BOOK REVIEWS

The Four Ages of Understanding: The First Postmodern Survey of Philosophy from Ancient Times to the Turn of the Twenty-First Century. By John Deely. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. Pp. xxiv + 1019. $110.00 (cloth). ISBN 0802047351.

Some histories of philosophy, like the admirable one of Frederick Copleston, only attempt to give an accurate account of various philosophies in their general historical setting. Others, like Bertrand Russell in his absurd A History of Western Philosophy or Étienne Gilson in his brilliant The Unity of Philosophical Experience proffer an argument for a particular philosophical position. Deely takes the second view and says that a good history of philosophy must be itself philosophy.

The thesis of this book, a history as brilliant as Gilson's and certainly one of the most original and comprehensive recent efforts to explain the value and scope of philosophy, is that postmodernism is not, as Heidegger claimed, the end of philosophy, but a promising new beginning. Ancient Philosophy discovered Substance. The Latin Age discovered Being. The Modern Age took the byway of Ideas. Thus with Descartes, modernity took a road that wobbled between idealism and empiricism and dead-ended in solipsism. Postmodernity is about to return to the true road it missed, although that true road lay open to it at the end of the Latin Age, the highway of the Sign. It will at last be freed of its solipsism and enabled to recognize that the world is a network of mind-dependent and mind-independent relations, of reality and cultural interpretation, that can be distinguished in order to be rightly united. This is not the postmodernity of Derrida, since that is merely the last gasp of modernity; it is the postmodernity of Charles Peirce--and, I must add, of Deely himself.

As Deely has explained Peirce, semiotics, the doctrine of signs that transcends the distinction between the real and the mental and enables us to make this distinction and interrelation clear, makes available to us today the major achievements of the three past ages of understanding. Ancient philosophy attained the notion of "sign" as regards natural signs, but even the masterly logic, psychology, and epistemology of Aristotle did not explicitly extend the concept of semeion to mental signs. The Latin Age, especially in the philosophy of being of Aquinas, took this major step, but its full implications were recognized only at its end, in the writings of Jean Poinsot (John of St. Thomas, O.P.). In the third

Age of Modernity, beginning with Descartes, the failure to recognize this semiotic achievement resulted in the war of Idealism vs. Empiricism. But this Empiricism, by its assumption that what we know are not beings but representations, was as solipsistic as was Idealism. With Peirce, who went behind Modernity to recover something of the first two Ages, although mainly in its Scotistic version, the Fourth Age of Postmodernity has begun with the recognition that the Sign transcends the natural and the mental worlds by distinguishing and relating them in the complex web of historical cultures.

For Deely, however, as for Gilson, the philosophy of being of Thomas Aquinas remains central to this historical development. If Peirce had known Aquinas and what Poinsot made explicit in Aquinas rather than Scotus, and if in this new century Thomists can escape their Neoscholastic or Transcendentalist dead-ends, Post-Modernism will be saved from Modernism's destruction of philosophy. The reason that St. Thomas's philosophy of being remains fundamental even in this semiotic age is that it was he who showed us that the primum cognitum, the primary object of intelligence, is "being" in a sense that transcends mind-independent being and mind-dependent being. Only in this way does it become possible to establish the principle of contradiction by which real objects, which cannot contradict themselves, are distinguished from what human thought in its efforts to deal with real objects necessarily or arbitrarily projects on reality. Naïve realism cannot make this distinction, and idealism, no matter how sophisticated, cannot escape the contradictory and solipsistic world of its own construction.

This fundamental epistemological position of Aquinas was based on Aristotle's distinction between sense cognition and intellectual cognition and the dependence of the latter on the former. Aquinas was acquainted not only with Aristotle's notion of how we know through natural signs, from effect to cause, but also with Augustine's insight that there are not only natural signs but also cultural signs, as for example the Christian sacraments. Thus it became clear for Aquinas and scholasticism that signs are both natural and instrumental. At the culmination of Baroque scholasticism, Jean Poinsot's Tractatus de Signis demonstrates that this indifference of the sign to mind-independence or mind-dependence makes it possible for us to relate the real and the ideal without detriment to either. Immediately after this establishment of semiotics Poinsot's achievement was overwhelmed by the rise of Cartesian Modernity and it was not until Peirce creatively took up an undeveloped suggestion of Locke that a genuine semiotics again emerged.

What Peirce saw clearly, and Poinsot had in Scholastic terms anticipated, was the triadic relational nature of the sign. A sign is not simply something by mediation of which something else is known, a dyadic relation of sign and signified, but a triadic relation between first an object known A (the sign), another object known through the first object (the terminating object) C, and what Peirce called the "interpretant," that is, a third object of knowledge that is precisely the relation of signification between the first two objects, B. For

example, a scientist observes that heavy objects fall (A) and infers that they have the property of gravity (C), because he understands this in terms of what in his scientific perspective he knows to be the logical relation of cause to effect (B). This critical or scientific understanding is possible only if the scientist does not confuse the logical relation of inference from effect to cause (which is purely mind-dependent) with the real dependence of effect on cause. If he does not make this distinction he falls either into Hume's empiricist notion that we do not know causal relations or Kant's idealist notion that this relation is a merely mental projection. One has only to look at current quantum theory to see into what puzzles such confusions have plunged modern science. As the Nobel Laureate in Physics Richard Feynman is often quoted as saying, "I think that I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics."

Poinsot, following Aristotle's and Aquinas's account of the category of relation, showed that predicamental (categorial) relation cannot be sensed but only known intellectually, and that it is supersubjective, since although it is a relation it exists not in a subject but between subjects that only supply its foundations. Since this is the nature of a relation, the triadic relation that constitutes a sign is independent of whether these subjects that supply its foundations are real or ideal. They are the sign-vehicles, not the relations that constitute the sign as such. It is this indifference of the sign relation to the real and the ideal, therefore, that makes it possible for semiotics, the study of the sign, as distinguished from semiology, the study of culturally determined signs, to deal with the intricate web of reality and ideality that constitutes the Lebenswelt or nature-culture world in which humans live.

It is by distinguishing and relating natural and cultural signs without confusion that we are not only freed for practical decisions, but also are enabled to make progress in theoretical knowledge as an historical process (not as a finished, dogmatic product) without falling into deconstructionist skepticism. Thus Deely pictures the history of thought as progressive, yet subject to occasional dead-ends, that can, however, eventually be overcome (and not without some positive profit). Thus Deely emphasizes that what is important is not just semiotics but semiosis, the action of signs by which thought is led from one insight to another through the intricate web of natural truth and cultural construction.

I believe that this work of Deely will make a major contribution to the revival of Thomism because it shows so vividly how Thomists can proceed to assimilate the positive achievements of modernity as a point of departure for a vigorous postmodernity. Moreover, Deely's treatment of Aquinas's own thought is excellent. He acutely exposes a number of Neothomist misreadings, such as the "Christian philosophy" confusion, the reduction of metaphysics to the single topic of esse, the over-emphasis on the originality of the real-distinction of essence and existence in Aquinas, and the Cajetanian mishandling of the doctrine of analogy.

