rationalist, who
accepts Revelation as a supplement to reason, repudiates the
right of the state to intrude in matters of the spirit, and who
speaks, for the most part, eloquently in the defense of
religious freedom. It is perhaps this sympathy to religion, a
quality not found ordinarily in the philosophesoftheEnlightenment, that made a felicitous combination of the political and
spiritual for the religious colonists.
It is perhaps surprising that he was so wrong in the matter
of slavery and in his unwillingness to extend toleration to
Catholics and atheists, but for the time in which he wrote, he
was quite liberal.

15 It is here that Locke invokes his " appeal to heaven " argument,
by which
tyrannized people, " by a law antecedent and paramount to all positive laws of
men", have the right to rebel. Ultimately, this is the Hobbesian argument of
self-preservation. Cf. Treatise, Ch. xiv; Bailyn, op. cit., pp. 198-229; Wood, op.
cit., Ch. x, " The Sovereignty of the people," pp. 344-390.

ROBERT PAUL MOHAN

ENTER THE REVISIONISTS
It has been customary to consider Locke's influence as
indirectly exercised on the colonists by means of the philosophes of the Enlightnment, but the revisionst work of
scholars in the past decade has given us new insights into
intermediary influences only partly Lockean in inspiration.
Of particular importance in any study of the philosophical
pre-suppositions of the Founding Fathers has been the work of
Caroline Robbins and Bernard Bailyn. 16
Bailyn has summarized what he calls the myth of the
American colonial experience, citing first the supposed fact that,
previous to the American Revolution, the political experience of
Colonial America was roughly analogous to Great Britain;
secondly, that an alliance of planters and merchants, constituting
an aristocracy embodying religious orthodoxy, economic privilege and social hierarchy, were attacked by native, frontierbred democrats through the medium of many provincial
assemblies, especially in the decade previous to 1776.
The traditional picture is completed with the American
Revolution destroying the oppressive power of this aristocracy
and giving power to freedom-loving Whig colonists. By the
imposition of these radical ideas on a traditional society, a
social revolution was effected that destroyed all but the
remnants of an old aristocracy-but remnants which survived
to regain power in a counter-revolution of the 1780s and impose
conservative views on the new Federal constitution.
By its light, politics in America, from the very beginning could
be seen to have been a dialectical process in which an aristocracy
of wealth and power struggled with the people, who, ordinarily
ill-organized and inarticulate, rose upon provocation, armed with
powerful institutional and ideological weapons to reform a
periodically corrupt polity .17
16 Caroline
Robbins, op. cit.; Bernard Bailyn, "Political Experience and
Enlightenment Ideas in Eighteenth Century America," in The American Historical
Review, Vol. 67, January, 1962, pp. 339-351. The Ideological Origins of the
American Revolution, Cambridge: 1967.
17 Bailyn, American Historical Review, Vol. 67, p. 841.

PHILOSOPHICAL PRE-SUPPOSITIONS

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18

The assumption involved was that an Enlightenmentinspired group 0£ American radicals had turned a dispute in
imperial relations into a sweeping reformation 0£ public
institutions and land, and that what evolved, evolved from a
necessity 0£ time and place.
The revisionists, writing against the theory 0£ such texts as
Carl Becker's History of Political Parties in the Province of
New York, 1760-1776, and Charles Beard's Eoonomio Interpretation of the Corn.stitution, tell a different story.
To some 0£ them, it was not the Enlightenment that provoked
American radicals during the Revolution, nor any other ideological source, but the brute pragmatism 0£ American li£e.18
Daniel Boorstin in The Amerioans: The Colonial Experience
(1958) emphasizes experience, the "given", as the secret 0£
American li£e rather than old world wisdom 0£ any class 0£
knowers.
So two sets 0£ £acts are in evidence. The first, the conscious
seriousness with which Revolutionary leaders took ideas 0£
social and political theory that they certainly knew; and
colonial practicality, which spawned an ad hoo ideology that
the uniqueness 0£ their situation suggested.
Moreover, Robbins sees a continuous fresh flow 0£ information into the colonies (already strong in the 17th century,
but increasing in the 18th) coming principally by way 0£
English dissenters and their American co-religionists. This
means that a neglected source 0£ colonial thought was the
commonwealth radicalism 0£ the 17th and 18th centuries, involving not only the obvious figures 0£ Beccaria, Montesquieu,
Voltaire, and Locke, whose works were known to the colonists,
but a whole group 0£ lesser known foes 0£ traditional authority
like Trenchard, Gordon, Neville, Harrington, Watts, Neal,
Sidney, Priestley, and Price. Moreover Diderot, Montesquieu, and Voltaire, liberal as they were, had doubts about the
18 Cf. Frederick
B. Tolles, " The American Revolution Considered as a Social
Movement:
A Re-evaluation," in The American Historical Review, Vol. 60,
October, 1954, pp. 1-12.

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possibility of republican government succeeding m a great
country.
Most interestingly, It IS to be noted that in the pamphlet
literature-and Bailyn discovered more than 400 available
in wide circulation in 1776-the work most often cited in the
colonies was not that of Montesquieu or Locke, but Ca.to's
Letters, radically libertarian essays written in London between
1720 and 1723 by two dissenters, John Trenchard and Thomas
Gordon, 19 who later were to write commentaries on Sallust
and Tacitus that evoked the praise of Franklin, Adams, and
Jefferson.
The controversy over the validity of imperial government
in the colonies is seen as providing a common vocabulary,
common thought, and later, common principles. But the
revisionists see the colonists not only aware of being innovators, but effecting reforms in the name of reason. They also
see franchise not being exercised by colonists who could vote,
and dissent well tolerated and not penalized. 20 In short,
dissent is seen as a well-established phenomenon before the
Revolution. And Enlightenment theory is seen as having little
to do with these developments, which are occasioned by the
exigencies of the situation. Bailyn says simply: "Nowhere in
the 18th century was there democracy-middle class or otherwise-as we use the term." 21
The Commonwealthmen of whom Caroline Robbins speaks
were an extraordinary group. Their names are not well known
and no great achievements are attributed to them, but they
were a group of Whigs who preserved the evolutionary tradition
for service in the American Revolution. They worked from the
older libertarian tradition of Harrington, N edham, and Milton
19 Books, newspapers, travel, correspondence
are also cited as sources of transmission of Whig radicalism. Cf. Pauline Maier, From Resistance to Revolution,
New York: 1979!.
• 0 It has been said that mobs in 18th-century
America functioned as a part of
the political structure rather than as an attack upon it.
"Bailyn, Ibid., p. 346.

PHILOSOPHICAL

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15

in Cromwell's time; through Sidney, Neville, and Locke at the
time of Charles II; and a later group including Burgh, Price,
and Priestley were the latest of the series.
The Commonwealthmen themselves produced, soon after 1689,
accounts, arguments, essays, and histories which might be dubbed
the apocryphal books of the Whig Bible as it was to be read by
revolutionaries and reformers all around the Atlantic world. 22

Robbins goes on to describe the Commonwealthmen of three
generations, seeing Priestly and Price early radicals of the last
period whose work was roughly contemporaneous with the
Revolution. Their thought, of course, was not a matter of
unanimity, but they argued for personal freedoms, a system of
checks and balances, resistance to tyranny, and constitutional
government.
Adams and Franklin both had direct contact with the
Trenchard-Hutchinson Whigs and were probably influenced
by the preoccupation of this group with religious and political
liberty, extension of the franchise, freedom of thought, although
oddly enough, not with egalitarianism. The London tavern
rather than the academic hall was the favored meeting place,
and many a tract or pamphlet seems to have been born of
these "club " discussions.
It is, of course, impossible to cite all of the figures involved,
but one man stands out among the early Commonwealthmen
both for the violence of his convictions and for the fact that
his Discourses were "more of a Bible to the revolutionaries
than any of the works of his century, Milton alone excepted." 23
Algernon Sidney
the aristocratic self-proclaimed
foe of tyranny, was executed by the government of Charles II.
His Discourses, abusive to the Crown, though not egalitarian,
placed power in Parliament and in the people; justified rebellion when necessary; condoned the slaying of tyrants and
the freeing of slaves; and advocated a militarily strong state.
••Robbins, op. cit., p. 5.
23 Robbins, op. cit., p. 46.

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A ringing message from a violent man, it not only appealed to
the revolutionary mind in England and in America, but expressed the hopeful conviction that popular government is
self-corrective. And his was an appeal that lasted for over a
century. It is somewhat odd that the more temperate Locke
does not seem to have read the Discourses.24
The fame of the great Milton and the equally great Newton
is in the fields of literature and science. Though Newton, like
Descartes, sought a low profile, his socio-political theorizing
and theological speculations seems to have influenced his own
century as much as his science did a later one. Richard
Cumberland (1631-1718), Anglican bishop and anti-Hobbes
political philosopher, in De Legibus N aturae emphasized the
role of reason operative in a teleological universe, and he
appears to have been widely read.
Robert Molesworth (1656-1725), one of the most important
Whigs of his time, was admired by Locke and wrote in his
famous Account of the blessings of health and liberty. He
was erroneously supposed to have contributed to the immensely
popular Cato's Letters of the independent Whigs, Gordon and
Trenchard.
Another work that had eleven printings and was well known
in the colonies was The Case of Ireland of William Molyneux
(1656-1698), basically because of its anti-colonial sentiment.
Another Englishman of this period was Thomas Hollis, whose
interest and benefactions to the colonists .elicited Dr. Johnson's
exaggerated but flattering charge that he was partially responsible for the American Revolution.
FRANKLIN AND FRIENDS
The Enlightenment in the American experience is first
associated with the name of Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790).
"Curiously, Locke recommends Sidney, but claims he never read him. Madison,
in a letter to Jefferson on February 8,
concerning textbooks, expresses
reservations about both Sidney and Locke, though conceding that they both are
basic sources for English republican theory.

PHILOSOPHICAL

PRE-SUPPOSITIONS

OF FOUNDING FATHERS

17

Thirty-seven years older than Jefferson, he had spent sixteen
years in England, where he made the acquaintance of David
Hume. And in his seventy-first year, he began a nine-year
sojourn in France, where he enjoyed the friendship of Condorcet, Voltaire, Madame Helvetius, and other figures prominent in the French Enlightenment. 25
Exposure to the critical thought of Hume and Voltaire, and
the rationalism of the philosophe.'!, while encouraging a
political stance that showed a marked development from a
Conservative loyalty to British institutions to a political
liberalism based on self-determination, did little to disturb
his rather serene deism, and the relatively conservative work
ethic reflected in the aphorisms of Poor Richard and in the
Autobiography .26
He certainly believed in the service character of government,
had a rationalistic confidence in the ability of well-intentioned
men to form viable political structures, and saw man as destined
to an eternity with the God who created him.
Yet Franklin, though he has been called with Jefferson the
fullest embodiment of the Enlightenment spirit in America, is
For him,
more the experimentalist than the theoretician.
philosophy lets light into the nature of things, and while he is
interested in theoretical understanding, the practical skills
take precedence.
This same "pragmatic wisdom" is found in Franklin's
26 Cf. Ralph
Ketcham, Benjamin Franldin, New York: 1965; Frank Mott
and Chester Jorgenson, eds., " Introduction," in Benjamin Franldin: Representative Selections, New York: 1936; The Autobiography of Benjamin Franldin,
New Haven: 1964; The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, 8 vols., New Haven: 1959;
C. L. Sanford, Benjamin Franldin and the American Character, Boston: 1955.
Condorcet and Turgot, who considered Americans " the hope of the world," were
to figure importantly in the philosophy of progress, one of rationalism's most
powerful dynamics.
26 His
acceptance of a Providential God, mentioned in a 1790 letter to
Jefferson's friend, Yale president, Ezra Stiles, would suggest a rather unorthodox
deism. The classic exposition of deism is probably J. Toland's Christianity Not
Mysterious (1696), which rejects Revelation and Providence.
Cf. also S.
Clarke, Demonstrations of Being and the Attributes of God (1704-06) .

18

ROBERT PAUL MOHAN

approach to morality and politics. 27 It is the empirical intelligence of a Bacon and Locke that he brings to domestic and
foreign politics and ethics. Like Jefferson, he esteems good
works over good words. Socrates and Christ were not for
Franklin the rather blasphemous association they would be
for a Jonathan Edwards.
A particular influence on Franklin was the Welsh dissenter
and moral philosopher, Richard Price (l
His well
known pamphleteering in behalf of the American cause possibly
lessened Franklin's aversion to breaking "that fine and noble
vase, the British Empire," although the latter did propose
separation as early as 1767. 28 The Philadelphian, as has been
noted, had been in England almost uninterruptedly from 1757
to 1775, and had become friendly with Price, to whom the
Continental Congress with Washington's blessing wanted to
extend citizenship. The Congress was interested in his skills as
a government financial consultant. He is also remembered for
his philosophical discussion with Hume and Priestley. 29 His
association with Franklin took place chiefly at the fortnightly
meetings at the London Tavern of the Honest Whigs, a group
of dissenters that included Priestly and Boswell. His Obser-

vations on the Nature of Civil Lib'erty, The Principles of
Government and the Justice and Policy of the War with
27 The
term is Adrienne Koch's, used in her description of the American
She sees hers as a mediating theory between the Carl Becker
Enlightenment.
thesis (that the 18th century colonial mind accepted a divinely designed nature
that could be discovered by reason and articulated in normative laws) and the
Boorstin view that the given and the experienced took precedence over theory
in the American experience. Boorstin sees the colonists uncongenial to any
class of knowers and sensitive to the unique and "unpredicted whisperings " of
environment.
Cf. Carl Becker, The Declaration of Independence, New York:
1945, and The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers, New York.
Daniel Boorstin's work is The Colonial Experience, New York: 1958.
28 Jefferson too, writing as late as August 25, 1775, to his loyalist relative, John
Randolph, hoped for an end to an " unnatural contest," and wished for a reunion
with the parent country.
29 Carl B. Cone, Torchbearer of Freedom;
The Influence of Richard Price on
Eighteenth Century Thought, Lexington, Kentucky: 1952.

PHILOSOPHICAL

PRE-SUPPOSITIONS

OF FOUNDING FATHERS

19

America (1776) was his most significant work, and his Discourse on the Love of Our Country (1789), written in defense
of the French Revolution, was to provoke Burke's famous
Reflections on the Revolution in. France.
Price saw in his Observations an America being deprived of
the natural and inalienable right of liberty. He described the
various species of civil liberty involved in the principle of
self-direction, and eventually proposed for the peace of the
world a league of independent states. Government power
should be forever suspect; structures should be representative;
people should not be arbitrarily taxed; and the people should
be the ultimate arbiters of the rule under which they live.
He mocks the enemies of the colonists who sneer that America's
defenders are Mr. Locke's disciples-and glories in the title. 30
Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), "a dissenter by training and
disposition," ten years younger than Price, was minister,
scientist, and philosopher. In his work, An Essay on the First
Principles of Government (1768) he displayed his Lockean
sympathies in behalf of political and religious pluralism and
civil liberty in general. His work is an odd combination of
unitarianism, determinism, and that kind of materialism
espoused by Jefferson that is compatible with spiritual values.
He continued to write on theological and political questions
after emigrating to Pennsylvania on 1794, angering some
Americans by his criticism of their intolerance, but enjoying
Jefferson's friendship and protection. 31 Passmore credits
Priestley's Socrates and Jesus Compared (1803) with provoking Jefferson's Syllabus of religious beliefs; and another of
the former's works, The Doctrines of Heathen Religion Compared with Those of Revelation (1804) evoking in John Adams
an interest in comparative religion.
The greatest of the political pamphlets of the American
Revolution is Common Sense of Thomas Paine (1737-1809).
Published early in 1776 by the erratic corsetmaker, grocer,
8

°Caroline Robbins, op. cit., p. 344.

81

Cf. John Passmore, Joseph Priestley, New York: 1965.

20

ROBERT PAUL MOHAN

teacher, and preacher-perhaps best remembered by the colorful
but inaccurate description of Theodore Roosevelt as " that
filthy little atheist,"-it touched, as Bernard Bailyn has
suggested, " some extraordinarily sensitive nerve in American
political awareness," although the author had been in the
country less than three years prior to its publication. 32
What is most notable is that, at the time of its writing,
independence from England was neither a political nor a
popular cause of great significance. As late as January,
1776, John Adams was to assert that he did not wish
America to break away from Britain. The picture of an
American nation almost universally desirous of independence
from Britain in 1776 is a popular myth. The American
nation was a scattered group of individualistic colonies possessed
of neither ideological nor political unity, and Great Britain,
despite her rather short-sighted ruling clique, had a much
better record on constitutional liberties than her contemporaries, who would have been quite willing to further their
own interests at America's expense. 33
It has been said that Paine considers government, like clothes,
a badge of lost innocence. And despite its emotional intensity
which would suggest that this first widely disseminated plea
for independence was more reflective of heart than mind, the
pamphlet has some philosophical pre-suppositions, chief among
which are the pessimistic convictions that a just monarchy
is even theoretically impossible, and the optimistic conviction
that corporate good sense and a rational capacity for perceiving
the orderly universe resides in the masses.
Quite simply, Paine was writing to a people who did not as a
group want independence from Great Britain. He saw an
umbilical cord that was not a conv.eyor of life but a rope of
32 Bernard
Bailyn, "Common Sense," in Fundamental Tenets of the American
Revolution, Washington, 1973, p. 7. John Adams despised Paine in particular,
and New Yorkers in general.
33 Professor
John Alden, however, argues for "the essential solidity of the
English colonies," A History of the American Revolution, New York: 1969, p. 5.

PHILOSOPHICAL PRE-SUPPOSITIONS

OF FOUNDING FATHERS

21

strangulation-and he wanted it severed. He saw Europenot England-as the mother country, and he lamented the
narcotic effect of any phrase or thought that would deaden the
political aspirations of the colonists. Paine is not speaking
in a formal Enlightenment idiom, although he is eventually
to arrive by sheer wrath at Enlightenment conclusions in favor
of the individual versus the iniquitous tyranny of a " sullentempered Pharoah " like George III.
In short, his is the short-cut of rage through the lucubrations
of reason. Logic and reason will later support his plea for
independence and freedom-although
he specifically denies
having even read Locke. His heart quite clearly had its own
reasons and he expressed those reasons with incredible intensity .34 The message of Common Sense spread like wildfire
through the colonies after its publication in January of 1776.35
JEFFERSON
In any discussion of the philosophy of the Founding Fathers,
the name of Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) inevitably assumes
the pre-eminent place. Although it is not a matter of unanimity that Jefferson was a philosopher at all in the strict
sense of the term, the many-sided genius was much more than
the chief representative of Enlightenment thought in the
colonies. 36
84 Cf. Alfred Owen Aldridge, Man of Reason:
The Life of Thomas Paine, New
York: 1959.
85 John
Adams, however, cited Jonathan Mayhew's A Discourse Concerning
Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers (1750) as the
opening gun of the Revolution. It combined libertarian thought of Sidney,
Milton and Locke.
86 Adrienne
Koch, for instance, cites the reluctance of the Jefferson scholar,
Gilbert Chinard, to consider Jefferson as a philosopher in the formal sense
of the word. She insists, however, that while Jefferson scorned school metaphysics, and was not a system-builder like Aquinas, Spinoza, Kant and Hegel, he
was a man of considerable intellectual curiosity and talent, with a capacity for
methodical rational analysis of the human situation and environment. Cf. The
Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson, Chicago: 1964, pp. xi-xiv. Cf. also The Papers
of Thomas Jefferson, Julian Boyd, ed., 16 vols., Princeton: 1950; Paul Ford,

ROBERT PAUL MOHAN

Our knowledge of the first four decades of Jefferson's life is
not helpfully revealing, but we do know that from his study of
the classics in James Maury's private school, he was exposed
to the thought of Homer, Euripides, Herodotus, Virgil, Ovid,
Seneca, and Cicero. 37 Stoicism and Epicureanism were also to
figure in his early formation, but neither tradition could be said
in any sense to have claimed his allegiance as a system.
He was a practical man whose thought was frequently
speculative. He was the great American libertarian, swearing
eternal hostility to every attempt to constrain the mind of
man; yet at various times, as Michael Kammen has pointed
out, " ... he could embrace loyalty oaths, consider internment
camps for political suspects, draft a bill of attainder, urge
prosecution for seditious libel, ignore the Fourth Amendment's
protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, condone
military despotism, use the army to enforce laws in peacetime,
choose professors for their political opinions, and endorse the
doctrine that means, however odious, could be justified by the
ends." 38
Jefferson is not simply categorized in any philosophic or
religious system, for the simple reason that he never submitted
his opinions to any party or system in politics, religion, philosophy, or anything else, and considered such submission as
servility and as a degrading addiction for a free moral agent.
"If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go
there at all." 39
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 10 vols., New York: 1892-1899; Daniel
Boorstin, The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson, New York: 1948; Merrill Peterson,
The Jefferson Image in the Virginian, Vol. I, Jefferson and the Rights of Man, Vol.
II, Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty, Vol. III, Jefferson, the President, Vol. IV.
Two additional volumes are to complete this definitive biography begun in 1948.
Norman Cousins, In God We Trust, New York: 1958.
37 The
Literary Bible of Thomas Jefferson: His Commonplace Book of
Philosophers and Poets, Gilbert Chinard, ed., Baltimore: 1928.
88 Michael Kammen in Book World, The Washington Post, July 7, 1974, pp. 1-2.
39 Letter to Francis
Hopkinson, March 13, 1789, Memorial Edition, Writings,
Vol. 7, p. soo.

PHILOSOPHICAL PRE-SUPPOSITIONS

OF FOUNDING FATHERS

Like Franklin, whom he admiringly referred to as the Father
of American Philosophy, Jefferson had, in his Paris period
(1785-1790), acquired a personal knowledge of the figures and
principles of the French Enlightenment, which is suggested as
a major philosophical influence in his life. The common sense
realism of his contemporary, Dugald Stewart, was to influence
him and colonial college curricula considerably .40
The Enlightenment, of course, is frequently cited as one of
the great sources of Revolutionary thought.
In general, the Enlightenment refers to the 18th century Age
of Reason when popularizers such as Voltaire, Holbach, Diderot,
La Mettrie, Condorcet, Helvetius, D'Alembert, and Beccaria
developed a distinctively rationalistic point of view conditioned by the empiricism of Bacon and Descartes, and social
theory derived from the thought of Hobbes, Rousseau, and
Locke. Fundamentally, the philosophes were not professional
philosophers, but they were concerned with rationally ascertained knowledge of man and nature that hopefully would lead
man to the good life. Implicit in Enlightenment thought was
an optimistic philosophy of progress which would see the good
life as possible by the unaided natural powers of enlightened
man. 41
Jefferson not only knew the philosophy of Locke, but he was
also influenced by Bolingbroke's scepticism which is structured
along the lines of Book Four of The Essay Concerning Hurrwn
Understanding. Henry St. John Bolingbroke (1678-1751),
the colorful Tory statesman and man of letters, the object of
Hume's contempt and and Dr. Johnson's wrath, was not an
important philosopher, but his deism and rather inconsistent
4 ° Cf.
Jefferson to Madison, November 15, 1817, The Writings of James
Madison, Vol. 4, p. 213. Jefferson was interested in Stewart, the friend of his
Paris days, on the faculty of his " new " university.
41 Peter
Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation: The Rise of Modern
Paganism, New York: 1966; Ernst Cassirer, The Phuosophy of the Enlightenment, Koelln-Pettegrove trans., Boston: 1955; Carl Becker, The Heavenly City
of the Eighteenth-Century Phuosophers, New Haven: 1932; and J. B. Bury, The
Idea of Progress, London: 1920.

ROBERT PAUL MOHAN

scepticism, coupled with a humanistic concern, appealed to
Jefferson. 42
In Bolingbroke authority and surmise is to yield to reason;
principles, far from being absolute, are relative to a time and
place; materialism is the philosophy reason dictates, but reason
must find a way to justify spiritual values.
Jefferson was perhaps sensitive to the inconsistencies of his
position. He seems to have been uncomfortable with any form
of philosophic idealism, yet he had, as his voluminous correspondence reveals, a profound interest in and respect for ethical
and spiritual values, even attempting to use the materialist
idiom to define the human soul, fashioned, like the universe,
by an orderly and intelligent "Superintending Power." 43
The man who has such a natural sympathy for the empirical
idiom tries with only partial success to articulate a belie£ in
an intelligent and benevolent Creator, who is at one time
identified as being akin to Mind, yet who cannot really be
known or described. 44
A life well lived is, for Jefferson, the ultimate test for religion's
value. The good man, who reflects the sublime doctrines of
Jesus of Nazareth in his life, is more important than sectarian
affiliation. Yet it can be seen that even this qualified personal
faith is far removed from the strident atheism of a Holbach or
a Diderot, whose extraordinary versatility his own skills
resemble. 45
It will be remembered that the Encyclopedie, ou Dictionnaire
42 Cf. Sir Douglas Harkness, Bolingbroke:
The Man and His Career, London:
1957; Walter McMerrill, From Statesman to Philosopher: A Study in Bolingbroke's Deism, New York: 1949.
43 Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823, Memorial Edition, Vol. 15, p. 427.

••Ibid.
••Jefferson's quasi-intuitionist ethic would, of course, differ sharply from
Diderot's rejection of free will in the deterministic D'Alembert's Dream. Yet they
share an ethical naturalism. In searching for a teacher of ethics for the University
of Virginia, Jefferson, in a letter to Madison on November 30, 1824, suggests a
layman to teach in a philosophical tradition of Locke, Stewart, Brown, or Tracy,
rather than a clergyman, who, he felt, would slant philosophy in the favor of a
specific religious traditio!l,

PHILOSOPHICAL PRE-SUPPOSITIONS

OF FOUNDING FATHERS

25

ra-isonnedes scwnces, des arts, et des metiers, edited by Diderot
and finished just four years before the Declaration of Independence, was to become not only the bible of rationalists, but
the greatest cultural ev.ent of its time. But it was not a
formally philosophic work any more than its famous contributors
were formal philosophers. Jefferson was particularly impressed
with D'Alembert's famous introduction to the Encyclopedic.
D' Alembert knew English empiricism, and the D-iscours preliminaire reveals not only a debt to Cartesian rationalism, but
more specifically to the empiricism of Bacon, Newton, and
Locke. He also shared Jefferson's acute distaste for school
metaphysics, and saw the human mind as capable of ferreting
out the One Great Truth that is the universe. Jefferson did
not accept John Adams' vigorous denunciation of the Encyclopedists as men " totally destitute " of common sense, but he
did not accept either their mechanism or belief that religions
were merely illusory " visions judaiques." 46
But even given Jefferson's general philosophic orientationand it must be remembered that he used the word philosophy
in a generalized sense that would include systematic investigation on the natural sciences-he is in no sense an American
edition of the French Encyclopedists.
Even the term American Enlightenment which implies
similarity to the French movement is perhaps an unfortunate
one. Adrienne Koch identifies the Franklin-Jefferson synthesis
as Pragmatic Wisdom, a blend of empiricism, rationalism, and
a humanistic concern for the whole man. 47
Its message is the confident Jeffersonian conviction that the
fruits of pragmatic wisdom were more evident in America
than in England.
Jefferson, like many of the prominent
theorists of the American Revolution, had his misgivings at
times about the success of the great experiment; but he did feel
46 Letter to Adams, April 8, 1816, Memorial Edition, Vol. 14, pp. 468-71.
"Adrienne Koch, " Pragmatic Wisdom and the American Enlightenment," in
The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 18, July, 1961, pp. 813-829; and The
American Enlightenment, ed., Adrienne Koch, New York: 1965.

ROBERT PAUL MOHAN

that the three greatest men who ever lived, Bacon, Newton,
and Locke, philosophers and Englishmen all, found their
crowning achievement in the new world rather than in the
old. 48
To pursue the investigation of the source of the ethical
convictions of Jefferson, one must cite the man credited by the
Sage himself as the author of the greatest moral philosophy
ever written, Pierre Charron (1541-1603). Charron's De la
sagesse espoused an optimistic and naturalistic humanism
which was not only to influence Jefferson's moral theory, but
which was to have a direct influence on his political stance.
The liberal Whig or conservative Tory, in Jefferson's mind, is
not the product of an independent rational investigation. The
parties are determined by the nature of men, and dichotomized
by good and bad psychological traits respectively. 49
Oddly enough, Adrienne Koch, in her classic study of
Jefferson's philosophy, takes little note of Charron as a formative influence. Pierre Charron was an ordained priest and
lawyer. His important De la sagesse (1601), highly controversial and widely read, was admired by Pierre Gassendi, among
others. Sceptical and fideistic in tone, it proposed both the
inadequacy of human knowing powers and the legitimacy of
the faith affirmation. From a sceptical methodology, Cartesian
in nature, man develops a natural ethic as best he can, even
though the human predicament precludes certainty based on
the resources of nature. 50
THE SLAVERY QUESTION
Perhaps the most perceptive study of slavery and the
Founding Fathers has been provided by William W. Freehling,
48 Letter
to John Trumbull, February 15, 1789. This is a recurrent theme in
Jefferson.
••Letter to Joel Barlow, May 3, 1802, Memorial Edition, Vol. IO, p. 319;
letter to Lafayette, November 24, 1823, Memorial Edition, Vol. 15, p. 490.
"° Cf. Richard Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes,
Assen, The Netherlands: 1963.

PHILOSOPHICAL

PRE-SUPPOSITIONS

OF FOUNDING FATHERS

fl7

who examines the impact of revisionist history on one of our
less glorious institutions. 51
The original roseate vision of our Founding Fathers sounding
the death knell to an iniquitous institution has yielded to a
more cynical view that sees both privilege and slavery fortified
by an elitist Constitution.
At first glance, Jefferson's eventual freeing of nine of his
slaves strikes one as a rather pallid liberalism, somewhat reminiscent of Dick Gregory's remark that a liberal lynches a
victim from a low tree.
There is an agonizing ambivalence in Jefferson's approach to
the problem dictated by the internal conflict of idealist and
pragmatist.
He sees the utopian goal rendered impractical
by the world that was, and his own suspicion of black sexual
prowess and intellectual inferiority must be admitted to be a
part of the world that was. By conviction Jefferson, like
Washington and Randolph, would have freed all of his slaves.
But property value and ethnic theory were both involved.
The financial cost of abolition, heavy enough by itself, was made
too staggering to bear by the Founding Fathers' racism, an
ideological hindrance to anti-slavery, no less important than their
sense of priorities and their commitment to property. 52

At any rate, though slavery was not dying in Jefferson's Virginia, he must be credited with localizing the .evil and looking
51 William W. Freehling,
"The Founding Fathers and Slavery," The American
Historical Review, 77 (1972), 81-91. Cf. also Robert McColley, Slavery and
Jeffersonian Virginia, Urbana: 1964; Staughton Lynd, Class Conflict, Slavery and
the United States Constitution; William Cohen, "Thomas Jefferson and the
Problem of Slavery," Journal of American History, 56 (1969), 503-26; Merrill D.
Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation: A Biography, New York:
1970. David Brian Davis' works are classic: The Problem of Slavery in Western
Culture, Ithaca: 1966, and The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution,
Ithaca: 1975.
52 William W. Freehling, op. cit., p. 83.
Thomas Hutchinson, the most famous
loyalist in exile, wrote in his anti-Declaration pamphlet of November, 1776, his
mystification as to the unalienable character of life and liberty if more than a
hundred thousand Africans were denied those rights. Cf. Bailyn, The Ordeal. .. ,
p. 358.

28

ROBERT PAUL MOHAN

forward to its ultimate strangulation. We Northerners conveniently forget that fourteen percent of New York's population at the outbreak of the war were slaves. And though the
battle was carried on by Edward Coles, the friend of both
Madison and Jefferson, Jefferson's initiatives are recognized in
his drafting of the anti-slavery ordinance of 1784, his message
to Congress on December 2, 1806, on the eve of the deferred
abolition of the slave trade, and in public and privately expressed opinions on the evil of slavery as an institution. Jefferson and his friends indeed, in Freehling' s words, left to posterity a crippled and restricted institution. l£ one believes that
the American Revolution did not end in 1790, then one can see
the virtue of a policy, which though too compromising by our
standards, was realistically farsighted by his.
James Madison (1751-1836), the great Virginia constitutionalist, reflects both the political liberalism and the pragmatism of the Founding Fathers. 53 He was particularly impressed by Hume's anti-faction Ideas of a Perfect Commonwealth (175'2). As a follower of Jefferson, the Father of the
Constitution was a longtime advocate of religious and political
freedom, a foe of Hamilton and the conservatives of the
Washington administration, yet pragmatist enough like Jefferson to accept a constitution that more recent scholarship
has revealed to be a basically conservative document. Herbert
W. Schneider sees the period as a time when philosophical
thinking and social action were most intimately joined. America " gathered into action the reflections and passions of several generations of European thinkers, and it also led the way
toward the bold political, religious, and moral experiments in
which the whole world has ever since participated." 54
Not only were Adams, Franklin, Jefferson and Madison not
53 Cf. Adrienne
Koch, Jefferson and Madison, the Great Collaboratiou, New
York: 1950.
54 Herbert W. Schneider, A History of American Philosophy, New York:
1963,
p. 35. The coordination factor is illustrated by John Adams' arresting figure of
thirteen clocks striking together.

PHILOSOPHICAL PRE-SUPPOSITIONS

OF FOUNDING FATHERS

29

philosophic system builders, but even their great themes of
religious liberty, natural rights, equality before law, freedom
of thought and expression were shortly to be assailed, and often
repudiated. Democratic thought in the colonies was neither
unanimous nor continuous after 1776, as has been noted.
And a change was taking place in the religious formulations
of the period that would influence its philosophical assumptions. It was the dissenters' progressive movement from a
vertical supernaturalist theology to a deistic horizontalist
humanitarian ethic. In short, much more was involved in the
evolving mentality than the rejection of the mediatorial office
of the priesthood, the sacramental system and Anglican formalism.
THE SUMMING UP
In the final analysis, what were the philosophical presuppositions of the Founding Fathers?
The author has perhaps reprehensibly minimized the classical influence that Richard M. Gummere has so ably described.
But despite the erudite character of the late Jefferson-Adams
correspondence, it is questionable that either Jefferson or Adams
ever really understood Plato; nor is it probable that many
American farmers could read Homer. 55 Certainly themes in
Aristotle, Cicero, and Polybius are discernible in the political
patterns for the new republic, and the classical tradition did
figure in the education of Adams, Jefferson, and Madison; but
it is difficult to see these influences as proximate or significantly
specific.
The first and foremost philosophical influence (although this
influence is perhaps more indirect than formerly thought) would
still be John Locke-and the political and empirical synthesis
of Locke, Bacon, and Newton.
Enlightenment rationalism with its progressivist social theory
55 Richard
M. Gummere, The American Colonial Mind and the Classical,
Tradition: Essays in Comparative Culture: Cambridge: 1963. The correspondence, despite the modesty of the writers, is much more than " senectutal
loquacity" or "senile Garrulity."

30

ROBERT PAUL MOHAN

and libertarian religious and political ideas would seem to be
a strong second influence.
Next would be the tradition of English common law, with its
repudiation of tyranny, its advocacy of inteUectual and religious
freedom and representative government.
Fourth, the tradition of dissent through correspondence,
tract, pamphlet, newspaper, and pulpit of the English Commonwealthmen of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is a
much neglected source of colonial theory. As Jack P. Greene
has observed, these elements of dissent were long a part of
colonial political tradition before the outbreak of overt hostilities. J. G. A. Pocock would go as far back as Florentine
Renaissance humanism to see the origins of these eighteenth
century eruptions.
Giambattista Vico once suggested that one of the greatest
faults of the historian was what he called the conceit of the
learned, that is, the habit of assuming that the people about
whom one is writing were as reflective as the historian himself,
whereas the world-historical individuals were among the least
academically minded. Thus it is that when the above sources
are cited, it is with the realization that much of the inspiration
for the Revolution was not the result of a priori philosophical
principles as much as an ad hoc ideology based primarily on
pragmatic considerations.
Genuine equality would appear to be largely a myth both
before, during, and after the Revolution, despite the Declaration of Independence.
It is not strongly affirmed by the
otherwise liberal Commonwealth (at least before the time of
Price), nor is it satisfactorily contained
in the American
Constitution which was their memorial. Their anti-Catholicism
can be partially explained, not by an endemic narrowness of
mind, but by the involved character of Stuart politics and
religion.
Colonial ideological unanimity is another myth.
Tory
sentiment was not only strong, as the studies of Maier, Bailyn,
Nelson, and Norton remind us, but the supposed tyranny of

PHILOSOPHICAL

PRE-SUPPOSITIONS

OF FOUNDING FATHERS

31

Britain was not as widely felt in the scattered colonies as
traditionally represented; and the Revolution was felt to be
the embodiment rather than the rejection of English constitutional government. Perhaps the colonies were far removed
from the profound tranquillity that General Gage spoke of in
1772, but they were hardly seething with rebellion.
The principal works influencing the colonists, directly or
indirectly, would seem to be Algernon Sidney's Discourses
(c. 1683), Cato's Letters of Gordon and Trenchard (17201723), Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)
and Second Treatise of Government (c. 1680), and Paine's
Common Sense (1791-1792). Yet one can readily admit that
thousands of colonists never heard of the above works of
their authors. Staughton Lynd once noted that observations
about national character are usually extrapolated from the
documents of the articulate wealthy. They tend to reflect a
point of view and a valuable one, but one realizes that a
Carolina farmer was probably more interested in crops than
in constitutions.
Our gratitude to the Founding Fathers needs neither apotheosis nor cynical reappraisal. Our Founding Fathers could be as
choleric as Adams, as inconsistent as Jefferson, as promiscuous
as Franklin. We need not be shocked that they often exhibit
the less admirable qualities of us, their descendants; they also
exhibited that idealism and tough practicality that add up to
greatness. The men and the hour met, and it is not their
fault if we choose to interpret their heritage as events to be
commemorated rather than work to be finished.
RoBERT

Catholic University of America
Washington, D. C.

PAUL MoHAN

TALK OF GOD AND THE DOCTRINE OF ANALOGY

If then we take the divine attributes one by one and
and ask whether each of them is to be found in God,
we must reply that it is not there, at least as such
and as a distinct reality, and since we can in no way
conceive an essence which is nothing but an act of
existing, we cannot in any way conceive what God
is, even with the help of such attributes.
E. Gilson

The world requires as its cause a being totally transcending it in every respect; but how can we even
affirm the existence of such a being, if our experience
of the world gives us no words by which to define
him?
E. L. Mascall

I

T

HE CLASSICAL DOCTRINE of analogy has been
used to try to show how terms involved in God-talk
have an appropriate meaning even if the key statements involving God-talk are not verifiable even in principle.
Someone who 1) accepted the verifiability principle as a criterion
for what is to count as factually meaningful and Q) who took the
intent of the normal use of most indicative God-talk sentences
to be to make factual statements, would assert that for ' God
loves His creatures ' to be properly meaningful, we must show
what implications for our experience would or at least in principle could count for or against its truth. Some defenders of
the doctrine of analogy present an alternative account of the
meaning of such utterances, an account, which, if correct,
would, for much of God-talk at least, supply an answer to the
challenge that non-anthropomorphic God-talk is devoid of factual significance. I shall consider the merits of such views.

