Out of the Shadows Into Reality – A Philosophical Exposition of John H. Newman’s Grammar of Assent – Edward Joseph Alam

Out of the Shadows Into Reality – A Philosophical Exposition of John H. Newman's Grammar of Assent

By: Edward Joseph Alam, Ph.D.

The book is a philosophical exposition of John H. Newman’s Grammar of Assent.  Chapters I and II, are devoted to discussing the four stages of the Grammar:  Belief and Understanding,  Belief and Mental Certitude,  Certitude and Theism, and the Divine Origin of Christianity.  Chapter III develops some evaluation by examining the tension in Newman’s metaphysics and epistemology.  The author tries to reveal Newman’s realism and empiricism, and suggests that certainty in formal assent could be obtained outside mathematical proof.

The study highlights Newman’s contribution to general philosophical discourse and to Catholic philosophy.  With respect to the former, he shows how Newman began to carve out a middle way between the two major epistemological tendencies of the nineteenth century, formalism and subjectivism-represented best in that century, perhaps, by Frege’s “logic” and Mill’s “contingent fact”.  With respect to the latter the book highlights the importance of Newman’s emphasis on the role of the will and the conscience in religious assent.  Newman’s works, according to the author, “may soon emerge as some of the more important philosophical and theological works of modern times.”
 

Language(s): English
ISBN: 0963434969 / 9780963434968
2000, Paperback, 198 pages, 17 x 24 cm