What was lacking in the great synthesis worked by Aquinas was an adequate consideration of the way the historic development of culture and the perspective of individuals within their culture both limits and opens up their understanding of reality. While St. Thomas well understood that "a thing is received in the mode of its recipient," the pioneering culture in which he lived tended to naïve objectivity. What modern thought from Descartes to Heidegger achieved was a painful reflection on how much of our Lebenswelt is a cultural veil through which reality reveals itself with difficulty. Our efforts to understand the world do in fact--not totally, as Kant claimed, but in a major way--conceal it. This has now become evident in quantum theory where the action of observation is so entangled with the observed facts.

In keeping with this emphasis, Deely writes in a style that is at once erudite, critically argumentative, and vigorously personal--indeed, sometimes more personal than is often considered academically "proper." He lets us see that he is an active participant in this ongoing dialogue, employing a touch of polemical rhetoric as well as patient analysis. I enjoyed this liveliness of style in a very long and complex work and welcomed the immense amount of information contained in its lengthy bibliography and appendices.

On certain topics, however, Deely is not entirely faithful to his own emphasis on cultural contextuality. For example, he calls the Pseudo-Dionysius a "forger," when in the culture of that writer a pious pseudonymity was acceptable (even in the Sacred Scriptures), since its purpose was not so much to claim a spurious authority as to express humble deference to it. Similarly his unnuanced criticisms of the Inquisition are more "modern" than "postmodern." In particular, I prefer St. Thomas's benign reading of Aristotle on the question of creation and whether the Unmoved Mover knows the world to that of Deely, who follows current scholarship in this matter. While certainly Aristotle never speaks of creatio ex nihilo or of God's knowledge of creation, neither does he deny these truths; moreover, they are consistent with his metaphysical principles, while a denial of them, as Aquinas shows, would make Aristotle contradict himself--not likely in the Father of Logic. It should be noted that one of Aristotle's lost dialogues was On Prayer and that his will provides for sacrifices. Abraham P. Bos in his Cosmic and Meta-Cosmic Theology in Aristotle's Lost Dialogues (1989) has well argued that these are mature works in which Aristotle chose another literary form for his more religious speculations.

I must confess, moreover, that if I were to write a history of philosophy, I would center it not on the theme of sign, as important as Deely has convinced me that this theme is, but on Aristotle's discovery of First Philosophy in the sense of a science of Being as inclusive of immaterial as well as material existents. Deely does indeed accept the Aristotelian demonstration of the existence of an immaterial First Cause from sensibly observed change in the world, and hence I find that we are in fundamental agreement.

To sum up, Deely's perspective on thought as a network of semiosis escapes idealism by firmly grounding thought in sense observation and saves the

epistemology of Aristotle and Aquinas as against Plato, Descartes, Hume, Kant, and Derrida, while at the same time showing how human thought exists always in a cultural context. No Thomist who faces the challenges of the postmodern age can afford to neglect this massive, lively, and profound work.

Benedict M. Ashley, O. P.

Saint Louis University

Saint Louis, Missouri

Contemplation and Incarnation: The Theology of Marie-Dominique Chenu. By Christophe F. Potworowski. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001. Pp.xviii + 334. $49.95 (cloth). ISBN 0-7735-2255-7.

As an introductory note to this book rightly remarks, Marie-Dominique Chenu (1895-1990) was, as historian of theology, reformer of Scholasticism, and pastoral strategist, a major figure of the twentieth-century Catholic Church. This book would be worth buying for its Chenu bibliography alone (fourteen hundred items occupying nearly one hundred pages of text and hence almost a third of the book's length). But, fortunately, given its relatively high price, it contains rather more than that.

Its title is helpful, for Christophe Potworowski seeks to make two claims. The first is that Chenu's initial attraction to the Dominican Order as essentially a contemplative Order continued throughout his life to command his theological work even though the vocabulary of contemplation ceased to play a dominant role in his later writing. The second claim is that the concept of incarnation (though whether this is the dogmatic concept of the Incarnation of the Word or the sociocultural one of human embodiment remains an open question) at all points governs Chenu's corpus as a pastoral theologian, a practitioner of applied theology. It is this second discussion that will arouse most interest in circles outside the limited world of the Dominican family, not least because it underlines--almost against the intentions of the author--the rather alarming ambiguousness with which the Incarnation/incarnation theme is sounded.

A major lacuna in the work is apparent from its opening. Since this is the first full-scale study of Chenu to appear in English, a biographical introduction would have been useful. As it is, a great deal is made to turn on Chenu's first visit, in 1913, to Le Saulchoir du Kain, the study-house, in Belgian exile, of the Province of France. There his Dominican vocation was discovered at a stroke, thanks to the intensity of the liturgical, contemplative, and studious life so zealously represented by that establishment. Clearly, that visit was momentous for him. So much is not conjecture, but the simple sense of Chenu's own words. It seems to

have caused, however, a curious imbalance in his estimate of the Order's nature. Like at least the early Chenu, the present reviewer is also committed to a canonical, monastic, and studious view of the Dominican vocation. But to maintain that the Order is essentially a contemplative Order, some individuals within which are deputed to preaching, is tantamount to saying that it is the moniales of the Order, its enclosed nuns, and not the friars, who best represent St Dominic's intention. No wonder that Chenu was later tempted by a transfer of his vows to the Carthusians! And, more importantly for the Church historian, no wonder, too, that discovery of the crying need for apostolic preaching in the many de-Christianized milieux of mid-twentieth-century France precipitated something of a crisis in his sense of the proportions of the Dominican vocation and the practical strategies that cohere with it. A good deal of the subsequent ambivalence about incarnation language in Chenu's work (so it might be speculated) takes its rise from here.

Of the book's six full chapters, two are devoted to the contemplation theme, and four to its incarnation complement. Potworowski opens by looking at Chenu's theology of contemplation, with its spirited refusal of the false oppositions of mysticism and asceticism, mysticism and intellectualism. Chenu used Thomas's theology of the virtues and gifts to reassert the happy conjunction of affectivity and knowing, in the appropriation of a grace to which, especially in the more advanced forms of mystical understanding, passivity ("docility" might be a better word) is all. Potworowski has little difficulty in showing how much Chenu's theology of faith--and hence his fundamental theology at large--profited from his strong contemplative orientation. The light of faith is the presence within us of the divine self-witnessing, the inchoate apprehension of the beatifying Good. Building on the work of Ambroise Gardeil, Le Saluchoir's Regent, Chenu stressed how in faith a mystical perception is accompanied by assent to propositions--a symptom of the "theandric" nature of the act of faith, where divine revelation enters the fabric of human concepts to transform them from within. Crucial to Chenu's development of Gardeilisme was his discovery--this time as historian of mediaeval theology--of the fashion in which Thomas had set to work the principle of the (quasi-) subalternation of the sciences in order to make just this point. (It is noteworthy that Potworowski makes far less use of Chenu's investigations of the symbolic theology of the twelfth century than he does his work on the rational dogmatics of the thirteenth.) The theological life of the mind takes wings from the original appropriation of revelation. Cogitatio is essential to faith, in the ever-renewed enquiry of the believer who must remain dissatisfied until the open vision of God arrives. The donné of biblical revelation calls for the construit of a metaphysically informed Catholic dogmatics.

