Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Methode in der Theologie

Titel: Methode in der Theologie

Stichwort: Lonergan; Wittgenstein, 'Philosophische Untersuchungen'; Unterschied zw. normaler und ursprünglicher Bedeutsamkeit der Sprache

Kurzinhalt: Die Entdeckung einer neuen Anwendung ist ein geistiger Akt, der durch den neuen Gebrauch zum Ausdruck kommt. Die Erfindung eines neuen Wortes ist ein geistiger Akt, der durch das neue Wort zum Ausdruck kommt.

Textausschnitt: 64/X In einem wertvollen Beitrag, der auf der dreiundzwanzigsten Jahresversammlung der 'Catholic Theological Society of America' gehalten wurde, erklärte Edward MacKinnon: (258; Fs)

65/X 'Seit der Veröffentlichung von Wittgensteins 'Philosophische Untersuchungen' gibt es einen wachsenden Konsens, daß die Bedeutsamkeit der Sprache wesentlich öffentlich und nur im abgeleiteten Sinne privat sei. Wenn dies nicht so wäre, könnte Sprache nicht als Vehikel intersubjektiver Kommunikation dienen. Folglich wird die Bedeutung eines Terminus hauptsächlich durch Klärung seines Gebrauchs oder der Gruppe seiner Verwendungen erklärt, die mit ihm verknüpft sind. Dies erfordert sowohl eine Analyse, wie Termini innerhalb der Sprache fungieren, oder eine Untersuchung der Syntax, als auch eine Analyse der außersprachlichen Zusammenhänge, in denen ihr Gebrauch angemessen ist, oder der Fragen der Semantik und Pragmatik. (258; Fs) (notabene)

66/X Eine Folge dieser Position [...] ist es, daß die Bedeutung eines Wortes nicht durch Verweisung oder Rückführung auf private geistige Akte erklärbar ist. Nach herkömmlicher scholastischer Lehre haben Worte Bedeutung, weil sie Begriffe zum Ausdruck bringen. Bedeutungen liegen primär in Begriffen, in privaten geistigen Akten oder Zuständen, und dann erst abgeleitet in der Sprache, die solch einen Begriff zum Ausdruck bringt. Innerhalb dieser Sicht der Sprache stellt Transzendenz kein allzu schwieriges Sprachproblem dar. Ein Wort wie etwa 'Gott' kann ein transzendentes Wesen bedeuten, wenn es eben dies ist, was man beim Gebrauch dieses Wortes meint. So tröstend eine derart einfache Lösung sein mag - sie geht leider nicht.'1 (258; Fs) (notabene)

67/X Ich halte das für eine klare und hilfreiche Diskussionsgrundlage und möchte einige Bemerkungen anfügen, um meine eigene Position klarzumachen. (259; Fs)

68/X Erstens glaube ich nicht, daß sich geistige Akte ohne einen tragenden Ausdrucksstrom ereignen. Der Ausdruck muß nicht unbedingt sprachlich sein; er braucht nicht adäquat zu sein; er braucht auch nicht der Aufmerksamkeit anderer vorgelegt zu werden - aber er ereignet sich. In der Tat berichtet Ernst Cassirer, daß Forscher, die die Aphasie, Agnosie und Apraxie untersuchten, diese Störungen der Sprache, des Wissens und des Handelns allgemein miteinander verknüpft fanden.2 (259; Fs)

69/X Zweitens bezweifle ich nicht, daß die gewöhnliche Bedeutsamkeit der normalen Sprache ihrem Wesen nach öffentlich und nur in abgeleitetem Sinne privat ist. Denn Sprache ist ja gerade dann normal, wenn sie in gemeinsamem Gebrauch ist. Sie ist in gemeinsamem Gebrauch aber nicht, weil irgendein isoliertes Individuum zufällig entschieden hat, was sie bedeuten soll, sondern weil alle Individuen der betreffenden Gruppe verstehen, was sie bedeutet. In ähnlicher Weise lernen Kinder und Ausländer eine Sprache, indem sie zum Ausdruck gebrachte geistige Akte nachvollziehen. Aber sie lernen die Sprache, indem sie lernen, wie sie gewöhnlich gebraucht wird, so daß ihre private Kenntnis der normalen Sprache vom allgemeinen Gebrauch abgeleitet wird, der seinem Wesen nach öffentlich ist. (259; Fs)

70/X Drittens, was für die gewöhnliche Bedeutsamkeit der normalen Sprache gilt, gilt nicht für die ursprüngliche Bedeutsamkeit jedweder Sprache, ob normal oder literarisch oder fachspezifisch. Denn alle Sprache entwickelt sich, und zu jedem Zeitpunkt besteht jede Sprache jeweils aus den Ablagerungen der Entwicklungen, die bisher erfolgten und nicht veraltet sind. Sprachentwicklungen bestehen nun in der Entdeckung neuer Anwendungen für vorhandene Wörter, in der Erfindung neuer Wörter und in der Verbreitung solcher Entdeckungen und Erfindungen. Alle drei Vorgänge sind Sache zum Ausdruck gebrachter geistiger Akte. Die Entdeckung einer neuen Anwendung ist ein geistiger Akt, der durch den neuen Gebrauch zum Ausdruck kommt. Die Erfindung eines neuen Wortes ist ein geistiger Akt, der durch das neue Wort zum Ausdruck kommt. (259; Fs) (notabene)

71/X Die Kommunikation der Entdeckungen und Erfindungen kann technisch erfolgen durch Einführung von Definitionen, oder spontan, wenn z. B. A seine neue Wortkonstellation äußert, B antwortet, A in Bs Antwort erfaßt, wie erfolgreich er bei der Übermittlung des von ihm Gemeinten war, und er, je nach Ausmaß des Mißlingens, weitere Entdeckungen und Erfindungen sucht und ausprobiert. Durch einen Vorgang von Trial and Error nimmt ein neuer Wortgebrauch Gestalt an, und wenn eine genügend weite Verbreitung des neuen Wortgebrauchs erfolgt, dann ist ein neuer normaler Gebrauch eingeführt. Anders als die normale Bedeutsamkeit entsteht die Bedeutsamkeit als solche in ausgedrückten geistigen Akten, wird durch ausgedrückte geistige Akte übermittelt und vervollkommnet, und wird zur Normalsprache, wenn die vervollkommnete Kommunikation auf eine genügend große Zahl von Individuen ausgedehnt wird. (259f; Fs)

72/X Viertens scheint hinter dieser Verwechselung von normaler Bedeutsamkeit und ursprünglicher Bedeutsamkeit noch eine weitere verborgen zu sein. Denn zwei ganz verschiedene Bedeutungen kann man der Aussage beilegen, alle philosophischen Probleme seien Sprachprobleme. Wenn man Sprache als Ausdruck geistiger Akte versteht, wird man schlußfolgern, daß philosophische Probleme ihren Ursprung eben nicht nur im sprachlichen Ausdruck, sondern auch in geistigen Akten haben, und es könnte geschehen, daß man viel mehr Aufmerksamkeit den geistigen Akten widmet als dem sprachlichen Ausdruck. (260; Fs)

73/X Man kann aber auch der Meinung sein, geistige Akte seien bloß okkulte Entitäten, oder, falls sie wirklich existieren, sich die Philosophen bloß endlos abarbeiten, wenn sie ihnen besondere Aufmerksamkeit schenken, oder zumindest, wenn sie sie zur Grundlage ihrer Methode machen. Bei einer reduktionistischen Auffassung, oder bei einer mehr oder minder starken methodologischen Option, kann man dafür eintreten, den philosophischen Diskurs, zumindest den grundlegenden philosophischen Diskurs auf den Gebrauch der normalen Sprache zu beschränken, die vielleicht durch die Metasprachen der Syntax, der Semantik und der Pragmatik erhellt wird. (260; Fs)

74/X Wenn man sich jedoch diesen Ansatz zu eigen macht, kann man die Bedeutsamkeit der Sprache nicht unter Berufung auf die sie hervorbringenden geistigen Akte erklären. Das wäre eine einfache Lösung. Es wäre eine wahre Lösung. Es ist aber keine zulässige Lösung, denn sie macht geistige Akte wieder zur Grundlage der Bedeutsamkeit der Sprache und tut dadurch gerade das, was die philosophische oder die methodologische Entscheidung verboten hat. Zudem übersieht man leicht innerhalb dieses Horizonts den Unterschied zwischen der Bedeutsamkeit der Sprache, die zur normalen Sprache geworden ist, und der hervorbringenden Bedeutsamkeit, die sie besitzt, wenn sie dabei ist, normale Sprache zu werden. Auf der Basis dieses Übersehens kann man behaupten, daß die Bedeutsamkeit der Sprache ihrem Wesen nach öffentlich und nur in abgeleiteter Weise privat ist. (260; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Die Einsicht

Titel: Die Einsicht Bd. I und II

Stichwort: Befangenheit, Scotosis

Kurzinhalt: Grundsätzlich ist die Scotosis ein unbewußter Prozeß. Sie tritt nicht in bewußten Akten auf, sondern in der Zensurfunktion, welche das Aufkommen psychischer Inhalte lenkt.