ANALOGY TALK OF GOD--A NEGATIVE CRITIQUE

33

Father F. Copleston and Professor James F. Ross provide us
with distinguished contemporary statements of such a position. 1
They both claim that where we are speaking of a transcendent
and infinite being-the object of a religiously adequate Godtalk-the terms predicated of this being must be used analogically if they are to have any meaning at all. We need
such an analogical account to escape the following dilemma. If,
on the one hand, the terms are used with the same meaning,
say in respect to God and to man, then God becomes an anthropomorphic being. That is to say, if God's intelligence or
love is like man's intelligence or love, then God becomes simply
a kind of superman, a being that is a part of nature, and not an
infinite, non-spatio-temporal being, transcendent to the world.
Yet, on the other hand, if ' intelligence ' and ' love ' are said to
have a completely different sense when applied to God, they
lose all meaning for us. The meaning-content of terms such as
' intelligence ' and ' loving ' is determined by our experience of
human beings, by our experience of human intelligence and
love, "and if they are used in an entirely and completely different sense when predicated of God, they can have no meaning
for us when they are used in this way." 2
'Intelligence' as applied to dogs and men could have (I don't
say it does have) a completely different sense and still 'intelligence' could be intelligibly predicated of a dog's behaviour as
well as a man's because we could ostensively teach how we
1 F. C. Copleston, Contemporary Philosophy (London:
Burns and Oates, 1956)
and James F. Ross, "Analogy as a Rule of Meaning for Religious Language,"
International Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. I (1961), pp. 468-502. In his later
"A New Theory of Analogy," in Logical Analysis and Contemporary Theism, ed.
by John Donnelly (New York: Fordham University Press, 1972), Ross uses
work in structural linguistics to give the outline of a new theory of analogy
which he believes to be compatible with the classical theory. His account there
(where it applies to analogy of proper proportionality) is vulnerable to most of
the criticisms I level at his earlier and more detailed account. I shall concentrate
my discussion most extensively on his earlier and more detailed account, but I
shall in the final section say something which applies particularly to the later
account.
2 Copleston, op. cit., p. 93.

34

KAI NIELSEN

used the term. But the case is different with God for we have not
observed and cannot observe God-anything that could be observed, ipso facto, would not be God. 8 Since this is so we cannot
discover by ostensive definition or ostensive teaching what it
means to say God has intelligence or is loving. Thus if' intelligence' and 'love' have a completely different meaning when
applied to God, we can have no understanding at all of these
predicates. If such key utterances as ' God loves human beings '
or 'God's intelligence is manifest in his creation' are to have
meaning, then 'love' and 'intelligence' must be used analogically: "that is to say, a term which is predicated of God
and finite things must, when it is predicated of God, be used
in a sense which is neither precisely the same as nor completely
different from the sense in which it is predicated of finite
things." 4 Terms like ' love ' and ' intelligence ' must be used
in a " sense which is similar and dissimilar at the same time to
the sense in which it is used when predicated of finite things." "
To put the matter in a slightly different way. For Aquinas
and for other late medieval writers, who, as thoroughly as most
contemporary writers, rejected any claim that there could be
a logically necessary being or a purely conceptual identification
of God, the problem of meaning was an acute one. 6 Our ordinary language with its pervasive empirical anchorage was accepted by these thinkers as being applicable to God. We must
start from the language of common experience if we are to have
any understanding of anything at all. But, as Ross puts it,
Aquinas' problem then was this:
How could he show that this language (all of the terms, expressions
and employments of which are learned from human experience)
can be applied, without such equivocation as would render invalid
all argument, to God, an entity which is so different from the
• Ibid., p. 91.
• Ibid., p. 94.
5 Ibid.
6 See here Terence
Penelhum, Religion and Rationality
House, 1971), pp. 77-87,
and 365-79.

(New York:

Random

ANALOGY TALK OF GOD--A NEGATIVE CRITIQUE

85

objects of experience as to be ' inexperience-able ' in any of the
ways common to ordinary human experience. 7

It is claimed that it is just here-if our God-talk is to be shown
to have an intelligible factual content-that we must develop
a viable theory of analogical predication. Again, as Ross puts
it, in a more technical rendering of Copleston's point:
If the predicate terms in G-statements

(statements with 'God'
or a synonym as the subject) are totally equivocal with respect to
the occurrences of the same predicate terms in E-statements (with
any object of ordinary, direct or indirect experience as subject),
then all arguments with an E-statement in the premises and a
G-statement as the conclusion will be invalid, committing the
fallacy of equivocation; and all G-statements will be meaningless
because none of the human experience will count either as evidence
for or as explications of those statements. 8

But if our common terms here have a univocal meaning, we
(Ross agrees with Copleston) fall into a gross anthropomorphism
in which our statements about such an anthropomorphic deity
are certainly literal enough but false or, as Copleston puts it,
at least they commit their user to a concept of God that no
one (presumably no ' contemporary man ') " would be seriously
concerned to argue" for. 9 As Ross puts it" if the G-statement
predicates are univocal with a representative set of instances
of those predicates in E-statements, then our statements about
God will be, in most cases, obviously false and, in the remainder,
misleading." 10 We are back with the old problem: God-talk
seems to be either without a proper meaning or, where it has
an evident factual content, our fir.st-order God-statements are
simply false and embody religious concepts which are plainly
religiously inadequate. 11 The analogy theory on such conRoss, op. cit., p. 470.
•Ibid., pp. 487-88.
9 Copleston,
op. cit., p. 89.
10 Ross, op. cit., p. 498.
11 See here my " On Fixing the Reference
Range of 'God'," Religious Studies,
Vol. II (October, 1966), Contemporary Critiques of Religion (London: Mac7

86

KAI NIELSEN

temporary readings as Copleston's and Ross's is designed to
bail us out here.
II
I shall begin by examining Copleston's account, for it is relatively straightforward and yet it attempts, taking into account
the analytical or linguistic turn in philosophy, to break new
ground. I shall then in section III examine Ross's "Analogy as
a Rule of Meaning for Religious Language." Ross's essay is
a complicated piece, full of stipulative definitions and a formidable jargon, but it does, though in an unnecessarily cumbersome way, attempt to come to grips with these crucial problems of meaning. I shall not examine E. L. Mascall's Existence
and Analogy for two reasons: (1) it has already been extensively criticized and (2) , as Ross points out, it does not
really come to grips with the problems of meaning, for it treats
analogy as a theory of inference rather than as a theory purporting to .show how God-talk can have factual intelligibility. 12
To say (1) 'God is intelligent,' (2) 'God made men out
of nothing,' and (8) ' God loves all human beings' is, according
to Copleston, to use-when (1), (2) and or (8) are vehicles for
religiously adequate assertions-'intelligent,'
'made,' and 'loves'
analogically. As we have noted, where our God-talk is not
grossly anthropomorphic, all predications of God must be
analogical. Where we have analogical predication as in (4)
'James is intelligent,' and (5) 'Fido is intelligent,' we must
say that the terms predicated of the different subjects, e.g.
James and Fido, are used in a sense which is neither precisely
the .same nor completely different. Yet this general remark,
Macmillan Ltd., 1972).
For
millan Ltd., 1971) and Scepticism (London:
F. C. Copleston's account of this situation see his "Man, Transcendence and the
Absence of God," Thought, Vol. XLIII (1968), pp. 24-38, "The Special Features
of Contemporary Atheism," Twentieth Century: An Australian Quarterly Review,
Vol. 25 (Spring, 1970), pp. 5-15 and his reviews of Axel Hagerstrom's Philosophy
and Religion and Richard Robinson's An Atheist's Values in the Heythrop
Journal, Vol. 7 (1966) and Vol. 5 (1964), respectively.
12 Ross, op. cit., p. 469.

ANALOGY TALK OF GOD--A NEGATIVE CRITIQUE

37

Copleston stresses, tells us very little. Moreover, to be told that
' intelligent ' is used analogically when applied to God is not
yet to be told what meaning it does have or even how to determine what meaning it has. 13 To say that 'intelligent' in
(5) is used analogously to the way it is used in (4) is most certainly not to tell us how it is used. We still do not know what
it means to say that Fido is intelligent. What behaviour traits
are we referring to? What would Fido have to do not to be
regarded as intelligent? As we have indicated with Fido and
his canine brethren, we can resort to ostensive definition but
with God no such thing is possible.
How then do we know how 'intelligence ' is used when applied to God? The negative way, though it is a natural way to
proceed, will not do with (6), 'God is intelligent,' for we cannot
intelligibly go on saying that God's intelligence is not like this
or like that, if we cannot .say what God's intelligence is. Every
time I say that God's intelligence is unlike a characteristic of
human intelligence, I whittle away more of its meaning. To
intelligibly apply ' intelligence ' to God I must make, or be able
to make, some positive affirmation such as ' God is intelligent
in an infinitely higher sense than human beings are.' But this,
Cople.ston is well aware, is still to say very little. Moreover,
when asked to give " a positive account of this higher sense,"
I find myself, full circle, back to the way of negation. Furthermore, if I continue in the affirmative way I end in anthropomorphism.14 A successful theory of analogical predication
must combine those methods without falling into the pitfalls
of either. As Copleston puts it, "to avoid anthropomorphism
of a gross sort the mind takes the way of negation, departing
from its starting point, namely human intelligence, while to
avoid agnosticism it returns to its starting-point." 15 We try
here, in oscillating back and forth between anthropomorphism
Copleston, Contemporary Philosophy, p. 94.
Copleston, Contemporary Philosophy, pp. 94-95. See also his "Man, Transcendence and the Absence of God," Thought, Vol. XLIII (1968), pp. 24-38.
15 Copleston, Contemporary Philosophy, pp. 96-97.
13

14

38

KAI NIELSEN

and agnosticism, in our predications concerning God, to hold
together similarity and dissimilarity at the same time. 16
This is indeed perplexing, but we must not forget that we
are speaking, or trying to speak, of a mysterious being transcendent to the universe. We have, Copleston tells us, no direct
apprehension of God.17 God transcends our experience and thus
He " cannot be positively and adequately described." This,
he believes, should not lead to a rejection of God-talk as incoherent but simply to a recognition that our understanding
of God-who after all is mysterious-is of necessity inadequate.
Without the possibility of an adequate understanding of God,
we must use analogy to have any understanding of God at all.
This is simply one of the features " of our understanding of
descriptive statements about God." 18 But, Copleston continues, that our concept of God is imperfect and can never be
thoroughly purified of anthropomorphism does not mean that
the very idea or concept of God is anthropomorphic; it only
means that what Copleston calls the "subjective meaning"
of ' God is intelligent ' or ' God loves his creation ' is inadequate
and in part anthropomorphic. It does not mean that the objective meaning of these statements is inadequate.
Copleston's use of that tricky word 'meaning' is rather unusual. By ' subjective meaning' he means " the meaning-content which the term has or can have for the human mind." 19
By 'objective meaning' he means "that which is actually referred to by the term in question (that is, the objective reality
referred to ) . . ." 20 In the case of such key God-statements
what is objectively referred to isn't at all anthropomorphic, but
what our subjective meaning signifies is. It is this meaning
that is inadequate, but not ' necessarily false.'
The distinction Copleston draws between 'subjective meanIbid., p. 97.
Ibid., pp. 96-97.
1 • Ibid., p. 97.
1 • Ibid., p. 96.
20 Ibid.

1•

17

ANALOGY TALK OF GOD-A NEGATIVE CRITIQUE

39

ing ' and ' objective meaning ' most certainly seems to be crucial
in his attempt to rehabilitate the appeal to analogy, but it unfortunately is not a coherent claim. We might intelligibly speak
of the distinction between ' subjective meaning ' and ' objective
meaning,' where the former referred to the meaning-content
of a term as used on a given occasion or set of occasions by
an individual or some group of people. This would make a nonvacuous contrast with 'objective meaning, ' since the latter
could be taken to refer to the meaning-content the terms would
have if people were fully informed and took to heart the implications of the terms in question. But for Copleston ' subjective meaning' includes any meaning-content the term or
terms" can have for the human mind," the 'objective meaning'
of terms predicated of God is said to transcend our experience. 21
"It cannot be positively and adequately described." 22 But
>if the ' can ' and ' cannot ' here have a logical force, viz. if it
is logically impossible to adequately grasp the objective meaning of these terms or even if it is some sort of ' ontological impossibility,' then there is no genuine contrast between 'objective meaning' and 'subjective meaning.' We can have no
understanding of this 'objective meaning;' we can have no
understanding of whether the ' subjective meaning ' adequately
or inadequately characterizes that 'objective reality' that the
objective meaning adequately signifies. Any understanding at
all of such matters that we humans can have-no matter how
purified of anthropomorphic elements-is still subjective; the
meaning we apply to predications of God is still necessarily and
irredeemably ' subjective meaning.' Having no grasp of the
' objective meaning,' we can have no idea at all of whether
our attempts to purify our ' subjective meaning ' succeed or
fail. Indeed ' purifying ' actually has no use here, for we cannot
know what would count as ' purifying' the meaning of a term
unless we had some grasp of the standard of perfection aimed
at. How, in short, does subjective meaning A fall shorter of
21
2•

Jbid.
Ibid., p. 97.

40

KAI NIELSEN

perfection than subjective meaning B? To know this we must
have some understanding of the meaning-content of that which
they fall short of, but if we have such a knowledge, then by
definition it will not involve 'objective meaning' but ' subjective meaning.' But again we do not know and cannot know how
this stands in relation to A and B.
There is a further quite unrelated difficulty in Copleston's
account. In trying to avoid agnosticism about our predications
of God we try to " hold together similarity and dissimilarity
at the same time.'' 23 To be an analogical predication of God
and man, the terms in question must be used in a sense which
is neither precisely the same nor completely different. But this
characterization is ambiguous. Taken in one way it makes
analogy the same as univocity; taken in another it makes
analogy the same as equivocity. If, on the one hand, 'James
is intelligent' and' God is intelligent' have even one similarity,
then it is the case (or so at least it would seem) that one
property (characteristic) of intelligence when referred to man
and God is the same. But this means (or so at least it would
seem) that the term by which this property (characteristic)
is signified is a univocal predication of man and God and that,
after all, not all God-predicates are analogical. If this is true,
then analogical predication is neither essential nor complete
in our talk about God. Indeed even for analogical predications
to be possible, there must be some univocal predications as
well. Suppose, on the other hand, the 'not precisely the same '
rules out their having any common property or relation, then
there can be no similarity since we cannot assert in what respect
they are similar. If this is so, analogical predication really becomes the use of equivocal terms. Yet there seems at least to
be no other way of intelligibly taking the terms being used
so that in the different contexts they are used in a way which
is neither precisely the same nor completely different. Thus
Copleston has not been able to give us an intelligible account
2•

Ibid.

ANALOGY TALK OF GOD-A NEGATIVE CRITIQUE

41

of analogical predication that would distinguish it from a univocal or equivocal use of predicates when applied to God and
the world.
There is a further problem that Copleston .should face which is
directly related to the falsification issue. l£ his claim that' intelligent' (for example) is in a definite sense similar, when used of
both God and man, then (given the correctness of the above
argument) in both employments of' intelligent' the term must
signify at lea.st one common property or, if you will, a relation.
But then, aside from being committed to claiming-inconsistently with his general thesis about analogical predication-that at
least one predication of God is univocal, he also in effect commits himself to treating ' God is intelligent ' as a statement
which can, at lea.st in principle, be confirmed or disconfirmed,
for if to be intelligent is to have property X and if property X
is never manifested by God or if God does something inconsistent with ascribing X to Him, then we have grounds-though
surely nothing like conclusive grounds-for denying that God
is intelligent and if He does manifest X we have grounds for
asserting that 'God is intelligent' is true. We have (if this is
so) shown how such God-talk is verifiable by showing how
evidence is relevant to the truth or falsity of 'God is intelligent.' The same, of course, applies to ' God loves all human
beings.' But now these theological-metaphysical statements
become what Copleston elsewhere has denied that they can
be if they are to count as metaphysical .statements, namely
empirical assertions. 24
This unintended implication of his account of analogical
predication is surely unwelcome, for Copleston is committed to
the view that such God-talk does not at central points consist
••This is very evident in his debate with A. J. Ayer. See A. J. Ayer and
F. C. Copleston, "Logical Positivism: A Debate," in A Modern Introduction to
ed. by A. Pap and P. Edwards
edition, New York: Macmillan,
1967). In a later essay "Man, Transcendence and the Absence of God," Thought,
Vol. XLIII (1968), Copleston contends that while believers and non-believers
have the same expectations in regard to events in the world, their interpretations
of the world are different. (See p. 37 of his text.)

42

KAI NIELSEN

in statements of empirical fact open to the usual precedures of
confirmation and disconfirmation. Indeed Copleston seems
anxious to meet, in some way, Flew's challenge about falsifiability. God-statements are taken by him to be factual statements, but they are alleged to be ' factual metaphysical statements.' Of these Copleston remarks: " I can hardly be said
to know what is meant by a factual statement unless I am able
to recognize that something at least is not asserted " and " unless I am able to recognize that something is excluded I do not
know what is asserted." 25 But in his actual arguments concerning this, Copleston does not give us straightforward factual
statements which could be used to confirm or disconfirm our
theological statements. Rather, reasoning like what has been
called a theological non-naturalist, his statements, used in confirmation and disconfirmation, hav:e the same equivocal and
controversial logical status as the statements to be confirmed
or disconfirmed. He never breaks out of the religious network
of statements; that is to say, in Ross's terminology, he gives
us no E-statements to confirm his A-statements and so does
not in reality meet Flew's challenge or give our A-statements
their needed empirical anchorage.
That this is so can be seen from Copleston' s own analysis of
'God is intelligent' and' God loves all human beings.' He asks
us, in asking for the meaning of these statements, to consider
why a person would make such statements. Consider ' God
is intelligent.' A man who has the idea of an ' existentially
dependent world ' naturally ascribes the order or system in the
world to a creator. My' subjective meaning '-the only meaning I can have for' God is intelligent,' on Copleston's accountis ' There is a creator of the world who orders the world.' But
if one is puzzled over what (if anything) it could mean to
assert or deny that God is intelligent, one is going to be equally puzzled about the statement, given as the' subjective meaning• or part of the' subjective meaning' of that statement. We
•• Copll)ston, Contemporary Philosophy, p. 99,

ANALOGY TALK OF GOD--A NEGATIVE CRITIQUE

43

do not have a .statement that is plainly an empirical statement
to give empirical anchorage to our G-Statement. The same
applies to ' God loves all human beings.' 26 Copleston remarks
'that if this statement or rather putative statement " is compatible with all other statements that one can mention and does
not exclude even one of them," then it is devoid of factual significance. But it appears at least that it is so compatible, for
no matter how many millions are put in the gas chambers, it is
still said by the faithful that God loves his children. No matter what wars, plagues, sufferings of little children are brought
up a la Dostoevski, they are still taken, by the faithful, to be
compatible with the truth of the .statement ' God loves all human beings.' Given such linguistic behaviour, one is tempted
to think that nothing is excluded in the statement and thus it
appears to be devoid of factual content. But, Copleson avers,
this impression is mistaken. Something is incompatible with it,
only we have been looking for that something in the wrong direction, namely in the experiences of men. But the Christian theologian knows a factual statement with which it is incompatible,
namely' God wills the eternal damnation and misery of all human beings.' The truth of ' God loves all men ' is confirmed by
' God offers all men through Christ the grace to attain eternal
salvation.' Knowing this latter statement to be true, we are
justified in asserting ' God loves all men.' But here again
Copleston is lifting himself up by his own bootstraps, for he is
verifying religious statements by appealing to further religious
statements without any of them getting the necessary empirical
anchorage. The verifying statements are as problematic as the
statements they are supposed to verify. In short, Flew's challenge concerning falsifiability is not met, for we have not been
given any empirically identifiable state of affairs that is excluded by these statements. We do not have the anchorage in
experience that Copleston so stresses as necessary for an understanding of God-talk.
•• Ibid., p. 100.

44

KAI NIELSEN

In short, Copleston has not provided us with an answer to
Flew's challenge: he has not shown us how experiential statements either verify or falsify' God loves all mankind' or' God
is intelligent ' or any G-statement at all and he has not given
an intelligible account of analogy that would enable us to overcome the anthropomorphism of univocal predication or the
impossibility of understanding what is meant by the predicates
in God-talk if they are used equivocally when applied to God and
the world. He has not shown us how it is that ' we see through a
glass darkly,' for given Copleston's approach to the incomprehensible Godhead, we can never know whether, by self-consciously and sensitively using our analogical concepts, we purify
or fail to purify our understanding of God, because we can have
no idea at all of the ' objective meaning' of such a concept.

III
Ross tries to state in contemporary terms what he takes to
be the vital heart of Aquinas' theory of analogical predication. But while his .statement is far more complicated than
Copleston's, it is no more successful.
As has frequently been pointed out, ' analogy ' is itself au
analogical term, that is to say, it has several meanings which
are not unrelated: that is, they are partly similar and partly
different. Moreover, 'analogy' is a term of art for the scholastics. In speaking of analogy we speak of analogy of attribution,
metaphor and analogy of proper proportionality. But, as Ross
and others have argued, it is analogy of proper proportionality
that is most crucial in considering the analogical relation between terms predicated of God and terms predicated of man
and other' contingent natures.' It is then to analogy of proper
proportionality that we shall tum.
Ross escapes some of Copleston's confusions by arguing that
" analogy of proper proportionality is the general form of language about God " and that it is improper to call this language
inadequate " for no other language is possible given the Christian assumption that God is transcendent and different in kind

ANALOGY TALK OF GOD--A NEGATIVE CRITIQUE

45

from all other things." 27 ' God,' on this account, is " a shorthand for the definite description which would result from a
combination of all the properties shown to be attributable to
one unique being with some (psychologically prior) property
such as' First Cause' or' Creator.'" 28 But the terms signifying
these properties are all " analogous by proper proportionality
with respect to psychologically prior instances of the same
terms in ordinary experience describing statements." 29 In order
to make sense of religious discourse, in order to explain how
we have any understanding of the concept of God at all, we
must give an intelligible account of analogy of proper proportionality and then show how it applies to God-talk.
What then are we talking about when we speak of analogy
of proper proportionality? A proportion is the equality of two
ratios, i.e. a is to b as c is to d. Ross gives several paradigms
the least unfortunate of which is (a) Fido caused the barking
and (b) Plato caused the murderous act. 30 Here 'caused' is
supposed to be such an analogical term. And in (a) and (b)
we have an analogy of proper proportionality. Fido's causing
the barking is as Plato's causing the murderous act. Where
we have analogy of proper proportionality, we have statements
of the form:
1. (a) A is (or has) T
(b) B is (or has) T
or:

Where ' T ' is a term, namely a word capable of naming or
applying to a thing or things, A and B are things, and x and
y are properties, actions or events. No. I above, Ross argues,
is reducible to no. 2.
We are asked initially to assume that in our paradigm
op. cit., p. 501-02.
Ibid., p. 500.
•• Ibid., p. 501.
" 0 Ibid., p. 487.
27 Ross,
2•

46

KAI NIELSEN

'caused' is not being used univocally. Later Ross will attempt
to show that this assumption is justified. Secondly, to have
such an analogy there must be at least two instances of the
property signified by' T.' As Ross puts it, "the second condition states, briefly, that the two things denoted by the term
'T' must have the property signified by' T' and that the first
condition must still be preserved: that the term is equivocal." 31
There is, as Ross recognizes, quite obviously a problem here.
If ' T ' is equivocal, the properties would not be the same. But
if the term' T' in its instances signified the same property, has
the same meaning as or is equivalent in its instances, then, in
its instances, it has the same intention (connotation). But if
this is so, then either the term is, after all, univocal or the
second condition is unsatisfiable. 32 The first and second
characteristics of such analogical terms appear at least to clash
and this casts doubt on the coherence of analogy by proper
proportionality.
To make sense out of this conception of analogy, we must
show how both characteristics of this type of analogy are jointly satisfiable. This is exactly what Aquinas, Ross tells us, sets
out to do and in Ross's opinion he is successful. To do this
Aquinas must show how a term can be " univocal in signification ... while being equivocal in not conforming to the rule
for univocity of intention.'' 33 That is in (a) 'Fido caused the
barking ' and (b) ' Plato caused the murderous act ' we must
show how 'caused' in both cases signifies the same property,
yet does not have exactly the same intention: does not in each
case have the same conjunction of terms applicable to that
to which each instance of 'caused' is applicable. There must
be some term which is applicable to that to which 'caused' in (a)
is applicable which is not applicable to that to which ' caused '
in (b) is applicable and yet ' caused ' in both occurrences
must still signify the same property or set of properties.
Bl Ibid.
""Ibid.
••Ibid., p. 487.

ANALOGY TALK OF GOD-A NEGATIVE CRITIQUE

47

We must examine whether such a notion makes sense. It
most certainly appears to be nonsensical. But, as Ross argues,
appearances are not to be trusted here.
To understand how this might be done, we must attend to
a distinction Aquinas makes and Ross stresses between the res
signifi0ata and the modus signific,andi of a term. A necessary
condition for having an analogy of proper proportionality is
to have a ratio in which the modus signific,andi differs and the
res signifi0ata is the same. In such a situation we have the
requisite .similarity in difference. We have a situation in which
we have a univocal signification together with an equivocal intention of the terms in question.
To make anything of this we must understand Aquinas'
distinctions here. The intention of a term specifies not only
the property or properties signified by the term but the way
it is signified. The former is the res signific,ata of the term and
the latter-the way it is signified-is the modus signifi0andi
of the term. 84 In considering our paradigms (a) and (b), if
we take our allegedly analogical term ' caused,' we can speak
of two instances of the term ' caused ' differing in their modus
signifi0andi in the sense that ' caused' refers to different kinds
of causality. (Ross also works out the same point for' knowledge.') The intention of 'caused' is proportionally the same
in (a) and (b) "but the mode in which the property is possessed makes entirely different the kinds of action which can
be performed." 85 We have the foundation of analogy of proper
proportionality in " the unequal and different in kind participation of different natures in the same property according to
differing modes of being determined by their nature.'' 86
The terms ' knowing ' and ' causality ' are indeed univocal
or equivocal depending on their use in sentences. In (a) and
(b) ' caused ' is not uni vocal even though we may form a metalanguage term ' caused ' or ' causality ' which is neutral with
•• Ibid., p. 488.
36 Ibid., p. 489.
36 Ibid., p. 490.

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KAI NIELSEN

respect to all the object-language senses of 'caused.' The object-language senses of 'caused' are themselves equivocal.
Given that the meta-language term' caused' is about language
and is neutral in the respect mentioned, then it need not be
univocal with respect to any object-language sense of 'caused.' 37
In the different kinds of causality, distinguishable in the different object-language uses of 'caused,' we have the basis for
the difference (the analogues are partly different) and in the
meta-language use of the term 'caused' we have the basis for
similarity (the analogues are partly similar). The neutral
sense of ' caused ' is not on the same level as the different kinds
of causality exhibited, in the different uses that ' caused ' has
in different .sentences in the object-language. The former is
a meta-linguistic notion which includes the other uses and signies them all equally and alternatively. 88 It, as a meta-linguistic term, is a predicate in sentences about predicates of sentences. This meta-linguistic use of the term is univocal. But
this does not make the object-language terms univocal. They
are, in contrast, equivocal. It is here that we have an intelligible
rationale for analogy of proper proportionality.
There is, however, a fundamental confusion in Ross's argument. Where 'knowing' or' caused' (the analogous predicate
in question) is a predicate about predicates, where it is a metalinguistic term, it is no longer ' knowing' we are talking about
but '"knowing".'
Where we are actually talking about
knowing or causing something-the object-language terms-we
are not talking about linguistic expressions but about their
meaning or use in object-language sentences. But where we
are talking about the expression ' knowing ' or ' causing ' we are
talking about language. ' She is bald ' makes sense; ' She has
three letters does not.' ' " She " is bald ' is nonsense while
' " She " has three letters ' is not. 'Knowledge is difficult to
obtain and Jane caused him to give up the quest' make sense
but ' Knowledge has nine letters and caused has six letters ' is
Ibid.
••Ibid., p. 491.

37

ANALOGY TALK OF GOD-A NEGATIVE CRITIQUE

49

nonsense. Again'" Knowledge" is difficult to obtain and Jane
"caused" him to give up the quest ' is nonsense while ' "Knowledge " has nine letters and " caused " has six letters ' is an
intelligible meta-linguistic sentence.
Ross thinks that he has found a univocal sense of 'knowledge' and' caused' and a equivocal sense of 'knowledge' and
' caused ' and that he has thus escaped a crucial difficulty about
analogy of proper proportionality. But he has not at all, for
he is not really talking about the same verbal symbol, for, even
on his own definition, we can only say that two marks or sounds
are the same verbal symbol when they have the" same recognizable pattern." But ' knowledge ' and ' " knowledge " ' are
clearly distinct. It is apparent we do not have the same verbal
symbol or the same expression, so we have no basis for univocity
and thus none for analogy of proper proportionality.
Let us assume, however, that somehow this difficulty has
been surmounted. Being analogous is a semantical property
of a term and-someone might possibly argue-I have mistakenly treated it as if it were a syntactical property. This
does not seem at all plausible to me, but let us assume that
my criticism can thus be put aside or that it can somehow be
gone around. (After all, Ross in his later "A New Theory of
Analogy " has formulated a doctrine of analogy which is not
vulnerable on this score.) Still, even with these assumptions
granted, is everything in order with Ross's account?
When we apply this analysis to the concept of God, Ross's
position gives rise to exactly the same difficulty as Copleston's.
In the res significata, if analogous terms signify a common property or set of properties, as they do, then the terms specifying
that property or set of properties will be univocal and thus
some univocal predications of God are possible. As Ross shows,
if there is to be an intelligible account of analogical predication,
the analogical terms have, through their res significata, a
property or set of properties in common. Thus there must be
some univocal predication possible concerning God if there is
to be any analogical predication at all. But the crucial point

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KAI NIELSEN

of Aquinas and the N eo-Thomists is that all predications of
God are analogous. The fact that they are used in different
modes or in different contexts or with differing intentions will
not alter the fact that, since they have a common term signifying
(standing for) a common property, it is the case that some
univocal predication is possible. The terms signifying those
common properties must have been used univocally. In neither
of his essays has Ross escaped this difficulty.
That Ross (and, on his interpretation, Aquinas) is committed to such a position can be seen from what he says about
(c) 'Fido knows his dog house' and (d) 'Plato knows philosophy.' 'Knows' in (c) and (d) is supposed to be used analogously. But if we accept Aquinas' partial definition of 'knowing,'
we have accepted a generic common feature of knowing, a
property that is common to and distinctive of all knowing. This
feature is, according to Aquinas, "the possession of the form
of another as belonging to another." 39 This is indeed but a
partial and very obscure definition; to fill out his definition
Aquinas adds to the above quotation " according to one's natural mode of possession." This last qualification presumably
gives us the difference which keeps the predication from actually being univocal. But it remains the case that, on the assumption (questionable in itself) that Aquinas' account of
knowing is intelligible, it is true that on all uses of 'knowing'
there is a property that remains common to and distinctive of
all these uses. That is to say, we could construct a predicate
signifying the res mgnificata of ' knowing ' that would be predicated of all cases of knowing. This would be a univocal predication.
Exactly the same thing would be true of the res mgnificata
of 'God', if the predicates of 'God' are to meet Ross's conditions for analogical predication. But to meet these conditions
they must violate another supposed characteristic of predications of ' God,' namely that all such predications be analogical.
•• Jbid,

ANALOGY TALK OF GOD--A NEGATIVE CRITIQUE

51

In short, for there to be analogical predication of a subject ·term
some univocal predications must be possible. Yet Aquinas and
the Neo-Thomists will not allow that there can be any univocal
predications of ' God ' ; but then it is impossible for there to be
any analogical predications either.
As a kind of postscript to this argument, it should be noted
that Ross's account here clashes radically with Yves Simon'<:i
account of analogical predication. Ross is committed to the
claim that in analogical predication the res significata picks out
generic features common to all instances of a given analogical
term. But Yves Simon's fundamental point is that such abstraction is impossible for analogical predication. Two important Thomistic accounts are in plain conflict with each
other.
Even if my above arguments are mistaken and Ross has
given an intelligible account of analogical predication, it will
not work for what it is really crucial for, namely for' God.' We,
if it were correct, would never be in a position to understand
the modus significandi of ' God.' As Aquinas, Copleston, Ross,
Simon, and Thomists generally all stress, we can have no
direct apprehension of God. We are limited to our own human
ways of apprehending things. But the modus sign.ifioandi of
predicates applied to ' God ' is supposed to be distinguished
by being according to God's distinctive mode of possession. But
we finite creatures can have no understanding of that, so we
can have no understanding of the modus signifioandi of the
predicates applied to God. When Aquinas tells us that the
nature of the thing denoted by the logical subject determines
the modal elements of the intention of predicates which are applied to the subject, he cannot apply this to ' God,' for no
direct apprehension of God is possible and if no direct apprehension is possible-if no use has even been given to ' a direct
apprehension ' of God-then no indirect apprehension is possible either.
If it is replied that ' knows ' in ' Fido knows his dog house '
has the same logical features as ' love' in ' God loves all man-

52

KAI NIELSEN

kind,' yet it is plainly meaningful, it simply must be pointed
out, against Ross, that ' Fido knows his dog house ' does not
have all these logical features. It is not the case that there is
" within the intention of the terms applied to animals ... no
term which specifies how the dog knows." 40 We can speak of
conditioning, of memory, of seeing a familiar object, of smelling
and a host of other things. If we are prepared to use ' know'
with respect to animals, we can bring in these definite characteristics, for this ' mode of possession.'
Let us again assume that all my previous criticisms of Ross's
reconstruction of Aquinas have been in some way mistaken.
Yet there are still further difficulties in his account. Aquinas
is claiming that a necessary condition for two terms being
analogous by proper proportionality is that they differ in their
modus significandi but have the same in res significatia. But
this is but a necessary condition, for the terms could still be
equivocal. 41 So far we have at best explained (1) "why certain terms cannot be used of God and creatures univocally "
and (2) "how a term can in two instances signify the same
property and yet be equivocal.'' 42 In short, we have at best
shown how the first two conditions for analogy of proper proportionality are compatible. But there is a third condition, namely
that there must be a proportional similarity between what is
denoted by the two putatively analogous terms.
We must scrutinize this notion of 'proportional similarity.'
There is a similarity in what the terms in question stand for
" if they are in some respect identical but never numerically
identical.'' 43 The respects, of course, must be specifiable. 'Proportion ' for Aquinas, is a synonym for ' relation.' ' Relation,'
e.g.' to the left of,' is a two or more place predicate in objectlanguage sentences. By 'proportionality between A and B,'
Aquinas means, according to Ross, that "there is a similarity
' 0 Ibid., p. 492.
" Ibid., p. 494.
'"Ibid.
••Ibid., p. 495.

ANALOGY TALK OF GOD--A NEGATIVE CRITIQUE

53

in the proportions (or relations) of A and B." Thus there is
a "proportional similarity ... between any two things, A and
B, which have similar relations to some property, event, or
thing." 44 Thus for' caused' in (a) 'Fido caused the barking'
and (b) 'Plato caused the murderous act ' to be analogous
by proper proportionality, they must have some common
properties or relations. 45 Ross then significantly mentions that
if we are to be able adequately to establish a doctrine of
analogy by proper proportionality, we need some criterion to
determine when in fact two things are proportionally similar. 46
We need in short "a criterion of similarity of relations" and
this in turn means that we must be able to say in what respect
they are similar and this, as Ross points out, means that they
are in some respects identical, though never numerically identical.47 Recall that for Ross, as for most followers of Aquinas,
'God' is a short hand substitute "for the definite description
which would result from a combination of all the properties
shown to be attributable to one unique being with some 'psychologically prior ' property such as ' First Cause ' or ' Creator'." 48 This means (gives to understand) that there is at
least a partial identity between God and the world. But this
most certainly seems to be a denial of God's transcendence. It
seems, at least, to make it impossible to say what Thomists and
all orthodox Christians and Jews want very much to say, namely that God is transcendent to the world. (Note the initial quotations from Gilson and Mascall.)
However, following Bochenski here, Ross .sets out a criterion
for similarity of relations that might, if workable, mitigate
somewhat this anthropomorphism by making it innocuous. We
can say that ' Relation R is similar to relation R'' if (1) both
are relations and (2) if they" have common formal properties
with respect to either a formal or merely linguistic set of axioms,
"Ibid.
••Ibid.
•• Ibid., p. 496.
"Ibid., p. 495.
••Ibid., p. 470.

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KAI NIELSEN

the latter not being explicitly formulated in ordinary language,
or, they have a common property." 49 Yet, as Ross is quick to
point out himself, there are plainly difficulties here. If we consider first whether there are common " formal properties, i. e.
common syntactical and semantical properties," we face the
difficulty that such an ideal language has not yet been worked
out and that it ".supposes a more extensive formalized language than seems practicable." 50 But, it seems to me, that
there is a far more crucial objection to this first alternative in
setting out a criterion for similarity of relations, namely that
in so talking about purely formal properties we are, in effect,
talking about an ideal language or an uninterpreted calculus.
To give it an interpretation so it would have .some application
to reality, including the putative reality of God, we would
need to be able to specify some non-formal properties. Thus,
the first alternative in effect reduces to the second and to
specify non-formal properties would, in the case of talk of
God, require the unwanted partial identification of God and the
world. Indeed, we would have a univocal predication bobbing
back up at us again, for we can, as Ross puts it, have a proportional similarity only if the terms are in some respect identical. 51
Ross operates (quite properly I believe) on the assumption
that if x is similar to y, then there must be some respect in
which xis similar to y. But this, given his reconstructions of
Aquinas' account, in effect lays the foundation for the inescapability of some univocal predications of God. But it is exactly this conclusion that he and Thomists generally wish to
avoid.
There is a further related difficulty in Ros.s's account similar
to a difficulty we found in Copleston. His account would make
a statement such as 'God loves all men' open to Flew's challenge. That is, such statements would be empirically verifiable (confirmable or disconfirmable), for it is a question of
••Ibid., pp. 496-97.
" 0 Ibid., p. 497.
" 1 Ibid., p. 495.

ANALOGY TALK OF GOD-A NEGATIVE CRITIQUE

55

empirical fact whether ' loves ' in ' Nixon loves all Americans '
and' loves' in' God loves all men' have a property in common.
(That this is so, is even more evident in Ross's "A New
Theory of Analogy.") But, as Thomists argue in other contexts, such God-statements are not so verifiable. 52 But, if they
accept this last criterion, of similarity of relations, they must
treat such God-talk as open to empirical confirmation and disconfirmation. They want it both ways but they cannot consistently have it both ways.
Finally, even if we accept, as I argued we could not, common
purely formal properties as an adequate criterion for similarity,
we still in a way are caught by Flew's challenge, for it is a fact
whether there· are or are not such formal properties. If we
have no reason to say that there are, then we should say that
it is probably false that ' God loves all men ' and the like are
intelligible, i.e., do have their intended factual significance. At
the very least, we should say that we had evidence that counted
against the intelligibility of that claim. But the faithful are
not at all willing to put their claims to such a test. In short,
even if such a theory of analogy can be worked out for terms
like 'caused' and 'knows,' it does not work for God-talk. If
no other language is possible, as Ross claims, if we are to talk
literally and intelligibly about God, then it must certainly appear that we cannot talk literally and intelligibly about a nonanthropomorphic God, for such an account of analogical predication is thoroughly broken-backed.