All this is excellent stuff, though the early twenty-first-century context for reading it could hardly be more different, in terms of ecclesial emphasis, than that of the years between the two World Wars. Chenu highlights the human dimension of the act of faith against those who would treat faith's supernatural

character as a charter for docetism. If the act of faith be, as Chenu thought, Chalcedonian, uniting the divine and human in perfect synergy, the threat to that union comes today far more from "Nestorianism" in fundamental theology than the tacit "Monophysitism" Chenu divined among the inter-War Scholastics.

From here to Potworowski's chapters on Chenu's incarnationalism is a relatively easy step to take. In this discussion of the act of faith, the model of the Incarnation has surfaced, even if, as the author admits, it is absent from Théologie comme science itself. Though the successive editions of that master-work conceal the fact, Chenu's involvement in the (by and large, not very successful) attempts of the French Church at pastoral strategy took more and more of his time and energies from the 1940s onwards. Chenu's growing conviction that the "law of incarnation" found in the "divine Economy" necessitated more attention than had previously been given to the material, social, and historical aspects of the human situation, and his belief that the transcendent dimension of the human spirit fulfills itself in fulfilling the world, translated into socio-political options of a broadly Leftist, and impressionistically marxisant, kind. His project is comparable to that of the Annales school of French historians of culture in the period. As Potworowski explains, Chenu much admired them.

The later Chenu appealed to patristic notions of oikonomia as a way of rendering more evangelically preachable a theology inclined to present itself as, principally, a sacred metaphysics. This was welcome, but the notion that the "progressive humanisation of humanity" is "the way of divinisation" (these are not only citations from Chenu but watchwords) seems to render the Incarnation more of a parable, albeit a really enacted one, than actually the means of human salvation. Indeed, the term "incarnation" becomes hopelessly overstretched when made the clarion cry of a Catholic Action itself undergoing, by the 1950s, rapid secularization of goals as well as means

Of course, when animating, in the worker-priest movement, those who were going to be ministering to sections of society alienated from the Church, the desire to avoid excessively ecclesiastical language was legitimate, even praiseworthy. But despite the stress on the need to address the concrete, analysis and rhetoric--as witness the chapters here on "Church, Society and Mission" and "Word as Sign"--became extraordinarily abstract. After the Second Vatican Council the combination of the two, infuriating to Anglo-Saxons, was thoroughly typical of official Catholicism in the French-speaking world.

Attempts to imagine the flesh these skeletons might bear suggest that the idea of "the signs of the times" functioned as something of a code word for a social-philanthropic humanitarianism of a corporatist-Liberal kind. That at least was its increasing fate in Catholic parlance until the Extraordinary Synod of 1985 tackled the matter.

One closes this book with a sense of regret that the development of French Catholicism, to which he so greatly contributed, channelled Chenu's energies into an applied theology whose merits are far from patent, and away from the

renewal of dogmatics by spirituality and historical ressourcement. For the latter renewal he was admirably equipped. And at it, despite occasional questionable formulations, he excelled.

Aidan Nichols, O. P.

Blackfriars

Cambridge, Great Britain

The Ethics of Aquinas. Edited by Stephen J. Pope. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2002. Pp. 544. $39.95 (paper). ISBN 0-87840-888-6.

There are many reasons to applaud the recent resurgence of scholarly interest in the moral thought of Thomas Aquinas. Among the most salutary is the recovery of the complex and fundamentally theological character of Aquinas's oeuvre. The conventional account of Aquinas as the epitome of medieval "natural law" theory, whose place in the history of western ethics is little more than a sideshow along the golden road to modernity, has always been deeply flawed, of course. Now it is increasingly difficult to deny this fact; and thus almost impossible to pretend to students (or oneself) that the "Treatise on Law" (STh I-II, qq. 90-97) represents the sum and substance of Aquinas's reflections on the moral life. Those who persist in doing so might justifiably complain that what Pope Leo XIII in Aeterni Patris (1879) called the "rivulets" of the angelic doctor's teaching are today too numerous and far flung to admit more than a nod in the direction of this complex and theologically minded Aquinas. No more.

In The Ethics of Aquinas, editor Stephen Pope has produced a compendium of recent work on Aquinas's moral thought that in one large but manageable volume brings this wide and diffuse scholarship together. As Pope acknowledges in the book's preface, there has been no dearth of brief overviews of Thomistic ethics (his own is included in an introduction to the volume); and on various aspects of Aquinas's moral thought (e.g., on human acts, on the will, on the virtues, etc.) there has over the last few decades been a veritable tsunami of monographs. However, there has never been anything quite like this: a "comprehensive treatment of the basic moral arguments and content of Aquinas's major moral work, the Second Part of the Summa theologiae" (xi).

Although the book deliberately addresses a wide audience--beginner as well as specialist--those unfamiliar with the primary texts will likely find this volume unhelpful in the extreme. To the extent it addresses beginners, The Ethics of Aquinas, like the Summa itself, presumes of its reader a considerable amount of preparation if not interest in Thomistic moral theory. In other words, if one is looking for a secondary source to use in a standard undergraduate introduction

to Aquinas's moral thought, then one of those brief overviews would probably be a better choice. As a resource for advanced undergraduate and graduate study, on the other hand, there is, truly, nothing quite like this book.

The book is divided into three main sections, which are introduced by three "orienting essays." The first is Leonard Boyle's slightly reworked version of his influential Gilson Lecture (Toronto), "The Setting of the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas," originally published in 1982. The decision to put Boyle's essay at the front of the volume reflects not simply the recognition of that essay's influence on subsequent inquiry into Aquinas's ethics (it is frequently cited in the notes to many of the other essays in this collection), but an editorial commitment to the importance of historical context in interpreting both Aquinas's moral thought and the reception of that thought in times and places leading down to and including our own. In fact, if this book has an editorial slant--Pope is emphatic that the selection of contributors does not represent the canonization of any one interpretation of Aquinas's moral thought--it is the insistence on the coherence of Thomist moral theory as a tradition of inquiry, "a scene of lively intellectual development."