Textausschnitt: 1. Der Common Sense als intellektuell (173-81)

212b Das Licht und das Streben der intelligenten Untersuchung entfaltet sich methodisch in der Mathematik und in den empirischen Wissenschaften. Im Kinde ist es ein geheimes Wunder, das in einer Kaskade von Fragen herausbricht, wenn einmal das Geheimnis der Sprache erschlossen ist. Nur zu früh geht die Kontrolle über das Fragen verloren und überdrüssige Erwachsene werden immer häufiger getrieben, sich mit der Ausrede herauszuwinden: 'Mein Liebes, das kannst du noch nicht verstehen.' Das Kind möchte alles auf einmal verstehen. Es vermutet nicht, daß es in der Akkumulation von Einsichten eine Strategie gibt; daß die Antworten auf viele Fragen von wieder anderen Fragen abhängen; daß oft genug das Aufmerken auf diese anderen Fragen nur durch die Einsicht erfolgt, daß man, um interessanten Fragen zu begegnet, bei recht uninteressanten beginnen muß. Es gibt also den Forschungsgeist selbst, der allen Menschen gemeinsam ist und in dem die wissenschaftliche Einstellung besteht. In seinem Urzustande ist er allerdings ungeschult. Unsere intellektuellen Karrieren beginnen im unablässigen 'Was?' und 'Warum?' der Kindheit zu knospen. Sie kommen zum Blühen nur dann, wenn wir gewillt oder gezwungen sind, das Lernen zu erlernen. Sie bringen nur Früchte nach der Entdeckung, daß wir die Antworten, wollen wir sie wirklich in den Griff bekommen, irgendwie für uns selbst herausfinden müssen. (212f; Fs)

213a So wie es die spontane Untersuchung gibt, so gibt es auch eine spontane Anhäufung zusammenhängender Einsichten. Denn Fragen sind nicht ein Aggregat isolierter Monaden. Insofern auf eine Frage eine Einsicht folgt, muß man nur auf der Basis dieser Einsicht handeln oder sprechen oder vielleicht auch nur denken, damit deren Unvollständigkeit ans Licht tritt und so zu einer neuen Frage führt. Insofern dieser weiteren Frage wiederum durch die befriedigende Antwort einer weiteren Einsicht begegnet wird, wird derselbe Prozeß wiederum einen anderen Aspekt der Unvollkommenheit ans Licht bringen und damit Anlaß geben zu noch weiteren Fragen und weiteren Einsichten. Derart ist der spontane Prozeß des Lernens. Er ist eine Anhäufung von Einsichten, in denen jeder aufeinanderfolgende Akt die Genauigkeit der vorgehenden Akte vervollständigt und ihre Unzulänglichkeit überdeckt. So wie der Mathematiker von Bildern durch Einsichten und Formulierungen zu Symbolen fortschreitet, welche weitere Einsichten stimulieren, so wie der Wissenschaftler von Daten durch Einsichten und Formulierungen zu Experimenten fortschreitet, welche weitere Einsichten stimulieren, so ist auch der spontane und selbstkorrigierende Lernprozeß ein Kreislauf, in welchem Einsichten ihre Unzulänglichkeiten offenbaren, indem sie zu Taten oder Worten oder Gedanken führen, und durch diese Offenbarung die weiteren Fragen auf den Plan rufen, welche zu weiteren Einsichten führen. (213; Fs)

213b Ein solches Lernen erfolgt nicht ohne Lehren. Denn das Lehren ist das Mitteilen von Einsicht. Es wirft die Hinweise aus, die zutreffenden Fingerzeige, welche zur Einsicht führen. Es schmeichelt der Aufmerksamkeit, um die ablenkenden Bilder zu vertreiben, welche der Einsicht im Wege stehen. Es stellt die weiteren Fragen, welche die Notwendigkeit weiterer Einsichten klarmachen, um den erworbenen Vorrat zu modifizieren und zu ergänzen. Es hat die Strategie der sich entwickelnden Intelligenz erfaßt, und es beginnt so beim Einfachen, um zum Komplizierteren fortzuschreiten. All dies wird von professionellen Lehrern, die ihren Beruf im Griff haben, bewußt und explizit getan. Worauf wir hier aber hinweisen möchten, ist, daß es auch — obwohl unbewußt und implizit — von den Eltern gegenüber ihrem Nachwuchs und von den Gleichgestellten untereinander getan wird Sprechen ist eine menschliche Elementarkunst. Mit ihrer Hilfe teilt jeder den anderen mit, was er weiß, und ruft zugleich Widersprüche hervor, die ihn auf das aufmerksam werden lassen, was er übersehen hat. Doch noch eindrucksvoller als das Sprechen ist das Tun. Taten erwecken unsere Bewunderung und spornen uns zur Nachahmung an. Wir sehen zu, um zu begreifen, wie man etwas macht. Wir experimentieren, um zu sehen, ob wir es selbst machen können. Wir sehen erneut hin um das Übersehen auszumachen, das uns scheitern ließ. Auf diese Weise gelangen die Entdeckungen und Erfindungen von Individuen in den Besitz vieler, um auf der Grundlage ihrer Erfahrung kontrolliert, der Prüfung durch ihre weiteren Fragen unterzogen und durch ihre Verbesserungen modifiziert zu werden. Aus dem gleichen Grund ist auch die spontane Zusammenarbeit von Individuen das gemeinschaftliche Entwickeln von Intelligenz in der Familie, dem Stamm, der Nation, der Rasse. Nicht nur werden die Menschen mit einem ursprünglichen Trieb zu untersuchen und zu verstehen geboren; sie werden in eine Gemeinschaft hineingeboren, welche über einen gemeinschaftlichen Fundus geprüfter Antworten verfügt, und aus diesem Fundus kann jeder seinen Anteil beziehen, ihm zugemessen entsprechend seiner Kapazität, seinen Interessen und seiner Energie. Nicht nur entfaltet sich der selbstkorrigierende Lernprozeß innerhalb des privaten Bewußtseins des Individuums; denn durch die Sprache und noch mehr durch das Beispiel wird eine anhaltende Mitteilung erwirkt, welche zugleich jeden Fortschritt weitergibt und prüft und verbessert und so die Errungenschaft jeder Generation zum Ausgangspunkt der nächstfolgenden macht. (214; Fs)

