The domain of logic according to Saint Thomas Aquinas

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THE DOlvlAiN OF LOGIC
according to
Saint tequ^^ a^^uinas
A Thesis
submittea in conforxiiity with the requirements;,
for degree of Doctor of Pliilosophy
tiiw'
in the University of Toronto
by
Robert Schmidt
Vif,
1947

IBS OdiAZK or Loaic
AOCOKDUBfO
sAunr ffiOMAs aqjoikas
A IhMla
Mtaalttad la oonfoRsalty with th* rTrptlrwiwiti
for ttui dtgTM of Doctor of fi^iXOMHv
la tho uaiTMrslty of ^[^oxoBto
1947

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES
PROGRAMME OF THE FINAL ORAL EXAMINATION
FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
of
ROBERT WILLIAM SCHMIDT
Liu. B. (Xavier Univei'sity) 1932
M. A. (Xavier University) 1934
THURSDAY, MAY 22nd, 1047, AT 3.45 PJM.
IN THE SENATE CHAMBER
COMMITTEE IN CHARGE
Professor R. S. Kxox, Chairman
Professor F. H. Anderson
Professor A. Pecis
Professor I. T. Eschman.v
Professor J. R. O'Donnell
Professor H. R. MacCallum
Professor J. A. Irving
Professor T. A. Goudce
Professor 0. Edison
Professor W. M. D. LoNO
BIOGRAPHICAL
1909 Born, Ciiicinnati, Ohio.
1932 Litt. B., Xavier University (Cincinnati).
1934 M.A., Xavier University
1935 Diploine d'Etudes Francaises, Universite de Poitiers.
1937-39 Instructor, University of Detroit High School.
1938, '40, '43 (Summer Sessions) Lecturer, Xavier University.
1945, '46 (Summer Sessions) Lecturer, Loyola University (Chicago).
1944-47 School of Graduate Studies, University of Toronto.
THESIS
Tlie Domain oj Logic according to St. Thomas Aquinas
(abstract)
,
Logic, in the view of St. Thomas Aquinas, is both an art and a science. By
logic as an art reason guides its own operations to its proper end, which is to
know the true. Not effecting a material product, it caimot be an art in the
strict sense; but because certain immanent terms and instruments of knowing
are constituted, logic is considered a liberal art. As a science it studies these
instruments of knowing. Thus it is a science of science rather than of things,
and so is not a science strictly, but is an instrument of the sciences. Through
them, especially those which are speculative, logic is ordered to the know^ledge of
real tilings, and can be said to be reductively speculative.
It is the instruments of knowing rather than real things or the acts of reason
which logic studies. Because the first exist only in reason and by consequence of
the manner in which things are known, they are called "beings of reason" or
"intentions."
''Being of reason" or "rationate being" {ens rationis) is set over against real
being. Not everything that we can think of has real existence; some things exist
only in thought. Of these some have non-existence in their very delinition; such
are negations and privations. Others, such as fictions, have a positive notion,
but do not really exist. There are, therefore, two kinds of rationate being,
negative and positive. And rationate being must be either negation or relation.
Positive rationate being must accordingly be a form of relation. With negative
rationate being logic is not concerned, but only with the positive, which is reduced
to relation. Among positive rationate beings are some which have no foundation
in reality, while others have. Regarding the first, pure fictions, tliere can be no
science; and so logic does not deal with them, but only with founded rationate
being. The foundation of this sort of being can lie in reality either immediately,
as, for example, in the case of direct concepts or of the notion of time, or
mediately, as in the intention of genus. The kind of rationate being which logic
studies as its subject is positive rationate being having a remote foundation in
the real tiling and an immediate foundation in the maimer of knowing.
Intention sometimes means an act of the will or of the intellect; sometimes,
die "intelligible species" by which the intellect in knowing is mformed and made
like something else. Another meaning of intention (usually in, the expression
intentio intellecta) is the "internal word" or innerly conceived and expressed term
of knowmg. What is expressed by this "word" or intention is the nature or the
intelligible determinations of the thing known. Intention in this last aspect has
accordingly two relations: one to Uie knower as a perfecting quality, the other
to the thing known as a likeness, the relation of similitude.
