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THE ART AND SCIENCE OF FORl\lAL LOGIC IN THOMISTIC PHILOSOPHY I. INTRODUCTION T HOMISTIC lof,ricians have always considered logic as both an art and a science/ It is considered to be the " art of reasoning rightly," and at the same time it is regarded as the science which contemplates the order which the intellect makes among its acts. It is my intention to trace out the character of logic as the art which is " natural " to the intellect, to show how this natural art can become the object of a science, and then to show how this science perfects the art of logic. We shall thus see two degrees of perfection of the art o£ logic and two ends for the science of logic. It must be emphasized that " logic " here does not mean what it does for some moderns, such as Suzanne Langer, who has said: Logic deals with any forms whatever without reference to content.2 ... the logical form of a thing depends upon its structure, or the way it is put together; that is to say, upon the way its several parts are related to each other.3 Other moderns as well have been most insistent that logic does not study the discourse of reason itself. Jan Lukasiewicz, for example, says: It is not true, however, that logic is the science of the laws of thought. It is not the object of logic to investigate how we are thinking actually or how we ought to think. The first task belongs to psychology, the second to a practical art of a similar kind to 1 John of St. Thomas, Cursus Philosophicus, A1-.~ Logica, P. II, Q. I, Art. I. • S. K. Langer, An Introduction to Symbolic Logic, 2nd ed. rev., New York, 1958, p. 48. • Ibid., p. 45. 588 534 JOSEPH J. SIKORA mnemonics. Logic has no more to do with thinking than mathematics has.4 We may say therefore: The logic of Aristotle is a theory of the relations A, E, I, and 0 in the field of universal terms.5 In this view " logic " would properly be a in abstraction from concrete relata. This study pertain, in Thomistic philosophy, to the metaphysical study of relation. It would not be logic at alL For the Thomist, logic is always concerned with the very act of thought itself. (Logic) has as its proper matter the very act of the reason.6 . . . Logic not only proceeds in conformity with reason, as do aU the sciences, but bears upon the act of reason itself, whence its name, the science of reason, or of the logos.7 Moreover, logic, for the Thomist, is primarily formal logic. Material logic is logic in a secondary sense, receiving its directionality, its intelligibility, from formal logic est propter . Our consideration here be confined to formal logic. II. Lome As THE" NATURAL ART" oF REASON For Thomist, art is the recta the " ordering of makeables." Art always refers to something to be made, and making always takes place under the direction of an intellect, which alone can order. according to the imposition of the name, has first of with making material artifacts out of parts of the natural world. But we 4 J. Lukasiewicz, Aristotle's Syllogistic, 2nd ed. enlarged. Oxford, l!l57, p. 12. 6 Ibid., p. 14. Lukasiewicz is most insistent on this point, saying earlier that "Aristotle knows with an intuitive sureness what belongs to logic, and among the logical problems treated by him there is no problem connected with a psychical phenomenon such as thinking" (p. 13). One wonders if L.ukasiewicz has sufficiently considered Aristotle's own words in the Posterior Analytics A 10, 76b 24-25: "... ull syllogism, and therefore :~ fartiori demonstration, is addressed not to the spoken word, but to the discourse within the soul ..." (Oxford translation) . • St. Thomas Aquinas In Analytica Posteriora 1, Proem., n. 2: "... est circa ipsum actum rationis sicut circa propriam materiam." 7 Jacques Maritain, Formal Logic (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1946), p. l. THE ART AND SCIENCE OF FORMAL . LOGIC 585 also speak of arts which make a product in the intellect itself, a construction of knowledge. Such arts we call liberal arts...

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