214a Wir haben von der spontanen Untersuchng, der spontanen Anhäufung von verbundenen Einsichten und der spontanen Zusammenarbeit der Mitteilung auf die Notion des Common Sense als einer intellektuellen Entwicklung hin gearbeitet. Es wird sich nun ganz natürlich die Frage nach dem genauen Inventar dieses allen zugänglichen Speichers stellen. Wie definiert er seine Termini? Welche sind seine Postulate? Welche sind die Schlußfolgerungen, die er aus den Prämissen ableitet? Wenn die Frage nun aber naheliegend genug ist, ist doch die Antwort schwieriger. Denn die Antwort beruht auf einer jener merkwürdigen Einsichten, die nur gerade eben die falsche Voraussetzung der Frage erfaßt. Definitionen, Postulate und Ableitungen sind die Formulierung einer allgemeinen Erkenntnis. Sie beziehen sich nicht auf das Einzelne, sondern auf das Allgemeine, nicht auf das Konkrete, sondern auf das Abstrakte. Der Common Sense ist im Unterschied zu den Wissenschaften eine Spezialisierung der Intelligenz auf das Einzelne und Konkrete. Er ist gemein, ohne allgemein zu sein; denn er besteht in einem Satz von Einsichten, der solange unvollständig bleibt, bis nicht zumindest eine Einsicht in die vorhandene Situation hinzukommt; und ist die Situation einmal vorbei, so ist die hinzugefügte Einsicht nicht mehr relevant, so daß der Common Sense sofort zu seinem Normalzustand der Unvollständigkeit zurückkehrt. Der Common Sense scheint von der Analogie her zu argumentieren, aber seine Analogien entziehen sich einer logischen Formulierung. Die Analogie, die der Logiker untersuchen kann, ist lediglich ein Fall der heuristischen Prämisse, daß Ähnliches ähnlich verstanden wird. Sie kann einen gültigen Beweis nur dann liefern, wenn die zwei konkreten Situationen keine signifikante Unähnlichkeit aurweisen. Der Common Sense aber kann direkt von seinen akkumulierten Einsichten her operieren, weil er nicht artikuliert zu sein braucht. Den Ähnlichkeiten der Situation entsprechend, kann er sich auf einen unvollständigen Satz von Einsichten berufen. Der signifikanten Verschiedenheit der Situationen entsprechend, kann er die verschiedenen, für jede Situation relevanten Einsichten hinzufügen. (215; Fs)

215a Der Common Sense mag also zu verallgemeinern scheinen. Aber eine Verallgemeinerung, die vom Common Sense vorgebracht wird, hat eine Bedeutung, die von der wissenschaftlichen Verallgemeinerung recht verschieden ist. Die wissenschaftliche Verallgemeinerung zielt darauf ab, eine Prämisse anzubieten, aus der korrekte Ableitungen gezogen werden können. Die vom Common Sense angebotenen Verallgemeinerungen sind aber nicht als Prämissen für Ableitungen gemeint. Sie wollen vielmehr Fingerzeige vermitteln, die es normalerweise nützlich ist [sic], im Gedächtnis zu behalten. Sprichwörter sind weit älter als Prinzipien, und sie verlieren — ähnlich den grammatischen Regeln — ihre Gültigkeit nicht ob ihrer vielen Ausnahmen. Sie zielen nämlich nicht darauf ab, den abgerundeten Satz von Einsichten des Wissenschaftlers auszudrücken, der entweder für alle Fälle gilt oder für keinen, sondern den unvollständigen Satz von Einsichten, auf den man sich in jedem konkreten Fall bezieht, der aber unmittelbar relevant wird, nur wenn ein ausgiebiges Herumsehen zu den notwendigen zusätzlichen Einsichten geführt hat. Sieh hin, ehe du springst! (215; Fs)

215a Nicht nur unterscheidet sich der Common Sense von der Logik und von der Wissenschaft in der Bedeutung, die er den Analogien und Verallgemeinerungen zuweist. In all seinen Äußerungen operiert er von einem besonderen Gesichtspunkt her und verfolgt ein ihm eigenes Ideal. Die heuristischen Annahmen der Wissenschaft nehmen die Bestimmung von Naturen vorweg, welche immer in derselben Weise unter ähnlichen Umständen handeln, und ebenso die Bestimmung von idealen Normen der Wahrscheinlichkeit, von denen die Ereignisse nur in nichtsystematischer Weise divergieren. Wenn sich der Wissenschaftler auch darüber im klaren ist, daß er diese Bestimmungen nur durch eine Reihe von Annäherungen erreichen wird, weiß er doch auch, daß selbst annähernde Bestimmungen die logischen Eigenschaften der abstrakten Wahrheit besitzen müssen. Die Termini müssen demnach unzweideutig definiert sein, und sie müssen exakt immer in dieser unzweideutigen Bedeutung verwendet werden. Die Postulate müssen aufgestellt werden ihre Voraussetzungen müssen untersucht werden, ihre Implikationen erforscht. Daraus resultiert automatisch eine technische Sprache und eine formale Sprechweise. Man ist nicht nur gezwungen, zu sagen, was man meint, und zu meinen, was man sagt, sondern die Übereinstimmung zwischen Meinen und Sagen hat auch die exakte Einfachheit solcher primitiver Äußerungen wie: 'Dies ist eine Katze.' (215f; Fs)

216a Der Common Sense strebt seinerseits nie nach einer allgemein gültigen Erkenntnis und er versucht auch nie, erschöpfend mitzuteilen. Sein Interesse gilt dem Konkreten und dem Einzelnen. Seine Funktion ist es, jede Situation zu meistern, wie sie eben aufkommt. Seine Vorgehensweise besteht darin, einen unvollständigen Satz von Einsichten zu erzielen, der allein dadurch zu vervollständigen ist, daß man bei jeder Gelegenheit die weiteren Einsichten hinzufügt, welche die Untersuchung der Gelegenheit ergibt. Es wäre falsch, wenn der Common Sense versuchte, seinen unvollständigen Satz von Einsichten in Definitionen und Postulaten zu formulieren und ihre Voraussetzungen und Implikationen auszuarbeiten. Denn der unvollständige Satz ist nicht das Verstehen irgendeiner konkreten Situation oder irgendeiner allgemeinen Wahrheit. Ebenso wäre es ein Irrtum für den Common Sense, eine systematische Formulierung seines vervollständigten Satzes von Einsichten in einem bestimmten Falle zu versuchen; denn jede systematische Formulierung hat das Allgemeine im Visier; und jede konkrete Situation ist partikulär. (216; Fs)
216b Es folgt, daß der Common Sense mit einer technischen Sprache nichts anfangen kann und keine Tendenz zu einer formalen Sprechweise hat. Er ist damit einverstanden, daß man sagen soll, was man meint, und meinen, was man sagt. Aber seine Übereinstimmung zwischen Sagen und Meinen ist zugleich subtil und fließend. Wie das Sprichwort sagt, ist ein Zwinkern ebenso gut wie ein Nicken, d.h. ein kurzer Wink genügt. Denn der Common Sense sagt nicht nur, was er meint; er sagt es jemandem; er beginnt damit, die Intelligenz des Gesprächspartners zu sondieren; er schreitet fort, indem er bestimmt, welche weiteren Einsichten diesem mitgeteilt werden müssen; er unternimmt diese Mitteilung nicht als eine Übung in formaler Logik, sondern als ein Kunstwerk; und er hat zu seiner Verfügung nicht nur alle Ressourcen der Sprache, sondern auch die Unterstützung des modulierten Klanges und des wechselnden Tonvolumens, die Eloquenz des Gesichtsausdruckes, die Emphase der Gesten, die Wirksamkeit von Pausen, die Suggestivkraft von Fragen, die Bedeutsamkeit von Auslassungen. Es folgt, daß der einzige Interpret von Common Sense-Äußerungen der Common Sense selbst ist. Denn die Relation zwischen Sagen und Meinen ist die Relation zwischen sinnfälligen Vorstellungen und intellektuellem Erfassen, und wenn diese Relation so einfach und exakt wie in der Aussage 'Dies ist eine Katze' sein kann, so kann sie doch auch all die Zartheit und Subtilität, all die Geschwindigkeit und Wirksamkeit annehmen, mit der eine inkarnierte Intelligenz ihr Erfassen einer anderen Intelligenz mitteilen kann, indem sie erfaßt, was die andere noch zu erfassen hat, und welche Handlung oder welches Zeichen oder welcher Ton sie zu diesem Erfassen führen könnten. Eine solche Vorgehensweise ist offensichtlich logisch, wenn man mit 'logisch' 'intelligent und vernünftig' meint. Ebenso offensichtlich ist eine solche Vorgehensweise nicht logisch, wenn man mit 'logisch' die Konformität mit einem Satz allgemeiner Regeln meint, die für jeden Fall aus einem definierten Bereich gültig sind; denn kein Satz allgemeiner Regeln kann mit der Findigkeit der Intelligenz in ihrer Anpassung an die Möglichkeiten und Anforderungen konkreter Aufgaben der Selbst-Mitteilung Schritt halten. (216f; Fs)