Of course, it takes more than a juxtaposition of divergent interpretations, or the history of such interpretations, to make this case, and Pope could be faulted for not attending to the complex questions raised by the claim that Thomistic moral theory represents a single coherent tradition, rather than multiple traditions (e.g., Dominican, Redemptorist, Jesuit, analytic, etc.), of inquiry. At the very least one needs some sort of criteria for identifying divergence, to say nothing of development, within a tradition in the first place. Many moral theologians, for example, are fond of citing Boyle's essay in defense of their attempts to restore the Secunda Pars to its place within the Summa (having been dislodged from the Prima and Tertia Pars by John of Freiburg and his epigones), and thereby reconnect Aquinas's ethics to his doctrines of God, creation, and Christ. However, as even Boyle notes at the conclusion of his lecture, "one could argue" that Thomas himself "was not particularly concerned about the circulation of these parts individually, or about the inviolability of the Summa theologiae as a whole," or "that the relationship between the parts of the Summa is not as clear as it might be in the various prefaces."

We obviously don't have Aquinas around to give us an answer--to tell us, say, which "rivulet" is more faithful to the source: Pinckaers's, Finnis's, or Fuchs's. For his part, Leo XIII thought that "the established agreement of learned men" would suffice to distinguish the corrupt from the "pure and clear." On the other hand, Pope's emphasis on the established disagreement among scholars, though a testament to liveliness, doesn't tell us much by itself. Yet, if the placement of Frederick Lawrence's essay ("Lonergan and Aquinas: The Postmodern Problematic of Theology and Ethics") at the other end of this volume is any indication, then the coherence of a single tradition of Thomistic ethics likely depends, in Eric Voegelin's memorable phrase, less on the minting of more Thomists than on the emergence of another Thomas. Given the already broad

scope of this book, it is difficult to imagine saying more than this within the confines of a single volume.

The point is however reinforced in different ways by both of the remaining two "orienting" essays. In his essay on "The Sources of the Ethics of St. Thomas Aquinas," Servais Pinckaers concludes that a proper understanding of Aquinas's moral thought requires that one prayerfully meditate upon the gospels and put them into practice, "as St. Thomas did," before one ever opens the Summa. Pope similarly notes that the "inner dynamic" of Aquinas's ethic leads not to good works, but a transformed life, ultimately the beatific vision.

After these introductory essays, parts I and II turn to detailed commentary and analysis of the various "treatises" of the Secunda Pars, with part I addressing those of the Prima Secundae and part II the Secunda Secundae. Each of the contributions to these sections is written by a well-known and established student of Aquinas, most of them English-speaking. The essays are all of a very high caliber, extensively annotated, with helpful guides for further reading. For the most part, they stick to straightforward exposition of the relevant portion of the Summa. The charge to the authors was clearly to present in as intelligible and concise a manner the origin, meaning, and problematic character of fundamental concepts (e.g., happiness, will, act, habit, sin, virtue, etc.) as Aquinas employs them. Nevertheless, in more than a few cases, engagement with contemporary debate over the interpretation of a specific passage, or with secular critics of Aquinas's thought more generally, peeks through. This is all to the good.

Two of the more notable instances of this engagement are Daniel Westberg's analysis of STh I-II, qq. 18-21, in which he briefly takes up the controversy between "revisionists" and "conservatives" over the question of intrinsically evil acts. His summary and conclusions regarding this debate, drawing in part on the work of Jean Porter, are surely among the most lucid available. Neither revisionists nor conservatives can claim Aquinas as exclusively their own. In her interpretation of STh I-II, qq. 71-89, Eileen Sweeney confronts Martha Nussbaum's "misreading" of Aquinas as the archetypal rationalist, whose underlying aim is to iron out the inherent ambiguities of human action by appeal to a univocal rule and a single scale of values. Aquinas is far more complicated than this, argues Sweeney, and in fact incorporates into his Summa precisely that appreciation for the contingent that Nussbaum so esteems in Aristotle and the Greek Tragedians.

The third and final section examines the "Twentieth-Century Legacy" of Thomistic moral thought. Thomas O'Meara surveys the interpretation of Aquinas by various Dominican theologians, including a few manualists who probably deserve more widespread attention than they have received: Dominic Prümmer and Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange. Raphael Gallagher looks at the Redemptorist and Jesuit traditions, and, with the help of Pinckaers, raises some very tantalizing (and pressing) questions about the necessity of bringing Thomistic moral vocabulary into dialogue "with language more directly associated with experience." Clifford Kossel provides an extensively annotated survey of Thomistic moral philosophy in the twentieth century, an extremely

helpful contribution since this tradition is something moral theologians, to their discredit, often bypass. An essay by Thomas Hibbs on post-Vatican II interpretations of Aquinas's ethics should simply be required reading in every master's and doctoral program in Christian ethics. The final two contributions depart from this narrative mode. Ludger Honnefelder investigates the interplay of contemporary "teleological" theories of morality, with their emphasis on the evaluation of consequences, within current Thomistic moral philosophy. Finally, as mentioned above, Frederick Lawrence presents the work of Bernard Lonergan, in its own way as vast and rich as that of Aquinas, as the result of Lonergan's lifelong "hermeneutical exchange" with Aquinas. That exchange enabled Lonergan to formulate his distinctive account of human experience, or more precisely, his account of human consciousness as experience, informed by the rhythms of both gift (grace) and achievement. In this respect, and in the implications of his method for a sustained critique of modern politics, culture, and philosophy, Lonergan exemplifies both the enduring power of Aquinas's moral thought and the inescapably theological nature of his project.

In books of this sort and size there is always room to quibble about what might have been included, but wasn't. For example, there is virtually no explicit attention given to the influence of the Thomistic tradition on the development of magisterial moral pronouncements (especially those of John Paul II), or in the various strata of liberationist ethics, or in the ongoing ecumenical encounters between Catholic, Protestant, Reformed, and Orthodox theologians. But these omissions are far from serious, and one is not left with the sense that the book is somehow incomplete because of them. The Ethics of Aquinas is still worthy of becoming one of the more frequently consulted secondary sources in the ongoing and lively investigation of Aquinas's moral thought.

Paul J.Wojda

University of St. Thomas

St. Paul, Minnesota

The Virtues, or the Examined Life. By Romanus Cessario, O.P. New York: Continuum, 2002. Pp. viii + 202. $26.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8264-1389-7.

This volume, intended to serve as a textbook, consists of seven chapters that examine the three theological virtues and the four cardinal virtues (acquired and infused), along with the associated gifts of the Holy Spirit and beatitudes. As such, it provides a thorough introduction to Aquinas's theology of the virtues. The great achievement of the book consists in displaying how the analysis of the theological and cardinal virtues provides a richly textured, supple outline of the Christian life.

Some moral theorists today reject moral absolutes on the grounds that the complex situations of real life militate against normative depictions of Christian holiness. In contrast to casuistry or to moral theories that focus upon the will, however, the study of the virtues offers an account of the acting person that properly contextualizes, in light of creation and grace, the explication of the moral absolute (102). The virtuous life is predicated upon the reality that certain ends--a just society, for example--are perfective of human nature. These ends follow from the kind of beings that human persons are, namely, rational animals called to a supernatural vocation of union with the Trinity. Human beings thus have hierarchically ordered ends that correspond to the psychological intellective and appetitive powers (knowing and loving), as well as to the operation of properly directed human passions. When adequately set forth, Cessario points out, the theology of the virtues exposes the rich relationship of the psychological powers and the human passions, thus identifying important foundations not only for moral theology, but also for the applied science of psychology.

