Judgment (iudicium) is the personal act in which the person asserts a state of affairs — that is, affirms it as obtaining or denies it as not obtaining. In judgment the person takes a stance toward reality and binds herself to the truth she has recognized (truth). It is not a mere registering of states of affairs but a free enactment (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 30–55).
Thomas Aquinas distinguishes judgment (compositio et divisio) from the simple apprehension of an essence (simplex apprehensio): only in judgment do truth and falsity become possible, for only here is something predicated of something. If the state of affairs asserted by the judgment agrees with the state of affairs obtaining in reality, the judgment is true; if it does not agree, an error is present. Reinach has shown that judgment has an objective correlate — the state of affairs — which subsists independently of the act of judging. Judgment discovers the state of affairs; it does not produce it.
Judgment presupposes cognition and stands in close connection with insight: insight supplies the ground, while judgment carries out the assent. As a personal act it presupposes rationality and the capacity for truth, and it belongs to the second dimension of personhood (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 133–139).
Ontological relations:
- is a subclass of: Personal Act
- presupposes: Cognition, Rationality, Capacity for Truth, Truth
- has as objective correlate: State of Affairs
- concerns subject: Person
- is presupposed by: Error
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae, I, q. 16, a. 2 (truth in judgment: compositio et divisio)
- Reinach, Adolf (1913): Die apriorischen Grundlagen des bürgerlichen Rechtes (German). (State of affairs as objective correlate of judgment)