IV
I have not claimed that generally speaking all theories of
analogy have been shown to be unsatisfactory. I do not even
52 See here M. J. Charlesworth, "Linguistic
Analysis and Language About God,"
International Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 1 (1961), pp. 139-67, Thomas
Corbishley S. J., "Theology and Falsification," The University No. 1 (1950-51),
C. B. Daly, "The Knowableness of God," Philosophical Studies (Maynooth,
Ireland), Vol. IX (1959), pp. 90-137. I have critically examined their views in
my "God, Necessity and Falsifiability," in Traces of God in a Secular Culture,
ed. by George F. McLean. (Alba House: Staten Island, New York, 1973).

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KAI NIELSEN

claim that for the conception of analogy of proper proportionality. What I have shown, if at least most of my arguments are
sound, is that two distinguished and influential accounts of
analogical predication have crippling defects. Perhaps some
account could, or even does, escape these difficulties; perhaps
there is or could be a perspicuous account of analogical predication. I do not know of one, but it is well to remain agnostic
on this score.
Finally, I should say something about a later and parallel
effort by Ross, namely his "A New Theory of Analogy." There
he deploys some of the technique of structural linguistics and
appeals to some of their findings. But, I shall argue, not with
the result that he has .shown how there is a formulation of the
doctrine of analogy of proper proportionality that obviates the
key difficulties I have found in his earlier and more extended
account.
In his "A New Theory of Analogy," Ross shows what I have
not been concerned to deny, that analogy is a pervasive feature
of natural languages, that any predicative term can be used
analogously and that analogy is a crucial "part of the expansion structure of ... language." 58 Indeed it is the case that
"many terms have varying meanings in different contexts and
that the meanings of some pairs of the .same-terms may be regarded as being derivative either from one another (unius ad
alterum) or from some ' prior ' use (or set of uses) of the same
term (multorum ad unum) ... " 54 Furthermore, I agree that
competent native speakers can and do recognize, in practice
at least, that "there are sets of same-term-occurrences which
are, taken pair by pair, equivocal but which can be ordered as
meaning derivatives ... " 55 There are sets of same-term-occurrences which are in pairs equivocal which are regularity conRoss, "A New Theory of Analogy," in Logical Analysis and Contemporary
Fordham University Press, 1972),
p. 126.
••Ibid., p. 125.
58

Theism, ed. by John Donnellly (New York:

""Ibid.

ANALOGY TALK OF GOI>--A NEGATIVE CRITIQUE

57

trolled and there are pairs which are not. Ross's example of
the last for ' fast ' .seems well taken. (Compare ' He ran fast,'
' He observed the fast,' ' He stood fast ' and ' He considered
her fast.') The various uses of ' fast ' here vis-a-vis each other
seem at least to be regularity controlled, though it is difficult
to be confident about this. (Is not ' fast' in 'He considered
her fast' derivative from' fast' in' He ran fast')? Now compare these uses of 'fast' with the uses of 'count' and 'calculated ' in the following: ' Children count when taught to ' and
' Computors count when programmed to ' and ' In oppressing
the dissidents the use of physical force was calculated ' and
in ' In building the bridge the physical force of the spring floods
was calculated.' ' Count' and ' calculated ' here are equivocal
when just the same term pairs are considered, but it is also the
case that they differ from ' fast ' in being regularity controlled
vis-a-vis each other. ' Count' in ' Computors count when programmed to ' is derivative from ' count ' in ' Children count
when taught to ' in a way that the different instances of ' fast'
cited above seem at least not to be derived. Similarly the first
instance of ' calculated ' above is derivable from the second instance.
What Ross rightly stresses is that there are such analogy
regularities built into the structure of our language. People
with a grasp of the language readily understand derivative
uses of terms; there are, legitimatizing them, meaning regularities within the corpus of our actual discourse and in mastering our language (English, Spanish, Swedish, etc.) , we come
to have an understanding of them.
However, the acceptance of all this is quite compatible with
making the criticisms I have made of Copleston's and Ross's
accounts of analogy, for they were giving a certain reading or
account of 'analogy' which would have a certain import for
theology. They were not just establishing that there are
analogical uses of language. My criticisms have been directed
against their readings and against their attempted theological
employment.

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KAI NIELSEN

In his ' new theory ' Ross uses ' count ' and ' calculated ' to
exhibit how analogy of proper proportionality works and is indeed something which can quite naturally be extrapolated from
semantic regularities in our natural languages. Consider the
following:
(1) Children count when taught to.
(2) Computors count when programmed to.
(3) The use of force by the police was calculated.
( 4) The force of the wind was calculated.

Here, with (1) and (2) and again with (3) and (4), we have
relationships which are meant to exhibit analogies of proper
proportionality. In (2) 'count' is derivative from 'count' in
(1) and it differs in meaning from ' count ' in (1) in exactly
the ways in which 'computors' in (2) differs in semantic
category from' children' in (1). That is to say, the meaning
of ' count ' in (2) is derivative from its meaning in (1) and is
altered " with respect to ' computors' in just the way the
semantic categories of that term differ from those of ' children'." 56 It is "the difference-of-meaning by combinatorial
contraction which corresponds to proportionality." 57 This enables us to understand the shift of meaning, while still carrying
similarities, which sometimes obtain when there is a shift from
one discourse environment to another. 58 The same considerations hold for' calculated' in (3) and (4).
In (1) and (2) and in (3) and (4) both pairs of terms differ
in their respective pairings in their discourse environments and
this is what in modern terms could be called their differences in
modus signific,andi. But in both cases there is still a sameness
in res significata for each. In simpler terms (or at least in a
more familiar jargon) Ross's point could be put as follows:
in both pairs respectively the property (set of properties) which
the term signifies is present and indeed is the same property;
i.e. both times 'count' signifies the same property (set of
Ibid., p. 189.
Ibid.
58 Ibid.

66

57

ANALOGY TALK OF GOD-A NEGATIVE CRITIQUE

59

properties), and both time.s 'calculated' signifies the same
property (set of properties), but in both cases respectively
" the conditions of use of the term in two contexts ... prohibit
us from making all the same inferences of each occasion." b 9
' Calculated ' on both occasions of its use signifies the same
property and 'count ' on both occasions of its use signifies the
same property, but the entailments of 'calculated' and 'counts'
differ, showing that in each case the property is present in each
subject in a different way.
However, as in his first account, there is in this very sameness in the res significata an implicit appeal to univocity. In
(1) and (2) and (3) and (4) this can be seen. In spite of
all the difference in discourse environment' count' in (1) and
'count' in (2) both signify a reckoning up to find a sum or
total. When we assert-talking about either or both what the
computors did or the children did-' There was a reckoning up
to find a sum,' we can in that proposition say something which
is significant and indeed sometimes even true. And there is
also a predication here, but the predication ' reckoning up to
find a sum here' is univocaL 00
The use of 'calculated' in (3) and (4) might seem more
helpful for Ross. In (3) 'calculated' could be replaced by
'deliberate' with little, if any, change in meaning. But no
such substitution could be made in (4) , yet 'calculated' in
(3) is derivative from 'calculated' in (4). We move from
' computed by figures ' to ' ascertained beforehand by exact
reckoning' to 'planned deliberately.' And here 'calculated'
seems to have a family-resemblance rather than its being the
case that there is any respect in which what they signify is
similar. What, it is well to ask, is the characteristic in common
59 Terence Penelhum,
op. cit., p. 81. Penelhum generally in his discussion of
analogy acknowledges his indebtedness to Ross.
60 I simply use 'predication'
here in the standard way, characterized by Michael
Durrant as follows: "An expression that gives us a proposition about something
if we attach it to another expression that identifyingly refers to something which
we are making the proposition about." See Michael Durrant, The Logical Status
of 'God' (London: Macmillan Ltd .• 1973), pp. Xiii-Xiv.

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KAI NIELSEN

signified by 'calculated' in (3) and (4)? In both cases we
are talking about something reckoned up according to plan.
But do ' reckoned up ' and ' according to plan ' signify common
properties or are they themselves family-resemblance terms?
Even allowing that the elusive conception of family-resemblance is well-enough fixed so as to exclude common characteristics between paired terms, both (3) and (4) would be
false, if no expected result was ascertained. And it is implausible to claim that ' result was ascertained ' is so different
in the two environments that there is no respect in which what
they signify is similar. Moreover, as Ross acknowledges himself, where there is a similarity between two terms we must, for
' similar ' to be intelligible, be able to say in what respect they
are similar. But then again we can see how univocal predication underlies analogical predication such that the very possibility of two terms being in an analogical relation of proper
proportionality requires that we can make some univocal predications of what is referred to by these terms. And this brings
with it the host of problems I discussed in the previous section.
In sum, Ross in two essays, one detailed and utilizing some
of the techniques of modern logic and one more sketchy and using
some of the techniques of structura1 linguistics, has sought to
articulate a sound theory of analogy which will serve as a crucial
philosophical underpinning in making sense of our talk of
God. I have argued that he has failed in both attempts, though
in the latter he has made it quite evident that there are analogical uses of language and he has shown us something about
these uses. But neither he nor Father Copleston have given
us an account of analogy which will enable us to make sense
of non-anthropomorphic God-talk.
KAI NIELSEN
University of Calgary and
University of Ottawa

ANALOGY AND THE MEANINGFULNESS OF LANGUAGE ABOUT GOD: A REPLY TO KAI NIELSEN

I

MUST SAY that I feel considerable sympathy with Professor Nielsen in his difficulties in making sense out of the
Thomistic doctrine of analogy as a device for rendering
language about God meaningful. In fact, for many years now
I have been struck by the constantly recurring phenomenon
of philosophers outside the Thomistic tradition trying to
understand the doctrine of analogy as applied to God and being
quite sincerely baffled in their attempts to see how it can do
the job assigned to it. When this occurs so often, there is a
good chance that the fault is not all on the one side. And, to
be honest, I do not think Professor Nielsen gets adequate help
from either Father Copleston or Professor Ross. He may not
get adequate help from me either, but I would still like to try,
since I consider the issue such an important one.
The main reasons for the obscurity surrounding the Thomistic
theory of analogy seem to be three. First, historically, St.
Thomas himself, ordinarily such a systematic thinker, for some
unexplained reason was never willing to pin himself down to
any one consistent terminology or structural analysis of the
logical form of analogy. He simply used it, very sensitively,
but without any full dress explanation of what he was doing.
When Thomistic commentators after him have tried to pin
down the theory more precisely and technically, they too often
have fallen into the straight jacket of Cajetan's oversimplified
and restrictive systematization, in which the structure of
proper proportionality is understood as a four-term proportion, a structure that St. Thomas himself quietly abandons
as not adequate by itself after his early work, De Veritate. 1
1 For a summary
of these developments, see David Burrell, Analogy and
Philosophical Language (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), Chap. 6

61

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Secondly, doctrinally speaking, Thomists tend too often to
omit in their formal analyses of analogy the indispensable
metaphysical underpinning that alone justifies the application
of analogy when one of the terms is not known directly in
itself. No purely logical or semantic analysis of the structure
of analogous concepts can supply this extra-logical component.
In addition, Thomistic commentators for the most part do not
bring out clearly enough-if indeed they accept the point at
all-the fact that analogy does not lie so much in any formal
structure of concepts themselves as in the actual lived usage of
meaningful analogous language, found only when the so-called
analogous concepts are used in judgments. 2 In the light of the
above comments I would like to see if I can shed some light of
my own on Professor Nielsen's difficulties, so that at least the
authentic and essential points of disagreement may be brought
more clearly into focus and allow more fruitful dialogue thereon
than usually seems to be the case in this elusive question of
analogy.
Objections of Professor Nielsen
The three most crucial objections of Professor Nielsen
against the explanations of Copleston and Ross seems to me to
be the following. (1) The first concerns the distinction made
by Copleston between the " subjective meaning" of an
analogous term, i. e., our understanding of the meaning as
drawn from instances in our experience, which he admits is
anthropomorphic, and the "objective meaning," i. e., the
objective reality referred to by the concept as found in God
and affirmed of him, even though we do not know just what
this is like, but only point to it in the dark, so to speak, and
for good reasons, since it is an infinitely higher mode beyond
the direct grasp of our experience and concepts. But the
on Aquinas, and G. Klubertanz, St. Thomas Aquinas on Anafogy (Chicago:
Loyola University Press, 1960).
2 Although I had come to this conclusion some time ago myself, I am deeply
indebted to Fr. Burrell for his fine elucidation of this point, one of the main
ones in his fine book cited in n. I.

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68

trouble here, as Professor Nielsen points out, is that, since we
have no access to this objective meaning as it is verified in God,
which is quite different from the subjective meaning drawn
from our experience, this so-called objective meaning is vacuous,
empty of meaningful content for us who are using the term.
And the gap between the two meaning-contents indicates that
the concepts predicated in each case are not the same, though
the same word is used; hence there is equivocation. (2) The
second concerns the very meaning of an analogous concept in
itself. At the heart of every analogous concept, Professor
Nielsen insists, there must be " a common core of meaning,"
which in tum necessarily implies that this core of meaning must
be univocal. " Common core of meaning " and " univocal "
are co-existensive and convertible terms. No merely formal
structure of isomorphic relations can supply such a common
core. (3) Third, Professor Nielsen points out that there is no
way of confirming or verifying the meaningfulness or truth of
what is analogously predicated of God, since there is no way
of verifying or falsifying it from experience or by any kind of
testing for consequences.
Most of my reply will be directly concerned with the
objections to Copleston, since the objections to Ross seem
to me merely a more technical application of the same basic
difficulties. And, besides, I agree with much of Professor
Nielsen's dissatisfaction with any attempt to lay out analogy in
some formal logical structure.
No isomorphism of formal
relations can supply for intrinsic similarity in content between
the sets of relations compared. Since I do not think it feasible
to separate out the answers to the three objections, for they all
involve the same roots, I shall give my own account of how
analogy works and pick up the objections along the way at
appropriate points. I will not give any distinct answer to the
third objection. Many have handled this already. And there
is simply no testing from experience or from consequences of
predications when one is discoursing about the attributes of
God. The only testing is the metaphysical exigency of

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W. NORRIS CLARKE

intelligibility itself: predications about God must have both
meaning and truth if our own world is not to fall into
unintelligibility.
They are all metaphysical musts flowing
from the primary must of the causal bond itself. Hence I will
divide my exposition into three main sections:
I. Must
Analogy Be Rooted in Univocity? IL The Extension of Analogy
Beyond the Range of Our Experience. III. The Application of
Analogy to God and Its Metaphysical Underpinning.

I. Must Analogy Be Rooted in Univocity?
As we read through Professor Nielsen's criticism of both
Copleston and Ross, we notice one crucial assumption
functioning over and over again, at first more or less implicitly,
then finally surfacing with full explicitness. It is this: if there
is to be any genuine similarity within difference in the various
predications of an analogous term, then this similarity necessarily involves some " common property" or attribute, even
if only a relation, which holds in all applications; now the
presence of such a common property necessarily involves a
"univocal core of meaning." Analyzing one of St. Thomas's
descriptions of knowing (it should be noted, however, that this
does not apply to all knowing but only to the knowing of
another than oneself) , which runs, " the possession of the form
of another as another, according to one's natural mode of
possession," Professor Nielsen comments:
This last qualification presumably gives us the difference which
keeps the predication from actually being univocal. But it remains
the case that on the assumption (questionable in itself) that
Aquinas' account of knowing is intelligible, it is true that in all
cases of ' knowing ' there is a property that remains common to
and distinctive of all these uses. That is to say, we could construct
a predicate signifying the res significata of 'knowing' that would
be predicated of all cases of knowing. This would be a univocal
predication. (p. 50)
In other words, whenever there is a common property predicated, there must be a univocal core of meaning. Hence even

ANALOGICAL TALK OF GOD-AN AFFIRMATIVE REJOINDER

65

the qualifying phrase added by St. Thomas, "according to
one's natural mode of possession," must leave intact the univocal core of meaning, " possession of the form of another as
another."
Here is the central and clear-cut point of contention between
Professor Nielsen and the Thomistic tradition in the very
meaning of analogy itself. Thomists would admit-though
a,few, like David Burrell, seem unduly squeamish about doing
so-that in some significant sense there must be some common
core of meaning in all analogous predications of the same term,
for otherwise it could not function as one term and concept.
But they insist, on the other hand, that this common core of
meaning is not therefore univocal, but remains analogous,
similar-in-difference, or diversely similar. If it is any consolation to Professor Nielsen, his objection is exactly the same
as that brought against Thomistic analogy by Duns Scotus and
William of Ockham shortly after the time of Thomas himself.
For them the sufficient requirement that a term be univocal
is that it be able to function as a middle term retaining the
same meaning in both premises of a syllogism, enough to
avoid equivocation. An analogous term was for them really a
verbal unity of two distinct, though related, concepts, and if
used in both senses in the same argument would introduce a
fourth term and invalidate the argument. 3
Yet this is definitely not the Thomistic understanding of
univocity and analogy. The difference in approach between
the two positions might be summed up thus: The Scotus-Ockham analysis is geared primarily to the demands of deductive
reasoning and the logical functioning of concepts. It also takes
the word and concept as the fundamental unit of meaning,
8 Cf., on Scotus, Burrell, op. cit., Chap. 5 and 7; C. Shircel, Univocity of the
Concept of Being according to Duns Scotus (Washington: Catholic University
of America, 1942); on Ockham, Burrell, op. cit., Chap. 7; M. Menges, The
Concept of the Univacity of Being regarding the Predication of God and Creatures
according to William Ockham (St. Bonaventure, N. Y.: Franciscan Institute,
1958).

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W. NORRIS CLARKE

which remams intact in its own self-contained meamng no
matter how it is moved around as a counter in combination
with other concepts, including its use in a judgment, which
is interpreted simply as a composition of two concepts, subject and predicate, without change in either. The Thomistic
analysis is geared much more to the actual lived usage of the
concept in a judgment, interpreted as an intentional act of
referring its synthesis of subject-predicate to the real order,
as it is in reality. Hence it tends to look right through the
abstract meaning of the concept to what it signifies, or intends
to signify (intendit significare), in the concrete, and so adjusts
the content of the concept to what it knows about its realization in the concrete. The difference in perspective-and in
theories of the relation of concept to judgment-leads to
quite different conclusions, which I think are considerably
more than a merely verbal dispute over different terminologies
for the same thing, though there is some of that hanging like
a cloud over the scene too, causing the opponents to pass each
other in the fog without meeting.
Let me explain now how I think Thomistic analogy actually
works, building it up genetically from its actual origin and use
in living language. I take it as understood that from now on
when I speak of analogous terms and concepts I am referring
only to what Thomists identify as properly and intrinsically
analogous terms, i. e., those that are intended to express a
proportionate intrinsic similarity found in all the analogates
(hence not analogies of the so-called " extrinsic attribution,"
such as " healthy " applied to man and to food, which is not
designed to express similarity but some relation of causality,
belonging to, etc.). Such intrinsic analogies are found in
terms like "knowledge," " love," " activity," " unity," "goodness," "being."
We construct and use analogous concepts in our languagelif e to fit occasions wherein we cannot help but use them. This
occurs when we notice some basic similarity-in-difference,
or proportional similarity, across a range of different kinds

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of subjects (or on different levels of being, of qualitative perfection), such that the similarity we notice does not occur in
the same qualitative way in each case but is noticed to be found
in a qualitatfoely different way in each case. When we form a
univocal concept, on the other hand, we pick out some similarity, usually some form or structure or quantitative relation,
which we judge or notice to be found with significant qualitative
variation in each case, usually falling within the same species
or a genus with closely related properties. In such a case we
notice that, even though a few examples are needed to get
started, the meaning content, what the term objectively signifies,
once grasped, remains neutral, indifferent, unchanged with
respect to any further instances. Such a content is thus quite
well defined, determinate, and fixed.
Not so with an analogous concept. The similarity we notice
here is not some one thing or characteristic that remains exactly
the same in all cases, except for some new additional note
being added on each time from the outside. It is rather that
the similar property itself is more or less profoundly and
intrinsically modified in a qualitatively different way each
time, so that through and through the whole property is
recognized as at once similar yet different (not just found in
some new instance that in other ways is different). An
analogous concept is not a composition of one part exactly
identical and another part different, as Scotus, Ockham, and
Nielsen seem to imply; rather it is an indissoluble unity where
the similarity itself is through and through diversified in each
case. As a result there is quite a bit of " give," flexibility,
indeterminacy, or vagueness right within the concept itself,
with the result that the meaning remains essentially incomplete, so underdetermined that it cannot be clearly understood until further reference is made to some mode or modes
of realization.
This leads us to discover one of the most remarkable and
distinctive features of analogous concepts, especially the ones
of broadest range: it is in fact impossible to define what we

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W. NORRIS CLARKE

mean by an analogous concept, to grasp the similarity involved,
except by actually running up and down the known range of
cases to which it applies, by actually calling up the spectrum of
different exemplifications, and then catching the point. The
similarity involved cannot be isolated from its qualitatively
diversifying modes and expressed by itself clearly, as it can
be in the case of a univocal concept. It can indeed be caught
or recognized by an act of intellectual insight as we run up and
down the scale of examples. It can be seen., and shown forth
by our meaningful linguistic behavior, as Wittgenstein would
say, but it cannot be said or expressed clearly by itself. Or,
if you wish, it can be said by framing one linguistic term for
use in all cases, but the meaning of the term cannot be grasped
at all clearly without actually calling up a diversified range of
cases. The meaning of the term, therefore, must be completed
and made determinate in each case by reference to some
concrete qualitative mode. That is why the notion always
contains within it, at least in an implicit way-which can
easily be made explicit, as St. Thomas does in the example of
knowledge-the
parenthetical indication (like a kind of
metalinguistic instruction or warning) that the property in
question will be present in each case " according to the mode
proportionate to the nature of each." Yet the concept itself,
as an abstract predicate by itself, fit to be used in many
different predications as somehow the same one concept, does
not mention or contain within its expressed content any of
these particular modes in any of its predications, but is understood as transcending them all. Otherwise, it is clear, it could
not be used to refer to any other instance with a different
mode. However, when this indeterminate abstract concept,
unified as such, is actually used in a concrete judgment, its
meaning, as understood in the whole concrete act of knowing
that is the judgment, then molds itself or shifts to take on
the particular determination of the case in hand, while at the
same time continuing to recognize the intrinsic proportional
similarity-in-difference of this instance with all the others in

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the range outlined by the concept. This is the point of the very
astute remark made by Gilson long ago, that "'analogy' for
Aquinas refers to our ability to make the kind of judgments
we do," that it is to be explicated " on the level of judgment "
and "not of concept " alone. 4 Analogy is to found and understood on the level of the lived use of concepts and terms, not
in any formalizable logical structure of the concept in itself.
Thus when I understand in an analogous way a proposition
like " x is intelligent," what I mean is, " x exhibits or realizes
in this different but still sufficiently similar way the same
similarity-in-difference which I have already noticed running
through a certain range of cases, so much so that I feel justified in expressing this case by the same analogous term as the
others."
I have laid special stress in the above on the importance of
the lived use of concepts in judgment, because it is not
always brought out sufficiently by Thomists, and is one of
the distinguished marks of the approach of St. Thomas when
compared to that of Scotus and Ockham. A Thomistic
analogous term does indeed contain a certain genuine unity,
though heavily laced with indeterminacy at its core, enough
unity to function logically quite like a univocal term. And,
of course, if one considers an analogous concept from a comparative or negative point of view with respect to other
concepts, it is quite determinate in what it excludes from
consideration, in how it delimits its whole rang•e from that of
other concepts. But the point remains that when looked at
in what it positively includes within its range it cannot express
clearly by itself the similarity in isolation from the differences.
When it tries to do so through so-called definitions it can only
call up as paraphrases other equally analogous and indeterminate terms, which themselves require reference to a range of
diverse examples in order to be meaningful. And whenever it
'E. Gilson, The Christian Phil,osophy of St. Thomas Aquinas
Random House, 1956), pp. 105-107.

(New York:

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W. NORRIS CLARKE

tries to become too precise, it contracts to become identical
with just one of its modes and loses its analogical function.
Let me illustrate what I have been saying above by taking
the same example used by Professor Nielsen, that of knowledge, defined by St. Thomas as " the possession of the form
of another as another, according to one's natural mode of
possession." Let us say that we have already recognized as
included within its range of proper instances the dim knowledge
through touch of the environment around it by an oyster or
snail; the more complicated integration of visual, tactile, and
audible sense images by a dog or other higher animal; the
intellectual insight of man into justice or the inner law of
operation of a typewriter or Einstein's Theory of Relativity;
the Zen master's empty, imageless, supra-conceptual awareness
of reality; the mystic's awareness of God in the "fine point of
the soul " beyond all concepts and faculties. All are judged
to be genuine though highly different instances of knowing.
Now suppose we try to say or describe just what is the
similarity amongst all of them, in itself. And suppose the
person to whom we are trying to describe it says "I don't want
you to do it by examples; just tell me what it is in itself."
What could we possibly tell him that could capture the
commonness by itself? We can only run through the spectrum
of examples on different levels and then appeal to the person's
own experience. "Do you know what I mean? Do you get
the point? "
Professor Nielsen, it seems, would like to insist: " But there
is a common univocal core: possession of the form of another
as another ... " Yet suppose we try to apply this even to only
two cases, such as a dog's "possession" of the "form" of a
typewriter in the mode of a visual image of its external shape
and color, compared with a man's" possession" of the" form"
as intellectual insight into the inner law of operation of the
machine. What in the world does "possession" mean here?
How can we describe it in itself? Is it like the possession of a
marble in one's pocket? No. Or having a ca;st in one's eye?

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71

No. Is it possessing a visual image in consciousness? Aside
from the problem of defining "consciousness," this is one
example, but not one that adequately circumscribes the
meaning, since having an intellectual insight into the intelligible form or law is vastly different, even though somehow
similar-it is impossible to specify just how. The same
difficulty would occur in trying to explain " form." The only
thing one can finally do is call up the whole range of examples
and ask, "Don't you catch the point? Do you see what
I mean? " This is not an evasion; it is precisely the intelligent (in fact, the only effective) way to do it. The same
with other analogous concepts, such as unity, activity, love,
goodness, power, perfection (imagine trying to describe precisely what is similar in all instances of activity or perfection) .
In a word, although one can indeed say that in some true
sense (analogous) there is a common core of meaning in an
analogous concept, it is nonetheless clear that the concept
functions quite differently-if we look at it from within as
used, not just from without a,s a logical counter in an argument-from a univocal concept with its common core.
This leads me to one more distinctive characteristic of the
analogous concept which I think it most important to mention,
since it too is frequently not made explicit by Thomist
commentators. What kinds of things, or aspects of reality,
or properties are thus amenable to, even necessarily require,
expression through analogous terms? As I see it-and I am
willing to defend this, even though it is not commonly mentioned-there is only one " dimension " of reality or " kind "
of property that is capable of truly analogous expression: this
is the realm of activities or dynamic functions, what we might
call " activity properties " understood in the widest possible
sense (plus, 0£ course, the opposite correlative properties of
receiving, being acted on, etc.: loving and being loved,
causing and being caused are equally analogous). All such
properties are expressed originally and primarily by verbs, not
nouns, or are in some way reducible to verbs. Analogous

W. NORRIS CLARKE

terms can of course be nouns, but then the noun presupposes
the verb-e. g., it signifies a subject, but as the doer of such
and such an action, which aspect alone is made explicit (knower,
lover ... ) .
The reason why activity properties are such fit candidates for analogous expression is that the same general " kind "
of activity can be performed quite differently by different
kinds of agents or subjects without destroying the similarityin-difference of the activity aspect itself. This is not true
of forms, structures, quantitative relations, and the like,
which are not thus elastic in their realizations. Different
kinds of things in the universe, different levels of being,
are not like each other in their essential specific forms or
essences considered statically. But they are proportionally
alike in their modes of activity, in their dynamic functions.
Different forms themselves can only be compared as alike
insofar as they are forms or structures for similar actions. If
there is any formal structure to analogous concepts, it is not
a strictly logical or formal structure, but the structure of an
activity situation: an analogous term expresses this general
kind of activity x, recognized as carried on in one distinctive
proportionate way by subject a, in another distinctively
different proportionate way by subject b, etc. The subjects
and modes of acting are quite different in each case; the
activities themselves are recognized as proportionately similar,
similar-in-difference, although it remains impossible to state
just what this similarity is apart from its range of varied
modes. Let me add that if the term " activity" itself here is
allowed to expand to its full analogous breadth of illuminative
meaning, existence itself then not only can be described but
is uniquely appropriate to be described as the most radical
kind of activity or act, the act of "presencing." This is the
Thomistic analogous notion of being itself: "that which has, or
exercises, the act of existing."

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II. The Extension. of Analogous Terms beyond thJe Range of
Our Experience
So far we have been analyzing how analogy functions
within a range where all the main levels of exemplification lie
within our experience, hence where the different modes can be
directly known to us. The next phase of our investigation,
crucial for the application to God, concerns the extension of
analogous concepts beyond our present range of known examples, i. e., the formation of "open-ended" concepts whose
range extends indefinitely beyond our present experience, at
least in an upward direction. The ranges of analogous concepts can be roughly classified as follows: (1) those having
a ceiling but no floor (no lower limit) in their application:
terms like physico-chemical activity, whose upper limit is
biological activity, or perhaps consciousness, but that
extend downward to unknown depths of matter still hidden
from us and perhaps very strange indeed compared with what
we know; (2) those having both a floor and a ceiling, say, biological activity, or sense knowledge, limited by the non-living
or unconscious below and intellectual knowledge above; (3)
those having a, floor but no ceiling: intellectual knowing, love,
life, joy, etc.; (4) those having neither ceiling nor floor: the
all-pervasive "transcendental properties" applicable across
all levels of being, such as being, activity, unity, power,
intelligibility, goodness (in the widest sense). Our special
concern will be with numbers (3) and (4) , as alone applicable
to God.
How in general do we go about opening up an analogous
concept beyond its presently known range of examples? Let us
take the example of knowing. Suppose we reflect on how
remarkably diverse are the modes we already know, and how
impossible it is to deduce from a lower level what a higher
level will be like; it then appears to us, when reflecting on the
ttnalogous meaning of knowing, that we have no good or
decisive reasons for closing off its possible range at the level
i$ $Orne plausible suspicioµ that
we knqw; in.

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W. NORRIS CLARKE

may be higher kinds of intelligence on other planets or perhaps
even beyond all corporeal entities (not yet God) . We decide
we should remain prudently open to the possibility of higher
intelligence trying to communicate with us through some
kind of signal. We have no idea what kind of communication
or signals-they would not even have to be through material
signs but might be by direct telepathy or thought-communication-or what the mode of intelligence involved might be like
or how it might function in itself, even when not attached
to a body. Yet it makes perfect sense, and in the concrete it
is quite easy-we are actually doing it already-to open up the
range of meaning of what we now experience and understand
as intelligence to include in expectancy some possible level at
present quite unknown and uncharacterizable by us. The new
extension of the term, though empty of any precise content
describable by us now, is not simply empty. It gets its new
and very useful content of meaning from its place on an
ascending (it might also be descending) scale, which serves as
guide for evaluation assessment (respect, awe, fear, caution,
etc.). Such a role as guide to evaluation procedures, and
their practical consequences, is an indispensable one for our
concrete life of the mind in the midst of a reality that is
always partly known, partly concealed in relation to us.
Another example arises from the new scientific interest in
para-psychology and psychic phenomena of various kinds.
There is widespread talk of some new kind (s) of force that
produces effects in the material world, yet seems to operate in
ways thus far unknown to us and is quite different from the
other physical forces we know-" psi-forces," some caU them.
They may be a new kind of physical radiation, or more probably psychic energy fields, or what have you. The point is
that we quite readily enlarge the notion of force to make
room for the possible discovery of a new mode, concerning
which we can say nothing clear as yet, not even that it really
exists. It may be objected that there is a univocal core in
all description of such forces, in that they produce observable

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75

effects in the material world. There may, it is true, be one
element of their definitions that has a univocal cast: the
material effects produced. But the notion of force does not
mean the effects produced. It means the power producing such
effects, and as long as this central part of the meaning is
variable in its mode the meaning must remain analogous.
In both of the above, and many other possible examples,
in order to extend the range of an analogous concept we must
" purify " its meaning-content, what it explicitly signifies,
making it indeterminate enough so that its range of application
will not be restricted within present limits. l£ we judge that
this cannot be done without a violent and arbitrary wrench in
the meaning that renders the term no longer comfortably
serviceable enough, we judge the proposed extension inviable,
too confusing, and devise an entirely new term to express the
additional range of cases presumed to exist. This is a matter
of good judgment, of a sense for successful living language,
not a matter of the logical structure of concepts.
It is within the context of this extension of an analogous concept to a new application whose mode of realization is unknown
to us that the traditional distinctions arise between "objective
meaning" and" subjective meaning" (Copleston), the res signific,ata, or the objective property signified by the term, and the
modus signific,amdi, or the modes by which we express to ourselves this property (St. Thomas), and other similar semantic
devices. There is unfortunately much confusion in terminology
here (and not infrequently in thought too, I fear), and I am
not happy with either of the above ways of trying to spell out
the same general point. St. Thomas' way is clear enough in
itself-though often misunderstood, as it clearly is here by
Professor Nielsen-but is so narrow in scope as he uses it that
it does not do the entire job that has to be done. Copleston's
way is, I fear, open to serious misunderstanding and seems
to me to be inadequate to its task. So let me first state the job
to be done, and how I think it best to express it, and then
return to assessing the two sets of distinctions mentioned above.

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In such a context of using analogous language, we must
separate out the following: (1) the res significata, i. e., the
" thing " or common property signified, which is what is
actually predicated in each case, whether previously known or
not. Its meaning-content as expressed in the analogous concept is deliberately or systematically vague and indeterminate,
not restricted to any of its modes so as to be truly predicable
of all cases. (It does not mean, by the way, the actual
concrete referent of this predicate in a given judgment,
although the terminology of " thing "-res-has misled some
into thinking so.) (2) The real modes, or modes of being, in
which this common objective property or attribute is understood to be realized in given applications, as we apply the term
in concrete complete acts of knowing in the judgment. These
modes may already be known to us, as the animal and human
modes of knowing, or they may as yet be unknown to us, in
which case we intend to signify what is there in the concrete
but through a vague and incomplete act of knowing. Or, if
you wish, we intend to refer to what is really there, but
through a vague and incomplete mental sign, recognized as
such, although we do recognize clearly that we are referring to
a mode different from the others we know. These modes,
however, are not part of what is actually predicated by the
abstract analogous predicate itself, as is (1) above, although
we understand the indeterminate content to take them on in
the concrete, as we actually use the term. 5 (8) The modes of
5 St. Thomas himself is quite clear about this.
Cf. his sensitive basic treatment
in Summa Theol., I, quest. 13 entire, esp. art. 3: " Some words that signify what
has come forth from God to creatures do so in such a way that part of the
meaning of the word is the imperfect way in which the creature shares in the
divine perfection. Thus it is part of the meaning of " rock " that it has its
being in a purely material way. Such words can be used of God only metaphorically. There are other words, however, that simply mean certain perfections
without any indication of how these perfections are possessed-words,
for
example, like 'being', 'good', 'living', and so on. These words can be used
literally of God" (the translation is the new English one edited by Thomas Gilby,
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Vol. I, Garden City, Doubleday Image Book,
1969).

