Connatural and Legal Knowledge

Abstract

First, this article tries to establish that practical reasoning includes at least one nondiscursive element. Second, the article makes the case that while that element is not discursive in nature, it is not irrational. In this sense, legal reasoning, as an example of practical, prudential judgment in this case, will also have non-discursive elements or moments. In this work we are referring to something that occurs at the level of affectivity, of appetites, whose act is called love, in a much more general sense than we commonly use. Affectivity affects the will although it is always ultimately indeterminate. But affectivity inclines it. It is now a question of considering how this inclination has an important effect on practical knowledge when it judges, because affectivity presents a certain good with intensity. That is why it is called judgment by inclination, affectivity, which is connaturalized with the object and so presented to the intellect. How such a thing occurs is what we are going to try to explain.