BOOK REVIEWS 485 Aquinas's Philosophical Commentary on the "Ethics": A Historical Perspective. By JAMES C. DOIG. The New Synthese Historical Library 50. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001. Pp. xvii+311p. $105.00 (doth). ISBN 0-7923-6954-8. Did Aquinas ever work out a moral philosophy, or does he only conceive of a theological ethics, an ethics that considers man as ordered to a supernatural end? James Doig offers an important contribution to this ongoing debate by arguing that Aquinas's Commentary on the Ethics is a philosophical, not a theological,commentary. Its principal purposes, he claims, were to discover the intentio Aristotelis and thus to correct earlier interpretations of the Nicomachean Ethics, and to present Aristotle's response to the question of human happiness (xi-xvii). On this basis, Doig proposes that the Commentary is the principal text for Aquinas's moral philosophy (274). Two main counter positions must be addressed: first, that Aristotle's Commentary was only a preparatory work for the Secunda Secundae and therefore lacks any intrinsic philosophical value (Gauthier); second, that Aquinas's interpretation of Aristotle was distorted by his theological perspective Oaffa). The first two chapters document some central points in Thomas's analysis of Aristotle's text and several putative corrections of earlier interpretations of the Ethics, the most prominent of which are for him those of Albert and Averroes. According to Doig, the most important point of disagreement between Aquinas and his Latin predecessors is that for Aquinas happiness consists chiefly in contemplation, which is the actualization of wisdom, and not in an activity guided by practical reason (26-33). In opposition to Averroes, Aquinas contends that Aristotle did not hold that contemplative happiness is obtained through a connection of the human agent with the separate agent intellect (47f.). In chapter 3, Doig argues that it is consistent both with the philosophical practice of Aquinas's time and with the role philosophy plays in his other writings that he should have composed a philosophical commentary on the Ethics. Doig cites several witnesses to Aquinas's philosophical reputation, notably Masters of Arts, particularly Siger of Brabant (106f.). More importantly, he documents how Thomas uses philosophical arguments to discuss issues of theological relevance: the unicity of the intellect, the eternity of the world, the necessity of choice, and the unicity of substantial form (92-102). Yet Thomas's arguments with the other Masters of Paris on these points are intelligible even apart from his theological concerns. For instance, in De unitate intellectus he argues that the unicity of the agent intellect for all mankind contradicts philosophical principles and is contrary to the intention of Aristode (94f.). Chapter 4 examines Jaffa's claim that Aquinas's Commentary "subordinates philosophical to theological principles, and interprets the data of philosophy from the viewpoint of theology," a thesis Jaffa spells out in his Thomism and Aristotelianism (1952) in terms of six "principles of Christian ethics." Doig responds in some detail that Aquinas did not regard these principles as particularly Christian or theological; for Thomas, in Doig's judgment, they are 486 BOOK REVIEWS thoroughly rooted in the corpus Aristotelicum. The principles in question regard: (1) particular providence, (2) perfect happiness as impossible in this life, (3) necessity of personal immortality to complete the happiness intended by nature, (4) personal immortality, (5) special creation of individual souls, and (6) a divinely implanted natural habit of moral virtues (synderesis). Concerning principles (2) and (3), Doig refers to Aquinas's reading of Aristotle's discussion in Ethics 1.10, where the Stagirite asks whether someone can be considered happy while still alive, given the changing fortunes of life. Aristotle concludes that during one's lifetime, one can only be considered "blessed as men," meaning that in this life only an imperfect happiness can be had. Citing this text, Aquinas argues-as a philosopher, according to Doig-that since the desire of nature is not in vain, it follows that the desire for perfect happiness will be fulfilled after this life (Sentences Commentary, Summa contra Gentiles, and Ethics Commentary) (122-35). Doig pays particularly close attention to the sixth topic (158-92). Aquinas understood synderesis-a term that originates with St. Jerome-as the habitus of the first principles of practical reason, such as "Evil is not to be done." Though the term itself is not found in his Commentary, it is clear that Aquinas understands the habitus of first principles of practical reason to be contained in Aristotle's discussion of intellectus, that is, the power of intellectual insight into first principles (Ethics 6). Aquinas establishes the need for these_principles on philosophical grounds by asking how one can perform virtuous actions when one is oneself not virtuous. In such a case, reason, without virtue, regulates the appetites in the light of the first practical principles (189-90). Chapter 5 shows "with some probability" (and convincingly so in my judgment) that much of books 2-7 of the Commentary are later than parallel sections of the Secunda Secundae. This means that the former text cannot be considered as merely a preparatory work for the latter. Doig points out how, in several cases, the Secunda Secundae is more dependent on Albert's Super Ethica than is the Commentary. In fact, Thomas's Commentary reveals a more thorough knowledge of the Ethics than does the Secunda Secundae, as is evidenced by its having successfully avoided certain erroneous interpretations of Aristotle at work in the Secunda Secundae. For example, while Thomas's Sentences and the Secunda Secundae explain epikeia (equity), following Albert, as "superior to justice," the Ethics Commentary more accurately describes it as "obeying the law in a higher way." It is not credible, according to Doig, that after the imprecise view in the Sentences Commentary, Aquinas should have corrected this understanding in the Ethics Commentary and then returned to Albert's description of epikeia in the Secunda Secundae (207-8). Doig