The theology of the virtues nicely illumines the fallacy of the two-tier model of nature and grace. The study of the virtues displays the profound integration of nature and grace in two ways: by identifying the guiding supernatural ends inscribed by the theological virtues (above all charity), and by appreciating the distinction between acquired and infused moral virtues (101). Reflection upon moral virtue as acquired enables the theologian to give due weight to the significance of creation in understanding the human person. Without supposing that Adam, after sin, was an instance of "pure human nature" (69), the theologian becomes attentive to "the human person as a creature" with "specific capacities and built-in teleologies" (102) grounded in God's eternal law or wise ordering of his creation (106, 131). Further reflection upon moral virtue as infused allows the theologian to grasp the moral life under the aspect of redeemed (graced) creation shaped by the life of charity. In this regard, Cessario quotes with approval Hans Urs von Balthasar:

Von Balthasar speaks about the "'opening up' to 'the Gentiles' (Gal 3:14) that is effected in the gathering together of Jesus' followers and the bestowing on them of the Holy Spirit (through faith in him)." The same kind of opening up takes place in the moral life through the graced translation of the human virtues--what we call the infused virtues. Because Jesus promises the guidance of the Holy Spirit to all those who are gathered in his name, the Christian believer is a man or woman whose soul brims with a graced discretion that continues to develop during the course of a virtuous life." (99)

The rich interplay of creation and grace--the manifold ways in which grace interiorly elevates and perfects human nature (individually and socially, as the Body of Christ) in attaining its ultimate end of Trinitarian communion--shines forth in the theology of the virtues. As Cessario puts it, "only charity can uphold the whole ensemble of authentic virtues, so that the human person achieves the

freedom that the New Testament promises to those who remain united with Christ" (71).

The benefit of a study that encompasses the theological virtues (faith, hope, and love) and the cardinal or moral virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance), in relation to the gifts of the Holy Spirit, is its ability to probe into the distinctions both between and within the virtues. In this way, the richness of the virtuous life finds the full portrayal that it deserves. In distinguishing, for example, theological hope from theological charity, Cessario explores whether hope "subordinates God to the person's own self-interest" (43). Charity loves God for his own sake; hope loves God "as a source from which other good things come to us" (45). This distinction opposes the veiled spiritualism that, in the name of an allegedly purer Christianity, always threatens to undercut the actual richness of the believer's salvific relationship to God. Cessario reminds us, "In the excesses of 17^th-century French spiritual idealism, some actually spoke about l'amour pur, a love so disengaged from the self that it could continue even in the damned" (38). Against such thin accounts, virtue-based moral theology, with its attention to the integral, subjective, and potential parts (see the schema on page 116) of the moral virtues as well as their contrary vices, provides an extraordinarily thick account of the Christian life. It thus not only avoids what Cessario refers to as "the disastrous separation of moral from ascetical and mystical theology which took place in the post-Tridentine period" (13), but also the individualism that plagues rival understandings of the Christian life.

Cessario emphasizes the social constitution of the "full flourishing" of Christian life in describing each virtue. He pays special attention to the ways in which the Church, as the supernatural Body of Christ, shapes but does not subsume the distinct ends of the family and the political community (136, as well as his chapter on charity). Given the significance for virtue ethics of the social embodiment of the Christian life, it is not surprising that many Protestant and Catholic theologians influenced by virtue ethics have accepted the notions of "tradition-constituted enquiry" and of theology as normed by the practices and doctrines of the Church. Protestant theologians of such a bent, however, paradoxically often find themselves decisively at odds with the moral teachings of the governing bodies of their denominations. By contrast, Cessario successfully advances in concrete form a tradition-constituted and ecclesially normed moral theology. For Cessario, moral theology, as theology, is a participation in God's "saving instruction" (8). The project of moral theology is both made possible and duly circumscribed by its ecclesial matrix: "Christian theology falls within the larger communication of divine truth that constitutes God's holy instruction to his people" (9). This "larger communication of divine truth" includes the definitive articulation of the meaning of revelation--including the constitutive elements of Christian holiness, the moral life--by the Councils and Popes, informed by the saints and doctors of the Church. For this reason, Cessario does not hesitate either to rely upon Aquinas's theology, given its significance in the Church's articulation of the moral life, or to advert frequently to Magisterial teaching.

In drawing out the necessity that moral theology abide humbly within a "larger communication of divine truth," Cessario frequently uses phrases such as "the moral theologian must recognize" or "the inspired Word of God supplies" or "for the Christian believer, the life that the New Testament describes" or "the Christian tradition holds." Such appeals to normative authority, he suggests, characterize moral theology that accepts the ability of the Church to instruct believers accurately about the life of holiness that directs the believer to faith's ultimate end, union with God himself. Indeed, the moral theologian who is unable to identify the Church's teachings as normative finds himself in the false position of either denying the Church's ability to proclaim authentic Christian revelation to ordinary believers in need of Christ's truth, or of laying claim, qua theologian, to the "larger communication of divine truth" that God wills to be expressed not through individual theologians but through the Church in accord with her visible apostolic structure.

The Virtues, or the Examined Life fills a lacuna in Cessario's work, and is therefore best read within the context of his work as a whole. The chapter on faith refers the reader to Cessario's Christian Faith and the Theological Life. Many of the insights conveyed in this larger treatment are not repeated in this chapter. Instead, the chapter on faith focuses upon themes that lay the groundwork for what follows in the later chapters, such as the relationship of nature and grace (Cessario beautifully compares this relationship to the angels' evening and morning knowledge [6]) and the nature of the gifts of the Holy Spirit (13-18). Not only the first chapter, but also the entire book is enriched by familiarity with Cessario's corpus. The opening pages, in which Cessario develops his accounts of nature and grace, the gifts, and the virtuous habitus, should lead the attentive reader to Cessario's The Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics. The chapter on justice, with its evocative comments on satisfaction and Christ's saving work (133, 143), finds valuable expansion in his The Godly Image: Christ and Salvation in Catholic Theology from Anselm to Aquinas. The frequent references to the blessed Virgin Mary (esp. 32, 195-97) invite a reading of his spiritual meditation Perpetual Angelus: As the Saints Pray the Rosary. Lastly, the ecclesial and Thomistic character of Cessario's presentation of the virtuous life should direct the reader to his most important study thus far, his comprehensive Introduction to Moral Theology. When The Virtues, or the Examined Life is joined with these earlier books, the comprehensiveness of Cessario's understanding of the Christian moral life will be fully seen.

