Faith and Reason by Anthony Kenny (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 303 It has been the reviewer's opinion for some time that the contemporary nominalist/realist dispute comes down to the acceptance or rejection of a single ontological maxim: to every discrete actuality a distinct entity. Thus in the simplest case, the resemblance of two particulars, the realist will maintain (at least) that over a:µd above the two particulars, there exists a universal relation of resemblance irreducible to particulars and needed to explain the fact of similarity. The nominalist, on the other hand, will maintain that such resemblance is a primitive fact which does not require the existence of a further entity, the resemblance relation, and which could not really be explained by the invocation of such a relational universal without giving an account per obscurius. The second point is well taken. That able thinkers of the nominalist position find in universals only occult entities suffices to show that the notion of a universal is a problematic one. If it were not, there would be no dispute. As regards the first point, though, it is simply not clear that similarity needs no account. And the realist may reply that to hold similarity primitive without further ado is to make such similarity obscure. If the realists are right, then universals exist even at the price of obscurity, while if the nominalists are right then they seem committed to rejecting a maxim which is at least as reasonable as their criticism of the obscurity of universals. And the debate goes on. Intensions fare similarly. It would be impossible to praise too highly the care, precision, and discrimination which Quine has always brought to his work; and this book is no exception. Even those who lack sympathy with his fundamental views must acknowledge their importance and the philosophic zeal they embody. Theories and Thin'gs is a tribute to the philosophical penetration and eirenic spirit with which its author has approached not only the problems of philosophy but the problems of life. NICHOLAS INGHAM, O.P. Providence College Providence, Rhode Island Faith and Reason. By ANTHONY KENNY. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983. Pp. viii + 94. In the first two of the four lectures which make up this book, the most popular philosophical account of rationality is described and rejected, and another one is put in its place. In the last two, the question is raised whether belief in the existence of God is rational in this sense, and whether faith in a divine revelation is so. The four lectures together make up a wonderfully clear, unpretentious, profound, and well-written little book, 304 BOOK REVIEWS from which anyone interested in the philosophy of religion, or indeed in the proper grounds of belief in general, will find a great deal to learn. Rationality, Kenny maintains, is best considered as a virtue on the Aristotelian model (for all that it was not so considered by Aristotle himself ) ; a mean between the vice of credulity or gullibility, where one believes too much, and the contrary vice of scepticism or incredulity, where one believes too little. Many philosophers, from Locke to Quine, have maintained that a belief is rational so far as it is proportioned to evidence. But Kenny complains that this will not quite do for many of the beliefs which we all hold, and rightly hold, as a matter of course. Thus we believe in the existence of Australia more firmly than in any of the reasons we could give for the belief to anyone ignorant of the fact. To meet this difficulty Kenny suggests a more complicated criterion for rational belief, which he admits lacks the charm of simplicity but which he hopes will neither be so strict as to be self-refuting nor so lax as to be hospitable to lunacy. What his suggestion amounts to is roughly this. Rational beliefs must be either properly basic or properly derivable from properly basic beliefs. Properly basic beliefs include not only those evident to the senses (as on the usual ' foundationalist ' account) but also many confirmable by memory; in addition, there are those which could not be given up without causing havoc in the whole structure of our belief about things...