ANALOGlCAL TALK OF G01>--AN AFFIRMATIVE REJOINDER

77

our understanding of the res mgn.ificata, which are the best
known modes of concrete realization of the common property,
considered as ways or media through which we first come to lay
hold of the meaning of the property and upon which we fall
back as the clearest examples when we wish to evoke its
meaning for ourselves anew-since, as we noted above, it is
always necessary to call up some examples across a range in
order to grasp or recall the meaning of an analogous comcept. Among these there is usually-not necessarily always,
it seems-one or more that stand out as prime analogates
for us, i. e., as focal meanings or privileged examplars closest
to us by which we most easily and immediately grasp the
meaning experientially, and out from which as from a center
we extend it in lessening degrees of clarity. This usually means
the properties as experienced and lived in our own selves,
whether in body, psyche, or spirit. But it should be clearly
understood that these ways of our coming to understand most
vividly the common property do not themselves enter into
the object meaning of the term when it is predicated
analogously, in any of its predications. They are modes of
revealing the analogous meaning of the term; they do not
constitute its objective meaning itself-otherwise they would
restrict it and destroy its analogical spread. Its objective
analogical meaning as predicated is deliberately expanded,
enlarged, made more vague and indeterminate than these
modes of discovery, so that it will be able to transcend them
in scope of applioation. Thus at the same time that we call
up these privileged modes in order to evoke the meaning of the
concept for ourselves, we understand (at least implicitly, but
in a way that effectively controls our use of the term) that
the meaning of the analogous term is being left open for
further application, that it is not tied down to these modes of
discovery. Thus if we were asked, in the example of speaking
of hypothetical higher forms of " intelligence " that might
communicate with us from outer space, what we mean by
"intelligence," we would say something like this: " You know,

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W. NORRIS CLARKE

the kind of thing we do, being self-conscious, comprehending
the natures and properties of things, making signs or
communicating in some way, in a word, understanding, but
probably in quite different ways from ours." We do not confuse the modes of understanding with the reality understood,
or signified.
We could add another aspect (4) which would correspond
exactly to St. Thomas' modus significandi, or modes of
signifying the res sign.ificata. These are often misunderstood
as signifying aspect (2), the actual modes of concrete realization of the common property in particular cases, as Professor
Nielsen seems to understand them. This is quite incorrect.
They are also sometimes extended to coincide with our (3),
man's modes of understanding the res significa,ta. There is no
great harm in deliberately using modus significandi with this
meaning, and one does need some appropriate term to express
these. But it is still not what the expression itself means as
Aquinas uses it. It refers only to our human modes of
expressing the res significa,ta, i. e., conceptual-linguistic modes.
It was originally intended to take care of the obvious difference
between the way God's perfections are found in him and our
way of expressing the perfections of God through multiple
verbal predicates, each distinct from the other, which are
predicated of a subject as though they were accidents inhering
in a distinct substance: " God is wise, and loving, and powerful." This is the way they are found in us, where wisdom can
come and go and where a man can be wise but not powerful or
vice versa. But what they signify as found in God himself is
that God is identically all the positive perfections signified by
these terms but united together in a single simple plenitude of
perfection. Similarly we speak of God, who is beyond time,
through verbal forms with tenses. Yet St. Thomas is quite
clear that, although our modes of expressing these attributes
bear the mark of their origin in our experience, these modes are
not what is express'ed and predicated by the concept itself,

ANALOGICAL TALK OF GOD-AN AFFIBMATIVE REJOINDER

79

in any of its predications. 6 To say that John is wise and
powerful does not mean, though it may indeed be understood
to be also true, that wisdom in John is an accidental attribute
really distinct from his power and his own essence. It is
simply stating that it is true that he is wise and it is true that
he is powerful, without stating how these are related. Hence
our modes of expression do not corrupt with anthropomorphism
our predications about God, or about anything, for that matter.
This is as far as St. Thomas's modes of expressing take us,
though he also speaks of the " modes in which a perfection is
found " or realized in its subject, which are not quite the same
thing, but correspond rather to our modes of rea.lizatU:min (2)
above. Where do Copleston's "objective meaning" and" subjective meaning" fit in here? 7 It is not entirely clear to me from
his text how they do, and it is no wonder to me that Professor
Nielsen had serious-and to my mind quite justified-difficulties
with his explanation. For Copleston, the "objective meaning"
means" the objective reality itself referred to by the term in question," which in his example, " God is intelligent," he maintains
is "the divine intelligence itself,'J as it is in itself. The "subjective meaning" is" the meaning-content in my own mind ...
primarily determined for me by own experience ... of human
See his text in note 5.
The main part of the text Professor Nielsen is quoting (Contemporary
Philosophy, Westminister, Md.: Newman Press, 1956, p. 96) runs as follows:
" By 'objective meaning' I understand that which is actually referred to by the
term in question (that is, the objective reality referred to), and by 'subjective
meaning' I understand the meaning-content which the term has or can have for
the human mind ... i. e., my understanding or conception of what is referred to ....
If this distinction is applied to the proposition 'God is intelligent', the 'objective
meaning' of the term 'intelligence' is the divine intellect or intellect itself .... And of this I can certainly give no positive account .... The 'subjective meaning' is the meaning-content in my own mind. Of necessity this is
primarily determined for me by my own experience, that is, by my experience of
human intelligence.
But seeing that human intelligence as such cannot be
predicated of God, I attempt to purify the 'subjective meaning' . . . . And in
doing so we are caught inextricably in that interplay of affirmation and negation
of which I have spoken."
6

7

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W. NORRIS CLARKE

intelligence." But here it seems that "intelligence" means in
this predication " divine intelligence " and yet the only
meaning-content in my mind in all predications is " human
intelligence." This opens up a yawning gap between the two
which Prof. Nielsen has very astutely seen, and it is not at all
clear from this text alone just how one crosses the gap. What
Copleston fails to explain is that what he calls the " subjective
meaning " is not really the meaning-content in my mind at all
which I mean to signify by the analogous concept. It is my
way of discovering the meaning, but not the purified more
indeterminate analogous meaning itself. He needs another
intermediate term in his discussion to indicate this. He comes
close to it, in fact, when he adds at the end of his text, not
quoted by Nielsen, " But seeing that human intelligence as
such cannot be predicated of God, I attempt to purify the
'subjective meaning' .... And in so doing we are caught inextricably in that interplay of affirmation and negation of which
I have spoken." It is this "purified meaning," purified by
being made more indeterminate and open, that is the one
actually predicated of God, which is not Copleston's objective
meaning either, since that is already determined to fit God only.
He does not make this clear enough in his text. (I fear there is
some confusion too in Fr. Copleston's text between meaning
and reference, when he speaks of the meaning as " the reality
referred to.") Thus it should be clear that I dissociate myself
from Fr. Copleston's explanation and consider it an inaccurate
rendering of St. Thomas's teaching, or at least an easily misleading one. Professor Nielsen has good reasons for finding it
unsatisfactory. There is in fact no gap between the meaning
of "intelligence " as predicated of God and its meaning as
predicated of man. But there is a gap between the modes of
realization which I understand this attribute will take on in
the concrete in each case, as well as between my mode of
coming to understand this meaning and the mode I affirm in
God.

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81

III. Application to God
Let us now take brief stock of what we have accomplished.
We have tried to explain what the structure of analogous
predication is in general, how it works, and what it means to
extend the range of an analogous concept beyond its ordinary
range in our experience. But the actual extension of our
analogous language to some new entity, such as God, that is
beyond the range of our experience requires three further steps:
(I) we must have good grounds for affirming that there
actually is (or at least might be) such a new candidate for
the application of our language; (2) we must have good
grounds for affirming that this new candidate is actually
objectively si,milar in some way or ways to the presently
known beings in our experience-in other words, that there are
good grounds for applying our concepts and language at all;
(3) once we are in possession of these grounds we must then
proceed to figure out just which of the attributes in our store
of knowledge are apt to be extended meaningfully and
legitimately to such an entity. But the first two suppositions
cannot be provided by a theory of analogy itself. They must
come from outside, to build a bridge across which our analogical language can walk. It is especially the lack of any
awareness of the second point above, the establishment of a
bond of similarity between God and creatures, that renders
Professor Nielsen's exposition of Thomistic analogy so cripplingly incomplete. Let us now turn to each of these three
points. The first two will be handled together under Section 1.
I. Causality as the Bond of Similarity between God and World

The first step is establishing the existence of God. This is
done through a causal argument, which postulates that, under
pain of our world of experience falling into unintelligibility,
there must exist, as experience's ultimate condition of intelligibility, or adequate sufficient reason, one ultimate Source
of all being, whose only intelligible mode of being must be

W. NORRIS CLARKE

infinite perfection-for otherwise it could not be the ultimate
condition of intelligibility. I would not carry on this argument
through the Five Ways of St. Thomas, since they are too
incomplete by themselves and defective in structure to do the
job for us today. I would use rather the simpler and more
basic metaphysical resources of St. Thomas, not drawn on
clearly enough in the Five Ways, to show that no being that
begins to exist, or is finite in perfection, or composed in its
radical being, or member of a system of dynamically interrelated elements-to sum it up most simply, no finite being
or group of finite beings-can supply the sufficient reason
or ground of its own existence, and that such an ultimate
condition of intelligibility is not reached until we posit an
infinite being, a being infinite in perfection.
It is not my purpose to work out this argument here, since
it would take another whole article, and our main aim here is
explaining the function of analogy within such a framework.
Let us therefore suppose that this step has been carried out
successfully. If it cannot be, there is no point in discussing
Thomistic analogy any further as applied to God. But as soon
as we have established the argument, without paying any
explicit attention to analogy in the process, we discover that
a strange thing has happened. Analogy is already being used
in the very formulation of the conclusion: there is an ultimate
Source or condition of intelligibility for the existenee of . .. , or
cause. (This by the way is all we mean by " cause " here in its
widest metaphysical sense: that which fulfills a need for
intelligibility, which answers the question, "What is effectively
responsible for the existence of this datum x, which has turned
out to be non-self-explanatory? "-not some meaning drawn
from the sciences.) 8 For to be intelligible to us, these terms
8 For this whole question of the meaning of "cause " in the context of the mind's
quest for intelligibility and its necessarily analogous character as a correlate of
the enquiring mind at work, see my own fuller development in "How the
Philosopher Gives Meaning to Language about God," in The Idea of God, ed.
by E. Madden, R. Handy, M. Farber (Springfield, Ill.: Charles Thomas, 1968),

ANALOGICAL TALK OF GOD-AN AFFIRMATIVE REJOINDER

88

themselves must all be analogous when applied to a being
outside our experience.
Does this mean that a vicious circle is here involved, that
analogy presupposes causality and causality itself presupposes
analogy? This is an excellent and crucial question, which
Professor Nielsen himself has certainly seen, when he speaks
of a circle where one religious statement backs up another.
There is indeed a circle of mutual involvement, but it is not
a vicious circle; it is a vital one. For it is the very thrust of
the mind's search for intelligibility, reaching out into the
unknown to postulate a sufficient reason somewhere in being,
that both sets up a new beachhead in being for our knowledge
to explore further and at the same time carries with it its own
enveloping field of analogy. Immanent in the entire innate
drive of the mind toward intelligibility is an unrestricted
commitment to intelligibility, wherever it may lead, and
simultaneously to its objective correlate, being itself, as the
source of all answers to this quest. To this range of intelligibility and its correlate being it is impossible to set any limits, since
the mind, as soon as it becomes aware of these limits as
limits, immediately transcends them by this very awareness.
Our own inner experience of this quest for intelligibility that
defines the very life of the mind reveals to us that both the
quest itself and the answers to it are infinitely Protean,
taking on endlessly different forms and modes. In a word, we
experience the field of intelligibility, enveloping our own
minds and reaching out beyond into its correlate, being, as
intrinsfoally analogical, open-ended but somehow all bound
together in some vague unspecifiable unity. The first and allembracing analogous field which we discover-not by constructing it deliberately but by waking up within it, so to
speak-is the correlation intelligibility-being.
Hence it is that when, as in the case of the affirmation of
pp. 1-28;

about God," in Christian
(Washington:
Catholic
of America Press, 1966), pp. 39-73, esp. pp. 46-51, 61-71.

and "Analytic

Philosophy

and Language

Philosophy and Religious Renewal, ed. by G. McLean
University

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W. NORRIS CLARnl

God, the mind is convinced-for what it believes are good
reasons-that it can save the intelligibility of the world of our
experience only by positing or postulating as existent outside
this world (i. e., transcending its limitations) an ultimate
infinitely perfect source of all being, it necessarily envelops
this term that it posits with its own pre-existent and potentially
all-embracing field of analogy, at once positing it as a real
condition of intelligibility and as necessarily analogous in the
same movement of thought. This initial analogy is extremely
vague, not yet extending beyond the immediate correlates of
the intelligibility-being field itself, together with the index of
location within this field at the supreme apex of perfection,
whatever that may be. For all the terms used to describe God
in this initial stage, "ultimate condition of intelligibility for
the existence of the world = cause," are nothing but reaffirmations of the general principle of the intelligbility of all being
in principle, tailored to the particular situation where the
beings we start with do not contain their own sufficient ground
of intelligibility within themselves, hence force us to look
beyond them. 9
9 It is very important
to make the point here that according to St. Thomas's
metaphysical method-and any sound metaphysical method, it seems to me, which
seeks to achieve knowledge of some being beyond our experience-it is a fatal
error to accept the demand so habitually made by analytic philosophers and
others that one must define what he means by " God " before undertaking to
establish His existence. This stand is not an evasion; it is a question of
proper method. It is impossible philosophically to give any definition of God
that can be shown to make sense before actually discovering Him as an exigency
of the quest for intelligibility.
The meaning of " God " emerges only in
function of the argument that concludes to the need of a being to which we then
can appropriat-ely give the name " God" or not, according to our culture and
religious tradition.
The philosophical meaning of God should be exclusively a
function of the way by which He is discovered. Hence a properly philosophical
approach to the existence of God should not ask, " Can I prove that God
exists? " but rather, " What does the world of my experience demand in order to
be intelligible? " Following out this exigency rationally, we " bump into " God,
so to speak, as a being all of whose properties are defined exclusively by its
needs to fulfill its job of satisfying the exigencies of the quest for intelligibility.
Hence any philosophical " proof for the existence of God " has already taken the
statement of the question from some non-philosophical source, usually religion.

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85

Thus the very initial positing of God as cause of the world
situates him within the primary a priori (a dynamic and
existential, not a logical, a priori) analogous field of both
intelligibility and being-of being precisely because this is
demanded by intelligibility. From the very beginning of our
intellectual life there is a necessary mutual co-involvement of
intelligibility, being, and analogy. This very vague initial
analogous beachhead of knowledge about God is now ready to
be expanded by further judicious search for more determinate
valid analogies.
It is at this point that a second crucial corollary of the causal
bond comes into play, one that is too often neglected in expositions of analogy, and of which there is likewise no hint in
Professor Nielsen's discussion. This is the principle, handed
down to St. Thomas by both the N eoplatonic and the
Aristotelian traditions, that every effect must in some way
resemble its cause. In a word, every causal bond sets up at the
same time a bond of intrinsic similarity in being. In the
Platonic-Neoplatonic
tradition this took the form of the
principle that every higher cause communicated something of
its own perfection to its effect beneath it, which participated
in the latter as much as its own limited nature allowed. In the
Aristotelian tradition it took the form of the principle that no
being can cause any perfection in another unless it already
possesses in act (in some equivalent way) this same perfection.
These two strands were joined together in a single synthesis
of causal participation by St. Thomas and other medieval
thinkers; and the same general principle of causal similitude
has been accepted by most realistic metaphysicians ever since,
in one form or another.
The philosophical reason why every effect must in some way
resemble its cause, at least analogously, is this: since all the
positive perfection of the effect, as effect, derives precisely from
its cause (s), the latter cannot give what it does not have; the
effect must in some way participate or share in the perfection
of the cause that is its source. If the cause does not possesss

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W. NORRIS CLARKE

in an equal, or some higher equivalent manner, the perfection
it communicates to its effects, then the perfection of the latter
would have to come from nowhere, have no relation to its
cause. Where there is no bond of similarity whatever between
an effect and its cause, there can be no bond of causality either.
The similarity in question, however, could be of two main
kinds. If both cause and effect were of the same species the
similarity would be on the same level and kind, that is,
univocal. If the cause were a higher level of being than the
effect, then the similarity could not be strictly univocal but
would have to be at least analogous. In this perspective, the
very fact of establishing a causal link between a lower effect
and a higher cause at once ipso facto generates an analogous
similarity, a spectrum of objective similarity extending from
the known effect at least as far as the cause, whether the latter
is directly known or only postulated as a necessary condition
of intelligibility for an already known effect. Whether both
terms of the relation are known or only one, every effect has
to be similar in some way to its cause, or it could not be
a real effect, and the same holds for the cause. As St. Thomas
sums it up:
Effects which fall short of their causes do not agree with them
[i. e., are not exactly like them] in name and nature. Yet some
likeness must be found between them, since it belongs to the
nature of action that an agent produce its like, since each thing acts
according as it is in act. The form of an effect, therefore, is
certainly found in some measure in a transcending cause, but
according to another mode and another way [i. e., analogously].
For this reason the cause is called an equivocal came [a term that
is " equivocal by design " in Aristotelian terminology is the same
as what was later called "analogous "-opposed to "equivocal
by chance"] ..... So God gave all things their perfections and
thereby is both like and unlike all of them. 10
An effect that does not receive a form specifically the same as
that through which the agent acts cannot receive according to a
10

a. 5.

Summa Contra Gentes, Bk. I, chap. 29, n. 2. Cf. also Summa Theol., I, q. 13,

ANALOGICAL TALK OF GOD--AN AFFIRMATIVE REJOINDER

87

univocal predication the name arising from that form .... Now the
forms of the things God has made do not measure up to a specific
likeness of that divine power; for the things which God has made
receive in a divided and particular limited way that which in Hirn
is found in a simple and universal unlimited way. It is evident,
then, that nothing can be said univocally of God and other
things .... For all attributes are predicated of God essentially ...
But in other beings these predications are made by participation.11

It is because of this metaphysical context of causality and
causal participation undergirding the Thomistic theory of
analogy that the most recent and authoritative-in the sense
of being almost universally accepted among Thomistscommentaries on St. Thomas's theory of analogy now all agree
that despite his many changes in terminology he fairly early
drops the structure of proper proportionality, taken by itself
alone, for a richer structure involving both immanent proportionality among the analogates of a term and a reference to
the causal source from which the analogous perfection in
question is communicated to all the participating analogates.
structure of analogy as
This fuller metaphysical-semantic
applied to the relation of God and creatures is most aptly
called " the analogy of causal participation."
The previously
long accepted "orthodox" explanation of Cajetan in terms
purely of proper proportionality without reference to a source is
now recognized as inadequate to handle the application of
analogy to a being not accessible to our experience, as is the
case with God. A purely formal isomorphism of relations
can supply no positive content of knowledge about the term of
comparison otherwise unknown to us unless some positive
intrinsic bond of similarity has already been established between both ends of the comparison. Cajetan presumed this
had been done elsewhere, but his omission of this step from his
11 Ibid., chap. 82, nn. 2 and 7. He goes on to say in chap. 88, n. 2:
" For in
equivocals by chance there is no order or reference of one to another, but it is
entirely accidental that one name is applied to diverse things .... But this is not
the situation with names said of God and creatures, since we note in the
community of such names the order of cause and effect .... "

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W. NORRIS CLARKE

formal and explicit analyses of analogy leaves a very serious
gap in his formal theory of analogy when taken by· itself, as
most non-Thomistic thinkers, if not forewarned, would naturally tend to do. St. Thomas himself appears to have come to
recognize this, since after his early work De Veritate-the main
source for Cajetan's systematization of all Thomistic texts-he
never again uses the formal structure of proper proportionality
by itself to express his own thought.
Thus it is not surprising that when non-Thomistic thinkers
like Professor Nielsen come to the theory of Thomistic analogy
through older traditional expositions in the mode of Cajetan,
which omit the context of causal participation as part of the
doctrine itself as applied to God (or to any unknown cause),
they find the structure of the analogy of proper proportionality
by itself quite inadequate to perform the role claimed for it.
Their critical insight is quite accurate. 12

2. Which Attributes Can Be Applied to God?
Once we have set up this basic framework of causal similitude between all creatures and God, from which it follows that
there must be some appropriate analogous predicates that can
be extended properly and legitimately to God, the next step
consists in determining just which attributes can, in addition to
the initial most indeterminate attributes of being and perfection, allow for open-ended extension all the way up the
scale of being, even to the mode of infinite plenitude, without
12 It is because of this basic similitude between all creatures
and God that
the phrase applied so often to God by theologians, philosophers of religion, and
spiritual writers, describing His transcendence over creatures, namely, that God is
" totally Other," is really, if taken in unqualified literalness as a metaphysical
statement, quite unacceptable as sound philosophy, theology, or spirituality. For
if God were literally totally other, with no similitude at all with us, there
could be no bond whatsoever between us, no affinity drawing toward union as
our true Good, no image of God deep in the soul, etc. He might be totally
other in His essence or mode of being, since He is beyond all form, but not
totally other in His being itself or the activity properties that flow directly from
its fullness of perfection.

ANALOGICAL TALK OF GOD--AN AFFIRMATIVE REJOINDER

89

losing their unity of meaning. This is the search for the
" simple or pure perfections," as St. Thomas calls them, which
are purely positive qualitative terms that do not contain
as part of their meaning any implication of limit or imperfection. Once we have located one of these, even though
we enter into its meaning in first discovering it or in re-evoking
it through the limited and imperfect modes (i. e., our privileged
modes of exemplifying it to ourselves) belonging to the things
we find in our experience, what we intend or mean directly by
the concept, once we have purified or enlarged it for good
reasons into an analogous concept, is a flexible, broadly but not
totally indeterminate core of purely positive meaning that
transcends all its particular possible modes, both those we
know and those we do not know.
We can recognize that we have effected this purification
when we can meaningfully affirm, as we certainly do, that all
the experienced modes of these open-ended perfections, such as
unity, knowledge, love, and power, are limited, not yet perfect
modes. For to affix the qualification "limited or imperfect "
to any attribute is already to imply that our understanding of
this attribute transcends all the limiting qualifiers we have
just added to it. Any attribute that cannot survive this process
of purification, or negation of all imperfection and limitation
in its meaning (and of comse in its actual mode of realization
when applied to an infinite being) without some part of its
very meaning being cancelled out, does not possess enough
analogical " stretch " to allow its predication of God. The
judgment as to when this does or does not happen is of
course a delicate one that requires careful critical reflection,
along with sensitivity to the existential connotations of the
use of the term in a given historical culture. 13
Two types of attributes have been sifted out as meeting the
above requirements by the reflective traditions of metaphysics,
religion, and theology: (l) those attributes whose meaning
13

Cf. for a fuller development my articles cited in note 8.

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W. NORRIS CLARKE

is so closely linked with the meaning and intelligibility of
being itself that no real being is conceivable which could lack
them and still remain intelligible, i.e., the so-called absolutely
transcendental properties of being, such as unity, activity,
goodness and power; and (;2) the relatively transcendental
properties of being, which are so purely positive in meaning
and so demanding of our unqualified value-approval that, even
though they are not co-extensive with all being, any being
higher than the level at which they first appear must be
judged to possess them-hence a fortiori the highest beingunder pain of being less perfect than the beings we already
know, particularly ourselves; such are knowledge (particularly
intellectual knnwledge), love, joy, freedom, and personality, at
least as understood in western cultures.

a) The Absolutely Transdendental Properties
Once established that God exists as supreme infinitely perfect
source of all being, it follows that every attribute that can be
shown to be necessarily attached to, or flow from, the very
intelligibility of the primary attribute of being itself must
necessarily be possessed in principle, without any further
argument, by this supreme Being, under pain of its not being
at all, let alone not being the supreme instance. Thus it is
inconceivable that there should exist any being that is not in
its own proportionate way one, its parts, if any, cohering into
one and not dispersed into unrelated multiplicity. Hence God
must be supremely one. Such all-pervasive properties of being
are few, but charged with value significance: e. g., unity,
intelligibility, activity, power, goodness (in the broadest
ontological sense as having some perfection in itself and being
good for something, if only itself), and probably beauty too.
Since these properties are so general and vague or indeterminate in their content-deliberately
so to allow for their
completely open-ended spectrum of application-we derive
from this inference no precise idea or representation at all as to
what this mode of unity, etc., will be like in itself. But we do

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91

definitely know this much: that this positive qualitative
attribute or perfection (in St. Thomas's general metaphysical
sense of the term as any positive quality) is really present in
God and in the supreme degree possible. Such knowledge,
though vague, is richly value-laden and is therefore a guide for
value assessment and for value responses of reverence, esteem,
etc. I am puzzled as to why Professor Nielsen would consider
such value-laden and value-guiding concepts simply empty and
hence apparently able to serve no cognitive purpose at all.

b) The Relatively Transcendental Properties
There is a second genre of transcendental attributes of
being that are richer in content and of more immediate
interest and relevance in speaking about God. These are terms
that express positive qualitative attributes having a floor
(or lower limit) but no ceiling (or upper limit), and hence
are understood to be properties belonging necessarily to any
and all beings above a certain level of perfection. Their range
is transcendental indefinitely upward but not downward. Such
are knowledge (consciousness, especially self-consciousness and
intellectual knowledge), love, lovableness, joy (bliss, happiness,
i. e., the conscious enjoyment of good possessed), and similar
derivative properties of personality in the widest purely
positive sense (not the restrictive sense it has in many
oriental traditions). All such attributes appear to us as purely
and totally positive values in themselves, not matter how
imperfectly we happen to possess them here and now. As such,
they demand our unqualified approval as unconditionally
better to have than not to have. Hence we cannot affirm
that any being that exists higher than ourselves, a fortiori
the supremely perfect being that God must be, does not
have these perfections in its own appropriate mode. To
conceive of some higher being as, for example, lacking sel£consciousness in some appropriate way, i. e., being simply
blacked out in unconsciousness, would be for us necessarily
to conceive this being as lower in perfection than ourselves.

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W. NORRIS CLARKE

Nor is there any escape in the well-known ploy that this might
merely mean inconceivable for us but in reality might actually
be the case for all we know. The reason is that to affirm that
some state of affairs might really be the case is to declare it in
some way conceivable, at least with nothing militating against
its possibility. This we simply cannot do with such purely
positive perfection-concepts.
What happens in our use of these concepts, as soon as we
know or suspect for good reasons that there exists some being
higher than ourselves, is that, even though our discovery of their
meaning has been from our experience of them in limited
degree, we immediately detach them from restricting links
with our own level, make them more purified and indeterminate
in content, and project them upward along an open-ended
ascending scale of value aPJYl'eoiation. This is not a logical but
an existential move, hooking up the inner understanding of the
conceptual tools we use with the radical open-ended dynamism
of the intellect itself. One way we can experience this power
of projection of perfections or value attributes beyond our own
level is by experiencing reflectively our own poignant awareness of the limitations and imperfection of these attributes as
we possess them now, even though we have not yet experienced
the existence of higher beings. We all experience keenly the
constricting dissatisfaction and restlessness we feel over the
slowness, the fuzzy, piecemeal character of our knowing and
our intense longing, the further we advance in wisdom .. for an
ideal mode of knowledge beyond our present reach. The very
fact that we can judge our present achievement as limited,
imperfect, implies that we have reached beyond it by the
implicit dynamism of our minds and wills. To know a limit as
limit is already in principle to have reached beyond it in
dynamic intention, though not yet in conceptual representation. This point has for long been abundantly stressed by
the whole Transcendental Thomist school, not to mention
Hegel and others, who bring out that the radical dynamism
of the spirit indefinitely transcends all finite determinate
conceptual expressions or temporary stopping places.

ANALOGICAL TALK OF GOD-AN AFFIRMATIVE REJOINDER

93

The knowledge given by such projective or pointing concepts, expressing analogous attributes open-ended at the top,
is again very vague and indeterminate, but yet charged with
far richer determination and value content than the more
universal transcendental attributes applying to all being, high
or low. By grafting the affirmation of these attributes, as
necessarily present in their appropriate proportionate mode in
God, on to the lived inner dynamism of our spirits longing for
ever fuller consciousness, knowledge, love (loving and being
loved) , joy, etc., these open-ended concepts, affirmed in the
highest degree possible of God, can serve as very richly
charged value-assessment guides for our value-responses of
adoration, reverence, love, longing for union, etc. But note
here again that the problem of the extension of analogous
concepts beyond the range of our experience cannot be
solved by logical or conceptual analysis alone, but only by
inserting these concepts into the context of their actual living
use within the unlimitedly open-ended, supra-conceptual
dynamism of the human spirit (intellect and will) , existentially longing for a fullness of realization beyond the reach of
all determinate conceptual grasp or representation. Thomistic
analogy makes full sense only within such a total notion of the
life of the spirit as knowing-loving dynamism. The knowledge given by these analogous concepts applied to God,
therefore, though extremely indeterminate, is by no means
empty. It is filled in by a powerful cognitive-affective dynamism involving the whole human psyche and spirit, which starts
from the highest point we can reach in our own knowing, loving,
joy, etc., from the best in us, and then proceeds to project
upwards along the line of progressive ascent from lower levels
towards an apex hidden from our vision at the line's end. We
give significant meaning to this invisible apex precisely by
situating it as apex of a line of unmistakeable direction upward.
This delivers to us, through the mediation (not representation)
of the open-ended analogous concept, an obscure, vector-like,
indirect, non-conceptual, but recognizably positive knowledge-

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W. NORRIS CLARKE

through-love, through the very upward movement of the
dynamic longing of the spirit towards its own intuitively felt
connatural good-a knowledge " through the heart," as Pascal
puts it, or through " connatural inclination," as St. Thomas
would have it. 14 Such an affective knowledge-through-connatural-inclination is a thoroughly human kind of knowing,
quite within the range of our own deeper levels. of experience,
as all lovers and artists (not to mention religious people) know.
Yet it is a mode of knowing that has hitherto been much
neglected in our contemporary logically and scientifically
oriented epistemology.

Conclusion
It is time to conclude this already too lengthy response.
To sum up, analogous knowledge of God, as understood in its
whole supporting metaphysical context of (1) the dynamism
of the human spirit, transcending by its intentional thrust all
its own limited conceptual products along the way, and (2) the
structure of causal participation or causal similitude between
God and creatures, delivers a knowledge that is intrinsically
and deliberately vague and indeterminate, but at the same
time richly positive in content; for such concepts serve as
positive signposts, pointing vector-like along an ascending
spectrum of ever higher and more fully realized perfection, and
can thus fulfill their main role as guides for significant value
responses, both contemplative and practical. Such knowledge,
with the analogous terms expressing it, is, and by the nature of
the case is supposed to be, a chiaroscuro of light and shadow,
of revelation and concealment (as Heidegger would say), that
alone is appropriate to the luminous Mystery which is its
ultimately object-a Mystery which we at the same time judge
14 Cf. Summa
Theol., I, q. 1, a. 6 ad 3; I-II, 9-45, a. 2. Also J. Maritain,
"On Knowledge through Connaturality," Review of Metaphysics, IV (1950-51),
483-94; V. White, "Thomism and Affective Knowledge," Blackfriars, XXV
(1944), 321-28; A. Moreno, "The Nature of St. Thomas' Knowledge per connaturalitatem," Angelicum, XLVII (1970), 44-62.

ANALOGICAL TALK OF GOD-AN AFFIRMATIVE REJOINDER

95

that we must reasonably affirm, yet whose precise mode of
being remains always beyond the reach of our determinate
representational images and concepts, but not beyond the
dynamic thrust of our spirit which can express this intentional
reach only through the open-ended flexible concepts and
language we call analogous. Such concepts cannot be considered" empty" save in an inhumanly narrow epistemology.

w. NORRIS CLARKE, s. J.
Fordham University,
New York, N. Y.

ECCLES/A DOCENS:
STRUCTURES OF DOCTRINAL AUTHORITY INTERTULLIAN AND VINCENT

I

N THE CONTROVERSY following the publication of
the encyclical Humanae Vitae, the discussion concerning
ecclesiastical doctrinal authority occupied much more time
than the arguments over the moral issues more directly involved.
The prohibition and condemnation of contraception had to be
upheld, it was maintained, because to do otherwise would mean
introducing an element of serious discontinuity with previous
Catholic teaching. 1 It has been claimed that this preoccupation
with continuity is a trait of the modern Church, especially
of the modern Papacy. It is intriguing to consider whether the
remark of Tertullian in Adversus Praxean referred to similar
concern for continuity c. 200 A. D. The bishop of Rome, according to Tertullian, was on the verge of granting some sort
of recognition and approval to the Montanist movement in Asia
Minor, when the Modalist heretic, Praxeas, dissuaded him with
lies and" ... by (his) insistence on the decisions of the bishop's
predecessors." 2
Continuity, in one form or another, has been a constant concern of the Church. In earlier centuries, this concern could be
summed up in the word" apostolicity." As the first generation
of Christian gentile converts began to pass from the scene and
increasingly discordant versions of the Christian message were
preached, the need for verification of the link with the past became evident. Irenaeus could speak proudly of his direct connection with the Apostle John through Polycarp of Smyrna.
Yet Florinus had had the same experience and Irenaeus con1

2

H. Kling, Infallible? An Inquiry. (Trans. E. Quinn, Garden City, 1971) 54.
Adversus Praxean. 1 (CC
Kroymann & Evans).

96

" ECCLESIA DOCENS "

97

sidered him a heretic.a Papias could proclaim his preference
for the living voice of tradition. Yet his own beliefs, e.g. millenarianism, demonstrated the unreliability of this approach.
Eusebius deemed Papias " a man of exceedingly small intelligence." 4'
The growing dilemma led to increasing pressure for a practical solution. This practical solution was found in combining
the argument from succession, formulated succinctly in Clement
of Rome, with the ever more important officeof the monarchical
episcopate. 5 Gnostics also claimed that their teaching took its
origin from the teaching of the Apostles. As Ptolemy wrote to
Flora: "For with God's help you will learn ... if you are
deemed worthy of knowing the apostolic tradition which we
too have received from a succession ... " 6 The answer to the
Gnostic challenge was formulated by Irenaeus and Tertullian. 7
The basic argument has not changed greatly since that day.
Immutability is the hallmark of Catholic doctrine; variation,
the characteristic of heresy. Bossuet in the 17th century, like
Tertullian in the third, could still pursue this reasoning. 8 As
historical knowledge increased and, more important, the historical mentality took deeper root in the 18th and 19th centuries, this view became untenable. Evolutionary and developmental theories became the fashion of the time. Yet, when it
was a question of Catholic doctrine, only a homogeneous development was acceptable. Catholic doctrine did change, it
was recognized, but always in the sense of progress, always
in the direction of greater clarity and explicitation. As Jossua
has observed, homogeneity came to play in historically aware
• Eus. H. E. V. 20. 4-8. (GCS text (E. Schwartz) in K. Lake, Loeb edition.
Vol. 1 496-8.)
• Eusebius H. E. III. 39.13 (LCL 1.296).
5 Clement
of Rome. 42. 1-2 (K. Lake, Loeb edition 78-80.). The Letters of
Ignatius of Antioch (LCL 172 ff) .
6 Letter of Ptolemy to Flora
(SC 24.68 Quispe!) (Paris, 1949).
• Irenaeus Adversus Haereses III. 3 (SC 211. 30£ Rousseau & Doutreleau)
(Paris, 1974). Tertullian De Praescriptione Haereticorum 36 (CC 1.216-7 Refoule).
8 0. Chadwick From Bossuet to Newman Ch. 1 "Semper Eadem"
(Cambridge
1957).

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ROBERT B. ENO

circles the role that fixity and perenniality had for more conservative minds. 9 Today's problematic is considerably more
complex than this. Even a recent Roman document like Mysterium Ecclesiae (sect. 5) admits the problem of the historicity
of doctrines but then gives it short shrift.
One's view of the ancient solution of apostolic succession
seems highly colored by one's basic ecclesial presuppositions.
Van den Eynde, writing in 1933, found: " In sum, the supreme
norm in doctrinal maters is none other than the Church herself. It is her teaching, a legacy received from the hands of the
Apostles, which serves as a measure for every other doctrinal
source. It is her chiefs, successors of the Apostles, who guard
the tradition and who alone teach the faithful with authority." 10
In other words, van den Eynde found the modern Catholic idea
of an episcopal magisterium in command in the
and 3d
centuries. Swedish Lutheran B. Hagglund, writing in 1958,
came to a different conclusion. " For Irenaeus, the true tradition is nothing else than prophetic and apostolic tradition.
It is false, therefore, to understand this as an explanation of
the content of the Faith by bishops or Church teachers. Its
content coincides rather with Holy Scripture ... The correct
traditw of the Church therefore is a traditw of Holy Scripture." 11
For some Protestant critics, the rise of the notion of Apostolic
tradition, while meant to guarantee unbroken continuity with
the teaching of Christ and the preaching of his disciples, only
succeeded in betraying the lack of such continuity, "The
early Catholic concept of tradition is based upon a dual error.
First of all, there was an historical error, because the tradition
which was claimed to be apostolic did not stem from primitive
•Jean Pierre Jossua "Immutabilite, Progres ou Structurations multiples des
RevScPhTh
(1968) 175.
Doctrines chretiennes?"
10 D. van den Eynde Les Normes de l'Enseignement chretien dans la litterature
patristique des trois premiers siecles (Paris, 1933) , 103.
11 B. Hagglund " Die Bedeutung der 'Regula Fidei' als Grundlage theologischer
Aussagen" Studia Theologica rn (1958) 15-16.

" ECCLESIA DOCENS "

99

Christianity alone. Furthermore, there was an error in principle, for the Church could not exist historically simply by
clinging to a tradition which was understood as a completed
law." 12 The modern evaluation of the ancient idea of apostolicity is itself thoroughly conditioned by the critic's view of
what constitutes the Gospel.
The modern critic, whatever his persuasion, finds a number
of questionable presuppositions behind the ideas of the Fathers:
that the content of Christian faith constitutes a unity and a
totality from the beginning; that this content is definite and
determined from the beginning and, despite the best efforts of
heretics, is destined to remain so forever. How were the ancient
Christians so certain of these presuppositions? How did they
recognize and accept one doctrine as apostolic and reject
another as false and heretical? They accepted what they had
been taught, of course. But what happened if two regions of
the world Church claimed apostolic authority for divergent
customs? This did happen in the Quartodeciman controversy
and the predictable result was conf:lict.13
The solution to the wider question, however, is not so easily
apparent. In their own minds, they just knew what was apostolic, suggests Greenslade. 14 In their view, there could not have
been such divergencies in the age of the Apostles. Such evils
could arise only later. One gets the impression that the belief and
practice of the Church of any given time and place were simply
presumed to be in fact apostolic. Certainly, in the realm of
praxis it is not surprising (to us!) that divergences could arise
in time, slowly and imperceptibly, and these would, locally at
lea.st, be presumed, with the passage of a generation or two, to
be of apostolic origin. 15
12 C. Andresen Die Kirche:n der alten Christe:nheit (Stuttgart,
1971) 688.; G.
Ebeling, The Problem of Historicity (Trans. G. Foley, Phila. 1967) 53.
13 Eus H. E. V. 23-4.
(LCL l.502-512).
14 S. Greenslade "Scripture
and other doctrinal Norms in early Theories of the
Ministry" Journal of Theological Studies 44 (1943) 164.
15 N. Brox, "Altkirchliche
Formen des Anspruchs auf Apostolische Kirchenverfassung " Kairos rn (1970) 123, 129, 116.

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ROBERT B. ENO

What Norbert Brox calls the Church's perennial "Urspr141glichkeitsbediirfnis " led it to look backward to its origins,
seeking especially to justify its present belief and practice by
reference to those foundation stones of the Church, the Apostles.
The argument from Apostolic succession furnished the basic instrument for this justification. 16 As the centuries passed and
the time of the Apostles became more distant, problems became
more complex. Correspondingly, the Church's instruments, its
mechanisms, for dealing with these problems, especially doctrinal problems, within the framework of apostolicity, became
more sophisticated. This process of growing complexity and
the initial development of some mechanisms of defence and decision can be traced in two early Western documents dealing explicitly with questions of innovation and continuity. These are
the De Praescriptione llaereticorum of Tertullian (c. 203 A. D.)
and the Commonitorium of Vincent of Lerins (c. 434 A. D.).

II
Faced not only by the teachings of the Gnostics and their
threat to the coherence of the Christian Church, but especially
by the Gnostic claim to be passing on to its adepts the real
teachings of Jesus, albeit esoteric ones fit only for the illuminati, Christian thinkers developed a line of argumentation
which has become standard throughout the later history of the
Church's resistance to heresy. The elements of authority and
succession in ministers of the local Church are found variously
in earlier strata. It was left to Irenaeus and then Tertullian to
combine these elements and weld them into a theory of authority for the future as well as a weapon against the troubles
of the present.
Although Tertullian authored several treatises against a
16 Reference
to the past, as later times would show, could be used as an
instrument for innovation under the banner of reform. See J. Preus " Theological
Legitimation for Innovation in the Middle Ages" Viator. Medieval and Renaissance
Studies Vol. 3 (1972) 1-26. Also K. Morrison, Tradition and Authority in the
Western Church, 300-1140. (Chicago, 1969) 7.

" ECCLESIA DOCENS "

101

variety of enemies, both individual and collective, he hoped
in his treatise on prescription to forge a weapon that would
serve as a " short way with heretics," a general historical proof
of the truth of Catholic doctrines rather than a detailed refutation of the tenets of any particular heretic. The object of
interest here is not the question of the prescription or prescriptions in this work,17 but the question of whether or not Tertullian sees in any Church office or structure a mechanism empowered to distinguish between doctrinal error and truth. Does
Tertullian see in the Church of his own time .someone or something that has the authority to decide whether a given doctrine
or practice is compatible with the teaching of Christ?
The offices or structures, the " mechanisms " of doctrinal
authority of which the modern Catholic immediately thinks,
namely, the Papacy and/or councils of bishops are clearly not
within Tertullian'.s view when he discusses questions of doctrinal
import. In two late works, from his Montanist period, he mentions councils. In one instance, he remarks that the Pastor
Hermae has been rejected by numerous councils from the accepted Scriptures. Moreover, he distinguishes between Catholic
and Montanist councils.18 In the De leiunio he speaks of councils being held throughout Greece. The subjects of their discussions are not .specified. Although Tertullian says that they
treated " certain deep issues," the whole fleeting reference
comes in the context of a discussion of obligatory fasts,
specifically the Montanist Xerophagies. 19
There are also a few clear or problematical references to the
Church of Rome in Tertulliam's later works. In the well-known
attack on the bishop who proclaimed his authority to forgive
sins of adultery and fornication, Tertullian sarcastically refers
to his opponent as a " bishop of bishops " and a " Pontifex
11 On the prescriptions,
see D. Michaelides, Foi, Ecritures et Tradition. Les
Praescriptiones chez Tertullien. (Paris, 1969), and J. Stirnimann, Die Praescriptio
Tertullians im Lichte des romischen Rechts und der Theologie. (Fribourg, 1949).
18 De Pudicitia 10.12 (CC 2:
1301. Dekkers.).
19 De leiunio 13.6 (CC 2: 1272. Reifl'erscheid & Wissowa).