Given Cessario's exposition of the wondrous unity and extraordinary complexity of the virtuous life, one might be left with the question of whether such a life has ever been lived or could ever be lived by ordinary Christians. The unity of the virtues is such that a fault in one of the potential parts of prudence, for example, shakes the entire edifice. Furthermore, Cessario testifies to the fact that "no adequate proportion exists between human nature and the goal of beatific fellowship with God" (17). Surely such a delicate, complex, and ambitious edifice as this cannot be lived out in ordinary experience? One suspects that herein lies the pull of casuistic and voluntarist accounts of the

Christian life. At first glance, such accounts may well seem more realistic, either by putting the best possible light upon our failures (the former), or by suggesting that despite the inability of grace to change us deeply, nonetheless by God's grace we might still be able to grit our teeth and will our obedience to God's commands. As Cessario notes, however, "In a certain sense, everyone remains a beginner in the spiritual life" (58). The Christian confession that God's grace is more powerful than our sins reminds us that, despite our real continued unworthiness, grace penetrates to the very core of our being. Cessario affirms that "a full theological vision, such as one finds in the writings of von Balthasar, consistently places the order of grace firmly within the natural world" (164). The theology of the virtues, like the theological virtue of hope, thus bears marvelous witness to the ongoing victory, even in the midst of apparent defeat, of God's supreme love--enacted, after all, upon a Cross.

Ave Maria College

Ypsilanti, Michigan

Being as Symbol: On the Origins and Development of Karl Rahner's Metaphysics. By Stephen M. Fields, S.J. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2001. Pp.155. ISBN 0-87840-792-8.

This work offers a historical, systematic, and constructive interpretation of Karl Rahner's metaphysics based on the concept of Realsymbol. Fields isolates four predicates of the concept and describes the purported sources for each. This structures his presentation: Rahner's notion of real symbol is "analogous" in view of his metaphysics of knowledge and theology of the Trinity (chap. 2); it is "sacramental," stemming from his theology of the Eucharist and the Church (chap. 3); it is "self-perfecting" in view of his metaphysics of change and becoming (chap. 4); and it is "embodied thought" as found in Rahner's metaphysics of language (chap. 5). Additionally, Fields locates historical antecedents that fund Rahner's concept of the real symbol. These include contributions to the notion of analogy and symbol in Neo-Thomism, Blondel, and Maréchal; Thomistic antecedents in the theology of the sacraments; romantic (Goethe) and idealist (Hegel) contributions to the notion of the real symbol as self-perfecting; and precedents in Möhler, Goethe, Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger to the idea of the Realsymbol as embodied thought. In an afterword, Fields offers his critical reflections on the notion of the future of the concept of the real symbol, drawing on the thought of Balthasar and Ricoeur.

The basic premise of the work is that the Realsymbol is the key to understanding Rahner's metaphysics and indeed his thought as a whole.

Although some secondary works are cited in support of this assertion, this thesis is generally assumed rather than defended. Rather, the purported focus of the book is the "origins" of the Realsymbol in philosophical theories of symbol. The author admits that the search for philosophical "sources" of Rahner's thought is "largely speculative," since Rahner rarely acknowledges them (5). Hence the decision "which modern philosophers should be considered origins of the Realsymbol and in what sense" (4) is not based on Rahner's actual reliance on these thinkers as sources, but depends upon "correlations" among their theories of symbol and his. The result is a speculative reconstruction of the "core" of Rahner's metaphysics based on his concept of the real symbol.

The Realsymbol is explicated in terms of its predicates, which not only structure the presentation but are thought to disclose the fundamental structure of Rahner's metaphysics and allow for the exploration of historical antecedents. But these predicates are in fact less significant than the dialectic of subject-object described as "intrinsic, dynamic, and reciprocal" (47, passim). It is this Hegelian-like dialectic which recurs throughout the book and gives structure to the presentation. Hence the "analogy of being" in Rahner turns out to be dialectic of finite spirit, the predicate "sacramental" is disclosed in the "intrinsic, dynamic, and reciprocal" character of the Eucharist, in the identity-in-difference of the Trinity, in the human person as body and soul, and in the dialectic of language and thought; the predicate "self-perfecting" (Selbstvollzug?) explicates this dialectic and thus forms the heart of the presentation, and the chapter on "embodied thought" illustrates the same dialectic with regard to language and being.

As a result, the book offers a more important, if more contested, reading of Rahner's work than the author himself realizes (4). The "unique contribution" is less his attention to the philosophical "origins" of Rahner's thought and the author's sure grasp of a diverse range of thinkers, movements and philosophical idioms, than it is the thesis that the Hegelian-like dialectical logic of the Realsymbol is the key to Rahner's metaphysics, and consequently the key to understanding his thought as a whole. It is this constructive thesis, rather than the historical reconstruction of philosophical sources, that is the key contribution of the book.

While this relativizes the problems associated with finding philosophical sources for Rahner's thought, it raises other difficulties. One of these is the author's method of speculative reconstruction which leads him to a systematic and philosophical interpretation of Rahner's thought. Another is the assumption that metaphysics serves as the "basis for Catholic theology" (98) or that philosophy (metaphysics) alone is adequate for interpreting religion (ibid.). Although the latter judgment is qualified, there are interpretative questions here about the relation of philosophy and theology in Rahner's thought that need to be addressed.

The fundamental interpretative issue is whether Rahner's metaphysics is funded by a Hegelian-like dialectical logic (65-70, 99). A Hegelian interpretation of Rahner would explain the apparent ambiguity involved in the description of

the subject of inquiry itself, which is alternatively described as a study of Rahner's metaphysics (1, subtitle), as the history of the idea "Realsymbol" (5), and as the "philosophy of symbol and Rahner's place in it" (ibid.). Is the assumption that the idea "Realsymbol," implicit in philosophy "from Kant to Heidegger," becomes realized or explicit in Rahner's philosophy? This would explain the appeal to "latent" aspects of the idea in previous thinkers and in Rahner himself (ibid.).

Another issue, related to the speculative character of this work, is the question of the systematization of Rahner's thought. Is Rahner as systematic as Being as Symbol assumes? How are Rahner's own remarks about the unsystematic and occasional character of his writings to be reconciled with this interpretation of his work? Does this speculative appraisal impose an interpretative straightjacket on Rahner--precisely of the sort Rahner opposed in Scholasticism?

Whatever the judgment about these and other questions, the speculative interpretation of Being as Symbol recalls the early philosophical appraisals of Rahner's work in terms of both its technical language and its philosophical elegance. It cuts against the grain of most contemporary research, but offers a way of reading Rahner that is internally coherent and consistent. The question, as with any interpretation, is whether it is warranted by the reading of Rahner's texts themselves.

Michael G. Parker

Fordham University

Bronx, New York

The Doctrine of Double Effect: Philosophers Debate a Controversial Moral Principle. Edited by P. A. Woodward. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001. Pp. 328. $34.95 (cloth), $18.95 (paper). ISBN 0-268-00896-5 (cloth), 0-268-00897-3 (paper).