explains the Commentary's greater accuracy as compared to the Secunda Secundae with the hypothesis that Aquinas undertook a detailed rereading of the Ethics after the composition of the Secunda Secundae and before writing the Commentary (198). While Doig addresses numerous doctrinal questions throughout his study, only in the final chapter does he attempt a reconstruction of the moral BOOK REVIEWS 487 philosophy presented in the Commentary as a whole. In the introduction to the Commentary, Aquinas describes the subject matter of moral philosophy as "human activity ordered to the end" and "man as voluntarily acting for the end." According to Aquinas, moral philosophy aims at discovering the objective order that the agent is to put into action: the correct order of human actions to one another and to their end, which is determined by God (233). The desire for the end, which is the desire for the good ("good is that which everything desires"), is a natural desire that is imposed by the divine intellect as an effect of divine providence. Aquinas believes this doctrine to be present in the Metaphysics (235; cf. 110-22). The happiness spoken of by Aristotle can be enjoyed in this life; it depends principally on God, but also is the result of man's own actions insofar as they cooperate in achieving this end (237, 241)0 Happiness, on this reading, is the "activity proper to man according to virtue in a perfect life" (240). The moral virtues are understood as inclinations in accord with correct reasoning; Thomas's definition of moral virtue coincides with Aristotle's: "a habitus operating by choice, existing in the mean relative to the individual agent, where the mean is determined by reason as a wise man would determine it" (246). The moral virtues are acquired by repeatedly following reasoning that is faithful to the naturally known first principles of practical reason (247, 254). While Thomas's accounts of courage and temperance are faithful to Aristotle's text, his presentation of justice and prudence are more independent. For instance, Aquinas's notion of the naturally just goes beyond the letter of Aristotle's Ethics: Thomas introduces the distinction between ius naturale and ius gentium and holds them to be implicit within Aristotle's understanding of the naturally just (253). Aquinas believes that only after the discussion of the virtues as the means by which the human goal is to be reached can the moral philosopher complete the description of happiness (232). Accordingly, in book X he offers his solution to the question of happiness. Contrary to the commentaries on the Ethics of Grosseteste and Albert, happiness, for Aquinas, does not principally consist in the activity of moral virtue as the perfection of practical reason, but in wisdom as the perfection of speculative reason (269-72). Doig's study is well documented, carefully reasoned, and displays a thorough knowledge of the historical context. In contrast to recent interpretations of the Commentary, Doig compares the issues raised in the Commentary with the entire corpus of Aquinas's works. proposing a key to the overall interpretation of the Commentary and by offering a discussion of many of its leading topics, it proves to be an indispensable introduction to Thomas's reading of Aristotle's Ethics. While Doig convincingly shows that the Commentary should be considered a philosophical, not a theological work, some questions remain unanswered. If Thomas's Commentary sought principally to establish the intentio Aristotelis, to what extent can we regard it as a source for Aquinas's own moral reflections? Can we assume that his moral philosophy coincides with his account of .AJistotle's, as Doig seems to suggest (106, 274)? On what basis can we decide 488 BOOK REVIEWS this question? In a word, when we read the Commentary, how do we know whether we are presented with Aquinas's own opinion or with his understanding of Aristotle? A diachronic study of some of the themes present in the Commentary as they are developed in Thomas's other writings, such as the one Doig undertakes in chapter 4, seems to be a path toward answering these questions. The Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. TOBIAS HOFFMANN Heidegger's Concept of Truth. By DANIEL 0. DAHLSTROM. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. 462. $60.00 (doth). ISBN 0-52164317-1. In this ambitious, learned, and highly informative contribution to the interpretation of Heidegger's philosophy, Daniel Dahlstrom's objective "is to elaborate Heidegger's early conception of truth (formulated in the Marburg lectures and in Being and Time) as it proceeds from his critique of a particular history of the logical prejudice" (xviii). This prejudice is the thesis "that the genuine 'locus' of truth is the judgment" or that "truth is to be understood primarily in terms of assertions and in view of the presence of what is asserted" (xvii). The role of judgments or assertions in the logical prejudice takes various related forms: "Truth has been characterized as itself a judgment, as a property of an assertion or judgment, or as a relation between a judgment and a reality, or even as the confirmation or confirmability of such a relation" (xvii). Heidegger sought to demonstrate that such conceptions of truth, central to the Western tradition of metaphysics, logic, and epistemology, conceal a more fundamental sense of truth as the "disdosedness of being-here (Da-Sein)" whose essence is "timeliness" (Dahlstrom's translation of Zeitlichkeit) or the comportment of "care" as being-here's authentic self-projection ahead of itself toward death (390). Heidegger undertook this critique on three fronts, simultaneously engaging the accounts of truth, being, and time that anchor the logical prejudice (xviii, 392). As Dahlstrom clarifies near the end of his treatise, the true target of Heidegger's critique is not logic or logical accounts of truth, but rather "the impropriety of an unrestricted extension of ... a certain interpretation of 'being' and its cognates in the context of logic" (449). In question is the interpretation of being as "presence" or as entities "on hand," and the corresponding account of truth as the disclosure of beings, thus understood, in assertions that are