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ROBERT B. ENO

maximus." 20 Many scholars have seen in this adversary not
only a bishop of Rome but specifically, Callistus (217-22) . In
1914, Adhemar D' Ales even wrote a book on this "Edict of
Callistus." In fact, of course, no one has proved definitively
that the target of Tertullian's righteous indignation was really
a Roman bishop. A sizable number of scholars opt rather for
a bishop of Carthage, probably Agrippinus.
The other incident involving Rome is that referred to in
passing at the beginning. Praxeas is accused of having turned
the Roman bishop against the prophecies of Montanus, Prisca
and Maximilla just as he was on the verge of " recognizing "
them and offering peace to the Churches of Asia and Phrygia. 21
The exact meaning of what Tertullian is describing is not clear;
less clear still, in view of his Montanist bias, is the relation between what he describes and what actually happened. What
does emerge is the very general conclusion that, in Tertullian's
mind, Roman approval of the New Prophecy would have been
a prestigious gain for it.
The incidents mentioned in which the Roman bishop or
Greek councils were involved are concerned basically with problems of discipline. To be sure, many disciplinary issues have
doctrinal implications or repercussions. Moreover, Tertullian's
own notion of disciplina has been shown to include elements
we would now classify as doctrinal. 22 Yet, at least it can be said
that the issues in question are not to be found in the regula
fidei. Here it should be pointed out that the regula fidei is the
faith itself (fides quae). The rule is not an external criterion
or an outside measuring device whereby individual tenets of the
faith are either tested and approved or found wanting and rejected. 23
De Pudicitia 1.6 (CC 2: 1281-2).
Adversus Praxean 1 (CC 2.1159) " ... agnosccntem iam prophetias ... et ex ea
agnitione pacem ecclesiis Asiae et Phrygiae inferentem .. ,"
22 V. Morel, "Le Developpement
de la 'Disciplina' sous !'Action du Saint-Esprit
chez Tcrtullien" RevHisEccl 35 (1939) 263.
23 F. Refoule, Introduction
to: Tertullien: Traite de "la Prescription contre les
Heretiques, (SC 46, 51-2) (Paris, 1957).
20

21

" ECCLESIA DOCENS "

103

This regula is of the greatest significance for Tertullian. For
him there can be no question that it has been handed down whole
and entire from Jesus himself as a simple, unified, definite and
determined corpus of doctrine. 24 Christ taught these things to
his Apostles and they are the key figures for the transmission
of this faith, not only to their own age but to all subsequent
ages as well. All centuries of the time of the Church receive
the teaching of Christ as handed on from Christ to the Apostles
and from them to the Churches they founded. " This is my
basic principle: that a single and definite doctrine has been
taught by Christ which the world must believe absolutely ... " 20
We come into contact with the teaching of Christ always
mediately, through the Apostles. They are our auctores.26 If,
as Tertullian believed, the teaching of Christ is a single, unified,
definite and determined corpus of doctrine, it was the prime
task of the Apostles to pass it on unchanged to those whom
they converted. In the course of developing this line of thought,
Tertullian answers various objections. Christ did not have a
secret doctrine he communicated to some while giving another
teaching to the masses. If there were such a secret doctrine,
who would have received it but these same disciples? On the
contrary, they were fully instructed in the very schola Chnsti. 21
Similarly, it is incredible that the Apostles themselves would
have taught an esoteric doctrine different from their public
preaching. Again, if such a special teaching existed, who would
have been its recipients but the leaders of the Churches founded
by the Apostles? The deposit of faith committed to the Apostles
is not a secret one. 28
Thus all heresies are proved to be that worst of evils, innovations, attempts at twisting or distorting one or another
teaching handed down by the Apostles. By its very nature, the
•• B. Hagglund, Art. Cit. 85.
De Praescriptione Haereticorum. 9.8 (CC 1.195 Refou!e.).
•• Prae. 6.4 (CC 1.191).
27 Prae. 22.8-5 (CC 1.208) Scorpiace 12.l
(CC 2.1092 Reifferscheid & Wissowa),
•• Prae. 26.Sf. (CC 1.208); Prae. 25.8 (CC 1.206).
25

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ROBERT B. ENO

divine truth has priority over falsehood. The original must
come before the imitation. 29 It does no good to argue that the
entire Church around the world has strayed from the truth. If
such errors had crept in, variations inevitably would be the result. Yet, as all can see, the Churches in different parts of the
world all teach the same doctrine. Heresies are developments
of the times after Christ, although their coming was predicted. 30
This truth handed on faithfully by the Apostles and their
successors is found in the regula fidei. The regula is the doctrina and the Scriptures are the instrumenta doctrinae. 31 Unfortunately for the apologist, the heretics also make use of the
same Scriptures. They, however, interpret them in an incorrect and perverse way, through either mutilating them
(Marcion) or simply twisting the meaning to their own purposes. Hence the need to emphasize the regula as the traditional teaching of the Church found throughout the earth.
"Where true Christian discipline and faith are found, there
will be the true Scriptures, the true interpretations and all the
true Christian traditions." 32 Even in the late work, De
Pudicitia, when his own earlier arguments were being turned
against him, he was still able to write: "From the beginning
they have fashioned the very substance of their doctrine to
agree with the details of the parables. Of course, since they are
not bound by the rule of faith, they are free to hunt up and
piece together things which seem to be typified by the parable.
We, however, do not fashion doctrines using the parables as
raw materials, but rather, we interpret the parables on the basis
of our doctrines." 33
Tertullian has already arrived at a well-known dilemma.
What is to be taught as Christian doctrine is to be found in
Prae. 35.3 (CC 1.216); Adversus Marcionem 4.5.1 (CC 1.550-1. Kroymatnn),
Prae. 28 (CC 1.209); Prae. 30.4 (CC 1.210-11).
31 Prae. 38.2-3 (CC 1.218).
32 Prae. 19.3 (CC 1.201).
33 De Pud. 8.12-9.1 (CC 2.1296).
29

30

" ECCLESIA DOCENS "

105

Sacred Scripture, yet these Scriptures do not explain themselves. Thus the traditional teaching of the Church is to be
taken as the correct and orthodox interpretation of what the
teaching of Christ was as the Apostles handed it down. He
mentions the Holy Spirit as the " vicaria vis . . . qui credentes
agat" and the "Christi vicarius" who could not have allowed
the Churches to believe otherwise than he preached through
the Apostles. Yet he never develops this thought very much. 34
Tertullian does not yet have any mechanism or structure in
the earthly Church which is itself a God-given authority enabled to judge between truth and falsehood in doctrine. Offices
and structures like the Roman primacy or the council are barely seen in Tertullian. The monarchical episcopate has moved
much beyond the embryonic stage although it does not occupy
a very large amount of space in Tertullian's thoughts as
mirrored in his writings.
One possible exception to this statement is to be found in
the De Praesoriptione. My contention is that Tertullian's use
of the episcopate in this work does not involve an appeal to an
authoritative office as such but an appeal to historical verification. It is the capstone of Tertullian's argument that the
teaching of Christ as transmitted by the Apostles has been
handed down faithfully and unaltered by the succession of bishops of the local communities which make up the world Church.
He places special but not exclusive emphasis on the local
Churches founded by the Apostles themselves. Yet all the
Churches founded later by missionaries from these primordial
Churches are apostolic by " consanguinitas doctrinae." 85
To sustain his claim of complete doctrinal continuity and
consistency, Tertullian appeals to the evidence of the universal
Church, especially as seen in the local Churches founded by
•• Prae. 13.5 (CC 1.198); Prae. 28.1. (CC 1.209). To be sure, in his later
works, the Paraclete takes on ever increasing importance. Even here, Tertullian
is careful to insist that there is no change in doctrine, only a greater progress in
disciplina (in the direction of ever greater rigorism) .
85 Prae. 32.6 (CC 1.213) .

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ROBERT B. ENO

Apostles. The basis of argumentation is still to be found in the
idea of succession, a notion which Tertullian describes in almost the exact words of Clement of Rome. The Apostles in
their missionary preaching founded local Churches. They, who
had received the integral teaching from Christ, passed this on
to these same Churches with the exhortation and warning not
to adulterate or distort this work of the Lord. 86
The lesson is that one who is seriously seeking the true
teaching of Christ and his Apostles must go to these same
Churches. Such Churches are conveniently scattered about
the Roman world so that they may be consulted with relative
ease wherever the sincere seeker may be located. Rome is
the apostolic church of record for Carthage as well as the whole
West. It is outstanding for its association with not just one but
three Apostles and these, the leaders of the Apostolic band. 87
The uniformity of this apostolic teaching found the world over
in these ancient Churches as well as their offshoots is proof that
they have preserved the Lord's teaching undefiled. These
Churches are the matrices et originales fidei.88
Yet in all this, there is no hint of automatic acceptance of
a doctrine because it is proposed by an authoritative person or
structure. Doctrines taught by Christ and handed on by the
Apostles are to be accepted, of course. But this is precisely the
question: What are these doctrines? Tertullian does not appeal
to an authoritative individual or body which is viewed as
having the power to decide what the teaching of the apostles
is in the contemporary world. Neither the bishop of an apostolically founded Church nor his community is to decide what
that teaching is. They are simply to pass on what they have
received intact to the next generation and to other newly
86 Clement of Rome 4!U-2
(LCL 78-80); Prae. 37.1 (CC 1.217); Prae. 21.4
(CC 1.203); Prae. 20.5 (CC 1.202).
87 Prae. 32, 36 (CC 1.212-3; 216-7).
Peter, Paul and John. Tertullian is the
earliest instance of the apocryphal tradition in which John was thrown into
boiling oil in Rome in an unsuccessful attempt at execution.
•• Prae. 21.4 (CC 1.202) .

" ECCLESIA DOCENS "

107

founded Churches. The apostolicity of persons or offices is
totally subordinated to the apostolicity of what it is they are
commissioned to transmit. 39 The structures of the local Churches
are not the masters of this doctrine but its servants. They are
not its makers, but its witnesses and purveyors. 40 In fine,
Tertullian's arguments are not an appeal to structures of authority, but an historical appeal to the preservation of the apostolic preaching in the public teaching of the Churches founded
directly or indirectly by the Apostles. The basic structure of
doctrinal authority, the episcopate, was already in place. Papal
and conciliar structures developed from it. Yet the episcopate
is still viewed as subordinate to and controlled by the teaching
it has received from the past.

III.
In the approximately 230 years separating the two related
works of Tertullian and Vincent of Lerins, the whole world was
transformed and turned upside down. The Western empire,
for Tertullian the bulwark holding off the end, 41 now was in
disarray, divided up among barbarian invaders. Christianity,
the once suspect and hounded sect, had become the official
religion of the empire. Wracked by dissension in the Arian and
Donati.st controversies as well as by a host of lesser contentions,
it nevertheless could boast of having enjoyed the devoted service of most of the leading minds of late antiquity. Throughout the trials of the fourth century, the Church had envisaged
its task in exactly the same way as always: to preserve and
hand on intact the deposit of faith. But at the same time, there
had been considerable developmental growth in the structures
and offices of doctrinal authority, notably the monarchical
episcopate in its divergent forms as manifested in the Roman
primacy and the ecumenical council. By the time of the Council
of Ephesus (431), the conciliar structure had become the prin•• F. Refoule, Traite (SC 46,
Prae. 6.3-4 (CC 1.191).
41 Apologeticum
(CC
40

Dekkers).

108

ROBERT B. ENO

cipal means of confronting serious and widespread doctrinal disagreements.
Augustine, who died in Hippo as preparations for the Council
of Ephesus were being made in the East, apparently attributed
supreme authority to this organ of the Church and the bishops.
In his lengthy debates with the Donatists, Augustine was faced
with the embarrassing task of admitting that Cyprian had been
wrong in his views on the re baptism of heretics. Yet he attempted to exculpate the great African hero-martyr, at least
partially, by recalling that the question in his day was still
basically an open one. Since Cyprian's time, a plenary council
had spoken and the consensus of the Church had been made
clear, thus depriving the Donatists of any excuse or of any
further justification for carrying on the old practices. 42
Individual authors may err, local councils may be wrong. All
must give way to the authority of plenary councils. 43 Augustine
wrote in the context of trying to show that, however exalted
Cyprian's position in the African Church, his opinion could
not be considered infallible against the decision of the Church
as a whole expressed in later plenary councils. While Augustine's statement about later councils correcting (improving?)
earlier ones is much disputed, his views of the plenary council
as having a final authority are clear. What is not clear is what
he means by a plenary council. He states that earlier plenary
councils have "often" been corrected by later ones but when
Augustine wrote (c. 400-1), only Nicaea was commonly accepted in the West as an ecumenical council in the modern
sense. Obviously what we mean by an ecumenical council cannot simply be equated with Augustine's "plenary" council.
Some thirty-three years after Augustine's De Baptismo and
Augustine De Baptismo 1.18.28 (BibAug 29.116-120. Paris, 1964).
Augustine De Baptismo 2.3.4. (BibAug 29.132-4). On Augustine's views
on councils, see: F. Hofmann, "Die Bedeutung der Konzilien fiir die kirchliche
Lehrentwicklung nach dem heiligen Augustinus" 81-89. (in) J. Betz and H. Fries,
hrsg. Kirche und Uberlieferung, Freiburg, 1960.; more recently, H. J. Sieben,
"Zur Entwicklung der Konzilsidee" Part 4: Augustine and (for what follows)
Part 5: Vincent. Theologie und Philosophie 46 (1971) 364-386; 496-528.
42

43

" ECCLESIA DOCENS "

109

in the wake of the council of Ephesus, Vincent, a monk of
Lerins, an island off the coast of S. Gaul, wrote the second work
of interest to us as one of the few ancient treatments dealing
explicitly with the questions of doctrine, orthodoxy and authority. Not without a certain irony, it has been suggested
that the work was discreetly but pointedly aimed at Augustine
and his supporters. Feeling that Augustine in his declining
years had gone too far in his writings on grace and predestination, Vincent, the argument goes, brought up the cases of
Origen and Tertullian to assert that however great any individual author, he is not guaranteed immunity from error. Yet
so great was Augustine's reputation after his death that this
polemic had to be carried on without so much as a mention
of his name. 44 In any event, the solution to the question of
Vincent's view of Augustine is no part of this essay.
Depite the more than two centuries separating them and the
developments of these two centuries, there is a surprising continuity between Tertullian and Vincent. Like Tertullian,
Vincent is aware of the difficulties of relying on Scripture alone
for settling doctrinal disputes. The same text is interpreted in
quite diverse fashions by different people. In fact, heretics are
very zealous in their insistence on Scripture. The heretic will
scour the Scriptures to present thousands of examples and testimonies to support his own ideas. They are well aware that
this is the surest way to ensnare the innocent and the gullible. 45
Like Tertullian, Vincent knows that something more is needed
beyond the authority of Scripture. This something extra is
basically the Scriptures as interpreted by the tradition of the
Church. 46
44 For a negative view on this question, see:
W. O'Connor. "St. Vincent of
Lerins and St. Augustine" Doctor Communis 16 (1963) rn3-257.
45 Vincent of Lerins.
Commonitorium (ed. by Adolf Jiilicher, Tiibingen, 1925)
2, 26, 25 (Jiilicher 3, 42, 39).
46 Comm. 29
(Jiilicher 46); "Non quia canon solus non sibi ad universa
sufficiat, sed quia verba divina pro suo plerique arbitratu interpretantes varias
opiniones erroresque concipiant, atque ideo necesse sit, ut ad unam ecclesiastici
sensus regulam scripturae caelestis intelligentia dirigatur."

110

ROBERT B. ENO

Vincent had much more history to look back over than did
Tertullian. It is not surprising then that there is less direct and
obvious reference to the Apostles in Vincent. Yet, once again,
the basic argument of both Vincent and Tertullian is the same,
though expressed differently. Tertullian had taken, as a basic
axiom, the temporal priority of truth over truth's counterfeit.
The original must predate its imitation. Vincent's more sophisticated appeal to antiquity, universality and consent rests on
the presumption that the authentic tradition is ancient and
error is novel. In Vincent, too, the apostolic is there as the
basic datum but because the time of the Apostles is so much
more distant, the reaching back is that much more tortuous,
the dangers that much more numerous and subtle.
With the usual presupposition that the Apostles have handed
down the teaching of Christ whole and entire and that it is
the task of each Christian generation to do exactly the same,
Vincent outlines his solution of how this is to be accomplished.
Scripture does not interpret itself. Such interpretation must
be directed " according to the norm of the ecclesiastical and
catholic sense." 47 In short, one must cling to that which has
been taught ubique, semper and has been accepted ab omnibus.
This alone can be considered truly and properly Catholic. New
and questionable developments are ruled out by the requirement for antiquity. False teachings which may give the impression of antiquity will be eliminated from consideration in
a restricted area. The Christian must eschew the craving for
novelty and cling to the " tradita et recepta semel antiquitus
credendi regula." 48
Vincent begins his work by speaking of the doctrines handed
down by the ancestors and deposited with us. These doctrines,
however, are not simply entrusted to individuals. The Church
is to be " the loyal and careful guardian of what has been entrusted to her." 49 Is this any different from Tertullian? Basi"Comm. 2 (Jiilicher 8).
' 8 Comm. 21 (Jiilicher 81).
• 9 Comm. 28 (Jiilicher 86).

" ECCLESIA DOCE'NS "

111

cally, no. The Catholic of Tertullian's time, after all, was not
left on his own. Specifically he was directed to consult the
Churches founded by the Apostles. For Tertullian, what the
Apostolic Churches taught was traced back to the Apostles.
There was a de facto consensus among all these local Churches
at any given time although they did not through their representatives come together to express it formally.
For Vincent, this appeal has been replaced by a more formal
mechanism. Instead of the simple appeal to antiquity and universality, there was an historically more verifiable appeal to
consent as expressed in the councils. If there arises some question about error in antiquity, the inquirer will .seek out the
decrees of a previous ecumenical council to solve his doubt.
These councils have not decreed anything new; rather they
have made more clear or explicit what had been believed before confusion was introduced by the wiles of heretics. The authoritative decrees of such councils, basing themselves on the
faith of the Fathers, fix and make more definite the regula fidei.
It is not lawful to scorn such conciliar decisions. 50
Vincent's vocabulary demonstrates the development and importance of these structures of doctrinal authority. In times of
heretical attack, the teachings of the past are in danger:
" superiorum instituta violantur . . . rescinduntur scita patrum ... " 51 In contrast to these rather vague terms, Vincent
with growing frequency speaks of the <lecreta and definita of
councils. The decrees of an ecumenical council are always to
be preferred to the temerity of a small group of individuals.
These councils have combatted heresy by explicitating the
beliefs of the ancients in their decreta. The decisions of the
council of Ephesus, guided by God (divinitus) are apostolic
and catholic <lecreta. When heretics distort the deposit of truth,
councils take what has been handed down in tradition and render it more secure and sure by confirming Catholic tradition in
clear and concise documents. 52
5

°Comm. 3, 23, 28, 33 (Jiilicher 4, 36, 46, 52).

51

52

Comm. 4 (Jiilicher 5-6).
Comm. 3, 27, 23, 33 (Jiilicher 4, 43, 36, 51-2).

lH

ROBERT B. ENO

With the focus on councils, there is less stress on apostolic
sees. Alexandria and Antioch receive scarce attention. Rome
receives special mention for its efforts for orthodoxy on two
occasions. Rome, for Vincent, is the Apostolic See. The bishops
of Rome are " the blessed successors of the blessed Apostles,"
the Apostles referred to being not the Twelve but Peter and
Paul. Stephen is applauded for resisting the African custom
of rebaptizing heretics. Stephen outdid others in his devotion
to the faith as he surpassed others" loci auctoritate." But, the
reference to Stephen comes in the context of praise for individuals of the past who combatted heretical novelties rather
than praise for institutions. In Vincent's own time, Popes
Celestine and Sixtus III are lauded for their efforts during and
after the Council of Ephesus. But attention is centered on the
Council itself. 58
Yet there were many doctrines and controversies that countcils had never treated. How was the tradition of the Fathers
to be safeguarded in these cases? In this instance, one is thrown
back on the views of the Christian thinkers and writers of the
past. Here Vincent sees the need for great care. After all, one
of his purposes in writing is to warn against the exaggerated
esteem accorded to some individuals which has led to difficulties in the Church. Whether it be Tertullian or Origen in
older days (17-18) or Nestorius in his own day (11) , individuals, however brilliant or great, can go astray. The shining
example of a dedicated life can be tarnished and destroyed in
the end by pride. Why does God permit it? Vincent never
tires of repeating Deut. 13: 1-4 concerning false prophets:
" The Lord is testing you ... " Clever heretics seek to justify
their notions by bringing forward alleged support from the
more obscure passages of some ancient author who cannot
explain or defend himself. They not only seek to deceive the
.living but bring insult and disgrace on the dead whose shortcomings should have been buried in silence. 54
58

54

Comm. 6,
(Jiilicher 8, 50-1).
Comm. 7 (Jiilicher 9).

" ECCLESIA DOCENS "

113

Therefore, if a past conciliar decision is lacking, one must
turn for guidance to the writers of the past. The essential thing
is to seek a consensus of the past and not to be satisfied with
the opinions of only one or two authors. This consensus entails
the unanimous or nearly unanimous definitions and op1mons
of the bishops and doctors. More specifically,
He will seek answers from the Fathers; he will compare their
opm10ns. He will seek especially for what has been taught in
different times and different places by men who remained in
communion with the faith of the Church and who have come to be
considered approved teachers (magistri probabiles) . Everything
that they have affirmed, written, taught, not just as individuals,
not just two or three of them, but all of them together, in complete
agreement, openly and often, with persistence-all this a Catholic
can believe without hesitation. 55
As soon as a hersy is detected, those who are diligent in the
defence of the faith must set about collecting the opinions of
the ancients with a view to refuting the error. Vincent later
repeats a string of adverbs qualifying these collected opinions
of the Fathers-what has been held and received " uno
eodemque sensu manifeste frequenter perseveranter." It should
be, he adds, as if one were listening to a council of these magistri.
Lacking a council, we must seek the " consensus of the great
teachers." 56
Here the two concepts join, the authoritative council and
the collected views of the Fathers. Both are expressions of
consensus, the first unified in time and place; the second,
gathering opinions from men widely scattered in country and
century. The defenders of the faith of old clung tenaciously
and faithfully to the decrees and definitions of all the priests
of the Holy Church. " Who ever started a heresy except the
one who first cut himself off from the consensus of the universal
and ancient Catholic Church? " 57
55 Comm. 2, 3 (Jiilicher 3, 4) " ... omnes pariter nno eodemque consensu aperte
frequenter perserveranter tenuisse scripsisse docuisse cognoverit ... "
56 Comm. 28, 27 (Jiilicher 44, 43) .
57 Comm. 5, 24 (Jiilicher 7, 38) .

114

ROBERT B. ENO

At the recently concluded council of Ephesus, Cyril of Alexandria had introduced a florilegium of patristic texts to support
his position against Nestorius. By divine inspiration (divinitus),
comments Vincent, the Fathers of the council decreed that all
must adhere to the tradition represented by the ancients. This
indeed was a sacred aonsensio inspired by the gift of heavenly
grace. In the Council of Ephesus, there was found, in Vincent's
view, the agreement of the Bishops accepting the consensus
of the Fathers, to proclaim in unambiguous terms the truth of
the faith handed down from the beginning. "Wherefore, neither
the apostolic definitions nor the ecclesiastical decrees may be
scorned, by which in accordance with the holy consensio of
universality and antiquity, all heretics of all the ages ... have
been condemned . . ." 58

IV.
Madoz, author of one of the few monographs on Vincent, has
complained of his excessively historical 59 bias and the fact
that the hierarchy as ecclesia docens plays such a secondary
role in the treatise. This observation is correct. Despite the
centuries intervening, the arguments of both Tertullian and
Vincent remain appeals to historical verification of the claim
that the orthodox teaching of the Church of any century is
that teaching which has been faithfully handed down and
preserved from the Apostles themselves. Tertullian appeals to
the local Churches as living witnesses of the undistorted
teachings of Christ. Preeminent among these are the Churches
founded by the Apostles themselves, of which again Rome is
the outstanding example. But in theory at least, any local
Church founded by the Apostles, directly or indirectly, can
fulfill Tertullian's requirements. Historically, each one can
trace the line of its bishops back to the founding Apostle or
missionary. It is an historically verifiable genealogy, that is
58
69

Comm. 33 (Jiilicher 51-2).
J. Madoz, El Concepto de la Tradicion en S. Vfoente de Lerins 166. (Rome:

1933, Analecta Gregoriana 5).

" ECCLESIA DOCEiNS "

115

also a pedigree of doctrine. The key figure emerging in Tertullian's discussion, as in the whole rationale of apostolic succession, is the monarchical bishop. Yet, at this early date, his
position is still primarily one of witness to that which he has
received from those who came before him.
Vincent, writing in 434, remains largely in the .same line.
There is less explicit and direct mention of Apostles. Yet they
are very much there. The appeal to universality, antiquity and
consent is still almost entirely an appeal to historical verification. The important institutional development is the rise of
the council of bishops, especially the ecumenical council. But
even this is seen largely within the perspective of historical
verification that the contemporary doctrine of the Church is
that of the Church of the Apostles.
The council is seen as an authoritative body, a structure of
doctrinal authority in the world Church. But it derives its authority from the proclamation of the truth and the deposit
of faith handed down from the Apostles. Lacking a council,
the faithful Christian seeks to adhere to the consensus of the
Fathers who are, as it were, a council of magistri. The council
of bishops must do essentially the same thing-it discerns the
teaching of the past and denounces modern innovations and
errors. The appeal is still to the past, the verification and renewed proclamation of the teaching of the Apostles rather
than to the contemporary authority of the council as a structure composed of authoritative office holders. We are, in the
fifth century, still at a point in which the teaching proclaimed
is the authoritative agent rather than the body proclaiming the
teaching. The monarchical bishop of Tertullian's argument
and the ecumenical council of Vincent's are still the witnesses
to the truth, not its masters.
ROBERT

The Catholic University of America
Washington, D. C.

B. ENO, s. s.

ACTION, PERSONHOOD, AND FACT-VALUE

T

HE FACT-VALUE issue-whether or not values can
be derived from facts or "ought" from "is "-has
emerged as the fundamental problem in contemporary
ethical and value theory. 1 For what is at stake is the validity
of ethical and value judgments as such. In its usual form, however, the problem seems virtually insoluble. As we shall see,
it is fallacious to derive value solely from fact. On the other
hand, it is also mistaken to hold that value has no relation to
fact, that values are arbitrarily postulated by private emotive
preferences, or that they are somehow mysteriously intuited.
The fact-value problem, then, is a dilemma; both alternatives
or horns are equally unacceptable. This is enough indication
that it is a pseudo-problem based upon a false dualism between
fact and value. In our original experience-which we shall
see is action-fact and value are not separate but interconnected. In reflection we .separate them and assume that they
are also separate in experience, thus creating the fact-value
dualism. Our task then becomes one of trying to join together
what we have sundered by asking whether value can be derived
from fact. However, as is the case with other dualismswhether spirit and matter, subject and object, or thought and
action-once a gulf is made between two fundamental categories of reality, bridging it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible.
The aim of this article is to overcome the fact-value dualism
by showing how value originates in action, and that action,
properly understood, constitutes the primary level of human
1 See, for example, W. D. Hudson, ed., The Is-Ought Question (New York:
St.
Martin's Press, 1969). See also Kenneth Pahel and Marvin Schiller, eds., Readings
in Contemporary Ethical Theory (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall,
Inc., 1970), pp. 1-IS!'l.

116

ACTIONS,

PERSONHOOD,

AND FACT-VALUE

117

activity and experience. To make this point, in Part I I shall
briefly present three basic aspects of human nature or per.sonhood: mutuality, agency, and reason. 2 Then in Part II I shall
examine the bearing of this anthropology on the origin and
nature of value in general, focussing upon the fact-value issue.
Space does not permit me to develop specific modes or types
of value.

I. Anthropological Foundations
A. The Mutuality of the Personal
Much of traditional philosophy-especially Modern philosophy since Descartes-has adopted the individualistic conception of the person. According to this view, man is constituted
as a person independently of his relations with other per.sons;
sociality, culture, and community are peripheral or accidental
rather than fundamental or essential to human personhood.
On the other hand, there have been other currents of thought,
especially in the twentieth century, which are strongly antiindividualistic. Thinkers such as Buber/ Marcel,4 and Macmurray, 5 not to mention the behavioral sciences, have emphasized the mutuality of the personal. According to this view,
interpersonal relatedness pertains to the core or essence of personhood; the unit of personal existence is not " I " but " You
and I " ; and the fundamental or primary human reality is the
entire field of persons-in-relation. This field by definition in2 For a fuller development of these three themes-especially
reason-see my "A
Personalist Theory of Human Reason," International Philosophical Quarterly, XIV,
No. 2 (1974), pp. 161-80.
8 I and Thou, trans. by Ronald Gregor Smith, Scribner Library
(2nd ed.; New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958) .
•The Mystery of Being, trans. by G. S. Fraser and Rene Hague, Vol. I:
Reflection and Mystery, Vol. II: Faith and Reality, Gateway Edition (Chicago:
Henry Regnery Company, 1960).
5 The Form of the Personal, Vol. I:
The Self as Agent; Vol. II: Persons in
Relation (London: Faber and Faber Limited; New York: Harper and Row, 1957
and 1961). I am indebted to Macmurray for a number of important ideas in this
paper. See also my own study, John Macmurray's Logical Form of the Personal:
A Critical Exposition (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Fordham University, 1970).

118

WALTER G. JEFFKO

eludes all persons, and is the inclusive context and matrix for
all aspects of experience, culture, and individuality. There is
nothing that can be called truly personal that is not related to
and not dependent upon the mutuality of persons. Even an
individual's biological makeup is transmitted in and through
the interpersonal context; it depends upon the procreation of
persons. 6
As including all persons, the mutuality of the personal refers
to both the direct and indirect relations of persons. The first
involves face-to-face contact, or personal acquaintance. The
second lacks this quality, yet the persons involved are related
to each other politically, economically, or metaphysically. I
am politically related to those Americans on the West Coast
whom I do not know, since we all belong to the same nation.
I am economically related to those Italians who built and exported my automobile. And I am metaphysically related to
the people of India and China, for we are all members of the
human family; we are all brothers under the fatherhood of God.
Since there are some four billion people on earth, it is clear that
the vast majority of interpersonal relations are indirect rather
than direct. Still, the direct relations are the basis for the indirect ones; without the direct relations of persons there would
be no indirect relations.
Mutuality's emphasis on relatedness, however, does not deny
the reality and importance of personal individuality. On the
contrary, the mutuality of the personal is its necessary condition; it is only in and through the interpersonal context that
the individual can exist and grow. Both relationality and individuality are essential dimensions of personhood; neither by
itself constitutes a person's total reality. Still, relationality is
primary, while individuality-both that which is given at birth
and that acquired after birth-is secondary and derivative, yet
necessary. On the other hand, for individualism, individuality
is primary and relationality is secondary. 7
Unless otherwise indicated, " person " refers solely to human persons.
• Although thinkers such as Hegel and Marx emphasize man as fundamentally

6

ACTIONS,

PERSONHOOD,

AND FACT-VALUE

119

For individualism, the realm of persons-in-relation is an
" aggregate " ; for the mutuality of the personal, it is a " field."
An aggregate is a group whose members are extrinsically related to each other, e.g., a heap of stones. Take away the
heap, take away the extrinsic relations among the stones, and
each stone retains its full individuality. Similarly, for individualism, take away the relations of persons and each person
is left intact in his individuality. Each person is first fullyconstituted as an individual person in his own right and then,
as a secondary and peripheral moment of his existence, becomes
related to other persons. This aggregate view of persons-inrelation can be seen in the early Modern social-contract theory
of society, in Descartes' conception of personhood as cogito, and
in the Aristotelian-Scholastic definition of man as a rational
substance in which relation is merely an "accident." On the
other hand, the field theory holds that the relations among persons are intrinsic to their personhood; take away the relations
among persons, and one ipso facto takes away the persons who
hitherto were related. For the aggregate theory, there can be
an" I" in isolation; for the :field theory, there is no "I" apart
from the" I-You" relationship.
The foregoing emphasis on man as person does not suggest
some kind of dualism between him and Nature or cosmos. For
just as an individual person needs an Other with which to
interact, so also does the whole field of persons need its own
Other. This Other is the rest of reality: God, social institutions,
Nature, and matter. Hence, the mutuality of the personal implicitly involves the totality of reality; there is no aspect of
reality that is not related to it in some way. Moreover, since
the whole field of persons-in-relation is related to the other
levels of reality, so also are individual persons related to them,
although not in the same way as they are related to other perrelational, they do so at the expense of his individuality.
For Hegel, the
individual person is swallowed up by the Absolute and by the State. For Marx,
the individual person lacks any real transcendence to Nature and to social
institutions in general.

120

WALTER G. JEFFKO

sons. Still, the central matrix of human activity is the mutuality of persons.
B. Person as Agent
Granted that man is fundamentally relational rather than
an individual, what does interpersonal relatedness consist of?
My view is that it consists primarily of action rather than
thought; action is ipso faoto interaction; it is inherently interrelational.8 The self (or person) cannot act in isolation; he
needs the Other with which to interact. Thought, on the other
hand, is a private and inward activity. In reflection the self
withdraws from active relation with others into himself and
his world of ideas. In this sense it is individualistic. Action
corresponds to the relational aspect of mutuality; thought as
such corresponds to its individual aspect. This does not mean,
however, that thought has no relation to the Other. Such an
assertion would be manifestly false. In action the Other is
given originally and directly; in thought the Other is given
derivatively and indirectly, through the mediation and representation of concepts and symbols. Thought, then, is individualistic in its intention, although it is relational in its
reference and, indeed, must be for it to be true. Action, on the
other hand, is relational in its very intention. Moreover, in
view of the relational character of action, it has a collective
dimension: not only does it involve a singular agent interacting
with a non-personal Other, but more significantly a plurality
of agents in concert. As such it includes both the direct and
indirect relations of persons.
The self, then, exists as primarily agent and secondarily as
thinker; the self's being lies primarily in his agency and only
secondarily in his thinking capacity. This can also be seen by
analyzing the inner constitution of thought and action. Action
8 Cf. The Self as Agent.
For an anthology of different views on various aspects
of action, see Myles Brand, ed., The Nature of Human Action (Glenview,
Illinois: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1970). See also my own article,
"Thought, Action, and Personhood," The Modern Schoolman, Lii, No. 3 (1975),
pp. 271-83.

ACTIONS,

PERSONHOOD,

AND FACT-VALUE

in comparison with thought is a much more inclusive activity
of the self. In thought the " mind " alone is active; in action
both " mind " and " body " are active. Action is not blind. It
contains a cognitive element as necessary to its constitution.
For in action not only are we aware that we are acting, but
also, to some extent at least, we know what we are doing. This
awareness or cognition in action is called " intention," which,
on the practical leivel, may be defined as what we are aiming
at in action. Moreover, intention involves sense-perception
and freedom. The latter is the self's capacity to choose between
alternative courses of action, or between the possibilities that
are constitutive of the situation which confronts the agent. To
act is ipso facto to choose. Without choice, action would not be
action at all but merely organic "behavior." A deterministic
action is a contradiction in terms. Again, to choose between
possibilities requires a motive--a " reason " why we choose one
possibility over the others. 9 Finally, motives involve emotions
or feeling, the springboards of action. There is no motive in action without feeling.
Consequently, besides its mo.st salient feature, bodily or
physical movement, action also includes intention (or cognition) , sense-perception, choice, motive, and feeling, all of
which are integrated with movement to constitute one continuous activity. When we think, however, we exclude at least
bodily movement; what else is excluded depends upon how
" pure " the thinking becomes. The purer it becomes, the more
it excludes the other elements and moves in a kind of gossamer
world of abstract and general ideas; the more intensive thought
becomes, the less extensive it is of the selfs power:s and capacities. Action, then, is a fully concrete activity of the self in
which all his basic capacities are employed, whereas thought is
constituted by the exclusion of some of his powers and a withdrawal into an activity which is less concrete and less existential. The self-as-agent is the self in his existential whole9 Motive,
then, should not be confused with intention, as they often are.
The intention is what we are doing; the motive is why we are doing it.

WALTER G. JEFFKO

ness, while the self-as-thinker denotes only an aspect of the
self. In this sense "agent" and "person" are co-extensive
terms; persons-in-relation are agents-in-relation.
Agency or action, then, is inclusive of personal existence.
Consequently, action does not denote only the more physically
intensive types of action, e.g., athletics and manual skills,
which are often called practical in a narrow sense. More importantly, it includes any act of communication, from simple
conversations to complex and sophisticated activities such as
political negotiations and professional conventions. Communication is properly called action because of its relational or interactive character, and because it involves those essential elements of action which have just been mentioned. It must be
.stressed that action is not necessarily a primarily physical activity; physical movement is merely one of action's several
elements. Many actions involve only" mild" physical activity,
while at the same time they involve a high intensity or quality
of cognition. On the other hand, in many physically strenuous
kinds of action, the cognitive element is minimal or recessive.
Indeed, if the bulk of the agent's energy is expended in physical
activity, there is less remaining for the cognitive element. In
its ultimate extension, action includes the total range of interactions between self and Other; it constitutes what Dewey has
called "primary experience." 10
C. Reason and Personhood
My argument so far may be summarized as follows: the
mutuality of the personal is the fundamental and all-inclusive
given of personal reality, and the nexus of relations contained
therein is primarily actional. Reason is a function of these two
basic ideas. In its experiential origin or primary expression, it
is the capacity by which man determines how he should act or
relate himself toward the Other-personal or otherwise. 11 It
10

Experience and Nature

(2nd ed.;

New York:

Dover Publications, Inc.,

1958), pp. la-S9.
11

As this statement suggests, and as we shall see, reason is inclusive of will.