The principle of double effect (PDE) has a long and rich history. While an account of the distinction between that which is intended in one's act and that which is praeter intentionem can be traced back to Aquinas, the significance of an action having a "double effect" for morality was first formulated as a principle by John of St. Thomas. Although the PDE can be found in the Catholic manuals of moral theology going back four centuries, the heyday for the formulation and application of the principle is in the casuistry of the Catholic manuals of the nineteenth century.

The present volume, as indicated in the subtitle, is concerned not with the history and context of the PDE but with the debate over the principle in recent Anglo-American analytic philosophy. The most important impetus for this

discussion arose from a work by a twentieth-century Catholic philosopher not primarily addressing the PDE. In her 1957 work Intention (and in other essays published shortly thereafter), Elizabeth Anscombe brought a Wittgensteinian sensibility to bear generally on debates in action theory and the philosophy of psychology, and more specifically on understandings and misunderstandings of the PDE. No less a philosopher than Donald Davidson referred to this work as the "most important treatment of action since Aristotle." Inspiring or at least influencing a generation of action theorists who began writing on the topic in the 1960s--from Davidson, Foot, and Searle to MacIntyre, Kenny, Grisez, and Donagan--Anscombe reinvigorated discussion of the PDE. Ironically, while Anscombe herself understood that the PDE lay on the periphery of moral theory and moral theology and could only be intelligently addressed if the PDE were seen as such and brought into conversation with questions about the total orientation of a person's life and his possession of various virtues and vices, significant groups of theologians and philosophers have attached (and continue to attach) great weight to the proper "resolution" of the PDE, for the most part independently of broader questions of moral methodology. On the one hand, a whole moral methodology in moral theology (known as "proportionalism") was created out of an interpretation of the PDE. While the PDE has not had quite that impact in philosophy, The Doctrine of Double Effect: Philosophers Debate a Controversial Moral Principle provides a rich range of examples of its continued appeal among contemporary Anglo-American analytic moral philosophers.

The book is divided into five sections. The first section seeks to present an understanding of the principle itself, though it provides but a single essay, Joseph Boyle's "Toward Understanding the Principle of Double Effect" (1980). The editor considers this to be the most helpful presentation of the principle that neither explicitly defends or critiques it.

The second and third sections collect a number of the best-known critiques and defenses of the PDE in the analytic philosophical literature since Anscombe's Intention. Critics include Jonathon Bennett, Nancy Davis, and Don Marquis, while the defenders are Warren Quinn, Thomas Nagel, and a later essay by Anscombe. Philippa Foot is given the rare honor of getting both to critique the principle (her classic 1967 article "The Problem of Abortion and the Principle of Double Effect") and to defend it (in her 1985 volte-face "Morality, Action, and Outcome").

Sections 4 and 5 are entitled "Discussion" and "Applications." The discussion section consists of two debates: the first recapitulates and extends a discussion over the significance of "closeness" as applied to terror vs. strategic bombing that is taken up by Foot and Quinn earlier in the volume; the second debate deals with the issue of affirmative action, a debate that seems to belong in section 5. The "application" section begins with Anscombe's "War and Murder" and an excerpt from Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars, both of which address issues of noncombatant immunity and proportionality. Unfortunately, the excerpt from Walzer does not include his discussion of "supreme emergency," which at best

relativizes the significance of the PDE in his work. The two articles present contrasting and somewhat incommensurable positions, and in so doing signal important underlying questions for students reading the essays in tandem. The remaining essays take up such issues as the difference between suicide and self-sacrifice, risks involved in the use of nuclear power (presumably the ethics of, for example, increasing the speed limit would also do), and the classic PDE question regarding the use of pain-relieving opiates knowing that their use hastens the death of some patients by weakening and eventually suppressing their respiratory system. The topics here discussed are practically all addressed in earlier essays; one wonders about the need for this section. Having said that, the essays in this section are all competent and usually enlightening.

The editor hopes to "offer a thorough introduction to the DDE [doctrine of double effect] and the important issues surrounding the DDE." If one is teaching an advanced undergraduate or graduate course in moral philosophy and wanted to spend a significant section of the course on the PDE, this would make an excellent and reasonably priced collection of essays. In using this volume, students will be exposed to and challenged by many of the most important recent philosophical commentators on the PDE. In providing many of the canonical texts on the PDE by contemporary analytic philosophers, the editor will have pleased many moral philosophers seeking a text to teach.

While there is much to commend in the volume, it is not clear that it is a "thorough" introduction to the PDE. A thorough introduction would not only acknowledge the many different formulations of the PDE over the centuries, but also represent the view that the way a thinker formulates the principle will (and should) be influenced by the particular moral tradition(s) of which he is either an adherent or an unwitting advocate. For example, while many of the essays acknowledge that the principle arises from the Catholic tradition, no essay either defends or challenges the adequacy of simply extracting the PDE for use in Anglo-American philosophy with hardly more than an historical reference to the Catholic moral tradition. One would think that after MacIntyre (and, e.g., Taylor, Hauerwas, and Jonsen and Toulmin), the question of the importance of a moral tradition for understanding and employing the PDE would have at least to be addressed. This is all the more striking since Anscombe herself expressed a similar view.

This weakness could be relatively easily addressed by a number of different means. For example, in 1991, Joseph Boyle addressed the issue with his article "Who Is Entitled to Double Effect?" This article prompted a response by Alan Donagan, which was the last piece Donagan composed before his death in 1991. "Who Is Entitled to Double Effect?" also has the advantage of addressing criticisms made by Richard McCormick to Boyle's 1980 essay, which Boyle considered to have exposed a significant flaw in the earlier piece.

There are a number of minor weaknesses in the volume. It would be of great assistance to novices to the debate if the introduction contextualized the various essays in the volume (e.g., providing an historical context, pointing out issues to which essayists are often tacitly responding). One strength of the collection is

that many of essays refer to each other. While an editor's note is sometimes inserted next to footnotes pointing out that the essay there noted is located elsewhere in the volume, this is not done consistently, and the corresponding page number in the volume is never indicated. Finally, the book has no subject index, and the "Case" index omits mention of many of the famous cases discussed in the volume. A select bibliography of important essays taking up the subject of double effect not included in the volume would also have been helpful. These weaknesses notwithstanding, the book is an important and significant collection of essays on the PDE, and is appropriate for use in advanced undergraduate classes in moral theory, as well as graduate classes either in moral theory or on issues of warfare or biomedical ethics.

John Berkman

The Catholic University of America

Washington, D.C.

The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability before Pascal. By James Franklin. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. Pp 512. $22.50 (paper). ISBN 0801871093.

He distinguishes between a Whig history and an Enlightenment one and insists that his is Whig history. An Enlightenment history, he says, is one in which a heap of perfectly formed propositions, previously hidden in darkness, are gradually brought to light. A Whig history is "a story of the Advance of Knowledge as the forces of Reason roll back the frontiers of ignorance. As such it does not exactly need a conclusion, as it records the gradual discovery of preexisting intellectual terrain in more or less rational order. Generally, a new idea in probability is seen to replace an older one because it is a better idea" (321). Probability is more like law, or psychoanalysis, in which there are

confused conceptions that work reasonably well in practice, and in which progress lies in clarifying those conceptions while keeping them grounded in reality. It is in such cases that there is a need for the historian to set out what the situation was like before and after the transition in ideas and to explain how it occurred.

