A. About the Divisions of Judgment

11. I reply:

Judgement is taken in general for any certain knowledge, and in this way are the senses called a judgment when they distinctly apprehend an object or distinguish an object from an object (where perhaps a more distinct apprehension is required). Hence in On the Soul 3.2.426b12-15, the common sense is said to judge of the sensible objects of the diverse senses.

12. In another way is a judgment said to be a certain intellectual apprehension, even any apprehension at all; and in this way definitive knowledge of anything can be called a judgment about the quiddity of the thing, according to the remark in Ethics 1.1.1094b27-28 that “Each person judges well what he knows, and of these things is he a good judge.”

13. Judgement is said still more properly of any true proposition, for, according to Augustine, On Free Choice 2 ch.14 n.152, “no one judges about eternal rules but in accord with them judges other things;” therefore a judgment is a certain apprehension of something through something else. Now every true proposition is apprehended to be true through something else, because if it is an immediate proposition it is still judged true through the ideas of the terms, according to Posterior Analytics I.3.72b24-25, “We know the principles insofar as we know the terms.”

14. More properly still is judgment said of a proposition that is a conclusion, because judgment is passed on a conclusion not only through the terms but through a principle.

15. Judgment is said of a practical conclusion yet more specially than of a speculative one, because a judgment is a dictate of the practical intellect consonant with justice, and justice does not regard matters of speculation but of practice.

16. Again more specially: since a law not only determines things to be done and avoided, but determines the rewards to be given for good merits and the punishments to be given for bad merits (so that from love of rewards men may be drawn to acting well, and from fear of penalties or punishments drawn away from acting badly), judgement is more properly taken as a certain determination about rewards or punishments to be given than as a determination about other practical truths. Now although anyone could elicit these truths from practical principles and thus make judgment by a process of reasoning, as it were, yet still judgment is more strictly taken as it pertains to him who has authority to make determinations, according to the remark (Gregory, Decretals II tit.1 ch.4, Gratian, Decretals p.2 cause 11 q.1 ch.49, Justinian, Code 7 ch.48 nn.1, 4), “A sentence passed by one who is not judge of it is null.”

17. The most complete idea, then, of judgment rests in this, that it is ‘complete and authentic determination of rewarding someone according to his merits’. I say ‘complete’ as to firm determination of the intellect and effective determination of the will, that is, of a will that is able and intends to reward according to the determination of the intellect. And this is what is specified by the word ‘authentic’, because by this is understood that it belongs to him who, according to his effective volition, can bring into effect the determination of the intellect and the determination of the will.

18. From this is in general plain the division of judgment into that of approval and that of condemnation; because certain things can be manifest to a judge from which things it follows in particular that this man is to be rewarded (namely because he merited well) or to be punished (because he merited badly); and the first sentence is one of approval and the second one of condemnation.

19. Next to these, two other sentences sometimes follow in us: namely if worthy merits be asserted for someone and the judge find the things asserted not true, a sentence follows rejecting him from the reward; likewise if some things worthy of punishment are asserted against someone and they are found not to be true, a sentence follows of absolution or of absolving him (namely, ‘we pronounce such a one, accused before us, to be innocent’).