217a Genau so wie die elliptischen Äußerungen des Common Sense einen tieferen Grund haben, als viele Logiker und praktisch alle Polemiker erreichen konnten, so ist auch die Ebene der Realität, auf die sich die Common Sense-Bedeutung bezieht, von der Ebene verschieden, welche die Wissenschaft erforscht. Es ist gesagt worden, daß die Wissenschaft von der Beschreibung zur Erklärung fortschreitet, von den Dingen in Relation zu unseren Sinnen durch Messungen zu den Dingen in Relation zueinander. Es ist klar, daß sich der Common Sense nicht mit den Relationen der Dinge zueinander beschäftigt, und daß er nicht die technischen Termini verwendet, welche die Wissenschaftler erfinden, um diese Relationen auszudrücken. Dieser offensichtliche Unterschied liefert nun aber keine Prämisse für den Schluß, daß das Objekt der wissenschaftlichen Beschreibung dasselbe ist wie das Objekt der Common Sense-Mitteilung. Es ist wohl wahr, daß beide Äußerungstypen mit den Dingen in Relation zu unseren Sinnen zu tun haben. Aber es ist auch wahr, daß sie dies von verschiedenen Gesichtspunkten her und mit verschiedenem Ziel tun. Wissenschaftliche Beschreibung ist das Werk eines ausgebildeten wissenschaftlichen Beobachters. Sie leistet der Forderung des Logikers nach vollständiger Artikuliertheit und erschöpfender Aussage Genüge. Sie trägt das Gepräge der Vorwegnahme des Wissenschaftlers, die reinen Konjugate zu erzielen, welche die Relationen der Dinge zueinander ausdrücken. Denn wenn die wissenschaftliche Beschreibung sich auch auf Dinge in Relation zu unseren Sinnen bezieht, so tut sie das mit einem weiter liegenden Zweck und unter der Anleitung einer Methode, die auf dessen Realisierung hinstrebt. (217; Fs)

217b Der Common Sense hat andererseits keinerlei theoretische Neigungen. Er verbleibt vollständig in der vertrauten Welt der Dinge für uns. Die weiteren Fragen, durch die er Einsichten ansammelt, werden eingeschränkt durch die Interessen und Sorgen des menschlichen Lebens, durch die erfolgreiche Erfüllung der Alltagspflichten, durch die Entdeckung umittelbarer Lösungen, welche funktionieren In der Tat ist der höchste Kanon des Common Sense die Beschränkung weiterer Fragen auf den Bereich des Konkreten und Einzelnen, des Unmittelbaren und Praktischen. Im Common Sense vorwärtszukommen bedeutet, die allesverschlingende Tendenz der untersuchenden Intelligenz zurückzuhalten und jede Frage, deren Beantwortung keinen unmittelbar handgreiflichen Unterschied zur Folge hat, als irrelevant, wenn nicht gar töricht zur Seite zu wischen. So wie der Wissenschaftler sich gegen die Einführung in seinen Forschungsbereich von metaphysischen Fragen, die seinem Kanon der Selektion nicht genügen, in herbem Protest verwehrt, so ist der Mann des Common Sense (und nur des Common Sense!) allzeit auf der Hut vor aller Theorie, stets bereit, den Vorbringer von Ideen milde zu fragen, welchen Unterschied diese machen würden, und sich dann, wenn die Antwort weniger lebhaft und weniger schnell als ein Reklamespruch ausfällt, nur noch darum besorgt, eine Entschuldigung auszudenken, um den Kerl loszuwerden. Common Sense-Menschen sind nämlich beschäftigt. Sie haben die Arbeit dieser Welt zu tun. (217f; Fs) (notabene)
218a Wie kann nun aber die Arbeit dieser Welt intelligent oder effizient getan werden, wenn sie von Common Sense-Menschen getan wird, die sich keine Sekunde lang über wissenschaftliche Methode Gedanken machen? Diese Frage kann, glaube ich, beantwortet werden, wenn wir bei einer anderen beginnen. Warum benötigen Wissenschaftler die wissenschaftliche Methode? Warum müssen so intelligente Menschen belastet werden mit der Ausrüstung von Laboratorien und langweiligen Büchern aus Fachbibliotheken? Warum müssen sie in Beobachtung und Logik geschult werden? Warum sollen sie auf abstruse Fachwörter und abstraktes Räsonnieren verpflichtet werden? Klar deshalb, weil ihr Forschen vom Vertrauten zum Unvertrauten fortschreitet, vom Offensichtlichen zum Entlegenen. Sie haben sich den Dingen in Relation zu uns in der Art und Weise zuzuwenden, welche zu den Dingen als in Relation zueinander führt. Wenn sie die allgemeinen Beziehungen der Dinge zueinander erreichen, bemühen sie sich jenseits des angestammten Bereiches der Einsicht in sinnliche Vorstellungen, und sie benötigen die Krücken der Methode, um ihr Hinsehen auf Dinge zu fixieren, die weder sinnlich gegeben, noch konkret, noch partikulär sind. (218; Fs)

218b Der Common Sense hat andererseits keinerlei derartige Bestrebungen. Er hält es mit dem Unmittelbaren und Praktischen, dem Konkreten und Einzelnen. Er verbleibt in der vertrauten Welt der Dinge für uns. Raketen und Weltraumstationen sind überflüssig, wenn man beabsichtigt, auf dieser Erde zu bleiben. Ebenso ist die wissenschaftliche Methode überflüssig für die Ausübung der Aufgaben des Common Sense. Wie die Wissenschaften ist er eine Anhäufung verbundener Einsichten in die Daten der Erfahrung. Wie die Wissenschaften ist er die Frucht einer weitreichenden Zusammenarbeit. Wie die Wissenschaften wurde er nach seinen praktischen Resultaten geprüft. Und doch gibt es einen tiefen Unterschied. Die Wissenschaften haben nämlich theoretische Absichten, und der Common Sense hat keine. Die Wissenschaften wollen präzise und mit allgemeiner Gültigkeit sprechen; aber der Common Sense nur zu Personen und nur über das Konkrete und Einzelne. Die Wissenschaften benötigen Methoden, um ihre abstrakten und allgemeinen Objekte zu erreichen; aber die Wissenschaftler benötigen den Common Sense, um ihre Methoden angemessen anzuwenden, wenn sie die konkreten Aufgaben der einzelnen Untersuchungen ausführen, so wie auch die Logiker den Common Sense benötigen, wenn sie verstehen sollen, was in jedem konkreten Akt menschlicher Äußerung gemeint ist. Es ist bewiesen worden, daß eine Komplementarität zwischen klassischen und statistischen Untersuchungen besteht; es ist jetzt vielleicht evident geworden, daß das Ganze der Wissenschaften und dazu der Logik eine Entwicklung der Intelligenz ist, welche zu der Entwicklung, die wir Common Sense nennen, komplementär ist. Die rationale Wahl ist nicht zwischen Wissenschaft und Common Sense; sie ist vielmehr die Wahl beider: der Wissenschaft, um das Allgemeine zu meistern, und des Common Sense, um das Partikuläre anzugehen. (219; Fs) (notabene)

