The Cosmological Argument by William L. Rowe (review)

686 BOOK REVIEWS The book reminds us once again of the complexities behind Britain's policies towards its colonies and of the fact that, given slightly different political and personal circumstances, things might have turned out rather differently. It would have been useful if space had permitted the author to spend more than a single page summing up Townshead's career. JAMES HITCHCOCK. St. Louis. University St. Louis, Missouri The Cosmological Argument. By WILLIAM L. RowE. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1975. Pp. 273. $13.50. Professor Rowe's study focuses on a version of the cosmological argument developed in the eighteenth century by Samuel Clarke. After critically examining various cosmological arguments presented by Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, Rowe decides for Clarke's argument as more fruitful for contemporary philosophical investigation since it employs the principle of sufficient reason (PSR) more explicitly than its medieval counterparts. One of Rowe's central theses is that a version of the PSR is essential to all forms of the Cosmological Argument. Various criticisms purporting to show Clarke's argument unsound Rowe submits to probing analyses and finally assesses as failures. The cosmological argument itself, however, cannot be regarded as a proof for the existence of a logically necessary being, since its premises either express or rest on the PSR, whose truth value is at best unknown. This first part of Clarke's argument, suitably emended, Rowe regards as showing the reasonableness of theistic belief in the reality of a logically necessary being, though it does not demonstrate such a being's existence. As the author presents it, the second part of Clarke's argument in its attempt to show that such a logically necessary being is the God of traditional theism is somewhat less than successful. This part of Clarke's argument encounters considerable difficulties in its efforts to establish the infinite wisdom, power, and goodness of the traditional deity. This important work is carefully constructed and is packed with arguments challenging for both friend and foe of various proofs for the existence of God. We shall restrict our comments to (1) the author's view of the function of the PSR in Aquinas's second and third ways, and (2) a suggestion the author makes with regard to the clarification of the first part of Clarke's argument. (1) Without raising questions as to the knowability, nature, or truth of the PSR operative in Aquinas's second and third ways, one can wonder BOOK REVIEWS 687 if Professor Rowe has captured the way it so functions. Rowe considers the PSR as the basic assumption underlying Aquinas's rejection of the infinite regress in the second way: if the series of essentially ordered causes proceeds to infinity without terminating in a first member, there could be no explanation of the fact that a certain sort of causal activity is going on; the essentially ordered series would thus be a brute fact without a cause. Rowe thus regards Aquinas as utilizing the PSR to eliminate the possibility that the essentially ordered causal series would be left unexplained . It is doubtful, however, that Aquinas employs the PSR in this manner. In the second way an essentially ordered series of efficient causes is the effect1 to be explained. Since the operation of such a series of efficient causes cannot be it own intrinsic efficient cause, Aquinas argues that there must be an extrinsic efficient cause (in addition to whatever intrinsic factors are operative) if one is sufficiently to account for the essentially ordered causal series. If there be an infinite number of such extrinsic efficient causes (an actual infinity), then there would be no efl'ect1 , that is, a series of essentially ordered efficient causes producing an efl'ect2• Aquinas is trying to argue that the efl'ect1 (the essentially ordered series of efficient causes producing effect2 ) could not occur as resulting from an infinite number of presently existing extrinsic efficient causes. Such a ruinous explanation would not leave the effect1 as a mere brute fact; it would dissolve it. So the first extrinsic uncaused cause is not poE