抄録
In his Grammar of Assent, John Henry Newman makes a new philosophical approach to the problem of the rationality of faith. Against the traditional empiricist epistemology, he introduces a brand-new concept of the certainty or knowledge which constitutes the basis of our belief system. Those basic beliefs which Newman calls “certitudes” are converging results from a cumulation of probabilities. They are personal as well as practical, but never arbitrary. He lays the foundation for his concept of personal certainty on his “illative sense”, which he has learned from Aristotle's practical knowledge, phronesis. Newman points out that there is no code or science in concrete matters of our life.