219a Es bleibt, die Differenzierungen des Common Sense zu erwähnen. Denn mehr noch als die Wissenschaften ist der Common Sense in spezialisierte Abteilungen aufgeteilt. Für jeden Unterschied in der Geographie, für jeden Unterschied in der Beschäftigung, für jeden Unterschied in den sozialen Einrichtungen gibt es eine entsprechende Variation des Common Sense. An einem gegebenen Ort, in einem bestimmten Beruf und in einer bestimmten Gruppe von Menschen kann ein Mensch in intelligenter Mühelosigkeit jeder Situation begegnen, in der er sprechen oder handeln soll. Er weiß jederzeit, was los ist, was richtigerweise gesagt werden soll, was eben getan werden muß und wie man es anpacken soll. Seine Erfahrung hat ihn durch den Kreis von Eventualitäten geführt, welche in seinem Milieu vorkommen. Seine Intelligenz ist immer wach gewesen. Er hat Fehler gemacht und er hat gelernt, sie nicht zweimal zu begehen. Er hat jene Verstandesschärfe entwickelt, welche Bewegungen zur Kenntnis nimmt, die von der vertrauten Routine abweichen; die Besonnenheit, welche diese abschätzt, ehe er sich in einen Handlungsverlauf einläßt; den Erfindungsreichtum, der die Antwort findet, welche dem neuen Problem begegnet. Er ist eine Verkörperung des Ideales des Common Sense; aber seine Leistung ist nur für seine Umgebung relevant. Man verlege ihn unter andere Menschen an einen anderen Ort oder in einen anderen Beruf, und solange er sich damit noch nicht vertraut gemacht hat, solange er sich noch nicht einen neuen Satz von Einsichten erworben hat, kann er Zaudern und Ungeschicklichkeiten nicht vermeiden. Er muß neu wieder lernen, worum es geht; er muß mit den Tricks eines neuen Berufes vertraut werden; er muß in kleinen Zeichen die sich verändernden Gemütslagen derer herausspüren, mit denen er zu tun hat. Derart ist also die Spezialisierung des Common Sense. Er paßt sofort die Individuen in jeder Lebenslage an die Arbeit an, die sie gewählt haben, oder an das Los, das ihnen zugefallen ist und außerdem bringt er all jene ganz kleinen Unterschiede der Gesichtspunkte und Mentalitäten hervor, welche Männer und Frauen trennen, alt und jung, Stadt und Land, bis schließlich die kumulativen Unterschiede und das gegenseitige Unverständnis der verschiedenen Gesellschaftsschichten, verschiedenen Nationen, verschiedenen Zivilisationen und verschiedenen historischen Epochen der menschlichen Geschichte erreicht werden. (219f; Fs)

220a Wir haben versucht, die intellektuelle Komponente im Common Sense zu begreifen. Wir begannen bei den spontanen Fragen, den spontanen Anhäufungen von Einsichten und der spontanen Zusammenarbeit, um sie zu prüfen und verbessern. Als nächstes formulierten wir die zentrale Notion eines habituellen aber unvollständigen Satzes von Einsichten, der durch geeignete Variationen in jedem konkreten Satz von Umständen vervollständigt wird, die Reden oder Handeln verlangen. Es wurde gezeigt, daß eine derartige intellektuelle Entwicklung nicht nur auf eine Meisterung des Konkreten und Einzelnen abzielt, sondern ihr Ziel auch auf eine konkrete und partikuläre Weise erreicht, welche mit den allgemeinen Regeln der Logik und den allgemeinen Methoden der Wissenschaft kontrastiert, indes eine notwendige Ergänzung sowohl für die konkrete Verwendung allgemeiner Techniken als auch die konkrete Anwendung allgemeiner Konklusionen liefert. Schließlich wandten wir uns den Differenzierungen des Common Sense zu, welche sich nicht durch theoretische Unterschiede wie die Abteilungen der Wissenschaft, sondern durch die empirischen Unterschiede von Ort und Zeit, Umständen und Milieu vermehren. (220; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Die Einsicht

Titel: Die Einsicht Bd. I und II

Stichwort: Verdrängung; Aberration, Ablehnung

Kurzinhalt: Unterschied zw. Aberration (repression) und bewusster Ablehung

Textausschnitt: 2.7.2 Verdrängung [192-93]

56/06 Und es ist auch nicht bloß der Verstand, der in Verwirrung versetzt wird. Die Scotosis ist eine Aberration, nicht nur des Verstandes, sondern auch der Zensurfunktion. So wie der Wunsch nach Einsicht die Oberfläche durchdringt, um schematische Bilder hervorzubringen, welche dann die Einsicht aufkommen lassen, so hat das Nicht-Wollen einer Einsicht die entgegengesetzte Wirkung der Verdrängung eines Schemas, welches die Einsicht suggerieren würde, aus dem Bewußtsein. Nun ist diese Aberration der Zensurfunktion umgekehrt zu dieser. Die Zensurfunktion ist primär konstruktiv; sie wählt aus und ordnet Materialien an, welche im Bewußtsein in einer Perspektive aufkommen, die eine Einsicht entstehen lassen; diese positive Aktivität impliziert einen negativen Aspekt, indem nämlich andere Materialien links liegengelassen und andere Perspektiven nicht ans Licht gebracht werden. Dieser negative Aspekt der positiven Aktivität führt allerdings nicht irgendwelche Anordnung oder Perspektive ein in die unbewußten Forderungsfunktionen der neuralen Muster und Prozesse. (233; Fs) (notabene)

57/06 Im Gegensatz dazu ist die Aberration der Zensurfunktion primär repressiv; ihre positive Aktivität ist es, Perspektiven vom Auftauchen im Bewußtsein abzuhalten, welche unerwünschte Einsichten entstehen lassen würden; sie führt, wenn man so sagen will, den Ausschluß von Anordnungen ein in das Feld des Unbewußten; sie schreibt die Weise vor, in der neuralen Forderungsfunktionen nicht begegnet werden soll; und der negative Aspekt dieser ihrer positiven Aktivität ist die Zulassung beliebiger Materialien in jeder anderen Anordnung oder Perspektive im Bewußtsein. (233; Fs) (notabene)

58/06 Schließlich unterscheiden sich beide, Zensurfunktion und ihre Aberration, von einer bewußten Zuwendung zu einer möglichen Verhaltensform und von einer bewußten Ablehnung, sich in einer solchen Weise zu verhalten. Denn die Zensurfunktion und ihre Aberration sind vor der bewußten Aufmerksamkeit operativ und sie betreffen direkt nicht, wie wir uns zu verhalten haben, sondern was wir zu verstehen haben. Eine Ablehnung, sich in einer gegebenen Weise zu verhalten, ist keine Ablehnung zu verstehen; weit davon entfernt, bewußte Aufmerksamkeit zu verhindern, intensiviert die Ablehnung sie und macht ihr Wiederauftreten umso wahrscheinlicher. Während es schließlich wahr ist, daß bewußtes Ablehnen verbunden ist mit einem Aufhören der bewußten Aufmerksamkeit, beruht diese Verbindung doch nicht auf einer Umwölkung der Intelligenz, sondern auf einer Verschiebung der Bemühung, des Interesses und der Sorge. Entsprechend sind wir gehalten, den Terminus Verdrängung auf das Wirken der abirrenden Zensurfunktion zu beschränken, welche damit beschäftigt ist, die Einsicht zu verhindern. (233f; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Methode in der Theologie

Titel: Methode in der Theologie

Stichwort: Erkenntnistheorie, Epistemologie, Metaphysik; Wende zur Interiorität; Fragen, Grundfragen ; Aristoteles

Kurzinhalt: So findet die Wende zur Interiorität statt. Die Allgemeinwissenschaft ist erstens Erkenntnistheorie (was tust du, wenn du erkennst?), zweitens Epistemologie (warum ist dieses Tun Erkennen?), und drittens Metaphysik

Textausschnitt: 75/XII Aristoteles und seine Anhänger anerkannten spezielle Wissenschaften, die sich mit Seiendem bestimmter Arten befaßten, sowie eine Allgemeinwissenschaft, die sich mit dem Sein als Sein befaßt. Nun zielen die Natur- und Humanwissenschaften darauf, Rechenschaft über alle Sinnesdaten zu geben. Wenn es demzufolge eine Allgemeinwissenschaft geben soll, dann müssen ihre Daten die Daten des Bewußtseins sein. So findet die Wende zur Interiorität statt. Die Allgemeinwissenschaft ist erstens Erkenntnistheorie (was tust du, wenn du erkennst?), zweitens Epistemologie (warum ist dieses Tun Erkennen?), und drittens Metaphysik (was erkennst du, wenn du dies tust?). Eine solche Allgemeinwissenschaft ist der Allgemeinfall der Methoden der speziellen Wissenschaften und nicht - wie im Aristotelismus - der Allgemeinfall des Inhalts der speziellen Wissenschaften. (317; Fs) (notabene)