ACTIONS,

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123

may be defined as the self's capacity for self-transcendence:
the capacity to act from or for oneself (i.e., autonomously or
subjectively) and in terms of the nature or objectivity of the
Other. Non-rational behavior, on the other hand, stems from
the capacity of an organism to react deterministically to stimuli
from the Other in terms of the organism's own biological constitution. Thus, there are two essential differences between rational and non-rational activity. First, rational activity is free
or autonomous, while non-rational activity is determined.
Secondly, rational activity comprehends the inner nature of
the Other, while non-rational activity reacts to the Other in
terms of how an organism's impulses, drives, and instincts are
affected by the Other. Since an act of genuine human love is
a free, subjective response to the objective needs or inner nature of another person, it is rational. On the other hand, a dog
who " loves " his master is merely reacting to stimuli from the
Other which are associated with the past satisfaction of the
dog's basic biological needs of food, shelter, and comfort. 12
Such animal activity, then, is non-rational. It may be adequately represented by a stimulus-response model, but such a model
is scarcely adequate for rational activity.
Instead, reason may be represented as a synthesis of subjectivity and objectivity; one is the condition for the other,
and without one the other could not exist. "Subjectivity" denotes the self's capacity to act freely or autonomously, his
capacity for self-reflection, self-initiative, and self-determination. " Objectivity" denotes the self's capacity to grasp or
comprehend, and to act in terms of, the nature or otherness of
the Other.
12 For a similar contrast
between human love and animal "love," see Werner
Stark, "Teilhard and the Problem of Human Autonomy," Preceedings of the
Teilhard Conference 1964 (New York: Human Energetics Research Institute,
Fordham University, 1964), pp. 81-84. For example, Stark makes the following
observation on mother ants who fondle and kiss their young from morning to night.
" Take a baby ant out of the hill, wash it and put it back, and you will find that
the supposedly loving mother will completely ignore it, in fact, will let it perish.
The sober truth of the matter is that mother ants lick the babies because the
babies are covered with a sweet-tasting sweat which they enjoy licking." (P.

WALTER G. JEFF.KO

But why is one the condition for the other? Take science, for
example, which everyone will agree is a rational activity of
some sort. As rational, it is both subjective and objective. It
is subjective because to think scientifically is to think independently, employing a rigorous methodology which itself is
a subjective construction, instead of believing something on the
basis of custom, tradition, or authority. However, for thought
to be truly independent or subjective, it must also be objective:
it must be based upon the otherness of the Other-which indeed
science is-not upon one's own private fancies or prepossessions. The earth is round whether we like it or not. Indepen·
dent thought does not occur in a vacuum but in a "mind " open
to reality. In this sense, objectivity is the condition for subjectivity.
This can also be seen by comparing science with its opposite:
superstition and dogmatism. If one believes that the earth is
flat, such a belief, of course, lacks objectivity, since the earth
is really round. But it also lacks subjectivity. A belief which
flies in the face of conclusive evidence to the contrary is nonindependent or heteronomous, the result of some external factor
of the Other-e. g., custom, tradition, authority-imposing itself deterministically upon the self and thwarting his capacity
to think freely and for himself. Since this thought is not objective, it cannot be genuinely subjective either.
Correlatively, subjectivity is the condition for objectivity.
One can guess or arbitrarily believe that the earth is round.
But until one demonstrates this proposition scientifically, until one has sufficient evidence to support it, the proposition lacks
true objectivity. Although it happens to be in conformity with
the nature of the Other, the self has not comprehended this
conformity. In this case, then, unless one follows a procedure
embodying independent thinking-i. e., scientific methodology-there is no way to guarantee that the Other is really as
our belief asserts.
Man's capacity for self-transcendence, then, which is precisely his capacity for synthesizing subjectivity and objectivity,

ACTIONS,

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125

is the essence of reason and the root of that which distinguishes
man from animal. It is thus the common core of all those
phenomena commonly associated with the distinctively human:
self-consciousness, conceptualization and reflection, intentionality, culture, language and other forms of symbolization, the distinctively human feelings such as love, compassion, and kindness, and everything that all of these imply-religion, morality,
politics, philosophy, science, mathematics, art, technology, etc.
Even in the case of self-consciousness, which seems to involve
"pure" subjectivity it is only by grasping the objectivity of
the Other that one can grasp one's own selfhood. Self-consciousness, in other words, is mediated by consciousness of the
Other's objectivity, and vice-versa. This is implied by the mutuality of the personal.
In brief we may say that mutuality, agency, and reason are
three moments in the constitution and growth of selfhood. Mutuality provides the context and matrix in which and through
which the self exists. In turn, he exists primarily as agent,
interacting with other agents. Finally, as agent, he is continually required to decide, in virtue of his rational capacity, how
he should act toward the Other.

II. Fact and Value
Our primary experience of value-what we experience as
good and bad, right and wrong-is constitutive of action. 13
This proposition may be demonstrated as follows. Action, we
have seen, contains choice as an essential element. To act is
to do " this " rather than " that," to actualize one possibility
or alternative in a .situation, and in so doing to negate the
others. And since action is interrelational, choice is necessarily
directed toward the Other. Now, to actualize one possibility
13 The terms " value " and " disvalue " will be used interchangeably
with the
terms " good " and " bad " and " right " and "wrong," respectively. This is not
the case, however, with the term "ought." My value theory is axiological rather
than deontological: value is the ground of ought and obligation rather than the
other way around.

WALTER G. JEFFKO

in a situation thus negating the others is to characterize (or
judge) the chosen one as "right" or "good" and the negated
ones as " wrong " or " bad." Although this characterization or
judgment applies explicitly only to the situation in which the
choice occurs, it extends, by implication, to all situations of
that type. Without this valuation-in-action, action itself would
be impossible, since in action the end sought is ipso facto designated as "good." Conversely, without action, valuation itself
would be impossible. For action is its primary source, since the
interrelation of agents or persons is the fundamental and inclusive context of all experience.
To avoid misunderstanding, a number of qualifications must
be made to the foregoing argument. First, choice-in-action
must not be confused with mental choosing: the act of deciding which often precedes a particular action-and indeed
should-and which is the result of deliberation or reflection.
The latter is not choice in the strict, concrete sense of the term.
For we can and do change our mind before the (mentally)
" chosen " action is performed-if indeed it is performed at all.
However, once choice-in-action is intended or performed, there
is no going back, there is no changing our mind. Action is irreversible. After it is performed, I may regret my choice, but I
cannot undo my action. What I have done is a new reality which
must now be reckoned with. Real choice, then, is the doing
of an action, and "action is choice" (or conversely, "choice is
action") whether or not action is preceded by mental choosing.
Choice-in-action-or more precisely, the power of choice-inaction-is what I mean by the traditional concept of " will."
Secondly, choice-in-action as valuational does not imply that
the agent's choice is ipso facto correct, or that his choice is a
sufficient condition for the objective rightness of that action.
For, since there must be at least two possibilities in a situation
for choice-in-action to occur, it is always possible for the agent
to choose the wrong one. The agent's choice merely characterizes the chosen alternative as good; it does not constitute
it as good. The essential fallibility of the agent, then, is a
corollary of the very structure of action.

ACTIONS,

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127

Finally, my position seems to imply the Socratic doctrine
that we cannot knowingly choose what we believe is wrong.
In this conection, three points must be made. First, the agent's
judgment of a chosen alternative as good means that it is
chosen under the aspect of goodness, not that the chosen alternative is judged to be perfectly good. Conversely, the other
alternatives or possibilities are negated under the aspect of
badness, but not under complete badness. As the Medieval
Scholastics held, evil as such cannot be chosen, since it is
tantamount to nothing.
Secondly, as we have seen, action is primary while thought
is secondary, and action itself contains a cognitive element as
necessary to its constitution. Consequently, if there is a conflict betwen the agent's practical choice and mental judgmenti. e., if the agent actually performs what he claims he thinks or
feels is wrong-it is his action rather than his mental judgment which is the primary indication of what he really believes
is right. This statement, however, excludes " acts of passion,"
i. e., involuntary acts, which are not really actions at all in my
sense of the term. The foregoing is another way of saying that,
as far as morality goes, what we do is more important than
what we think (and feel). As Aristotle observed, pure thought
by itself moves nothing. It is action that makes a difference
in the real world. Indeed, action may be defined as a modification or determination of reality. This is not to say that
our thoughts and feelings by themselves are morally irrelevant.
Indeed, it is precisely our feelings which illuminate the whole
realm of values. If we did not experience reality or being in
terms of desires, inclinations, and aspirations, we would not
be aware of value at all. Nevertheless, the original locus of
feeling is as a constituent element of action. My main point
is that action is the primary source of morality (or value)
while thought and feeling as such are only a secondary source.
What primarily counts in the moral order, then, is whether
and how we act out our thoughts and feelings. Still, it must
be recognized that they have a natural tendency to pass over
into action.

ms

WALTER G. JEFFKO

Thirdly, the goods chosen in action are often inadequate or
merely apparent; our choices are often the wrong ones. Again,
if we make the right choice, its justification is necessary; the
rational agent must be prepared to give good reasons for his
choice. Consequently, value-in-action needs reflective valuei. e., value judgments which are the term of reflection rather
than of action-for its rectification, improvement, and justification. Reflection explicitates our practical choices to see whether
or not they can be justified when brought out into the open.
In other words, in terms of the person-as-agent, practical value
is primary, and reflective value is secondary yet necessary.
While values arise from action or the interrelation of agents,
it is reason-i. e., the rational agent-which intends them. This
intentionality involves three phases. Ffrst, the rational agent
apprehends the situation, or the Other, in terms of its discrimination into a set of possibilities for action. Secondly, he
valuates-in the light, ideally, of all the relevant factors and
knowledge-each discriminated possibility. Thirdly, he willsi. e., chooses or actualizes-the possibility he values most highly
or positively. Will, then, as choice-in-action, is a necessary or
constituent aspect of practical reason.
The foregoing sugests that reason or rationality is our standard of value. The valuable is that which is rational or reasonable; the disvaluable is that which is irrational or unreasonable. In view of our definition of reason, value is self-transcendent: it is that which is intended by, and is the term of, rationality. Whereas reason as such is the capacity for selftranscendence, value is the actualizing (i.e., intending) of selftranscendence. Hence, value is that which makes objective
sense in terms of the constitution of the Other and at the same
time brings into play the subjectivity of the self; it is the actualizing of the synthesis of subjectivity and objectivity.
At this point, it may be objected that my concept of value
implies axiological subjectivism or relativism. For, it will be
asked: whose reason do we take as normative? This objection,
however, is based upon a false conception of reason. For reason

ACTIONS,

PERSONHOOD,

AND FACT-VALUE

Ul9

is a capacity of man qua man; it is universal, common to all
persons. Its subjective structure is the same for everybody.
Moreover, reason's objective polei--the Other-likewise has
the same basic structure for everybody. However, this is to
deny neither the uniqueness of individual persons nor that each
of us has a somewhat different vantage point on the Other.
Rather, it is to affirm that the whole of Reality, which by
definition is one, constitutes the objective pole of any self's reason, which itself is essentially the same for everyone. To be
sure, this one Reality or Other is mediated by one's own experience. Nevertheless, it is the same objective reality which
is experienced by all. In turn, this experience is interpreted
through reason. Moreover, although the variable features of
reality-especially on the personal level-are numerous and obvious enough, the invariable features are far more important
and fundamental. For example, what human beings have in
common, what distinguishes them from animals, is much more
significant than what distinguishes one human being from
another.
Let us now look into the relation of value to fact. In Modern
ethical theory, the fact-value issue is bound up with the "naturalistic fallacy," which may be defined as the attempt to
logically derive value from fact, or ought from is.14 As so defined, it seems correct to call it a fallacy. For, from the standpoint of logic, the possibility of deriving value from fact, or
ought from is, would imply that propositions containing value
terms such as ' good," " right," and " ought" could be correctly or validly inferred from premisses containing no such
terms. This simply cannot be done according to the accepted
canons of deductive or inductive logic. To do so would be to
argue that A is B, therefore A is C without introducing any
proposition to connect B and C. Therefore, as one author points
out: " In this: sense, those who insist that we cannot go from
Is to Ought or from Fact to Value are perfectly correct. Such
14 As is well-known, this term was coined by G. E. Moore.
See Principia
Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge Press, 1965), pp.
but especially pp. 9-10.

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WALTER G. JEFFKO

an inference is logically invalid unless there is a special third
logic which permits us to do so." 15 However, as the same author adds, such a logic does not yet exist.
On the other hand, to accept the validity of the naturalistic
fallacy has its own difficulties. If values are not derived from
facts, then from what are they derived? As one author puts
it:
If these (fact and value) are separate and incommensurable, as
is customarily assumed, then there is no way in which, through a
consideration of the natural order of things, we can ever determine
the moral order of things. If fact and value are wholly separate
and distinct, then no investigation of the facts of human nature
can ever disclose what human good is or what is the good life for
man. 16

The validity of the naturalistic fallacy seems to suggest some
kind of emotive theory of value, according to which value judgments are merely private expressions of emotional preference,
while only factual judgments are public and objective. It seems,
then, that the fact-value issue has reached an impasse: if we
hold that value can be derived from fact, we violate logic; and
if we hold that value cannot be derived from fact, then we deprive value of any real, rational, and objective foundation, thus
suggesting that values are nothing more than arbitrary, emotive
preferences.
However, the situation is not as dilemmatic as it appears.
For there is another alternative. Within the context of action,
we can hold that facts are " derived " from values. " Fact "
denotes existence, or the actual and determinate aspect of the
situation in which action is performed. However, there is more
to action than existence or fact. As we have seen, action involves possibility as well as existence. Indeed, action, as the
15 William
Frankena, Ethics (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey:
Prentice-Hall,
1968), p. 80.
16 Henry B. Veatch, Rational, Man (Bloomington,
Indiana: Indiana University
Press), p. 199. For Veatch's entire critique of Moore and of the naturalistic
fallacy, see pp. 188-208.

ACTIONS,

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AND FACT-VALUE

181

choosing of a possibility, is a synthesis of fact (or existence)
and possibility; action unites the actual and the possible.
It is precisely this unity or synthesis of fact and possibility
from which value (or disvalue) arises. If the agent acts rationally, i.e., synthesizes subjectivity and objectivity, he ipso
facto achieves an effective synthesis of fact and possibility. In
this case, (positive) value is affirmed. On the other hand, if
the agent acts irrationally, i.e., if he fails to synthesize subjectivity and objectivity, he does, to be sure, actualize possibility and therefore in some sense unites the possible with the
actual, but no effective synthesis of the two is achieved. In this
case, disvalue is affirmed. Value, then, arises from and is constitutive of the wholeness of action, i. e., of the synthesis of fact
or existence and possibility, which synthesis is achieved by the
rational agent's synthesis of subjectivity and objectivity. In
the concrete, however, there is not value as such but rather
specific modes of value, e. g., ethical, religious, aesthetic, and
instrumental value. In terms of the foregoing analysis, we may
conclude that each mode of value arises from two simultaneous
and interrelated conditions: (1) the level (or levels) of the
Other-e. g., other persons, Nature, inanimate objects-toward
which the agent's action is directed; and (2) the mode of action
he performs with the Other, i. e., the specific way he is acting
rationally, e.g., treating the Other as end or as means. In brief,
each mode of value arises from a corresponding mode of
rationality-or mode of synthesis of subjectivity and objectivity.
However, this point cannot be developed here.
As arising from the wholeness of action, value is derived from
neither fact nor possibility by itself. Indeed, in either case action and therefore value would be impossible. Regarding the
fact-value problem, then, we do not have to violate logic by
trying to derive value from fact. Nor do we have to determine
some other " where " from which our values come. As constitutive of action, value is given in reality and in experience ab
initio. Moreover, since value arises from the wholeness of action, whereas fact refers only to its existent aspect, it is fact

WALTER G. JEFFKO

which is derived from value rather than the other way around,
through an activity of reflective abstraction in which we
eliminate value from original experience and obtain the concept of "pure" fact. In action, however, there are no pure
facts. In action, fact is included within value as a constituent
and subordinate part of value. Without fact there would be no
existent basis for the possibilities to be evaluated and thus no
values at all. On the other hand, value goes beyond fact to
the possibilities themselves.
By including value within action, I am not denying its ontological irreducibility. Value is a unique feature or quality of
action (albeit it pervades the whole of action); it is that which
the rational agent produces and affirms in action through a
synthesis of subjectivity and objectivity, and in so doing effectively synthesizes fact or existence with possibility.
In action, then, fact and value are inseparably connected in
one integral experience. On the other hand, in reflection, the
concepts of fact and value are first distinguished and then
.separated out. When this happens, and when we forget that
action is the original source of value, the fact-value problem is
created. At the same time, it is also forgotten that fact and
value are not ontologically on the same level. If they were,
they would exclude each other, and the dualism between them
would be impossible to overcome. Or as Macmurray puts it:
When we contrast fact and value the conceptual opposition leads
to the assumption that the contrasted elements are on the same
level and existentially exclusive. In the same fashion we tend to
think that the contrast between mind and matter implies that these
are entities in the same sense and at the same level. Descartes
thought of them as two ' substances ' : more vaguely we conceive
them as different entities. This is one of the trickeries of language
to which we are liable. It is clear that any assertion of value
presupposes what is matter of fact; and the experience of value
includes and supervenes upon the apprehension of fact. . . . The
experience of value is not a different but rather a fuller experience
than the experience of the fact which is valued, though it is true
we may concentrate our attention on the valuational aspect of the

ACTIONS,

PERSONHOOD,

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133

total experience; and this may on occasion lead us into mistakes
about the character of the fact itself.17

In brief, value includes, subordinates, and is partially constituted by fact; value is " more than " rather than " other
than" fact. Value cannot be derived from fact for the simple
reason that the greater cannot be derived from the lesser; a
whole cannot be derived from one of its parts. On the other
hand, since in action fact is a constituent aspect or dimension
of value, the concept of fact as such can be derived from value
by a limitation of attention and intention to certain features of
the fullness of action. For, in reflection, the lesser can be derived from the greater, a part can be derived from its whole.
At this juncture, however, a serious difficulty arises. What
I have said so far applies only to human value. However, in
my view, the universe is created by God-the infinite rational
agent and person. As such the univel'.se is not the result of
human rational action. This universe includes not only Nature
but also human nature as a given prior to human choice-inaction. Does not God's creation have value in this sense? Or
does it have value only insofar as man confers value upon it?
Let me say without qualification that God's creation does
have value prior to human choice. The argument I have been
developing with respect to human value also applies to divine
value, albeit analogously. For, since God is a rational agent,
creation is the result of His rational action; He creates the
world by choosing the best possible out of a realm of possibilities. In this sense, Leibnitz is correct in saying that this is
the best of all possible worlds. It is this divine rational action
which endows creation as .such with its primordial value. Moreover, God's rational action creating the universe takes place
out of the depths of His subjectivity. However, since God
creates ex nihilo, His valuation cannot be a synthesis of subjectivity with objectivity, i.e., with an objective universe al11

Religion, Art and Science: A Study of the Reflective Activities in Man

(Liverpool:

Liverpool University Press, 1961), pp.

134

WALTER G. JEFF.KO

ready given. Rather, His subjectivity creates the very objective
universe (with the exception of social institutions, which are
human creations), which is then to be synthesized with human
subjectivity. Human valuation, then, is a kind of continuation
and development of divine valuation, but on a somewhat different level, since man does not create ex nihilo. Nevertheless,
since the objective world, including man, is created by God,
man's valuation, as involving objectivity (and not only his
subjectivity) , must be in harmony with divine valuation. This
does not mean, to be sure, that man merely acquiesces to the
universe's objective structures. If he did, human value could
not occur at all. At the very least, man must subjectively ratify
or affirm that which God presents to him as an objective given.
But more significantly, mankind is called, through his subjectivity, to renew, promote, and develop the universe-especially the world of persons and their institutions. Finally, with
respect to the fact-value is.sue, we arrive at the purely factual
aspect of divine valuation by reflectively abstracting creation
from divine agency thus obtaining the concept of the world
as matter-of-fact.
Since the foregoing analysis of value has prescinded from its
modal differentiations, it is necessarily sketchy and .somewhat
abstract. To fill in the concrete content of value, we would
have to distinguish its basic modes, which will be treated in
a sequel to this paper. Enough has been said, hopefully, to indicate the general lines of overcoming the fact-value dualism.
VVALTERG.JEFFKO
Fitchburg State College
Fitchburg, Massachusetts

ARISTOTLE ON UNIVERSALS

T

HE CENTRALITY 0£ the ' one-many' problem or
' problem 0£ universals ' to epistemology and metaphysics is hardly an issue £or argument. Questions
regarding the metaphysical status 0£ universals and their relation to individuals, the process 0£ ' concept formation,' and
the epistemological £unction 0£ universals in predication are
classic ones in philosophy having originated with Socrates and
Plato. In view 0£ the contemporary interest in these problems
as well as the numerous studies 0£ other topics treated 0£ by
Aristotle, it is a matter £or at least initial surprise that there
exists no systematic account 9£ his views on universals. This
is partially explicable by the £act that these questions are not
dealt with by Aristotle in any single treatise or place in his
works; indeed, texts relevant to these problems are scattered
throughout them all, from the Categories to the Poetics, and
even the fragments. In addition, many 0£ the texts are, as one
might expect, obscure, and some apparently contradict others.
Another £actor which might help explain the situation is that
there is a traditional, 'orthodox' interpretation 0£ Aristotle's
thinking on these matters, which gives rise to the impression
that whatever he has to say on the topic is already known in
sufficient detail, has been fully considered, evaluated, and refuted, so that it would be pointless to pursue the matter further. This impression has little basis in £act. The 'orthodox'
interpretation has it that Aristotle is a ' moderate realist,'
holding that universals exist somehow ' in ' individuals. 1 Taken
as it stands, this interpretation is worse than unhelpful. It does
1 This view is propounded,
for example, by Whitney J. Oates, Aristotle and the
Problem of Value (Princeton, 1963), p. 182; Ralph W. Clark, "Saint Thomas
Aquinas's Theory of Universals" The Monist, 58 (1974), p. 163; many other
examples could be cited.

135

136

EDWARD REGIS, JR,

not tell us what a universal is, just that whatever it is, it exists
'in' things. The truth is that Aristotle's theory of universals
has never been satisfactorily stated by his interpreters, and its
adequacy as a general solution to the problems associated with
universals has not been fairly assessed.
Our object in this paper is to present an interpretation of
Aristotle's theory of universals which is detailed, precise, and
based upon the relevant texts from the entire corpus. That is,
we will not limit our discussion to the Categories only, or to
the Metaphysics only, but will attempt to integrate the appropriate texts from many works into a unified and consistent
doctrine. We shall consider, in order, the ontological status of
universals and their relation to particulars, the psychological
processes by which universals come to exist in the soul, and the
role played by universals in knowledge. The theory which will
emerge is, in brief, as follows: that universals for Aristotle
exist only in the mind, not' in things' (although there is a basi,s
for them in things), that universals arise in the mind through
numerous inductions of particulars, and, contrary to the usual
view, that it is universals which in fact make knowledge of
individuals possible. Aristotle's theory is important, we shall
conclude, because it does justice to the empirical facts, and
to the requirements of scientific knowledge.

I
From the time of Porphyry onward, discussions of Aristotle's
conception of a universal have centered about what occupies
less than twenty lines in Bekker's text, a portion of chapter
two of the Categories. We begin, then, with, an examination
of these lines, for the core of Aristotle's theory is indeed to be
found there. 2
In this chapter Aristotle gives what appears to be an exhaustive classification 'of things' (Twv ovTwv) determined by
• Whether or not the Categories is an authentic work of Aristotle's, it has been
commented upon by interpreters and taken as if were a genuine work, and we
shall do so here.

ARISTOTLE ON UNIVERSALS

137

two principles 0£ division: being 'said 0£' (A.eyerm) and being
'in' (ev) a subject (v1ToKeiµh<p). These principles are combined
to give rise to a fourfold division 0£ reality. We begin with
the most .straightforward and least controversial class which,
since it comes last in Aristotle's exposition, we will designate
as class (d) : " Some [things] are neither in a subject nor said
0£ a subject, for example, the individual man or the individual
horse" (lb3-4, Ackrill tr.) . This class is not problematic: it
is composed exclusively 0£ individual sensible substances. These
are not ' predicated 0£ ' or ' said 0£ ' 8 anything else, nor do
they exist ' in ' anything else. They are simply there, given.
Another class (b) 0£ individuals is marked out as being " in
a subject but not said 0£ any subject" (la22-3) , for example
"the individual-knowledge-of-grammar"
(T/ 'l"t'>
translated as "a piece 0£ grammatical knowledge" (Cooke),
" a certain point 0£ grammatical knowledge " (Edghill) ) is in
a subject, the soul, but is not said of any subject; and the individual white (To 'l"t A.evKov "a particular whiteness" (Cooke),
"a certain whiteness" (Edghill)) "is in a subject, the body (for
all colour is in a body) but is not said 0£ any subject" (la26-9).
Precisely what is intended to be marked out by this definition
and the examples given is controversial, and several recent
journal articles have been devoted to this question. We shall
consider the point in a moment, but will be content now merely
to agree with Ackrill (p. 74) that Aristotle refers here to "individuals in categories other than substance."
The remaining two classes are concerned with species and
genera. (a): "Some [things] are said of a subject but are not
in any subject. For example, man is said 0£ a subject, the individual man, but is not in any subject" (la20-3). And (c):
• Whether these two expressions are equivalent in meaning is controversial.
Hamlyn, "Aristotle on Predication" Phronesis, VI (1961), p. 113, and Ackrill,
see a
Aristotle's Categories and De lnterpretatione (Oxford, 1963), pp. 76,
difference; J. M. E. Moravcsik, "Aristotle on Predication" The Philosophical
Review, LXXVI (1967), p. 85, n. 11, holds that Aristotle does not keep a
two expressions,
distinction by use of

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EDWARD REGIS, JR,

"Some are both said of a subject and in a subject. For example,
knowledge is in a subject, the soul, and is also said of a subject,
knowledge-of-grammar (Tfjs ypaµ,µ,anKf}s)" (la29-b2). To simplify matters, we will hereafter substitute for " species and
genera " the term " universal." 4 Summarizing, then, the results
so far, we have the following fourfold division of reality:
Individuals

( d) primary substances
(b) qualities, quantities, etc.,

Universals

(a) universals said of, but not present in, subjects
( c) universals both said of and present in subjects

Two problems are evident at this point. One is the ascription
to Aristotle of the doctrine of individuals in categories other
than substance, that is, members of class· (b) , for this doctrine
has recently been branded a " dogma," and dismissed. The
other is that class (c) appears to be in flat contradiction to the
conception of universals that we impute to Aristotle in this
paper. For we hold it to be his view that universals exist only
in the mind and not in things, whereas class (c) is said quite
explicitly to be made up of universals which are " in a subject."
We can attack these problems together, for they are very much
intertwined.
The thesis that class (b) is not composed of individuals in
non-substance categories has been propounded by G. E. L.
• The substitution is clearly legitimate. It is a matter for discussion only
because Ka06"11.ov, the term translated by " universal," does not appear in the lines
we have been discussing, nor, indeed, anywhere in the Categories. The term
does not have a history prior to its being used by Aristotle, and is a crasis of
Karil. 5"11.ov (lit., ' in respect of a whole,' or perhaps
as a whole,' or 'taken
generally'), which is used by Plato in this sense at Meno 77a, and Republic
392de. The term coined by Aristotle is defined by him and used characteristically
to mean 'that which is predicable of many,' cf. Metaph. 1023b29-32, lOOOal; De
Int. l 7a38-b2. It is likely that it was used first by Aristotle in the logical works
where it is employed regularly in the sense of universal proposition. In any case
it is clear that inasmuch as a species and genus denote kinds or types of things,
and hence are predicated of many, it will be appropriate to subsume them under
the more general term " universal."

ARISTOTLE ON UNIVERSALS

139

Owen,5 in a paper which has elicited much criticism. 6 We will
not attempt to catalogue here the arguments which have already been given for and against Owen's thesis; rather, we limit
ourselves to seeing whether the texts which Owen himself advances against the traditional interpretation of class (b) can
be made consistent with that interpretation. In the process
we hope to show in what sense it is true that universals can
be spoken of by Aristotle as being in a subject when in fact
all that is in a subject is particular.
Against the traditional view of class (b) Owen offers the
following texts:
I: "knowledge is in a subject, the soul" (lbl-2)
II: "colour is in body and therefore also in an individual body;
for were it not in some individual body it would not be in body
'at all" (2b2-3)

These texts, Owen thinks, " settle the issue " ; that is, they
show that members of class (b) are not individual. For ready
reference we quote again Aristotle's formulation of this class:
III: "the individual-knowledge-of-grammar

is in a subject, the
soul, but is not said of any subject; and the individual white
is in a subject, the body (for all color is in a body), but is
not said of any subject" (la26-9)

If I and II can be made consistent with III when III is understood in the traditional way, then Owen's argument will collapse. Assume, then, that III is to be taken in the traditional
way. What meaning can then be attached to the phrase in
parentheses: a'Tl'av yap xpwµa f.v cr<!Jµan? Given the context,
it would hardly do to understand it as asserting that the universal" color" is, as a whole, in a body. This would surely not
"lnherence" Phronesis, X (1965), pp. 97-105.
Moravcsik, op. cit., pp. 80-96; Gareth B. Matthews and S, Marc Cohen, " The
One and the Many," The Review of Metaphysics, XXI (1968), pp. 680-655;
R. E, Allen, "Individual Properties in Aristotle's Categories," Phronesis XIV
(1969), pp, 31-89; Barrington Jones, "Individuals in Artistotle's Categories,"
Phronesis XVII
pp. 107-rn8.
5
6

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EDWARD REGIS, JR.

explain, as the yap indicates the phrase is intended to do, how
this individual white is in this individual body. It must mean,
then, that all instances of color, i. e. individual instances in
the sense understood by the traditional doctrine, are in individual bodies. Then III would be an enthymeme in Barbara
with the suppressed premiss being " this individual white is
a color." If we thus take the phrase in the distributive sense
specified, then ' color' as a universal is predicated of an instance, while the instance itself is not predicated of anything
else.
This analysis tells us how to understand the texts which
Owen .sets in opposition to the traditional view. Proceeding
in reverse order, passage II begins: "color is in body and therefore also in an individual body; ... " Inasmuch as an individual
color (i. e. an individual instance, not a species like Owen',<;
"vink ") is a color, it is true to say that there is color in this
individual body. And this can be said without taking it to mean
that a universal, specifically the universal ' color; ' is as a whole
in the individual thing, or indeed that any universal so exists
there. All that is meant is that the individual quality which
is in the body is a color. To say that there is color in a body is
to say that there is some shade of color in it, but more than
that, it is to say that there is an individual instance of that
.shade in it. None of this implies that a universal of any kind
exists in an individual thing; only individual instances of colors
exist there. The continuation of text II is quite consistent with
this: "for were it [viz. color] not in some individual body it
would not be in body at all." Text II, therefore, does not contradict III when the latter is taken in the traditional way. 7
As for text I, " knowledge is in a subject, the .soul," the same
analysis will hold good here as well. For since an individual
instance of knowledge is knowledge, then if such an instance
is in the soul, knowledge is in the soul. Owen's attempt to do
away with individuals in non-substance categories is, then, a
failure.
7

Cf. Allen, pp. 34-5, and n. 6.

ARISTOTLE ON UNIVERSALS

141

The principle established in our consideration 0£ Owen's argument may be used now to understand what Aristotle means by
saying that some things are in a subject and predicated 0£ a
subject, where the thing in question happens to be a universal.
The statement "color ... is in an individual body" (2b2), contains a universal term: 'color.' We have seen that the statement does not mean that the universal qua universal is in some
body, but merely that some individual instance 0£ color is in a
body. Now this individual instance may be taken in two ways,
as the individual instance which it is, or as a universal; £or any
individual may be considered as if it were a universal. 8 But it
is the same thing which actualy exists in the thing whether it
is regarded' as an individual or as the universal 0£ which it is
an instance. It is this which allows Aristotle to speak in the
way illustrated, while nevertheless maintaining that it is only
individuals which exist, whether as primary substances, or as
qualifications present in them. 9
This account receives confirmation from the other treatises
in which universals are discussed. In them it is characteristically found that " by ' a universal ' we mean that whose nature
is such that it may belong to many" (Metaph., 1038bll,
8 For elaboration of Aristotle's doctrine that individuals may be " taken universally," cf. J. Owens, "The Grounds of Universality in Aristotle," American
Philosophical Quarterly 8 (1966), pp. 162-169; instances of this locution appear
at 1085b29f, 1087a5-7, among other places.
9 Ackrill, pp.
74-5, maintains that as a consequence of the "inseparability
requirement" of la24-5, it is Aristotle's doctrine that "only indiviiluals in nonsubstance categories can be ' in ' individual substances. Aristotle could not say that
generosity is in Callias as subject, since there could be generosity without any
Callias.
Only this individual generosity-Callias's
generosity-is
in Callias.
Equally, white is not in chalk as subject, since there could be white even if
there were no chalk. White is in body, because every individual white is the
white of some individual body. For a property to be in a kind of substance it
is not enough that some or every substance of that kind should have that
property, nor necessary that every substance of that kind should have it; what
is requisite is that every instance of that property should belong to some
individual substance of that kind. Thus the inherence of a property in a kind of
substance is to be analysed in terms of the inherence of individual instances of
the property in individual substances of that kind."

14Q

EDWARD REGIS, JR.

Apostle tr.). Again, this does not mean that a universal as
something numerically one exists in many individuals. But
what, then, does exist in particulars which serves as the basis
for the universal which is in the soul? The answer is: a common attribute. An attribute is common to many particulars in
the sense that each individual instance of it which is found
in things is the same in species with every other instance.
That Aristotle identifies the universal with what is common
is clear from many texts:
The universal is common: for what belongs to many we call ' universal,' ra Ile Ka86i\011 Koiva · ra yap 7Ti\doaw 1mapxovra Ka86i\011 i\iyoµEv,
De Part. An. 644a26-8
a universal is common, r6 ll€ Ka86i\011 Kow6v, Metaph., 1038bll
the universal is a common predicate, Kow6v Kar'rJYopo/,ro,De An., 402b7
these are common and belong universally, Koiva Kat Ka86A.011 Phys.,
200b22-3.
Further, the common attributes are in things:
The [scientific] method of selection consists in laying down the common genus (y€vo> Koiv6v) of all our subjects of investigation-if e.g.
they are animals, we lay down what the properties are which inhere
in every animal 7To/,a 7Tavrl 'iii'P 1Yrrapxn An. Po., 98al-5, Mure tr.
some [characteristics] which are common to all things that have
a share in life [are] waking and sleep, youth and age, inhalation
and exhalation, life and death, De Sensu, 436al2-16, Hett tr.
The common characteristics are observed, not necessarily inferred, to be in things: "We must collect any other common
character which we observe (a),J...o 'n o<fiBii V7rapxov KOWOV
eKA.aµ,f3avovra)," An. Po. 98al5, Mure tr.
Criticizing the theory of Forms, Aristotle insists that positing
a universal where there is no common characteristic is impossible: " this would be similar to calling both Callias and a piece
of wood ' a man,' although we observe nothing common in them
(µ:·YJSEµ,iav Kowwviav E7rif3A.eif;a<;;avrwv) ," Metaph. 1079bl-3. The
universal itself does not exist in things because it is one

ARISTOTLE ON UNIVERSALS

143

the common, however, does: "what is one cannot
exist in many ways at the same time, but what is common
can exist in many ways at the same time." 10
None of this need be taken as implying that a universal in
any way exists in the things of which it can be predicated. For
a term to be ' predicated universally ' means simply that it applies to, i. e. may be truthfully said of, each of the instances
of which it is predicable. The reason for this is that each common attribute is the same in .species as all the others of which
the term is predicable.
The universal refers to a common characteristic whether or
not the universal is in the category of substance:
' man ' and every common term denotes not an individual substance
( r68€ n) but a quality or relation or mode or something of the kind,
Soph. Elene. l 78b37-9al; cf. l 79al-ll
as regards secondary substances, though it appears from the form
of the name--when one speaks of man or animal-that a secondary
substance likewise signifies a certain 'this' (r68€ n), this is not
really true; rather, it signifies a certain qualification (1rot6v n), for
the subject is not, as the primary substance is, one, but man and
animal are said of many things, Cat. 3bl3-18.

Thus it is that the universal existing solely in the mind refers
to common characteristics which exist in all the many individuals
of which the universal is predicable. But how is the universal
established in the soul? How is it that the common attributes
of things are mentally cognized by a universal?
II
Inasmuch as Aristotle treats of this question separately and
at length only at An. Po. II, 19, we will follow this account in
the main. The ostensible subject of this chapter, which parallels
in many respects Metaph. A 1, is an explanation of how the
10 Metaph.
1040b25-7; cf. Apostle's comment ad lo1V.: "If [a universal]
exists as one numerically, it does so in the soul, but as such (a predicate) it does
not exist in the things of which it is predicated."

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EDWARD REGIS, JR.

first principles of scientific knowledge are acquired. Aristotle's
discusssion, however, actually concentrates upon the psychological genesis, not of first principles, but of the universals themselves. The development of univer:sals is in fact the sole topic
treated from 99b35 through 100b5, and there is no reason why
we should not think that the explanation given here will not
hold for all universals whether or not they are part of a first
principle. The examples given as end-products of this process,
'man,'' :animal' at lOOhl-5, are surely not limited in their employment to first principles. 11 Moreover, the parallel account in
M etaph. A 1 makes no mention of primary axioms at all.
The operations by which universals come to exist in the soul
are inductive, 12 and induction presupposes the capacity of senseperception.18 The latter, which is perception of the individual, 14
gives rise, in those animals which are capable of it, to a persistence in the soul of what is perceived, even though the original object of perception is no longer present.
Although Aristotle does not say so in An. Po.,. it is clear from
other treatises that what persists is an image (cpavmCTµ,a), and
that the faculty responsible for this is the imagination
(cpavmCTia). Thus: "imagination is the process by which we
say that an image is presented to us" (De An. 428al-2), and,
in itself, imagination is " a movement produced by sensation
actively operating" (429al-2), and it gives rise to "imaginations [which] persist in us and resemble sensations" (ibid. 5-6).
Images "are similar to objects presented except that they are
without matter" (432a9-10) .
Ross (Aristotle's Parva Naturalia, pp. 32-3, Aristotle's De
Anima, p. 39) attempts to disassociate imagination from any
claim to having a role in knowledge, and in fact argues in the
main that Aristotle " regards it not as a valuable faculty but
11 For a different account of this, cf. James H. Lesher, "The Meaning of NOUS
in the Posterior Analytics," Phronesis XVII (1973), pp. 44-68.
12 Top. IOSbl0-11;
156bl5; An. Po. Slbl-3.
13 An. Po. 8lb5-9, 71a21, 24; Top. 105a13-19, 156315-7.
14 An. Po. 87b31-34, 100al6-l 7; De An. 417b22; Metaph. 98Ibll,
and cf. texts
in preceding note.

