The Teleological Grammar of the Moral Act by Steven A. Long (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 321 potential persons, because potentiality presupposes the person, ontologically, but also conceptually. That which has any possible potential (and structures its unfolding), cannot itself be potential (245f.). Such potentialities are always those of a particular species. According to Spaemann, persons are not their nature, but they do have a nature, and they are not just something over and beyond this "having." Nor is this "speciecism," because this nature does not have to be the human species (although membership in the human species does always imply personhood); it could also be angels or possibly-as Spaemann suggestsdolphins (248). The tension in Spaemann's reflections results from the combination of personalist influences with the metaphysical tradition. This tension is not peculiar to Spaemann; it can be found also in the thought of John Paul II and those who follow him. What is peculiar to Spaemann is the highly speculative, though unthematic, integration of metaphysical and phenomenological thought. Since this is perhaps itself something like an integration of outside and inside perspective, it might be significant that it happens in the context of a reflection on the concept of "person." The fertility of this thought process (sometimes of Hegelian stature, constantly engaging the whole history of philosophy) can hardly be even hinted at in a short review. It is to be hoped that Spaemann will find many readers. Robert Sokolowski has already taken him as a source of inspiration; and that Oliver O'Donovan, himself the author of two remarkable essays on the concept of "person," has made the effort to give Spaemann's book a meticulous (though not always felicitous) translation, speaks for the importance of this text. Readers from the analytical tradition might be puzzled that their discussions do not feature largely in Spaemann's book. Much of what analytical philosophy says about personhood has been about personal identity or its denial; most of its thought experiments revolve around this question. Spaemann does not address them directly, except through the discussion of Locke and the empiricist tradition; but he provides a deeper foundation and a perspective that could also liberate this discourse from being locked into potentially sterile quandaries. Dominican School ofPhilosophy and Theology Berkeley, California ANSELM RAMELOW, 0.P. The Teleological Grammar of the Moral Act. By STEVEN A. LONG. Naples, Fla.: Sapientia Press, 2007. Pp.166 $24.95 (paper) ISBN: 978-1932589399. Since the mid-1960s the attention of a number of Catholic scholars has been directed toward the theory of human action. A convenient starting point for the 322 BOOK REVIEWS discussion-which has often been animated-would be Germain Grisez's 1965 essay "The First Principle of Practical Reason: A Commentary on the Summa Theologiae, 1-2, Question 94, Article 2" (Natural Law Forum 10 [1965]), although an historian could also use his book of the previous year, Contraception and the Natural Law (Bruce Publishing). In the decade or so that followed, a number of European scholars chimed in, including Peter Knauer, Louis Janssens, Joseph Fuchs, and Bruno Schuller. The latter scholars are often associated with proportionalism, judged incompatible with Catholic doctrine in John Paul H's encyclical Veritatis Splendor (1993), although even such a strong defender of Catholic doctrine as Grisez was led by his theorizing to assert that in certain situations craniotomy (i.e., the crushing of skull of a fetus whose inability to pass through the pelvic cavity threatens the life of its mother) is morally permissible, despite the Holy Office's 1884 declaration that it cannot safely be taught that such a procedure is moral. Since the 1960s and 1970s, theories of human action have led other scholars with reputations for orthodoxy to take positions difficult to reconcile with traditional Catholic thought and practice. The name that jumps out here is Martin Rhonheimer, who defended Veritatis Splendor against proportionalist critics (The Thomist 58 [1994]) but who has also come out in favor of the use of condoms by married couples with AIDS ("The Truth About Condoms," The Tablet, 10 July 2004). Steven A. Long in the book under review engages with none of these scholars directly, although he clearly has them in mind throughout. In a long appendix ("Particular Applications to...