An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent

An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent

Belief and experience: these realities are necessary for the continuation of life. In an age deeply scored by empiricism, materialism, and skepticism—as were the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—it is belief which comes under close scrutiny; under the harsh light of new scientific standards and methods, belief—the assent to mystery—is interrogated, its legitimacy as a rational exercise contested, its standing as a faculty of human nature dismissed. Widely considered Newman’s most important work and a pivotal text in the philosophy of faith, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent is a challenging and technically elaborate apologia for belief—the means by which men and women come to believe in God, to freely assent to propositions which they do not or cannot fully understand and to propositions for which there is not absolute empirical proof. In the words of Martin Cyril D’Arcy, S.J., A Grammar of Assent “remains the masterpiece which no one can safely neglect” on the subject of belief and intellectual assent. First published in 1870, the fruit of twenty years’ labor, and re-issued here with the 1955 Introduction by renowned French Catholic philosopher Étienne Gilson, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent is a text of profound significance and singular import for those seeking to plumb the mysterious depths of man’s rational power to believe.