That is what the book is about: a study of how notions and distinctions required for nondeductive reasoning have been teased out. Their development took place over many centuries and in response to many practical demands largely, but not exclusively, in areas of law and of conscience.

Franklin explains how predecessors of Pascal and Fermat learnt to handle--without any trace of irrationality--such notions as attaching weight to certain kinds of evidence. They also learned to distinguish such concepts as "suspicion," "simple presumptions," "presumptions of law," and "conjectures." Early writers on probability can therefore be regarded as having made advances if they distinguish between conclusive and inconclusive evidence and if they grade evidence by understanding that it can make a conclusion "almost certain," "more likely than not," and so on. Franklin shows that rationality cannot be restricted to what is demonstrable, and probability cannot be restricted to what can be expressed in numerical terms.

One can admire not only the range of topics with which Franklin deals, but also his command of the material extending through Roman Law, evidence as found in mediaeval law, Renaissance Law, ecclesiastical disputes about doubts, the doctrine of probabilism, skepticism, laws of God and laws of nature, and much else besides. Prominent among the thinkers concerned with matters of evidence were Scholastics, often Thomists, such as Vitoria and his school.

Franklin exhibits an impressive breadth of knowledge and sureness of touch. Add to this a felicitous writing style that expresses difficult matter with an ease and clarity that leaves little doubt about the continuity of argument whether within chapters or between chapters. The quotations from figures encountered in the text are unfailingly apposite, and are enhanced by parentheses of key words in their original language, thereby helping to allay any suspicion that liberties are being taken by the translators.

The book is an important corrective to the influence of the widely read The Emergence of Probability: A History of Probability Prior to Pascal, by Ian Hacking. Hacking maintained that "until the end of the Renaissance, one of our concepts of evidence was lacking: that by which one thing can indicate, contingently, the states of something else." He went so far has to claim that, in the Renaissance, "a probable opinion was not one supported by evidence but one which was approved by some authority, or by the testimony of respected judges." The Science of Conjecture shows that these two crucial claims are not supported by the evidence--and indeed, that there is an abundance of counter evidence. A further by-product of the book is that it provides a much needed antidote to some of the more nonsensical claims of postmodernism.

The Science of Conjecture is a masterly work, beautifully written, and based on encyclopaedic research, all references to which have been carefully annotated. It is simply a tour de force that is unlikely to be surpassed for many a year.

Barry Miller

University Of New England

Armidale, New South Wales, Australia

Peter of John Olivi On the Acts of the Apostles. Edited by David Flood, O.F.M. St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2001. Pp. xxvi + 516 + ii. $50.00 (paper). ISBN 1-57659-174-3.

In this the most recent volume of the editorial work of David Flood, O.F.M., we have an excellent critical edition of the commentary by Peter John Olivi on the Acts of the Apostles. Produced, as Flood observes (viii), somewhere in southern France and, in all probability, towards the end of Olivi's life (1248-98), the Lectura super Actus Apostolorum is the record of lectures delivered to younger friars. Although it draws heavily upon the traditional medieval sources for an Acts commentary, such as the Expositio Actuum Apostolorum and the Retractatio in Actus Apostolorum of venerable Bede and Rabanus Maurus's Super Actus Apostolorum, the Lectura evinces its Franciscan origin in, among other points, the explanations of the paupertas humilis of the early apostolic community. This poverty, as Olivi is anxious to point out, excluded not simply individual claims to ownership, but even ownership on the part of the community (88-92)

The work is divided into two major sections: the first part comprises the proemium and the commentary on chapter 1 of Acts; the second is composed of four subsections, each one of which is named according to one of the seasons of the year and treats its share of the remaining 27 chapters as part of the light metaphor that Olivi draws from the Canticle of Canticles (6:10): "Who is that woman going forth like the rising of the dawn, beautiful as the moon, choice like the sun, and terrible to behold, like an army arrayed for battle?" But, in spite of his typically medieval interest in numerology, Olivi also shows considerable sensitivity to historical detail and accuracy, even taking the effort to study the texts of the Jewish historian Josephus found in Bede and elsewhere.

A noteworthy passage in this substantial commentary is the one bearing upon chapter 17 of Acts, wherein St. Paul attempts to convince the Athenian philosophers that they should accept his teaching about Christ crucified and raised from the dead. Here Olivi, speaking to a group of younger and less urbane friars who may not have done much reading in philosophical texts, recounts a brief history of ancient philosophy, using as his primary source Augustine's De

civitate Dei, while, interestingly enough, not drawing upon the richest source at his disposal for presenting the history of earlier classical philosophy, Aristotle's Metaphysica. Perhaps Olivi's intention was to keep the overview of the subject as clear as possible for the simple and humble friars (simplices [336]) to whom he was then lecturing.

The edition is based upon the five known manuscripts along with quoted excerpts taken from the sermons of Bernardino of Siena. As Flood shows in his introduction, four of the five manuscripts fall into two groups that present texts of good quality. When the two groups are not in agreement, the reading of the majority of the witnesses is usually sound; in the cases when there are no majority readings, Flood maintains that the reading of the Naples manuscript (Bibliotheca Nazionale, cod. vii AA 45) is usually the best available choice because of its tendency to preserve typically Olivian expressions. Overall, the quality of the text is superb, the punctuation helpful, and the sources clearly documented, evidencing the remarkable scholarship of the editor, who has spent years reading and studying the writings of the Occitan master.

In addition to the introduction and the text, the volume contains annotationes et auctoritates or the apparatus fontium, an index of manuscripts cited, an English summary of the commentary, an extremely handy listing of doubts and quaestiones raised by Olivi in the midst of his fundamentally literal commentary, an index of unusual Latin words found in the text, an index of authorities cited, and a general index. The fourth of these items, the listing of dubia and quaestiones, should prove quite useful to historians of philosophy and theology in addition to scholars of biblical commentaries, because it will give them entry into the more speculative parts of the commentary and allow for comparison to Olivi's other published writings such as the famous commentary on the Sentences published by Fr. Jansen in the Bibliotheca Franciscana Scholastica.

This volume should be purchased by every library seeking to keep its collection up to date in the areas of medieval theology and biblical interpretation. The present edition is only part of a series of Olivian texts that are currently appearing in critical edition in Europe and the United States (see, for example, Olivi's Expositio in Canticum Canticorum, ed. Johannes Schlageter, O.F.M. [Grottaferrata: Editiones Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1999). Let us hope that through the continued efforts of the Franciscan Institute and Fr. David Flood even more biblical commentaries will be forthcoming so that greater attention may be paid to this influential and ingenious Franciscan philosopher-theologian.

Timothy B. Noone

The Catholic University of America

Washington, D.C.