| Summary: | <p>In this study I examine how the human being naturally comes to understand the human good and practical truth according to a Thomistic perspective. I begin with a claim that St. Thomas Aquinas draws from the Christian tradition as my starting premise: that the human being is created by God with an intellectual nature and natural intellectual aptitude to participate in God’s understanding and loving.</p>
<p>In Part I, which includes chapters 1 and 2, I examine, broadly speaking, what are two poles of contemporary Thomistic discourse on natural understanding of the human good and practical truth, namely, the theories of John Bowlin and John Finnis. After concluding that each author articulates an overly determinative account of practical truth, I consider in Part II the implications of Aquinas’ claim that practical thinking depends on speculative thinking.</p>
<p>My approach in Part II takes three turns. First, I turn in chapter 3 to the topic of simple truth. I recognize that a Thomistic theory of practical truth relies on a clear account of how simple judgment of affirmation (i.e., natural assent) arises distinctly in act. I observe both a need for clarity in Aquinas’ account and a tendency in Thomistic interpretations to conflate the operation’s logical and natural species. Second, I turn in chapter 4 to consider Robert Sokolowski’s descriptive account of human engagement in truth. In dialogue with Sokolowski, I realize that to explain how simple judgment arises, I need to distinguish it from another species of assent that is already a practical activity, namely, judgment of affirmation by inductive inference. Therefore, third, I turn in chapter 5 to clarify a Thomistic speculative account of simple judgment in terms of its natural causal principles, and then to articulate the beginnings of an account of natural understanding of the human good and practical truth in terms of this.</p>
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