76/XII Diese Wende zur Interiorität wurde auf verschiedene Weise von Descartes über Kant bis zu den deutschen Idealisten des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts versucht. Doch darauf folgte eine noch nachdrücklichere Wende vom Wissen zum Glauben, zum Willen, zum Gewissen, zur Entscheidung und zur Aktion bei Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Newman, Nietzsche, Blondel, den Personalisten und Existenzialisten. Die Richtung dieser Wende ist richtig in dem Sinne, daß die vierte Ebene des intentionalen Bewußtseins - die Ebene der Überlegung, Bewertung, Entscheidung und Handlung - die vorhergehenden Ebenen des Erfahrens, Verstehens und Urteilens aufhebt. Sie geht über diese hinaus, stellt ein neues Handlungsprinzip auf und eine neue Art von Handlungen, lenkt diese auf ein neues Ziel, aber weit davon entfernt, sie verkümmern zu lassen, bewahrt sie sie und führt sie zu einer volleren Erfüllung. (317f; Fs) (notabene)

77/XII Die vierte Ebene hebt nicht nur die vorhergehenden drei auf, auch unterscheiden sich die vorhergehenden drei erheblich vom spekulativen Verstand, der die selbstevidenten und notwendigen Wahrheiten erfassen sollte. Ein derart spekulativer Verstand konnte vollständige Autonomie beanspruchen und tat dies auch: Böser Wille konnte schwerlich die Erfassung selbstevidenter und notwendiger Wahrheiten beeinträchtigen, und ebensowenig die notwendigen Schlußfolgerungen, die sich aus solcher Wahrheit ergeben. Tatsächlich jedoch ist das, was die menschliche Intelligenz in Daten erfaßt und in Begriffen zum Ausdruck bringt, nicht eine notwendig relevante Intelligibilität, sondern nur eine möglicherweise relevante Intelligibilität. Solche Intelligibilität ist wesentlich hypothetisch und daher stets eines weiteren Überprüfungs- und Verifizierungsprozesses bedürftig, ehe sie als de facto relevant für die vorliegenden Daten behauptet werden kann. So kam es dazu, daß die moderne Wissenschaft unter Leitung der Methode steht, und die Methode, die man wählt und der man folgt, ergibt sich nicht nur aus dem Erfahren, Verstehen und Urteilen, sondern auch aus einer Entscheidung. (318; Fs)

78/XII In gedrängter Form habe ich eine Reihe von grundlegenden Wandlungen aufgezeigt, die sich in den letzten viereinhalb Jahrhunderten ereigneten. Sie modifizieren das Bild, das der Mensch von sich und seiner Welt hat, ebenso wie seine Wissenschaft und seine Auffassung von Wissenschaft, seine Geschichte und seine Auffassung von Geschichte, seine Philosophie und seine Auffassung von Philosophie. Die Wandlungen betreffen drei grundlegende Differenzierungen des Bewußtseins, und alle drei1 liegen völlig außerhalb des Horizonts der griechischen Antike und des mittelalterlichen Europa. (318; Fs)

79/XII Diesen Wandlungen setzten Geistliche im allgemeinen aus zwei Gründen Widerstand entgegen. Der erste Grund war vielfach der, daß Geistliche das Wesen dieser Wandlungen nicht wirklich erfaßten. Der zweite Grund lag darin, daß diese Wandlungen gewöhnlich von einem Mangel an intellektueller Bekehrung begleitet und daher dem Christentum feindlich gesinnt waren. (318; Fs)

80/XII Moderne Wissenschaft ist eines, die außerwissenschaftlichen Meinungen der Wissenschaftler sind aber etwas anderes. Unter den außerwissenschaftlichen Meinungen der Naturwissenschaftler war bis zur Übernahme der Quantentheorie ein mechanistischer Determinismus zu finden, der die Natur falsch darstellte und menschliche Freiheit und Verantwortlichkeit ausschloß.2 (318; Fs)

81/XII Auch die moderne Geschichtswissenschaft ist eines, und die philosophischen Annahmen der Historiker sind etwas anderes. H. G. Gadamer untersuchte die Annahmen von Schleiermacher, Ranke, Droysen und Dilthey.3 In etwas gedrängterer Form hat Kurt Frör festgestellt, daß die Arbeit der Historiker in der ersten Hälfte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts durch eine Mischung von philosophischer Spekulation und empirischer Forschung gekennzeichnet war, daß aber der immer einflußreicher werdende Positivismus die Spekulation in der zweiten Hälfte des Jahrhunderts beseitigte.4 Der sich daraus ergebende Historismus drang auch in die biblischen Untersuchungen ein, und hier fand er durch die Arbeiten von Barth und Bultmann einen starken Widerhall. Beide anerkannten die Bedeutung moralischer und religiöser Bekehrung. Bei Barth zeigte sich das in seiner Forderung, daß die Bibel zwar historisch, ebenso aber auch geistlich zu lesen sei; und geistliches Lesen sei nicht bloß eine Sache frommer Gefühle im Leser, es habe auch auf jene Realitäten zu achten, von denen die Bibel spricht.5 Für Bultmann ist die religiöse und moralische Bekehrung die existentielle Antwort auf den Ruf oder auf die Herausforderung des Kerygma. Doch solch eine Antwort sei ein subjektives Ereignis, und seine Objektivierung ende im Mythos.6 Wenn auch Bultmann kein gewöhnlicher Positivist ist, weil er um das 'Verstehen' weiß, zerfällt für ihn das Studium der Bibel aber doch in zwei Teile: den wissenschaftlichen Teil, der von religiösem Glauben unabhängig ist, und den religiösen Teil, der die mythischen Objektivierungen der Bibel tiefer durchdringt bis zu den subjektiven religiösen Ereignissen, von denen sie Zeugnis ablegt. (319; Fs)

82/XII Bei beiden, Barth und Bultmann, kommt, wenn auch auf unterschiedliche Weise, die Notwendigkeit intellektueller, wie auch moralischer und religiöser Bekehrung deutlich zum Vorschein. Nur eine intellektuelle Bekehrung kann dem Fideismus von Barth abhelfen. Nur eine intellektuelle Bekehrung kann die säkularistische Auffassung von wissenschaftlicher Exegese beseitigen, wie sie von Bultmann vertreten wurde. Dennoch ist intellektuelle Bekehrung allein nicht genug. Sie muß noch in eine philosophische und theologische Methode expliziert werden, und eine derart explizite Methode muß eine Kritik der Methode der Naturwissenschaft und der Methode der Gelehrsamkeit einschließen. (319f; Fs)









Wenn es demzufolge eine Allgemeinwissenschaft geben soll, dann müssen ihre Daten die Daten des Bewußtseins sein. So findet die Wende zur Interiorität statt. Die Allgemeinwissenschaft ist erstens Erkenntnistheorie (was tust du, wenn du erkennst?), zweitens Epistemologie (warum ist dieses Tun Erkennen?), und drittens Metaphysik (was erkennst du, wenn du dies tust?). Eine solche Allgemeinwissenschaft ist der Allgemeinfall der Methoden der speziellen Wissenschaften und nicht - wie im Aristotelismus - der Allgemeinfall des Inhalts der speziellen Wissenschaften.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Methode in der Theologie

Titel: Methode in der Theologie

Stichwort: Methode: acht funktionalen Spezialisierungen in der Theologie; Forschung, Interpretation, Geschichte, Dialektik, Fundamente (Bekehrung), Lehre, Systematik, Kommunikation

Kurzinhalt: Die Dialektik hat es mit dem Konkreten, dem Dynamischen und dem Widersprüchlichen zu tun und findet daher in der Geschichte christlicher Bewegungen reichlich Material.