After directly apprehending the thing according to its nature, the intellect can
reflect, first, upon itself; secondly, on its maimer of apprehension; and thirdly, on
the way in whicli the nature exists in the intellect as a consequence. By this three-
fold reflection the logical or "second" intention is formed. This intention is called
"second" because it is understood after the nature itself is apprehended. It is an
accident of the nature, not of the nature as it exists in reality, but, precisely
speaking, as il is known. This typ,e of accident exists only in the intellect, is a
"being of reason," and constitutes the subject of logic.
The only kind of accident that can exist in reason alone is relation; all others
posit something in exislcircc. Relation does not by its mere notion posit anything
in its subject; it is only "to something"; it is just a regard, a bearing, or an order
of the subject to something else; and this can exist either in reality or only in
thought. If a relation is real, however, it is so because its subject, its term, and
its foundation are all real; otherwise it is a relation in tJiought only.
Among relations which can exist only in thought are some which "follow upon
the act of reason," are devised by die intellect, and are attributed to things pre-
cisely as known. They are the relations which logic studies as its subject. To
this kind of relation both positive rationate being and logical uitentions are reduced.
There are llu^eeprincipal kindsof logical intention; thoseof universality, of attri-
bution, and of consequence.
The intention of universality follows upon simple apprehension. By virtue of
the fact that this apprehension is, witliin the undifferentiated grasp of being,
abstractive of the quiddity or nature of tlie thing know-n, the nature exists in the
intellect without individuating conditions and in uniform similarity to all
individuals of its kind. When the intellect reflects upon tlie abstracted manner in
which the nature exists in the intellect and compares it to the individuals or less
universal, inferior natures, it perceives it to be applicable to many and similar to
all. The relation of similarity of the apprehended nature to many inferiors is tlie
intention of universality. The subject of this relation is tlie natirre as apprehended;
its term is the nature as restricted or mdividualized in its mferiors; its foundation
is the abstractness of the nature as it exists in the intellect.
Another sort of intention is that of attribution. This is consequent upon
judgment. Because our intellectual appreliension is abstractive, bringing to con-
sciousness only one intelligible aspect of the tiling at a time, judgment is necessary
to restore in thought the concretion or union of several aspects of the real tiling
known and already confusedly present in knowledge from the first. In judgment
one apprehended nature is compared with another through a comparison of both
of tliese natures to the real thing, in which the reality represented by one appre-
hended nature is perceived to exist in the thuig represented by the other appre-
hended nature, as a formal determination ui a supposite. Through this comparison
the real conjunction or identity of the represented natures is affirmed. There is
here not an identification of tlie natures in the abstract but of the real thing dif-
ferently represented by both natm-es.
The relation set up by this comparison is a proposition. In the latter the
subject stands as the material part, representing a supposite; the predicate as the
formal part, representing a determination, either substantial or accidental, of tliis
supposite. The subject and predicate are joined by the copula to be in a. relation
of identity in the concrete subject. In the real order when form, the act of matter,
informs its matter, the whole composite is actuated and exercises its act, which is
to be. So in the order of intention when the predicate, the formal determination
of the subject, is joined to the subject and is perceived to be in it, the whole in-
tellectual composite is actuated and has existence in the mind. For this reason
(0 6c in a proposition, effecting and signifying composition in the order of thought,
is a sign of the composition and actual existence in the real order of the thing
known.
By its very nature llie proposition is an attestation of t)ie conformity of tlie
intellect to iJie concrete thing known). The proposition thus attesting is the
"being in the sense of the true" which logic studies. As a relation of identity
between subject and predicate, and therefore of two terras distinct in thought but
not in reality, the proposition can be only a relation of reason. The subject of
this relation is the predicate; the term of this relation is the subject of the pro-
position; and its foundation is the apprehended existence of the nature signified
by the predicate in the supposite signified by the subject. The remote foundation
is tlie real imity or concrete existence of the thing known.
Another intention, that of consequence, follows upon reasoning. Reasoning is
required because of the same deficiency of human apprehension which makes
judgment necessary. Simple apprehension cannot attain things or aspects of
things which do not fall under the senses, and cannot give certitude for judgments
regarding them. Reasoning does tliis; for from things known reason progresses
to truth previously unknown. The movement of logical thought is caused by
initial knowledge, principles or premises; for they contain the conclusion virtually.
