Chapter 2 - Practical Judgment

Summary

This chapter is the first of four investigating Aquinas’s view that choice is a hylomorphically structured act that inherits its preferential character from a previous judgment of reason. This chapter deals with the judgment preceding choice. The hallmark of this judgment is that it is free. It does not yet investigate this judgment’s free character in this chapter. Rather, here the groundwork is established for its discussion in Chapter 3 by clarifying what a practical judgment generally speaking is, for Aquinas. It argues that, on his view, a practical judgment involves two components, namely, a propositional content and an attitude of assent. It shows that the propositional content in question is an ought-statement or what Aquinas calls a “precept,” where the force of the ‘ought’ is not deontological, but rather means-end-relating. Thus, on Aquinas’s view, the chapter argues, to say that X ought to be done is to say that X ought to be pursued as a means for the sake of some end Y. It also shows that Aquinas draws a distinction between two types of means, expedient and necessary ones, and two types of ends, ultimate and non-ultimate ones, which yields four different types of precepts.