Textausschnitt: 9/5 In diesem Abschnitt legen wir eine kurze Beschreibung von acht Funktionalen Spezialisierungen innerhalb der Theologie vor, nämlich

(1.) Forschung,
(2.) Interpretation,
(3.) Geschichte,
(4.) Dialektik,
(5.) Fundamente,
(6.) Lehre,
(7.) Systematik und
(8.) Kommunikation. Später werden wir versuchen, die Gründe für die vorstehende Einteilung, ihre genaue Bedeutung und ihre Implikationen anzugeben. Im Augenblick geht es uns jedoch nur um den vorläufigen Hinweis auf die inhaltliche Bedeutung funktionaler Spezialisierungen in der Theologie. (136; Fs)

10/5
(1.) Die Forschung macht die für die theologische Untersuchung einschlägigen Daten verfügbar. Sie ist entweder allgemein oder speziell. Die spezielle Forschung befaßt sich mit der Zusammenstellung jener Daten, die für irgendeine besondere Frage oder für ein Problem relevant sind, z. B. die Lehrmeinung von Herrn X zur Frage Y. Derart spezielle Forschung arbeitet um so schneller und effektiver, je vertrauter sie im Umgang mit den Werkzeugen ist, die ihr von der allgemeinen Forschung zur Verfügung gestellt werden. Die allgemeine Forschung lokalisiert alte Städte, gräbt sie aus und erfaßt sie kartographisch. Sie füllt die Museen und reproduziert oder kopiert Inschriften, Symbole, Bilder und Statuen. Sie entziffert unbekannte Schriften und Sprachen. Sie sammelt und katalogisiert Manuskripte und bereitet kritische Textausgaben vor. Sie stellt Verzeichnisse, Tabellen, Repertoires, Bibliographien, Auszüge, Bulletins, Handbücher, Wörterbücher und Enzyklopädien zusammen. Vielleicht wird sie uns eines Tages ein vollständiges System zur Informations-Auffindung in die Hand geben. (136; Fs)

11/5
(2.) Während die Forschung uns zugänglich macht, was geschrieben wurde, versteht die Interpretation, was gemeint war. Sie erfaßt diese Bedeutung in ihrem eigenen geschichtlichen Kontext, in Übereinstimmung mit dessen eigener Weise und Ebene des Denkens und des Ausdrucks, sowie im Licht der Umstände und der Intention des Autors. Ihr Ergebnis ist der Kommentar oder die Monographie. Interpretation ist ein Unternehmen voller Fallgruben und heute noch zusätzlich erschwert durch die von der Erkenntnistheorie, Epistemologie und Metaphysik übernommenen Probleme. Wir werden darauf zurückkommen, wenn wir uns später mit der Hermeneutik befassen. (136; Fs)

12/5
(3.) Geschichte ist fundamental, speziell oder allgemein. Die fundamentale Geschichte sagt uns wo (Ort, Gebiet) und wann (Daten, Perioden) wer (Personen, Völker) was tat (öffentliches Leben, äußere Taten), welchen Erfolg er erzielt, welche Rückschläge er erlitten und welchen Einfluß er ausgeübt hat. Daher schildert sie die leichter erkennbaren und allgemein anerkannten Züge menschlicher Aktivität je nach ihrer geographischen Erstreckung und zeitlichen Abfolge so spezifisch und präzise wie möglich. (136f; Fs)

13/5 Die spezielle Geschichtsschreibung berichtet über Bewegungen kultureller Art (Sprache, Kunst, Literatur, Religion), institutioneller Art (Familie, Sitten, Gesellschaft, Erziehung, Staat, Gesetz, Kirche, religiöse Gemeinschaften, Wirtschaft, Technologie) oder lehrmäßiger Art (Mathematik, Naturwissenschaften, Geisteswissenschaften, Philosophie, Geschichte, Theologie). (137; Fs)

14/5 Die allgemeine Geschichte ist vielleicht nur ein Ideal. Sie wäre fundamentale Geschichte, die durch spezielle Geschichtsschreibung erklärt und ergänzt wird. Sie würde eine Gesamtschau bieten oder etwas, das dem nahe kommt. Sie würde die Information, das Verständnis, das Urteil und die Einschätzung des Historikers im Hinblick auf die Summe der kulturellen, institutionellen und lehrmäßigen Bewegungen in ihrer konkreten Umgebung zum Ausdruck bringen. (137; Fs)

15/5 Geschichte als funktionale Spezialisierung innerhalb der Theologie hat es, unterschiedlich abgestuft und auf verschiedene Weise, mit fundamentaler, spezieller und allgemeiner Geschichte zu tun. In der Hauptsache hat sie die fundamentale Geschichte vorauszusetzen. Ihr wesentliches Anliegen ist die lehrmäßige Geschichte christlicher Theologie mit deren Antezedentien und Konsequenzen in der kulturellen und institutionellen Geschichte der christlichen Religion sowie der christlichen Kirchen und Gemeinschaften. Auch zur allgemeinen Geschichtsschreibung kann sie letztlich nicht auf Distanz bleiben, da man die Unterschiede zwischen den christlichen Kirchen und Gemeinschaften, die Beziehungen der verschiedenen Religionen zueinander sowie die Rolle des Christentums in der Weltgeschichte nur im Rahmen einer vollständigen Gesamtschau begreifen kann. (137; Fs)

16/5 Auf die Geschichte kommen wir später noch zurück. Nicht weniger als die Hermeneutik wurden auch das historische Denken und die historische Kritik der Gegenwart - über ihre spezifischen Aufgaben hinaus - in die philosophischen Grundprobleme unserer Zeit verwickelt. (137; Fs)

17/5
(4.) Unsere vierte funktionale Spezialisierung ist die Dialektik. Obwohl dieser Terminus sehr unterschiedlich verwendet wird, ist der Sinn, in dem wir ihn hier gebrauchen, recht einfach. Die Dialektik hat es mit dem Konkreten, dem Dynamischen und dem Widersprüchlichen zu tun und findet daher in der Geschichte christlicher Bewegungen reichlich Material. Alle Bewegungen sind zugleich konkret und dynamisch, während christliche Bewegungen ihrerseits durch äußere und innere Konflikte gekennzeichnet sind, ob man das Christentum nun als Ganzes oder auch nur diese oder jene größere Kirche oder Gemeinschaft betrachtet. (137f; Fs)

18/5 Inhalte der Dialektik sind demnach in erster Linie die Konflikte, die ihren Mittelpunkt in christlichen Bewegungen haben, doch sind diesen noch die sekundären Konflikte in den historischen Darstellungen und theologischen Deutungen jener Bewegungen hinzuzufügen. (138; Fs)

19/5 Neben den Inhalten der Dialektik ist ihr Ziel zu beachten. Dieses ist hoch und weitgesteckt. Wie es der empirischen Naturwissenschaft um eine vollständige Erklärung aller Phänomene geht, so geht es der Dialektik um einen möglichst weiten Blickwinkel. Sie sucht nach einer einzigen Grundlage oder nach einem Gesamt aufeinander bezogener Grundlagen, von dem aus sie zum Verständnis der Eigenart, der Gegensätze und der Beziehungen der vielen Standpunkte gelangen kann, die sich bei widerstreitenden christlichen Bewegung, ihren widerstreitenden Geschichtsdarstellungen und ihren widerstretenden Deutungen zeigen. (138; Fs)

20/5 Außer den Konflikten unter Christen und dem fernen Ziel eines umfassenden Standpunkts gibt es noch in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart das Faktum der vielen divergierenden Standpunkte, aus denen Konflikte erwachsen. Solche Standpunkte zeigen sich in Glaubensbekenntnissen ebenso wie in den gelehrten Werken der Apologeten. Sie zeigen sich aber auch - oft sogar noch viel lebendiger - in unbemerkten Annahmen und Versehen, in Vorliebe und Aversion sowie in den heimlichen aber sehr bestimmten Entscheidungen der Gelehrten, der Schriftsteller, der Prediger und auch der Männer und Frauen in den Kirchenbänken. (138; Fs)

21/5 Die Untersuchung dieser Standpunkte führt uns über das reine Faktum hinaus zu den Gründen für den Konflikt. Wenn man diese miteinander vergleicht, so zeigt sich, wo die Differenzen unaufhebbar, wo sie komplementär sind und innerhalb eines größeren Ganzen zusammengebracht und überwunden werden könnten, und wo man sie als sukzessive Stadien eines einzigen Entwicklungsprozesses ansehen kann. (138; Fs)