ARISTOTLE ON UNIVERSALS

145

as a disability," (Arist. De. An., p. 39) . His arguments for
this position are not convincing. He appeals to Aristotle's
claims that "cf>avracria is neither sense-perception (428a5-16),
nor scientific knowledge nor intuitive reason (a16-18) ... and
that it may be either true or false" (ibid.). But imagery may
play the role we assign to it here quite in spite of these facts.
For even though imagination is not scientific knowledge or intuition, it may nevertheless be operative in the formation of
these. For sense-perception itself is not scientific knowledge
or intuition but the account in An.. Po. is very definite that senseperception is nonetheless a requirement of scientific and of intuitive knowledge as well. As for the possible falsity of images, it is
surely difficult to see how a process which issues in infallible
knowledge can make use of other processes which are themselves fallible, but the fact is that memory is explicitly said (at
An. Po. 100a3-6, cf. Metaph. 980a27-8lal) to be involved in
the genesis of the primary axioms, and it is fallible also. (This
is implied by the distinction between good and bad memories
(De Mem. 449b5-8, 453a32-b8), and by its dependence upon
images (ibid., 450a10-11); further, it is said to belong" to that
part of the soul to which imagination belongs" (ibid. 445a24) .)
According to Ross the imagination is a disability because it
is " due ... to the eclipse of reason by passion, disease or sleep
in man," (op. cit., p. 39) . But in the sole pas.sage to which
Ross appeals for support of this view, De An. 429a6-8, Aristotle
does not say that the faculty is " due " to these phenomena, but
only that men "frequently act in accordance" with images as
a result of these causes. This does not mean that imagination
may not be valuable in the genesis of knowledge. 15
Returning to An. Po. we find that frequent repetition of such
persistence, which we now take to mean: frequent repetition
of images, gives rise to memory. 16 This interpretation is at least
15 Contrast
Ross himself in Aristotle's Metaphysics (Oxford,
V. I, p.
116 on
Lesher, pp.
denies that Aristotle holds awareness of first
principles to be " infallible."
16 lOOal-4, cf. Metaph.

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EDWARD REGIS, JR.

partially confirmed by De Mem.: "Memorizing preserves the
memory of something by constant reminding. This is nothing
but the repeated contemplation of an object as a likeness, and
not as a thing in itself." 17 The dependence of memory upon
imagination is stressed: "memory, even of the objects of
thought, implies an image." 18 Aristotle makes an even stronger
claim: " it is impossible even to think without an image." 19
We may pause at this point to ask what is the relation, if
any, between images and memory on the one hand, and common properties inhering in individuals on the other. The answer
is that it is just those individual properties common to many
individuals which are the objects of perception and remembered in the form of images. Sensation puts us in contact with
qualities of individuals, 20 and these qualities will be individual
in any given instance of perception. Inasmuch as images resemble sensations, it follows that they would have to be as individual as the qualities of which they are ' mental pictures.'
Universality does not exist at the level of sensation, 21 nor, therefore, on the level of images. Where, then, does universality first
exist? On the level of memory?
It seems that the universal does not exist yet on this level. 22
For at 100a4-7 the universal is described as being "in the soul,"
but that is already the level of experience (eµ,7TEtp£a). Further,
since memory is simply " the retention of an image as a likeness
of that of which it is an image" (De Mem. 451a14-16), it would
follow that since images and what they resemble are individual
qualities, that this is all that is remembered as well. The universal, then, is not yet present at the level of memory.
From memory arises experience: " repeated memories of the
45la13-14.
450aU-13.
19 449b31-50al,
cf. De An. 432a7-10.
20 De An. 418al3-14.
21 An. Po. 88a2, 87b30-33.
22 This is in contrast to Ross' account, Aristotle's Prior and Posterior Analytics
(Oxford, 1949), pp. 677-8.
17
18

ARISTOTLE ON UNIVERSALS

147

same thing give rise to experience; because memories, though numerically many, constitute a single experience " (An. Po. 100a46, Tredennick tr). This is the level at which it is definite that
the universal exists in the soul, £or in experience there is " the
whole universal come to rest in the soul, the one alongside the
many, which is one and the same in them all." 23
When Aristotle speaks of " repeated memories of the same
thing" does he mean the numerically same thing? 24 In view
of the fact that induction is regularly described as dealing with
particulars rather than with a particular, and is usually illustrated by many particulars which have some feature in common, 25 it .seems unlikely that Aristotle means to restrict " the
same thing " to one and the same individual. Indeed, it would
be difficult to extract a universal, which is common to many,
from a single individual.
How then does the universal arise in experience? Perhaps
in this way: The several memories, each of which is composed
of an image representing some individual attribute of a previous perception, are all memories of some common characteristic. When one object, image, or memory is perceived alone
and by itself, all that is perceived is individual. But when the
many memories, representing common attributes are perceived,
as it were ' together,' and the fact of their commonality is apprehended, this is experience, and the specific form in which
the commonality is realized is the universal. The universal,
then, is an intellectual apprehension, realization, or experience
as a whole of the common attributes which exist apart in many
individuals. This is the meaning of lOOal 7-bl: "though the
act of sense-perception is of the particular, its content is universal."
Is this interpretation consistent with the ' rout in battle '
23

100 A 6-8: 7ravT0s 1,peµ-l}uavTosToV Ka86Aov Ev Tfi lf!vxfi, ToD €v0s TrapO. re\ 7roi\A&,
Ev'fi EKelvois rb aVr6.

a Clv Ev ChraUlV

24 As thought
by Apostle, Aristotle's Metaphysics
1966), p. £55, comm. 6.
25 Top. 105al3-17, 108bl0-11.

(Bloomington and London,

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EDWARD REGIS, JR.

metaphor and the ' clearer ' account of the whole process given
at 100a15-b4? The battle metaphor is intended to provide an
analogy to the way in which ai €gcii;, the ' states of knowledge'
just described, viz. memory, experience, and the universal, develop out of sense-perception, yiyvovmi d:iro alafJ'ljaewi;, lOOall.
The analogy is this: there is a military formation which is
broken by a retreat; but then one man stops retreating, then
another, and another, until the original formation has been
taken up once again.
This is picturesque, but not very informative. Aristotle explains it at 100a15-b4: <TTUVTO<; yap TWV a8iacp6pwv €v6<;, 1tpWTOV
ev rfi l/Jvxfi Ka86>..ov. This can only refer to the level of experience: what stops is a universal, which exists first at this
stage. 26 Perhaps the universal corresponds to the common attributes in individuals as the formation before the rout corresponds to the one after it. Or perhaps' the intended parallel
is with the common attributes as represented by images in the
memory. The analogy is not close and cannot be pressed closely
with complete success. It is possible that the ov aacpwi; at
100a15 is intended to warn us of this.
The parenthetical remark at 100a16-bl is disturbing. The
assertion there that " perception is of the universal " (Ti 8'
ataOT)at<; roil Ka86Aov eariv) is contradicted earlier (88a2) :
" there is no perception of the universal " (ov yap
roil Ka86Aov
ataOTJaii;), and the reason for the latter is clearly given:
granting that perception is of the object as qualified, and not of a
mere particular, still what we perceive must be a particular thing
at a particular place and time. A universal which applies to all
cannot be perceived by the senses, because it is not a particular
thing or at a given time ... (87b30-33, cf. 34).

Indeed, Aristotle insists again and again that only repeated
perceptions of individuals can give rise to a universal, for example
Top. 108b10-ll: "it is by induction of particulars on the basis
26 Ross,
Aristotle's Prior and Posterior Analytic, p. 677, holds that the
' standing still ' is " of an individual before the memory" ; Lesher, p. 61, holds
that an infimae species is meant.

ARISTOTLE ON UNIVERSALS

149

of similarities (e1Tt TWV oµofow) that we infer (atwvµev) the
universal" (cf. An. Po.
lOOal-6) .27 Lesher, for these
reasons, holds that " it is simply false to say that the universal
is present in the soul from the first perception of the individual." 28 But perhaps this problematical assertion (as well
as the similar claim at 100b4-5) is to be understood in the light
of the earlier (lOOal0-11) explanation (which is in fact the
clearer account, in spite of the ov <racpwc; at 1OOa. 15) , that ai lteic;,
memory, experience, and the universal are produced from perception (y[yvovrai a1To ai<rB,,]<rewc;). If so, then perception must
be understood to be only a necessary and not a sufficient condition of the production of the universal, a sine qua non of
the universal's existence. Taken in this way the remark ceases
to provide a problem and does not contradict our account of
the psychological genesis of the universal in the soul. 29

III
We turn now to the role of the universal in knowledge. It is
well known that for Aristotle there is an alleged dichotomy between the real and the known: only the individual is real
whereas only the universal is knowable. For many commentators this means that Aristotle's metaphysics is at odds with his
epistemology and therefore that there is an insoluble contradic27 These facts pose a problem
for Ross' account (ibid. p. 678) whereby in
perception " the awareness of an individual is at the same time awareness of a
universal present in the individual; we perceive an individual thing, but what
we perceive in it is a set of qualities each of which can belong to other things."
But if the qualities are in the thing as universals then they do belong to other
things. If they are individual, then how does one know that they " can belong
to other things " by perceiving, which is of just one individual? It seems that only
the notion of many individuals having common qualities which can be realized in
the process of induction can make sense of the genesis of universals in the
intellect.
28 P. 61, n. 42.
28 On the other hand, perhaps Aristotle
means by " universal " that which is
common; thus the remark could be taken as: perception is of what is common,
viz. an attribute which is possessed also by other individuals of the same species.
This solution does not s•eem any more satisfying than the one proposed in the text.

150

EDWARD REGIS, JR.

tion at the heart of his system. Can the conception of the
universal advanced so far be of assistance in solving this difficulty?
Leszl has broken down the evidence for the view that Aristotle held that knowledge is of the univer:sal into three distinguishable principles, which, this view alleges, Aristotle maintained:
(a.) The individual is singular, but definition is common, so no
definition is of individuals.
(b.) The individual is too complex and many-charactered to be
the object of universal knowledge.
( c.) The individual is contingent and transitory, while knowledge
is of what abides, and this is the universal. 30

To a large extent, these problems can be minimized in their apparent seriousness if it is realized that Aristotle held that it
is only in a sense that knowledge is of universals, while there
are other senses in which it is quite legitimate to say that knowledge is of individuals, even when by " knowledge " is meant
" scientific knowledge." The distinction can be stated in general
terms as follows: While knowledge is of universals in the sense
that it has universals for a medium and hence occurs on the
level of universals, nevertheless the universals themselves are
derived fr01n and apply to individuals.
That this is true of definition can be easily shown. For if
a species is defined, what is stated in the definition will be true
also of each and every member of the species: in fact, it is
because the definition is true of the members that it is true
of the species. To the extent that the definition constitutes
knowledge, therefore, the individual will be known through
definition.
Why, however, should definition be of the class or species
and not of the individual per se? This question is especially
30 Walter Leszl, " Knowledge of the Universal and Knowledge of the Particular
in Aristotle," The Review of Metaphysics XXVI
pp.
esp. pp.

ARISTOTLE ON UNIVERSALS

151

pertinent to those who maintain that for Aristotle the universal
exists in things, for, if definition were of the universal and the
universal existed in an individual, why should not the individual
instead of the class be the proper object of definition? It is
only on the conception of the universal as being derived from
induction of many individuals of a species that we can explain
why definition is of the species. The discussion of definition in
An. Po. II 13 provides support for this analysis. A general
description of the process of forming a definition is given at
97b7-14, in which it is made clear that induction across many
individuals is a requirement for sound definition. There is no
ready explanation why this should be a requirement were the
universal inherent in each individual. On our account, however, the answer is plain: common characteristics must be
passed before the mind, retained in the memory, and so forth,
until the universal is elicited from these repeated inductions
and identified by a formula which is the definition. At the
same time, the definition, though of the species, will apply to
each and every instance of it. The individuals, therefore, will
be known in this way.
This analysis has by no means to be restricted only to
definitions, however, for all ' universal knowledge ' may be
shown to be knowledge of individuals in this manner, for all
universals are no more than mental recognitions of what is
common to many individuals. If this is correct, it would be
impossible for universal knowledge not to be applicable to,
and therefore ' of,' individuals.
Aristotle distinguishes three types of knowledge. (1) Potential knowledge in the sense of mere possession of a universal
truth; (2) Sense knowledge, or knowledge proper to an individual thing here and now; and (3) Actual knowledge, recognition that the here and now individual is an instance of the
universal under which it falls.s1 Thus, actual knowledge is in
a sense universal, but also in a sense particular. To say with31 An. Pr. II 21, esp. 67al2-21,
26-30, 37-67b5;
1087al2-25; cf. 98Ial3-29.

An. Po. 71all-29;

Metaph.

EDWARD REGIS, JR.

out qualification that knowledge is either universal or particular is to tell the truth but not the whole truth: it does
not take into account all that knowledge is or may be.82
It would not, therefore, be literally correct to say that for
Aristotle knowledge exists when the universal is recognized to
be ' in ' the individual. The facts are just the opposite: the
individual is rather 'in' the universal, that is, it falls within
its scope, and when the mind realizes this, this is actual knowledge. The Aristotelian theory of universals, then, does not
necessitate a divorce of epistemology from metaphysics. If anything, the Aristotelian universal provides the connecting link
or bridge between them. Universals are the correlates in the
mind of that which is common to many individuals in reality,
and because of this correlation scientific knowledge of individuals is possible.
That further elaboration of Aristotle's theory may constitute
a complete and comprehensive solution to all the difficulties
which today go under the heading of ' the problem of universals' is not claimed here. What I hope to have .shown in this
exposition is merely that there is more to the Aristotelian
theory than there is usually thought to be, and that what is
there is based firmly upon the facts of observation, developed
with logical consistency and rigor, and provides an adequate
account of the nature of scientific knowledge.
EDw ARD REGIS, JR.

Howard University
Washington, D. C.

32 Leszl, p. 303, states
the relationship in this way: "potential and actual
knowledge have the same contents, namely the rule or connection expressed by
the mentioned hypothetical proposition. The difference between them lies in the
fact that potential knowledge is the unactualized capacity to apply the general
rule to any particular case which falls under it, and actual knowledge is the
actualization of this capacity by application of that rule to a given particular case."
Cf. his replies to objections pp. 303-5, and his Logic and Metaphysics in Aristotle
(Padua, 1970), pp. 467-75, 496-522.

BOOK REVIEWS
San Tommaso e il pensiero moderno, ed. Pontificia Accademia Romana di
S. Tommaso d'Aquino Rome: Citta Nuova Editrice, 1974. Pp. 334.
Paper, lire 5,000.

I
This volume is the third in a four-volume series of essays published by
the Pontificia Accademia di S. Tommaso to honor the thirteenth century
thinker on the seventh centenary of his death. It consists of fifteen articles. Ten are in Italian, two in Spanish, and one in German. It is divided
into three sections. Of these the first is concerned with the foundations
of the metaphysics of Aquinas. The second and by far the longest has for
its heading "St. Thomas and the Great Modern Problems." The third
treats of Aquinas in confrontation with Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche,
Heidegger, Sartre and Josef Pieper. No general introduction or further explanation of its purposes is offered.

II
In the opening article Etienne Gilson, "Observations on Being and its
Notion," replies to a charge made by the late Jacques Maritain. Gilson,
Maritain wrote, is so fascinated by the intuition of being that he has rejected the concept of existence. Gilson (p. 8) affirms that this is still his
way of thinking, and undertakes to explain his own understanding of the
terms. His model for an intuition of existence is the grasp of it as a
nature in the beatific vision of God. This grasp is denied to the human
intellect in its present state, with which alone the article is concerned. Because existence as men know it is not a something, it cannot be said to
exist. Hence the concluding sentence: " The intuition of an object of which
one cannot properly say that it exists is ill conceived." (p. 17) Yet existence is explicitly termed " immanent cause of that which it makes be "
(p. 10) and (p. 13) "immanent formal cause". The sensible existent is
the "effect" (p. 11) in which existence is made manifest. The article
emphasizes throughout that the proper object of the human intellect is
quiddity, and that no quiddita:tive apprehension of existence can be had.
It places beyond conceptual knowledge the understanding of the intelligible principles. These give rise to judgments, not concepts. (p. 15; cf. p.
11) From this viewpoint the first principles· of reason may be called intuitions, if for no other reason than to distinguish them from conclusions.
(p. 11) What Gilson is obviously opposing is an intuitive concept (" con-

153

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cept intuitif, source des autres "-p. 15) from which other abstract concepts could arise.
What is to be thought of this approach to the problem? No explicit
mention is made of Aquinas's tenet that human intellection is basically
twofold, namely the apprehension of a thing from the viewpoint of its
nature and the apprehension of it from the viewpoint of its being. Both
of these are required concomitantly for the knowing of an existent. If the
requisite for an intuition is the immediate apprehension of an existent,
then of course the term " intuition " cannot be applied to human knowledge of existence, since, as the article makes clear, the existence of sensible
things is not itself an existent. Aquinas, it is true, does not prefer " in
tuition " for the immediate apprehension of existence in judgment (but
see texts cited in Bogiolo's article, present volume, p. 47, n. 18). Yet does
not the ordinary use of the term " intuition " today bear rather on the
immediate grasp of what is the case? Only with difficulty, one might suggest, may it be refused to the immediate apprehension that takes place in
judgment. But that is where the intuition of existence is found for Maritain,
with whom the discussion is here being held. Gil11on's article refers to
judgment in terms of saying (p. 15) , posing and affirming (p. 16), rather
than of apprehending. This one remark, however, need not impede appreciation of the article as a whole. Couched in quiet humor, it abounds in
penetrating observations arising from a long lifetime of reflection on the
topics. It repays very careful reading, and a number of its remarks are
worth committing to memory. Especialy the Thomistic tenet that God
remains utterly unknown is handled with exceptional skill.
The other article in the section, M. F. Sciacca's "Reflections on the
Principles of Thomistic Metaphysics," is spread over far too wide a
ground to permit penetration in depth. It gives a capsule presentation of
N eo-Thomist metaphysical doctrine, confronting its anthropology with the
various ' absolute humanisms." (p. 29; cf. p. 27) '.

III
In the second section Luigi Bogliolo, " Modern Realism and Thomistic
Realism," proposes " a more modern way of understanding experience and
cognition, on the basis of the Thomistic text." (p. 66; cf. p. 55) He suggests that the realism towards which modern philosophy tends cannot be
understood without returning to the Thomism of Aquinas, which is
often very different from the Thomism of his commentators. (p. 33;
cf. p. 54) In complementary fashion he sees also that perhaps only
today, urged on by the thrust of modern thought towards realism, can we
evaluate the realism of Aquinas in all its depth and actuality. (p. 40)
The link between the two is to be found in "human subjectivity " firmly
grounded on being. (p. 34) "Intellectual experience," in which intuition

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155

and concept and experience immediately coincide (" si immedesimano "-p.
46; cf. p. 54), has for its object all reality. (cf. pp. 41-4Q) Accordingly
"the intellective experience of being is that on which the whole of philosophy rests " (p. 53) , and an analogy may be set up " between the creative
intuition of God and the re-creative (spiritualizing) intuition of man."
(p. 65) In this way the article envisages human subjectivity emerging
into an all-embracing realism (" onnirealismo "-p. 53; cf. p. 41) that
is already found sketched in Aquinas and towards which modern philosophy
tends. Hence the " integral realism of St. Thomas, based upon the act
of being, understood in the way explained, allows one to interpret and
evaluate critically the realism of the other philosophies.'' (p. 4Q) In its
light not all the philosophies that call themselves realisms are so in fact.
(p. 40)
This thesis merits attention. How is it to be gauged? In concentrating
on the activity of the human intellect as a unified " intellectual experience,"
it neglects the crucial distinction of Aquinas between apprehension of a
thing under the aspect of its nature and apprehension of it under that of
being. Worse still, it pays little attention to the Aristotelian specification
of faculties and acts by objects, at least from the viewpoint in which the
nature and content of intellection are known through its object. How
could this tenet, correctly understood, allow "human subjectivity" or "intellectual experience" to be the basis ("la base "-p. 55) of the Thomistic
approach? Should not the basis be seen frankly as external sensible things,
with awareness of the intellection as only concomitant? Moreover, should
not the notion of " realism " be taken in the way it is used by philosophers
who expressly call themselves realists, instead of setting up apriori the
doctrine of Aquinas as the model according to which all true realisms are
to be assessed? To bring Thomistic thinking under the label " realism "
has grave dangers. Nevertheless Bogliolo's articles deserves attentive study.
It is replete with acute philosophical observations on the various themes
it touches, and is excellently documented from the writings of Aquinas himself.
Next in the section, Alberto Caturelli offers a solidly Thomistic discussion of creation in terms of participation of being. The creationist doctrine
is shown to provide a rationally demonstrable demythologizing (" demitificati6n "-p. 70) of the ancient world and to be capable of remaining efficacious in confrontation with the contemporary thrusts of logical positivism
and Hegelian immanentism.
Georg Siegmund, "The Question about the 'Nature' of Man," offers an
able and convincing defense of the truly basic (p. 89) role of human nature for the guidance of moral life. Medicio-biological as well as philosophical anthropology can show that man's nature in its dominantly spiritual
teleology contains an "obligatory
(p. 86), vindicating the general

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direction of the encyclical " Humanae Vitae " against the recent philosophical notions of "love" as the sole deciding factor. No effort, however, is
made to integrate these important tenets into the Aristotelian and Thomistic understanding of choice as the first principle of the moral order.
Francesco Cacucci, " The Doctrine of Image according to St. Thomas
Aquinas," gives an interesting and well-written presentation of Aquinas's
teaching on the Trinitarian likeness of God in man, against a background
in which the divine word, perfect image of the Father, is regarded as the
model" type of every image." (p. 91) The treatment is theological throughout.
Alberto Galli, "Morality of Law and Morality of Spontaneity according
to St. Thomas," discusses how the moral doctrine of Aquinas avoids on
the one hand extrinsic legalism (" estrinsecismo "-p. 109) and on the
the other the ethics of non-preceptive spontaneity or love (p. 117) as the
sole principle of morality. It treats in detail (pp. 118-125) the positions
of well-known Catholic moralists who today follow the latter tendency.
It notes that freedom itself is not freely assumed but pertains to the na'/;ure of the rational will. (p. 110) While correctly upholding free-will as the
primary root of moral action (p. 127), and maintaining "the irreducible
difference between moral law and ontological law " (p. 135) , it insists on
the essentially rational character of law (pp. 140-141), showing that
goal-directed and preceptive law is required by the very essence of morality.
(p. 151)
Mario Valentino Ferrari, "A Study of Justification of Means in View
of End, in the Light of St. Thomas Aquinas," examines the teaching of
Aquinas on the way the end imparts goodness to the means, the only way
(p. 176) in which it "justifies " them. The article shows how the end
cannot so justify means that are immoral in themselves. The end may
require one good to be sacrificed in favor of another and more important
one (cf. p. 175), or that an equally or less important good be safeguarded
by using a different method. The article applies its conclusions to a number
of practical cases.
Giuseppe Perini, " Comparison of Man with Animals in the Sexual Anthropology of St. Thomas and of the Moderns," finds that today's two
dominant anthropologies, the one phenomenalistic in the framework of
Kant and Husserl, the other biological in the wake of Darwin, destroy
" the central idea of Thomistic anthropology," which is "nature." (p. 193)
With remarkable acumen the article defends the Thomistic sexual ethics
against misunderstandings by its two main opponents, and shows the contribution it has to offer today to a true knowledge of man.
Luigi Salerno, " Relation, Opposition and Dialectic in Modern Thought
and in Thomas Aquinas," aims to integrate " the valid element contained
in Hegelian thought" (p. 234; cf. pp. 230; 233) into Christian philosophy

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157

and theology by inserting it into the framework of relation and of being.
(p. 231) The essential oppositions throughout the entire range of human
interests should be regarded not as contradictory but as relative. (p. 239)
In this way becoming can be explained through relations (p. 225) , and
dialectic can be inserted into the further frame of being, which remains
"the fundamental concept in Christian philosophy" (p. 230). Contradiction is never a necessity, and "an ontological continuity" (p. 239)
should be present between the parts of reality.
Pier Carlo Landucci, " Physico-chemical Structure of Matter and
Thomistic Hylomorphism," confronts the two different approaches to the
structure of matter, the one philosophical and ancient, the other modern
and of experimental and mathematical character. Close scrutiny shows
that the findings of the latter, such as discontinuity of matter and the
convertibility of matter and energy, in no way work against the conclusions
of Thomistic hylomorphism. The Thomistic tenet that primary matter in
itself lacks all existence and actuality is defended against the Scotistic
tradition. (p. 253) Nevertheless Thomistic hylomorphism is regarded as
"metaphysical" in character, apparently in the Wolffian use of the term.

IV
The third section commences with an attractively written article by
Georges Kalinowski, " The Philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Face
of the Critique of Kant, Nietzsche and Heidegger." The article notes (p.
257) that some spiritual sons of Aquinas have reservations about the
efficacy of his metaphysics today. It finds that on the contrary the critiques
by Kant, Nietzsche and (dealt with at by far the greatest length) Heidegger have arbitrary and dubious starting points. They do not touch the
metaphysics of Aquinas, which is based upon a broad and solid empirical
foundation. (p. 283) But in arguing Kalinowski makes use of the principlesphilosophy of Neo-Thomism (pp. 259-261), plus the modern distinction
between the existential and the predicative" is." (pp. 273-274) The article,
though, envisages a Thomistic metaphysics that is open in all desired directions of refinement, deepening, and extension (p. 283).
Andrea Milano, " The ' Becoming of God ' in Hegel, Kierkegaard and
Saint Thomas Aquinas," capably explains and defends the doctrine of
Aquinas on divine immutability against current Hegelian and Process Theology trends in Catholic writers. Drawing on Krempel's magisterial study
of relations in Aquinas, he shows that the new relations of creator and the
like are truly in God but add no real entities, and that for Aquinas the
mode of human knowing does not always correspond to the mode of reality.
(p. 293) From this viewpoint God enters history remaining always himself, the Eternal. (p. 294)
Octavio N. Derisi, "Two Antagonistic Conceptions of Being: Sartre and

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Saint Thomas; Nihilistic Immateriality and Realistic Immateriality," outlines the commonly received interpretations of Sartre and Aquinas on being
and immateriality. He concludes (p. 314) that they embody antagonistic
conceptions of being. For Sartre, immateriality annihilates being; in the
Thomistic conception it enriches it. (p. 306) The annihilating immateriality
makes love a conflict of subject and object for Sartre, in contrast to true
love which is the fruit of immateriality understood as richness, fruit of the
spirit. (pp. 299-300) Accordingly in Aquinas spiritual striving is for enrichment in being, and not for its destruction. (p. 314)
In the final article Ubaldo Pellegrino, " The Crisis of Man and Metaphysics in Josef Pieper," surveys Pieper's "Christian Optimism" (p. 330),
which is theocentric (p. 318) in its regard for man as a "pilgrim being."
(p. 324; cf. p. 327) Moral life has to be grounded in " faithfulness to being"
(p. 323), which is" law, hence authority, for whoever wishes to live in an
orderly manner." (p. 326; cf. p. 329) This permits the establishing of moral
law and of an obligatory ethics, based on the nature of things and of man.
(p. 329) The role of prudence gives rise to the morality of a man come
of age, in contrast to a casuistic morality based on an extrinsic model
(" l'estrinsecismo moralistico "-p. 321) . The article regards Pieper's conclusions as drawn from the principles of Thomism and the encounter with
today's philosophical problematic (p. 317), in an open and Christian philosophy. (p. 318) It quotes (p. 316) with approval a view of Pieper's work
as destined to influence the general educated public rather than as shriveled
into a kind of knowledge for initiates.

v
These essays give rise to a number of reflections. First, they are a living
witness to the innate capacity of Thomistic principles to function effectively
in the broad panorama of modern thought, and to face the problems of the
present-day world without too much danger of contamination or absorption.
They are an apt testimony to the " intemporal thomisme de Thomas Aquin
lui-meme" (Gilson, p. 11). In this regard, the relatively lighter penetration
into the particular issues raised by English philosophical literature is
sufficiently explained through the absence of Anglophone contributors.
Secondly, the essays radiate a refreshing sense of existence as the basis
upon which all things must ultimately be judged, and a quiet but healthy
understanding of the role of nature, natural law, precept and obligation in
moral matters. They show intelligent reaction to the chaos of situation
ethics and unregulated spontaneity by insisting on the integrity of the
human person to the full. The confrontation is not overdone, and is a
welcome contribution to the steadying influence of a growing literature
in this direction.
What does give one pause, however, is the problem of marketing these

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principles of Aquinas in the current world. It would certainly be too much
to expect that writing of this type should evoke the active enthusiasm
generated among contemporary readers by Hegel, Heidegger, Sartre,
Merleau-Ponty, Russell and Ayer. The septicentennial meetings and publications of 1974 have shown that by and large the modern intellectual
world is quite ready to pay tribute to Aquinas as one of great thinkers of
the West. But the interest seems to end there. To bring the Thomistic
principles effectively into the living ferment of present day thought is, one
must acknowledge with regret, a problem still to be faced. It has to be
faced with an utterly open mind. Aquinas wrote in medieval Latin. He
couched his profound philosophy in a frankly theological framework. He
did not enjoy the wealth of scientific and anthropological information that
means so much in today's world. These obstacles are far from easy to
counter. Against that background is it too much to wonder whether the
overall breadth of vision required by the Thomistic principles has yet been
attained by contemporary writers? The warning (p. Q57) that Thomists
may still be writing for a closed community deserves careful consideration.
Even more devastatingly one may ask if the spirit of a closed system has
been effectively overcome. To Gilson (p. 8; cf. p. 16) it still seems a bit
of a scandal that two seasoned followers of Aquinas should be in disagreement on a fundamental point of interpretation. He draws from it a lesson
of intellectual modesty. But might not the real lesson be something very
different?
It might not be too hard to prove that no two leading Thomists of the
present century have interpreted Aquinas in exactly the same way. This
could be documented sufficiently to show that in the philosophical inspiration of Aquinas there are many truly inhabitable mansions. Should not
the lesson, then, be a much broader acceptation of individually different
approaches on the part of each Thomistic writer? Aquinas himself was
quite used to philosophical pluralism among his Greek and Arabian
predecessors as well as among his Christian forebears and contemporaries.
Should not the same spirit hold within the orbit of Thomistic thought?
The text of Aquinas has to be scrupulously upheld. But to be vital and
effective, does not the understanding and development of it have to vary
with each individual? Cannot each continue to benefit from interpretations that are found personally unacceptable? But can this open spirit be
said to have been attained as yet among Thomistic writers?
There is no doctrinal relativism implied here. Still less can there be
acquiescence in the contamination of Thomistic principles by the tenets
of other philosophies, a defect so widespread in Neoscholasticism and so
justly though gently criticized in Bogliolo's article. (p. 33) Thomistic
principles will continue to reject these alien transplants. Antibiotic treatment to suppress the opposition will soon render the organism incapable

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of surviving in the actual environment. Rather, what is called for is a
development of the Thomistic principles from within, in the way in which
each individual writer experiences them in his own intellectual life and
puts them into practice in his own personal involvement in each sphere
of human activity. For this, obviously, the notion of adherence to a
" system of thought " will have to be completely overcome. In the meantime, publications like the present one play an essential role in keeping alive
the spirit of interest in the writings of Aquinas.
JosEPH OWENS, C. Ss. R.
Ponaifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies
Toronto, Canada

Evangelization Today. By BERNARD HARING. Translated by Fr. Albert
Kuuire. Notre Dame: Fides Press, 1974. Pp. 191. (paperback).
This book is an effort to apply the two great themes of Evangelization
and Reconciliation currently being celebrated in the Catholic Church to a
serious reconsideration of the basic understanding of moral theology and
its urgent problems that have surfaced as a result of its encounter with the
contemporary world. Evangelization Today continues Father Haring's long
scholarly development of an understanding of moral theology which is faithful to the absoluteness of God and is, at the same time, responsive to the
experiences of man. Underlying his entire approach through so many books
is Father Haring's thesis that the revelation of the person of Jesus always
takes place in and to community which leads to communion. Thus, the
gospel message must always be embodied in the Church's life if it is to
be proclaimed.
As Father Haring sees it, the split between dogmatic theology and moral
theology and the deep cleavage between the structure of contemporary
societies and the Catholic Church make such a re-examination at this time
essential for the future of the Church. Although there has been a healthy
switch away from casuistry distant from the gospel and life in the solution of moral problems, many of the solutions being offered today in the
name of social justice, human development and freedom are no closer to
the perspectives and demands of faith. Consequently, in this book, Father
Haring shows how the moral teaching of the Church and the moral life of
the faithful are integral parts of witnessing to the faith which is evangelization. (Evangelization is understood not only as the initial propagation of
the faith but also as its perennial deepening and continuing vitalization).
While the characteristic note of Christian moral theology is the perfect
synthesis between love of God and love of neighbor, today sees the rise

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of a new and dangerous ' moralism ' that limits itself either to an appeal
to people to become involved in a good cause or to a threat of sanctions
for a failure to respond. It is in the light of this new danger that "moral
theology must think over its structures and norms in the light of evangelization." (p. 3) .
As far back as 1956 in his book, Macht und Ohnmacht der Religionssoziologie al,s Anruf, that is, even before his intense involvement in Vati can
II, Father Haring saw clearly the necessity of interaction between theology,
sociology and the pastoral ministry of the Church. His work as peritus at
Vatican II and secretary to the commission which prepared the P(J)3toral,
Constitution of the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes) reflects very much his unifying insight into the sacramental nature of the
Christian life, expressed so eloquently in Gabe und Auftrag der Sacramente
in
where he says: "We do not separate the ethical commandment
from the good news. Instead we see in Christ himself, in his works of
grace and in the good news of the gospel, our salvation and the law of
our life."
His next work, published the year Vatican II convened, Konzil im Zeichen
der Einheit, developed this understanding further when Father Haring
insisted that the Church must re-examine all aspects of its life to see if
its structure, preaching, liturgy, juridical forms and moral teachings are
truly reflective of Christ's love and serve, therefore, as effective witnesses
to it.
This latest book brings to a further stage a lifetime of scholarship and
prayerful reflection. While it cannot be considered a major work, it is an
important contribution to the current multi-level discussion in the Church
today: Where are we going? Father Haring's answer, the direction given
by the Holy Year and the Synod of Bishops, is that we are to be instruments of reconciliation and evangelization; to be effective, we must know
and read " the signs of the times."
Evangelization Today is divided into three parts. In the first part, the
author describes the problem to which he is addressing himself: the relationship of moral theology to the Church's mission to evangelize the world.
The second part explores a rather extensive series of problems that arise
out of the efforts to evangelize a world which is no longer sympathetic to
or in harmony with the great cultural roots of Western Catholicism. The
third part is a consideration of how God is acting in the world today, as
the setting for evangelization. Since evangelization presupposes God's
presence as Creator and Redeemer, evangelizers must meditate not only
on the revealed word, but on the world itself, discerning God's action, so
that they can cooperate most effectively with the Lord of History.
"Part I: The Vision of Morals in the Light of Evangelization: The
Fundamental Problem." Fr. Haring sees clearly and proposes forcefully

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that evangelization cannot be accomplished by systems or institutions, only
by faithfilled people who have themselves been evangelized and can read
the signs of the times. Consequently, he calls for some rather radical changes
in the thinking and understanding of the Church and its role. In particular,
he thinks that the modern situation demands a " demythologization of
authority," calling for humble service, subsidiarity, collegiality and coresponsibility in the carrying out of the mission of the Church as opposed
to the traditional clericalism. He says: "A Church which assumes as a
fundamental criterion only the external rite and cold statistics instead of
the sincere faith of the person cannot evangelize the world of tomorrow."
(p. 19).
Applying this understanding to the Church's teaching authority, he observes, "This is not to serve primarily for the control of orthodoxy, but
for the convincing communication of the joyful news: such a demand
should condition the whole style of the exercise of the magisterial authority."
(p. 37) . Furthermore, the structuring of moral systems requires that the
Church recognize that the centers of influence are passing from Europe
and the old Western World to the so-called Third World.
" Part II: The Morals of Evangelization and the Evangelization of
Morals." "Moralism" fails to recognize the priority of the gospel as a
way of life and fails to place evangelization before moral teaching; consequently, moralism blocks the action of saving grace and becomes an
obstacle to experiencing the joy of the gospel and effective evangelization.
The first chapter of this part, " The Morality of Evangelization," is especially appropriate today in the light of the prevalence of Pelagian and
semi-Pelagian teaching. Father Haring says:
The fact of having been gratuitously reconciled became for Paul the most urgent
motive for preaching the gospel. . . . To recognize the gratuity of the gift of
salvation and of reconciliation transforms all our life into a Eucharist, into a
thanksgiving; and thus, we become, by an internal necessity, messengers and propagators of the Joyful news.' ' (p. !'l7) .

In other words, only the joy-filled believer can spread the faith, and he
is driven to this act of sharing what he has been freely given because
of the urgency of the experience of salvation. Given the joyful nature of
this proclamation of salvation, it follows that, once man accepts the gospel,
his life becomes a joy-filled living out of the message-he lives the gospel
morals.
In the second chapter of this part, Father Haring argues to certain characteristics moral life should have when it has been evangelized, insisting
that the gospel must always evangelize the morals already existing in
various cultures. Christians cannot simply impose European moral models
on non-European cultures, especially with regard to Church government

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163

and understanding the natural law; however, whatever expression morals
take, it should always be an expression of the fundamental gospel law of
love. Here he touches again on the point he raised in the first part:
" Evangelization imposes on the Church the liberating duty of abandoning
a clerical, juridical and centralistic concept of her government, modelled
on and deeply marked by the out-dated political systems of the western
world." (p.
.
"Part III: Evangelization as Response to the 'Kairos '." This part offers
a phenomenology of today's world to provide a perspective for evangelization at this moment in history. Men and woman today, by and large,
do not identify with the Church and exhibit an attitude which is markedly
critical. At the same time, while being extraordinarily dynamic, the world
is also manipulative even though it thinks of itself as self-sufficient and
adult. It is further divided by extremes of wealth and poverty. As a result of this new situation, Father Haring explores in some detail how the
Church must respond with drastic changes in its attitudes towards theology, eclesiastical structure and authority. He courageously touches upon
some very difficult and controversial issues, especially regarding the morals
of marriage in non-European, specifically African, cultures. He returns again
to stress the importance of the Third World by insisting that the Church
take greater cognizance of the role of culture in the expression of moral
life, realizing that the gospel transforms all human expressions of culture.
This book is worthy of praise. The insights are as brilliant as one expects from Father Haring because he continues to develop his theology
along the lines of his understanding of the primacy of love in the gospel
message so that all moral life of the Christian and his Church is an evergrowing extension of that experience in the Spirit. The observations he
offers with regard to the situation in the present day are most accurate.
We do live in a post-Christian world, and the institutional Church can
no longer depend upon a residue of understanding among the vast minority
of mankind for a sympathetic hearing of its message. Therefore, change
is essential, and Father Haring is well qualified to suggest the lines along
which change should take place in the interest of reaching all, although
they may seem radical and even destructive to those whose thelogical
growth has not kept pace with the changing thoughts of the Church-a
development to which Father Haring has been a respected contributor for
many years.
Whether it is due to the translator or to Father Haring's own trenchant
style of writing, the book is difficult to read. One is forewarned that it is
not a one-sitting effort. It requires reading and rereading, mainly because
principles are stated in a rather complicated way, and the reader is left
on his own to draw out the inferences and practical ramifications. At the
same time, it is not a substantial theological treatise. In spite of its

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deficiencies-obvious perhaps because one expects so much-it does lead
to a gospel understanding of reconciliation and evangelization in our secular
age.
JoHN BURKE, O. P.
Dominican House of Studies
Washington, D. C.

