Abstract

This study seeks to give an interpretation of John Henry Newman's An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent for the purpose of presenting his conception of mind. The general aim of the Grammar is to justify the rationality of belief, and in particular religious belief, in which the unconditionality of its assent is not intrinsically related to understanding nor to formal demonstrative proof. Central to the task of attaining this aim is a conception of the human mind as a composite unity or whole. ;We hope to show that the type of whole in which the mind is constituted according to Newman is an analogical one. As such this conception of the mind is implicit to varying degrees in the Grammar but nevertheless is an important component in the Grammar. Our procedure is to identify and examine two principles which run throughout the Grammar, principles from which Newman's analogical conception of mind emerges. One principle is analogical relationality among the acts of the mind and their uses in different subject-matters. Our study highlights and analyzes the many analogical relations among the acts of mind, sensation, and their uses in secular and religious subject-matters. The other principle which we follow in the Grammar is the irreducible nature of propositions. Propositions are the proper objects of two of the acts of mind which are particularly important to the intelligibility of belief. Their irreducible quality corresponds to the non-reductive character of the analogical relations among the acts of mind for which they are the objects. Finally, we argue how it is that Newman's resolution of several particular problems such as the rationality of his view of assent, personal knowledge of God, and the dubitability and corrigibility of concrete propositions are subsumed under his wider analogical conception of mind