When reason compares two premises, a third enunciation, the conclusion is to be
seen as following from them necessarily, because its relation to die premises is
perceived as a necessary consequence. In each premise the predicate is compared
to the subject as a form existing in it. In one premise die predicate is the middle
term, the subject is the minor term; in the other, the predicate is the major term,
the subject is the middle term. Because the major term is formally in the middle
term and the middle term formally in the minor, the major is seen through the
middle term necessarily to be ui the minor. Hence the conclusion, the relation of
the major term to the minor, is to be seen in the relation of the two premises.
The relation thus perceived is the relation of consequence. Its subject is the
conclusion; tlie premises are its term; its foundation is the "vhtue" of the prem-
ises, which is the formal inclusion of the major term in the middle and of the
middle term in the minor. This foundation rests immediately upon the comparative
operation of reason, and remotely upon the efficient causality of real things, which
brings about composition, the information of a designated matter by a determining
form, and the reduction of potency to act.
Logical being, accordingly, as St. Thomas conceives it, is not only to be ex-
plained by analogy to the real but is seen to be dependent upon il;. This
dependence, though remote, is always present. Proximately there is a dependence
upon the manner of knowing the real. In its ultimate nature logical being, which
is the subject of tlie science of logic, is rationate relation as an instrument of
knowing. Thomistic logic is, therefore, always related to the real and directed to
knowledge of the real as its final cause.
PUBLICATIONS
"'The Prose of Francis Thompson," Tli-e Month (London) CLXVI (1935) 134-141.
"The Realism of Jules Lachelier," The Modern Sclwolman XVII (1940) 31-37.
GRADU.-VTE STUDIES
Major Subject:
Medieval Philosophy—Professor G. B. Phel.in,
Professor A. Pegis.
Minor Subjects:
Systematic Philosophy—Professor F. H. Anderson,
Professor H. R. MacCallum.
Greek and Latin Patristics—Professor J. T. MucKLE.
TABLE OOr OOllTBMIS
PA08
iv
SB SPBBZJXO;VZOR OF LOQZO AS A mVOOt
CBAPTS !• PTCdlalaoiy Tliv of %«A Loglo Is t
•
Lost* •• aa Art t
M U
I«ti« • 8tl«BM
(BAfTiR XI. Bilatloa of io«ie to Other soImom 14
VCXIMM—ifioctioa of :iol«ttomi • 14
of Leci« in this Cluisifio»tioo 17
Q&Yiaioiw of Logie 10
OM^wrlaon of I.ocle with U«tapbjr«les 47
(UAPTES ni« A* aobjoot of l4«io 87
Roum
A«t« of aa th« iToyav tisttw of Loislo • . . • • 97
Ratlawkto Bo&ag bmA lolantioaa 60
PMiiMtioa cat tit* ttua mA tho Fidoo 88
•»iMii*i<t im4 niBtcrial* Logio 78
BMR
II
mx
tts stmsat or aaajsor oi Loaio
mssm
XT. totioaato Baiflt 88
r«n>B»lx« toA Bolos in novi^t 88
Jpiaitiva Kationata Salag IB
KMBAat ia iioaUlsr 87
Baaotaljr VMBiAad 101
Ratiaaata Batag ea tha 4>ubj«ot of Losio 107
.
CKAFtn lataatiaaa 113
•
Ial«rtloa aa an Aet of iU or of latoUaet US
:
U9
lataatiOB aa lolalllcihlo o^aolaa
laXtio latallaota 124
rrnUtu5»Sai f!TC» latalllftibla £l)paaiaa 188
8. B9lsiaa4 • 188
S. Tmt^A naUtiOB of tha iBtantioa 198
4. Clbjoeti-ra Slcaifiomea of tha Xataetlea 188
KjwalaA#» of tha Xatntioa 188
K1b4i of Intoatioaa 144
IntMtiOB 100
•
OBAFm n. SaUtiona 189
Battaaata Boias ^ad Lo.fleal Ictantlcwa aa RalatlTo. . . 189
ittaa of Ralstloa 168
Batiaaato Kalatloaa 174
Ralatloaa 1B8