Thomas and Bonaventure: A Septicentenary Commemoration. Proceedings
of The American Catholic Philosophical Association, Volume XLVIII.
Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America, 1974. 344 pp.
Scholars teaching in Germany, Spain, Italy, Japan, Canada, and the
United States have contributed to this septicentenary volume. Their
thirty-one papers are grouped under six headings: "The Nature of Philosophy,"" Man and Knowledge,"" God and Religious Knowledge," "Ethics,"
"Law," and " Texts," followed by a commemorative oration by Robert
J. Henle, S. J. The concluding section of the volume contains the presentation of the Aquinas Medal by W. Norris Clarke, S.J., to Cornelio Fabro,
C. P. S., and such Association business as committee reports and minutes
of meetings.
Not all of the papers are directly on Bonaventure or Thomas. Some
are on relevant problems or historical background. For example, the
first paper, by Thomas Langan, presents a conception of a Christian
philosophy that provides a place for both metaphysics and historicity.
Louis Dupre, in " The Mystical Experience of the Self and Its Philosophical
Significance," explores what mystical experience contributes to the knowledge of the self as such. Adolfo Munoz-Alonso and A. Robert Caponigri
discuss St. Augustine, who was a master to both Bonaventure and Thomas.
Munoz-Alonso, in " The Idea and the Promise of Philosophy in St. Augustine," by showing that Augustine does not detract from nature or human
intelligence to exalt the role of faith, helps the reader to see him more
clearly as the forerunner of Thomas Aquinas. Caponigri, in " Contemporary
Neo-Augustinianism," thinks Augustine speaks directly to contemporary
man and notes that Catholic scholars like Munoz-Alonso, Blonde!, Sciacca,
have renewed for our time the thought of Augustine. John McNeill, S. J.,
in " Blonde! on the Subjectivity of Moral Decision Making," sees Blondel's
philosophy of action as the most powerful presentation of the Augustinian
tradition in contemporary philosophy and theology. Julian Gervasi, in
"The Integralism of Michele Frederico Sciacca," relates Sciacca's concept of objective inwardness to Augustine's experience both of inwardness
and openness to transcendence.
Of the papers directly on the theme of the volume, those on St. Bona-

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165

venture are outnumbered by those on St. Thomas Aquinas, but they should
not be neglected by students of Franciscan philosophy. John 0. Riedl,
in" Bonaventure's Commentary on Dionysius' 'Mystical Theology,'" gives
a careful textual analysis of those portions of the second of the Collationes
in Hexaemeron in which Bonaventure speaks of Dionysius the Areopagite,
whom he names as a guide, along with Gregory and Augustine. Bernardino
Bonansea, 0. F. M., in "The Impossibility of Creation from Eternity According to St. Bonaventure,'' compares and contrasts the position of St.
Bonaventure with that of St. Thomas on this admittedly difficult question
and tries to show the reasonableness of Bonaventure's position. Ewert
Cousins, in "God as Dynamic in Bonaventure and Contemporary Thought,"
and Leonard Bowman, in "A View of St. Bonaventure's Symbolic Theology," would bring Bonaventure into dialogue with twentieth century
man. Cousins, seeing the God of Bonaventure's Trinitarian doctrine as
a dynamic, self-diffusive source, suggests the fruitfulness of comparing his
metaphysics of fecundity with the thought of Whitehead and Teilhard.
Bowman, noting that Bonaventure described material creatures from above
as footprints of the Trinity, asks what these vestigia would look like to
twentieth century man who describes phenomena from below. Seeing them
as gifts to our consciousness which disclose a giver of infinite fecundity,
Bowman finds Bonaventure's symbolic theology not too different from some
things said by Heidegger, Karl Rahner, and Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Ignatius Brady, 0. F. M., in " The Opera Omnia of St. Bonaventure
Revisited," discusses four points on the Quaracchi edition and later developments: 1) the background of the edition and its preparation;
problems of the edition or items open to criticism; 3) the question of whether
or not pieces found since the edition can be attributed to Bonaventure;
4) things that still remain to be discovered. The Bonaventure scholar
will appreciate Father Brady's frank and helpful report.
Some of the papers on St. Thomas Aquinas explore his thought by
studying it in his own context, or by comparing it with recent views, or
by doing both. Fritz-Joachim von Rinteln, in "The Good and the Highest
Good in the Thought of Aquinas," presents the context of metaphysical
realism within which Thomas situates his theory of value. Cornelio Fabro,
C. P. S., in "Philosophy and Thomism Today," contrasts the present reduction of being to being-of-consciousness with the Thomistic position on
being as the inexhaustible foundation for the activity of consciousness.
Joseph Owens, C. Ss. R., in "Aquinas on Cognition as Existence," also
shows clearly that the starting point of philosophical inquiry for Thomas
is being; being exists with a new mode of existence in knowledge. Kenneth
Schmitz, in "Another Look at Objectivity," inquires into the factors that
enter into " the apprehension of a thing as it is." While sensitive to the
role of the knowing subject, he finds the center of objectivity in the dis-

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closure of a thing as it is. Henry Veatch, in " Essentialism and the Problem
of Individuation," tries to clarify Thomas' notion of matter as the principle of individuation against the background of issues discussed today by
Chisholm and Wiggins. D. H. Salman, 0. P., in "Body and Soul," suggests that the Thomistic concept of man as a unity of body and soul can
be shown by appealing not just to the adult human being's accomplishments
but to psychological data on behavior, motivation, and development at
all stages of human life, including early childhood. Richard Reilly, in
"Weakness of Will: The Thomistic Advance," and Klaus Riesenhuber, in
"The Bases and Meaning of Freedom in Thomas Aquinas," point to contrasts between Thomas's views and those of the Greeks. Reilly thinks
Thomas' understanding of weakness of will goes beyond that of Aristotle.
It does not mean being overcome by passion, as for Aristotle's incontinent
man; it is rather a deliberate pursuit of a lesser good at the risk of forsaking a higher spiritual good. Riesenhuber believes there was a shift in
Thomas' position on freedom from the earlier to the later works. He thinks
that Thomas first seemed to make will a subordinate and executive faculty
of the intellect and later shifted the emphasis towards the autonomy of
the will, in response to the Greco-Arabian necessitarianism condemned
in Hl70.
Some of the writers search in Thomas for answers to problems raised
in our time. James Reichmann, in "From Immanently Transcendent to
Subsistent Esse: Aquinas and the God-Problem," shows how Aquinas' theory
of being, if properly understood, answers the contemporary need to solve
the problem of transcendence and history. For Aquinas God is in history
but not dependent upon it, immanently present to it, but transcending
this immanent presence. David Tracy, in "St. Thomas on the Religious
Dimension of Experience: The Doctrine of Sin," shows that Thomas has
something to say to our contemporary theologians and philosophers of religion. He finds that Thomas's philosophical theory can justify both the
explicitly religious Christian insight into the gratuity of God's grace and
the dimension of man's freedom which acknowledges the fact but not the
necessity of sin. Vernon Bourke, in "Aquinas and Recent Theories of
Right," examines the distinction of good and right in British-American
ethics, shows that Aquinas regards good as the primary value and right as
secondary, and points to the contemporary significance of Thomas' view.
Kevin McDonnell, in "Aquinas and Hare on Fanaticism," explores the
function of reason in ethics by using as a test case the problem of fanaticism
raised by Hare. He finds that Thomas's view of reason, particularly moral
reason, provides the more adequate basis for a rejection of fanaticism.
Martin Golding, in "Aquinas and Some Contemporary Natural Law
Theories," and John U. Lewis, in "Aquinas and Professor Kelsen: Their
Differing Conceptions of Legal Science," compare Aquinas' view on law
with modern theories and suggest its relevance for our time.

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167

The volume, though dominantly appreciative of Aquinas' contributions,
is not an anthology of eulogies, but of careful scholarly expositions and
appraisals. John Noonan, Jr., in" Masked Men: Person and Persona in the
Giving of Justice," asks some hard critical questions about Thomas's distinction of the public person and the private person. This might well be read together with Nicholas Rescher's discussion, in "Morality in Government
and Politics," of the question: Should public agents be exempt from
standards that apply to others? These papers and others in the Law
and Ethics sections would be useful supplementary reading for an Ethics
course.
Another critical note can be found in Leslie Dewart's discussion of" The
Relevance of Thomism Today." He finds no Thomism today which enjoys
at the same time both " historical legitimacy " (i. e. fidelity to the principal
doctrines of Thomas) and philosophical adequacy. This is not surprising
since, as Ralph Mclnerny points out, he takes phenomenology as a norm
of philosophical adequacy. He raises an interesting question which is, however, as relevant to the disciple of Husserl and Heidegger as to the disciple
of Thomas Aquinas: Is the spirit of philosophy antithetical to the spirit
of discipleship? The question, "What does it mean to be a Thomist today?," could be further explored on a theoretical level, but it is implicitly
answered in several of the earlier papers in this volume.
Edward Mahoney, in" St. Thomas and the School of Padua at the End
of the Fifteenth Century," points out that there is still no detailed and
exhaustive history of Thomism, but his paper provides some solid information on three philosophers who were influenced by Thomas: Nicoletta
Vernia, Agostino Nifo, and Pietro Pomponazzi. James P. Reilly, Jr., in
"The Leonine Commmission and the Seventh Centenary of St. Thomas
Aquinas," presents I) a brief history of the Leonine Commission; 2) an
examination of the method used to provide a critical edition of the works
of Aquinas; 3) a statement on the present and future prospects of the
Commission.
Father Henle, in his commemorative oration, predicts "a great
If he is right,
revival of Thomistic scholarship and interpretation."
this book may well be a precursor of such a revival. Many may turn to
this volume for additional historical knowledge about two major thinkers
of the thirteenth century, but they will find more than this. They will
glimpse a coherent view of man and reality in a theocentric universe. They
will also be alerted to the help that Bonaventure and Thomas can give
us with some of the problems of our own time.
BEA H. ZEDLER

Marquette University
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

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Perception: A Philosophiccil Symposium. By F. N. SIBLEY. London:
Methuen and Company, 1971. (Distributed in the United States by
Barnes and Noble, Inc.). Pp. vii and 193.
This book is the proceedings of a colloquium held at the University of
Lancaster some five years ago. There are four major papers published substantially as presented at the colloquium and four responses, some more
detailed than others. Some of the participants, like G. J. Warnock, William
Kneale, Godfrey Vesey and Bernard Williams, are philosophers important
in mid-century British analytic philosophy. This is a very technical work
and in its present published form probably of interest only to those
philosophers actually involved with the current discussions regarding perception theory. The papers and responses contained in the book are a
logical development of the concerns about perception expressed by philosophers like Russell, Moore, and others central to the foundation of analytic
philosophy in the beginning of the present century.
Hovering behind three of the major papers is the ghost of the sense datum
theories so common to epistemological accounts of perception by analytic
philosophers a quarter century ago. That the concern with sense datum
theories is now moribund is apparent from only a cursory reading of this
book, which represents current work by analytic philosophers. Given the
disdain with which the sense datum theory is viewed today, it is difficult
for the contemporary student of epistemology to realize why it was so
thoroughly and tenaciously held by so many not so long ago. Although
there are no explicit refutations of the sense datum theories in these papers,
nevertheless the theory's demise has prompted new problems, especially the
claim that the " acquisition of beliefs " is a necessary condition for an adequate analysis of perception. This " epistemic " or " propositional " view
of perception plays an explicit role in the papers by G. J. Warnock, J. W.
Roxbee Cox, and F. N. Sibley. On an unrelated topic, Brian O'Shaughnessy's
paper provides a new yet fairly difficult analysis entitled " The Temporal
Ordering of Perception and Reaction." O'Shaughnessy's analysis appears
a bit out of place, given the " epistemic " theme considered in some form
or other in the other three papers. Since these three papers have a common
theme, the major part of this review will be devoted to them.
In his paper entitled " On What is Seen," Warnock discusses the nature
of some of the insights regarding perception theory attributed to the late
John Austin. That Austin was no friend of the sense datum theory is well
known by anyone even vaguely familiar with his work. Using Austin's remarks from Sense and Sensibilia as a spring board, Warnock continues the
demolition of the appearance/reality distinction made by representative
realists, and a fortiori by advocates of the sense datum position. Warnock

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spends much time in discussion of the validity of the following argument
form:
A sees X.
XisP.

#

AseesP.

Insofar as the conclusion attributes the property "P" to what is perceived as "X ", this implies that an epistemic dimension is part of the
perception process.
Throughout his discussion, I suspect that Warnock has blurred the important and useful distinction found in Aquinas between the object of
perception known via the sensus communis (which I take to be a composite
of proper and common sensibles), and the object known via the vis
cogitativa (which I take to be an awareness of an individual object as a
concretum-what both Aristotle and Aquinas refer to as the " incidental
object of sense ") . I find this Thomistic distinction quite useful although
it is commonly blurred in contemporary discussions of perception theory.
Interestingly enough, in responding to Warnock, D. M. Taylor attributes
the same structural blur to Warnock's analysis which I have suggested
(cf. p. 18 ff.).
The second and third papers and their corresponding responses explicitly
deal with questions concerning the epistemic nature of perception. Insofar
as Sibley's "Analysing Seeing" is in some sense a more general treatment
of this problem, editorially it could well have been placed before Roxbee
Cox's "An Analysis of Perceiving in Terms of the Causation of Beliefs."
Given the logical priority of Sibley's analysis, I shall treat it before discussing Roxbee Cox's article.
Sibley's long article begins with a clear expository account of two opposing positions discussed in contemporary perception theory:
a) Epistemic: This position affirms that perception must be analyzed in terms
of states of belief. Thus an adequate analysis of seeing things and events
necessarily involves reference to a state of " believing that .... " .
b) Non-Epistennic: This position affirms that there are some basic acts of
perception which do not necessarily involve the acquisition of beliefs. Thus an
adequate analysis of perception can be given without reference to the concept of
belief.

In his article, Sibley endorses considerations which favor an epistemic
view and presents difficulties for any version of a non-epistemic position.
I suggest that scholastic philosophers familiar with Aquinas's distinction
mentioned above between the object of the sensus communis and the object of the vis cogitativa can obtain a prima facie awareness of the difference
between epistemic and non-epistemic accounts of perception. I suggest,

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furthermore, that an analysis of the act of awareness of the vis cogitativa
and its object (the incidental object of sense) in terms of what Sibley has
referred to as an epistemic account of perception might prove both fruitful
and intriguing.
Simply put, Sibley's thesis is as follows:
It is proposed that there are two visual uses of " see " with direct object, one
epistemic and one not, and that the epistemic is in various respects the more
fundamental.
(p. 83)
... an account of seeing must be ultimately epistemic in the sense that every
being able to see (non-epistemically) logically requires, as a necessary condition,
the capacity for seeing (epistemically), a capacity that is epistemic. (p. 108)

In proposing and developing his position, Sibley discusses in some detail
the accounts of perception given in Warnock's 1963 article, "Seeing," Fred
Dretske's Seeing and Knowing and D. M. Armstrong's A Materialist Theory
of Mind. Dretske's position is the only one Sibley affirms as totally nonepistemic. Sibley reduces the positions of Warnock and Armstrong to
modified forms of epistemic accounts. Warnock's remarks in his paper
published in this symposium would tend to substantiate Sibley's claim.
In a manner similar to Sibley's discussion, Roxbee Cox develops a position elucidating an account of perception of the "causal variety." The
account is elucidated in terms of the " causation of beliefs." Accordingly,
it is epistemic in nature. Roxbee Cox explicitly claims that his position is
causal in the sense of Grice's famous 1961 article, " The Causal Theory
of Perception," yet structurally more akin to the theory proposed by Armstrong. Roxbee Cox explicitly argues that the concept of " perceiving that "
is fundamental-i. e., the concept of perceiving that so and so is the case.
On his analysis, it follows that the concept of " perceiving a thing " can
be explained in terms of " perceiving that," whereas the converse does not
hold. For Roxbee Cox, the concept of perceiving is the concept of the
exercising of an epistemic capacity; and this capacity, he suggests, is not
just a capacity for being at the receiving end of a perceptual process.
William Kneale's response to Roxbee Cox contains more historical touchstones than any of the other major papers or responses. Furthermore, it
is the one most structurally interesting to scholastic philosophers. Kneale
concentrates on a proposition affirmed by Roxbee Cox that animals and
human babies cannot rightly be said to perceive anything in the full sense
of the concept of perception. This assertion follows from the propositional
nature of the epistemic position affirmed by Roxbee Cox. In response to
Roxbee Cox, Kneale elucidates the following important distinction:
a) the having of a perception.
b) the making of a perceptual claim.

BOOK REVIEWS
But it is certainly

not true that all respectable

171
talk of perce1vmg ca:n be

To indicate the historical dimension of this distinction between sensation
and perception, Kneale quotes extensively from the Summa Theologiae, I., Q. 78, a. 3 and a. 4. Kneale believes this distinction is im.portant as opposed to many empiricists like Hume who have used "perception" as "an omnibus word for whatever goes on in a mind." Kneale
focuses attention on the concept of "intentiones non sensatae" affirmed by
Aquinas and other medievals when discussing the vis cogitativa and the vis
aestimativa. Yet Kneale appears to accept an account of the vis cogitativa
developed by the late Professor Klubertanz in his The Discursive Power.
Klubertanz argued that, according to Aquinas, the principal function of the
vis cogitativa is to perceive that a thing is either useful or harmful. This
interpretation of the vis cogitativa, especially given Aquinas's account of
this faculty of inner sense and its connection with the incidental object
of sense elucidated in his Commentary On Aristotle's On The Soul, seems
quite incomplete to me. However, this review is neither the time nor place
to argue that point in detail.
Kneale offers an analysis of Thomas Reid's account of perception and
likens Reid to Aquinas in that both strongly affirmed the important distinction between "sensation" and" perception." Kneale suggests that Reid
is " right in trying to rescue the word ' perceive ' from misuse." In the end,
Kneale argues against any epistemic account of perception.
But it is certainly not true that all respectable
duced to talk of perceiving that (pp. 72-73).

talk of perceiving can be re-

Kneale provides an interesting insight with his claim that the worry about
"sense experience" and its traditional connection with the postulation of
intermediary entities like sense data have forced epistemologists like Roxbee
Cox into epistemic positions. This postulation of intermediary entities is
further connected, I suggest, with the acceptance of a perceptual model
based upon the "diaphanous mental act" inherited from Moore, Russell,
and Price. For a discussion of the nature of the diaphanous mental act
and its relation to contemporary analytic philosophy, see this reviewer's
article, "Deely and Geach on Abstractionism in Thomistic Epistemology,"
The Thomist, July, 1973. What might be necessary to further the development of perception theory capitalizing on Kneale's remark is to provide an account of a non-diaphanous mental act which is at the same
time non-propositional-i. e., not a state of belief. And possibly some reworking of the structure of Aquinas's faculty psychology could provide some
insights for this task.
On the whole, this book is highly recommended for those philosophers actively engaged in work with contemporary perception theory. It should be
on the shelves of all libraries at colleges and universities with serious philos-

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ophy programs. Yet it is not a text-book nor is it a monograph which could
be picked up by a casual observer or an unsophisticated student of philosophy interested in discovering what contemporary philosophers have to say
about perception theories. And it is precisely this point which has caused
this reviewer some anguish. I make the following comment from the perspective of a teacher of philosophy. A book like this, serious and important
as it is, would be better if it contained a competent and lucid introductory
chapter, especially one expository in nature, which would indicate where
in the flow of contemporary philosophy these papers and responses fit. This
type of introduction would be an invaluable asset for students of philosophy
confronting these difficult issues for the first time, either in seminars or
through independent study. I realize that at times authors are under pressures from publishing-house editors to limit severely the size of introductions. Nevertheless, editorial policy should be in keeping with educational
needs. And one such educational need for books of this caliber is the inclusion of introductory material helping students to become aware of how
the important papers contained within the book are connected with each
other and how the issues discussed are related to the other concerns central
to twentieth-century epistemology.
ANTHONY J. LISSKA
Denison University
Granville, Ohio

The Political Philosophy of Luis de Molina, S.J. (1535-1600). By FRANK
BARTHOLOMEW COSTELLO, S. J. Roma: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1974. Pp. XXVIII
242. Paper.

+

Father Costello, now of Gonzaga University, Spokane, is a former student
of Heinrich Rommen at Georgetown. The present work, his dissertation researched in Rome, is Vol. XXXVIII in the Bibliotheca Instituti Historici
Societatis Iesu. It is monographic in its documentation: there is a bibliography containing every work cited, an index, and long footnotes which
include quotations from Molina's Latin. But the simple and clean prose
makes the book swift and readable. Moreover the report of Molina's
thought is spiced at the beginning and end of each chapter with ancient
and recent parallels and contrasts. These wide-ranging citations make
the reading easy and enjoyable, provided one is willing to pass over the
exhaustive footnotes.
The book is divided into nine chapters which open with Molina's biographical and historical setting, and then take up in tum his theories of civil
society, political authority, the right of resistance, church and state, war,
slavery, and law. A brief concluding note is appended to the last chapter.

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178

The reader is impressed with Father Costello's mastery of the materials
and his admiration for his subject. Molina receives from him an apologetic
treatment in the face of the " almost universal neglect " of the great Spanish
jurist-theologian by modern scholars, notably political scientists and international lawyers. Father Costello places Molina at the head of the " socialmetaphysical tradition of the Jesuits". In the summer of sixteenth-century scholasticism, he writes, " Molinism became the distinctive flower of
Jesuit thought." (p. 231)
\
Molina's political thought is encompassed in the massive De Justicw
et Jure, which began as lectures commenting on the Secunda Secundae
of St. Thomas at the University of Evora in Portugal. Its five volumes,
published betwen 1593 and 1609, are subdivided into tractates and disputations. Although the plan of the work is original, its inspiration came
from Aristotle's classification of justice. Besides St. Thomas, Molina's work
was strongly influenced by two other Dominicans, more contemporary
with him: Vittoria and Soto. No doubt the neglect of Molina by historians
of political philosophy is largely due to his adherence to a tradition already
established by illustrious predecessors.
Molina's treatment of the origin and nature of civil society unfolds
along Aristotelian-Thomistic lines. He postulates three broad groups of
reasons for the origin of political society. The first two provide a natural
basis for the state's directive function: indigentia (the instinctive rational
sense of need) and socialitas (which insures the possibility of human development). The third is responsible for the coercive power of the state:
eventus peccati (the effects of original sin).
As for political authority, Molina is among the Translation theorists,
who argued that it stems from the commonwealth as a whole. For Molina
the immediate use of power is conferred on governors through a communicatio or concessio which renders inactive the natural residual authority of
the people but also leaves it intact. Hence the right to resist a tyrant.
Father Costello finds Molina's thought least satisfactory in the matter
of church-state relations. In principle, he held that rulers are independent
of the pope in the secular domain; he has no direct power to intervene in
temporal maters except in his own state. But Molina concedes practical
circumstances when the greater spiritual common good requires such intervention and entitles the pope to claim temporal jurisdiction.
Father Costello next devotes two chapters (comprising one-third of the
whole book) to Molina's principal contribution to political theory: the
law of war. As a forerunner of Grotius (whose De Jure Belli et Pacis refers
21 times to Molina) , his principles are " in perfect harmony with the practice of modern international law" (p. 131) and could well be helpful in
studying today's conflicts, Father Costello affirms. But as he outlines
Molina's principles governing the right to wage war, the essential elements

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BOOK REVIEWS

of a licit war of aggression (proper authorization, right intention, just
cause), and the conduct of war, one cannot help thinking that our contemporary international situation is more than a little removed from the
civilization Molina knew.
It is in connection with slavery that Molina's thought has been most
controversial. In responding to his critics, Father Costello treats the matter delicately: " Molina's approach to the question of the morality of the
slave trade was first of all to review facts carefully as far as he could
know them," and then outline the norms by which slaves might be legally
acquired, denouncing at the same time the illegal slave traffic. (p. 198)
The concluding chapter, on Molina's philosophy of law, is little more
than a survey of what could make another entire book if handled in detail.
For throughout the five volumes, Molina is concerned to state clearly and
develop in great detail the Thomistic definition and division of law. Father
Costello contents himself with a consideration of three elements of Molina's
jurisprudence: the definition and divisions of law, the relation between
natural law and Jus gentium, and positive civil law in relation to economic
problems such as taxation.
In his conclusion the author finds Molina's political philosophy realistic
(considering man in the concrete within contingent historical conditions),
personal (placing the free individual in the center of his concerns), and
democratic (consistently opposing all usurpations of authority). These are
the fruits of Father Costello's exploration of the stream of Jesuit political
thought as it flowed into the larger river of scholastic political thought in
the last quarter of the sixteenth century.
JOHN A. GuEGUEN
Illinois State University
Normal, Illinois

The Commentary of Conrad of Prussia on the De Ente et Essentia of St.
Thomas Aquinas. Introduction and Comments by JoSEPH BOBIK.
Transcription of the Manuscript by James A. Corbett and Joseph
Bobik. The Hague: Martinus Nijhofl', 1974.
The De Ente et Essentia was one of St. Thomas's first and shortest works,
and yet it has been very popular in Thomistic circles ever since his death.
At least nine commentaries on it were written up to the end of the 16th
century, and in modern times it has been edited many times and translated
into several languages. If St. Thomas were alive today he would no doubt
be astonished at the attention given to this brief and occasional treatise.
Its popularity is understandable, however, for apart from his commentary

BOOK REVIEWS

175

on Aristotle's Metaphysics it is his only purely philosophical treatment of
the notions of being and essence and other related metaphysical terms. The
De Ente et Essentia reveals the young St. Thomas calmly and surely laying
the foundations of his metaphysics, which he developed and deepened later
on in his theological writings.
In the book under review Professors Bobik and Corbett have published
and analyzed the first known commentary on the De Ente et Essentia.
The manuscript of the commentary was transcribed by Corbett and Bobik,
and the Introduction and Comments were made by Bobik. The commentary
is extant in only one manuscript, dating from the mid-14th century. It was
written before St. Thomas' canonization in 1323, since it refers to him as
Brother Thomas. Martin Grabmann, who discovered the manuscript in
the monastery library of Admont, Austria, attributed it to Conrad of
Prussia. He noted, however, that the name of the author was erased in
the manuscript; only ' de Prusya " remains. A partial erasure of the name
" Conradi" preceding ' de Prusya " in another treatise in the same codex
suggests that the erased name of the author of the commentary was also
"Conradi." But on the evidence presented, nothing certain can be said
about the name of the author. Even if his name was Conrad of Prussia
nothing further is known about him.
The commentary consists of a Prooemium and sixteen lectiones or lectures, each of which is divided in the medieval manner into two parts: a
division and summary of Aquinas' text, and a commentary on it. After
presenting the Latin text of the author, Professor Bobik comments on it
at length (pp. 92-162) . His "one purpose" is " to employ Conrad's lectiones as a means to make clearer, if possible, some (certainly not all)
of the claims which Aquinas makes, and the arguments which he devises,
in this densely packed philosophical treatise" (p. 99). He is not unconcerned, however, with the author's interpretation of Aquinas' doctrine, and
he suggests both weaknesses and strengths in it.
I should like to comment briefly on the edition of the text and then on
its interpretation of the thought of St. Thomas.
Anyone who has tried to edit a medieval work from only one manuscript-and a poor one at that-will sympathize with the editors' difficulties in presenting an intelligible text. This reviewer has not had access to
a copy of the manuscript, and so was unable to check the edition. On the
whole, however, the text is readable and intelligible. Only a few sentences
raise difficulties. Occasionally the manuscript clearly needed the emendations made by the editors, but sometimes they have altered the text unnecessarily. For example, aliquod is changed to aliud, p. 26, lines 471, 473,
and p. 27, line 496. Profertur is changed to prosequitur, p. 36, line 700. The
words si animal alitur are omitted on p. 37, line 744, but they do make
sense in the context: according to Aristotle plants are both born and

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BOOK REVIEWS

nourished "if the living thing is fed" (See De Anima, II, 413a80).
Quiddam is changed to quoddam, p. 51, line 140 (but seep.
line 157 for
quidam) . For convenience sake the Baur edition of the De Ente et Essentia
has been printed before Conrad's commentary, and the lemmata of his
text have been changed, where necessary, to conform to the reading of the
Baur edition. There are a few easily detected misprints; e.g. fundamentaum
for fundamentum, p. 56, line
eamden formam for eamdem formam,
p. 78, Lectio XIII; aliquor:m for aliquorum, p. 18, line 216; nonm for non,
p. 12, line 77. Hoc et illuc, p. 18, line 219, should likely be hue et illuc;
qui est res, p. 20, line 304, should surely read quid est res.
Many of the citations of authorities have not been identified and checked,
on the ground that the primary purpose of the edition is philosophical, not
paleographical (p. 4) . But this reduces the usefulness of the edition and
also its excellence. The verification of the references would sometimes help
to establish the text. It was hazardous to change the reading of the dictum
of Averroes on p. 24, as given in the manuscript, without consulting
Averroes' own words. Regretfully, this edition, from a paleographical point
of view, leaves something to be desired.
To the historian of philosophy, Conrad's commentary is important as
one of the earliest interpretations of Aquinas' metaphysics. St. Thomas'
immediate followers seem uniformly to have failed to understand in depth
his notions of esse and essentia. The author of the present commentary
must be placed among their number. The commentary is a literal exposition
of Aquinas' work, and one can find in it almost all the arguments, phrases,
and expressions of the Angelic Doctor. From that point of view Grabmann
was correct in calling it a lucid explanation of Aquinas. Only occasionally,
as Professor Bobik points out, does it misrepresent Aquinas' doctrine, as
when it claims that the essence of a material substance, conceived as a part
(e.g. humanity) does not include both matter and form (p. 61, lines 402404). The commentary also confuses the divine being with esse commune
(p. 73, lines 714-715). It is thoroughly Thomistic, however, in describing
God as esse tantum (p. 72, line 698); in asserting that his esse does not
differ from his essence, while in creatures esse is other than their essence
(p. 66, line 512); that the intelligences are composed of esse and essence
(p. 64, lines 461-462), receiving their esse from an extrinsic cause, namely
God, who is his esse (p. 68, lines 559-562) .
Like the De Ente et Essentia itself, the commentary says little about
the meaning of esse. It does not clarify Aquinas' work by referring to
Aquinas' later profound descriptions of esse as "the actuality of all acts
and consequently the perfection of all perfections " (De Potentia, VII, 2, ad
9), or "the actuality of every form" (Sum. Theol. I, 3, 4). One suspects
that the author was not aware of Aquinas' later developments in his doctrine of esse. He does give some hints, however, as to how he conceived

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BOOK REVIEWS

being and esse. He says that esse is that by which a thing is or subsists
(p. 69, lines 595-596) . Essentia and esse are not the same, though they
communicate between themselves. Esse is the " union of form with matter "
(unio formae cum materia) (p. 45, line 973). This reflects Aquinas' doctrine
in his commentary on the Sentences, that the esse of a substance composed
of matter and form "consists in a certain composition of form with matter" (In I Sent. d. 38, q. 1, a. 3). Esw is not described, however, as a
synthesizing act of the essence. Essence, curiously, is said to be the "duration" of the composite or simple substance (p. 45, line 975). In a clear
distortion of St. Thomas' notion of being, the author asks his reader to
imagine the relation of ens to essentia on the pattern of the relation of
animal to rational. Essentia is added to ens as a kind of specific difference:
essence is an ens extr.a animam (p. 18, line 245 ff.) !
While Conrad, like St. Thomas, is concerned throughout to elucidate
the meaning of terms such as " being " and " essence," it does not seem
to me that either philosopher understands this to be merely a linguistic
or logical task, as Professor Bobik claims (p. 5). Aquinas, to my knowledge, never observes ' that the word 'being ' is composite" (ibid.), though
he, with his commentator, speaks of a composition of essence and esse
in creatures. Professor Bobik's identification of the meanings of the word
"being" with its uses (ibid.) suggests a Wittgensteinian interpretation of
the De Ente and its commentary that the works themselves do not bear.
To Aquinas, the terms analyzed in his treatise are terms of first intention,
signifying reality itself; hence their analysis is not logical but metaphysical.
The book concludes with three useful Indices: 1) to Aquinas' De Ente
et Essentia, 2) to Conrad's commentary, 3) to the footnotes, introduction,
and the comments on Conrad's commentary.
One must be grateful to the authors of this book both for an edition
of a manuscript of such importance for the early history of Thomism and
for their many helpful comments on it.
ARMAND MAURER,

Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies
Toronto, Canada

c. s. B.

BOOKS RECEIVED
Alba House: Where Peter Is: A Survey of Ecclesiology, by Edward J.
Gratsch (Pp. 276, $4.95 paper) .
Barnes and Noble: The Ethics of Buddhism, by S. Tachibana. (Pp. 278,
no price given) .
University of California Press: Marsilio Ficino: The Philebus Commentary,
A Critical Edition and Translation, by Michael J. B. Allen (Pp.
574, $20.00).
Desclee-Bellarmin: La Pedagogie de la Crainte dans l'Histoire du Salut
selon Thomas d'Aquin, by Andre Guindon, 0. M. I. (Pp. 417,
$16.00).
Dimension Books: Building God's World by Robert Faricy, S. J. (Pp. 190,
$4.95, paper). Inward Stillness by George A. Maloney, S. J. (Pp.
236, $6.95, cloth).
Franklin and Co.: Joachim of Fiore in Christian Thought, Vols. I and II,
edited by Delno C. West, (Pp. 631, $28.50).
Liviana Editrice: Summa Dialetice Artzs deUa Biblioteca Feliniana di
Lucca, edited with Introduction by Lorenzo Pozzi (Pp. 260, no
price given).
McGraw-Hill Book Co.: St. Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae. Vol.
7 (Ia, 33-43) Father, Son and Holy Ghost, translated with appendices by T. C. O'Brien (Pp. 274, $20.00). Vol. 56 (3a 60-65)
The Sacraments, translated by David Bourke (Pp. 160, $12.50) .
The Seabury Press: Ethics of Manipulation: Issues in Medicine, Behavior
Control and Genetics, by Bernard Haring (Pp. 211, $8.95).
Scholars' Press: The Religious Language of Nicholas of Cusa, by James
E. Biechler (Pp. 240, $4.20).
The University of North Carolina Press: Philosophy and the Modern
Mind: A Philosophical Critique of Modern Western Civilization,
by E. M. Adams (Pp. 225, 12.95).
Western North Carolina Press, Inc.: The Horizontal Line Synopsis of the
Gospels, by Reuben J. Swanson (Pp. 597, $23.95).
Martinus Nijhoff: Religious Consciousness and Experience, by Thomas
N. Munson (Pp. 192, Guilders 42.50).

178

THE GENERAL INDEX TO THE THOMIST
VOL. XL (1976)
INDEX OF AUTHORS
PAGE

Bourke, Vernon J., Moral Philosophy Without Revelation?
555
Clark, Ralph W., Aquinas on Intentions .
303
Clarke, W. Norris, Analogical Talk of God: An Affirmative Rejoinder
61
Conn, Walter E., Bernard Lonergan on Value .
243
Eno, Robert B. Ecclesia Docens: Doctrinal Authority in Tertullian
96
and Vincent .
Innis, Robert E., Hans - Georg Gadamer's Truth and Method: A Review Article .
311
Innis, Robert E., The Triadic Structure of Religious Consciousness in
393
Polanyi .
Jeffko, Walter G. Action, Personhood and Fact- Value .
116
Kelly Charles J. Some Arguments Concerning the Principle of Sufficient
258
Reason and Cosmological Proofs .
Kerlin, Michael J., Crossing Berger's Fiery Brook .
366
Kluge, E.-H. W., Abstraction: A Contemporary Look
337
Leliaert, Richard M., Orestes Brownson: An American Search for God 571
Lisska, Anthony J., Aquinas on Phantasia .
294
Llamzon, Benjamin S., Philosophy in Our Catholic Universities:
Athena or Socrates .
608
May, William E., What Makes a Human Being to Be A Being of
Moral Worth? .
416
222
Mcinerny, Ralph, Naturalism and Thomistic Ethics .
Mohan, Robert P., Philosophical Presuppositions of the Founding
Fathers .
1
32
Nielsen, Kai, Analogical Talk of God: A Negative Critique .
Peccorini, Francisco L., Aristotle's Agent Intellect: Myth or Literal
505
Account? .
Regis, Edwards, Jr., Aristotle on Universals .
135
Sala, Giovanni, The A Priori in Human Knowledge: Kant's Critique
of Pure Reason and Lonergan' s Insight .
179
Shea, William M., Tracy's Blessed Rage for Order: A Review Article 665
Skousgaard, Stephen, Wisdom and Being in Aristotle's First Philosophy .
444
Tyrrell, Bernard, Healing Our Communal Consciousness: Christotherapy
571

VanderMarck, William, Ethics as a Key to Aquinas's Theology .
535
Wallace, William A. Sia: Studies of Causality on the Bicentenary of
David Hume: A Review Article .
684
INDEX OF BOOKS REVIEWED
Beauchamp, Tom L. (ed.) Philosophical Problems of Causation
(Wallace)
Bedell, George C., (ed.) Religion in America (Whitney)
Bobik, Joseph, (ed.) The Commentary of Conrad of Prussia on the
De Ente et Essentia of St. Thomas (Maurer)
Cunningham, James (ed.) Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Vol.
57 Baptism and Confirmation (3a 66-72) (Milmore)
Costello, Frank B., The Political Philosophy of Luis de Molina
(Gueguen)
Feiner, Johannes {ed.) The Common Catechism: A Book of Christian
Faith (Donnellan)
Hoye, William J. Actualitas Omnium Actuum: Man's Beatific Vision
of God as Apprehended by Thomas Aquinas (Fenton)
Haring, Bernard, Evangelization Today (Burke)
Harre, Rom, and Madden, E. H., Causal Powers (Wallace)
Kovach, Francis J., Philosophy of Beauty (Philippe)
Mackie, J. L., The Cement! of the Universe: A Study of Causation
(Wallace)
Madden, E. H. and Harre, Rom, Causal Powers (Wallace)
Midgley, E. B. F., The Natural Law Tradition and the Theory of International Relations (Zagar)
May, William E., Becoming Human: An Invitation to Ethics (Lawler)
Pontifica Accademia Romana di S. Tommaso d'Aquino, (ed.), San
Tommaso e il pensiero moderno (Owens)
Piolanti, Antonio {ed.) San Tommaso, Fonti e riflessi del suo pensiero,
Saggi (Weisheipl)
Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, Vol.
XLVIII, Thomas and Bonaventure: A Septicentenary Commemoration (Zedler) .
Shepherd, John J., Experience, Inference and God (Reichenbach)
Scotus, John Duns, God and Creatures: The Quodlibetal Questions
(Boler)
Suenens, Leon J., A New Pentecost? (Stiegman) . .
Sibley, F. N., Perception: A Philosophical Symposium (Lisska)
Sosa, Ernest (ed.) Causation and Conditionals (Wallace)
von Wright, Georg Henrik, Causality and Determinism {Wallace)

694
330
174
328
172
501
484
160
702
332
69ci
702
495
333

153
322

16·i
488
492
325
168
695
697