22/5 Außer dem Vergleich gibt es die Kritik. Nicht jeder Standpunkt ist kohärent, und diejenigen, die einen nicht kohärenten vertreten, können aufgefordert werden, zu einer folgerichtigen Position überzugehen. Nicht jeder Grund ist ein stichhaltiger Grund, und die Christenheit hat nichts zu verlieren durch das Ablegen von unguten Gründen, von ad hoc Erklärungen und Klischees, die nur Verdächtigung, Ressentiment, Abneigung und Bosheit hervorrufen. Nicht jeder irreduzible Unterschied ist ein ernster Unterschied, und die es nicht sind, kann man an zweite, dritte oder vierte Stelle rücken, so daß man Aufmerksamkeit, Studium und Analyse jenen Unterschieden widmen kann, die tatsächlich ernst und tief sind. (138f; Fs)

23/5 Unter Dialektik ist demnach eine verallgemeinerte Apologetik zu verstehen, die im ökumenischen Geist geführt wird, die letztlich auf einen umfassenden Standpunkt zielt und sich diesem Ziel nähert, indem sie die Unterschiede anerkennt, deren wirkliche und offenkundige Gründe sucht und überflüssige Gegensätze beseitigt. (139; Fs)

24/5
(5.) Wie die Bekehrung für das christliche Leben von grundlegender Bedeutung ist, so gibt eine Objektivierung der Bekehrung der Theologie ihre Fundamente. (139; Fs)

25/5 Unter Bekehrung verstehen wir eine Umwandlung des Subjekts und seiner Welt. Normalerweise handelt es sich hierbei um einen längeren Prozeß, obwohl ihre ausdrückliche Anerkennung auf wenige gewichtige Urteile und Entscheidungen konzentriert sein kann. Dennoch ist Bekehrung nicht bloß eine Entwicklung oder gar eine Reihe von Entwicklungen. Sie ist vielmehr ein sich ergebender Kurs- und Richtungswechsel. Es ist so, als gingen uns die Augen auf, als schwinde und stürze unsere frühere Welt. Etwas Neues taucht auf und trägt Frucht in ineinandergreifenden kumulativen Entwicklungsfolgen auf allen Ebenen und in allen Räumen des menschlichen Lebens. (139; Fs) (notabene)

26/5 Bekehrung ist existentiell, in höchstem Maße personal und ganz innerlich; doch ist sie nicht derart privat, daß sie einsam und allein wäre. Sie kann sich bei vielen ereignen, und diese können eine Gemeinschaft bilden, um sich gegenseitig in ihrer Selbst-Umwandlung zu stützen und einander bei der Ausarbeitung der Implikationen und der Erfüllung der Verheißung ihres neuen Lebens zu helfen. Und was gemeinschaftlich werden kann, das kann auch geschichtlich werden, das kann von Generation zu Generation übergehen, kann von dem einen kulturellen Umfeld auf ein anderes übergreifen. Es kann sich den wandelnden Umständen anpassen, neuen Situationen begegnen, in ein anderes Zeitalter hinein überleben und in einer anderen Periode oder Epoche neu erblühen. (139; Fs) (notabene)

27/5 Bekehrung als gelebte Bekehrung beeinflußt alle bewußten und intentionalen Handlungen des Menschen. Sie lenkt seinen Blick, durchdringt seine Vorstellungskraft und löst die Symbole aus, die bis in die Tiefen seiner Seele vordringen. Sie bereichert sein Verstehen, lenkt seine Urteile und verstärkt seine Entscheidungen. Bekehrung aber als gemeinschaftliche und geschichtliche Größe, als eine Bewegung mit ihren eigenen kulturellen, institutionellen und lehrmäßigen Dimensionen, ruft eine Reflexion hervor, die diese Bewegung thematisiert und ausdrücklich ihre Ursprünge, Entwicklungen, Ziele, Errungenschaften und ihr Versagen erforscht. (139f; Fs) (notabene)

28/5 Insofern als Bekehrung selbst thematisiert und ausdrücklich objektiviert wird, taucht nun die fünfte funktionale Spezialisierung auf: es sind die 'Fundamente'. Diese Fundamente unterscheiden sich von der alten Fundamentaltheologie in zweifacher Hinsicht. Erstens war die Fundamentaltheologie ein theologisch Erstes; sie folgte nicht den vier anderen Spezialisierungen, die wir als Forschung, Interpretation, Geschichte und Dialektik bezeichnet haben. Zweitens war die Fundamentaltheologie ein Block von Lehren - de vera religione, de legato divino, de ecclesia, de inspiratione scripturae, de locis theologicis. Im Gegensatz hierzu bieten die Fundamente nicht Lehren, sondern nur den Horizont, innerhalb dessen die Bedeutung der Lehren erfaßt werden kann. So wie im religiösen Leben gilt: 'Der irdisch gesinnte Mensch läßt sich nicht auf das ein, was vom Geist Gottes kommt. Torheit ist es für ihn, und er kann es nicht verstehen' (1 Kor 2,14), so sind in der theologischen Reflexion über das religiöse Leben die Horizonte zu unterscheiden, innerhalb derer die religiösen Lehren verstanden oder nicht verstanden werden können; diese Unterscheidung ist grundlegend. (140; Fs) (notabene)

29/5 Zu gegebener Zeit werden wir uns fragen, wie Horizont zu verstehen und zu definieren ist und wie sich ein Horizont vom anderen unterscheidet. Wir können jedoch sogleich anmerken: Wie die Bekehrung echt oder unecht sein kann, so kann es auch viele christliche Horizonte geben, und nicht alle müssen eine echte Bekehrung repräsentieren. Und obwohl es möglich ist, sich echte Bekehrung auf mehrfache Weise vorzustellen, scheint dennoch die Anzahl möglicher Bekehrungsweisen weit geringer als die Anzahl möglicher Horizonte zu sein. Daraus folgt, daß unsere 'Fundamente' eine Verheißung in sich tragen: die Aufhellung der durch die Dialektik aufgedeckten Konflikte und das Auswahlprinzip, das die verbleibenden Spezialisierungen leiten wird, die sich mit der Lehre, der Systematik und der Kommunikation befassen. (140; Fs)

30/5
(6.) Die Lehre bringt Tatsachen- und Werturteile zum Ausdruck. Sie befaßt sich demnach mit den Behauptungen und Verneinungen nicht nur der dogmatischen Theologie, sondern auch der moraltheologischen Disziplin, der aszetischen und mystischen Theologie, der Pastoraltheologie und ähnlicher Zweige. (140f; Fs)

31/5 Solche Lehren stehen im Horizont der 'Fundamente'. Sie erhalten ihre genaue Definition von der Dialektik, ihren positiven Reichtum an Abklärung und Entfaltung aus der Geschichte und ihre Grundlagen durch die Interpretation jener Daten, die der Theologie eigen sind. (141; Fs)

32/5
(7.) Die Tatsachen und Werte, die durch die Lehren behauptet werden, lassen weitere Fragen entstehen. Denn der Ausdruck der Lehre kann bildhaft oder symbolisch sein. Er kann beschreibend sein und letzten Endes bloß auf der Wortbedeutung beruhen, statt auf einem Verständnis der Realitäten. Er kann, wenn man ihn preßt, schnell vage und unbestimmt werden, ja er kann sich, wenn man ihn genau untersucht, in Widerspruch und Trugschluß verstrickt erweisen. (141; Fs)

33/5 Die Systematik als funktionale Spezialisierung versucht diese Probleme aufzugreifen. Ihr geht es um die Ausarbeitung angemessener Begriffssysteme, um offensichtliche Widersprüchlichkeiten zu beseitigen und zu einem gewissen Begreifen geistlicher Dinge zu gelangen, und dies von ihrer eigenen inneren Kohärenz her, wie auch durch Analogien, die von einer vertrauteren menschlichen Erfahrung angeboten werden. (141; Fs)

34/5
(8.) Bei der Kommunikation geht es um die Theologie in ihren Beziehungen nach außen. Diese sind dreifacher Art. Es gibt interdisziplinäre Beziehungen zur Kunst, zur Sprache und Literatur, zu anderen Religionen, zu den Natur- und Geisteswissenschaften, zur Philosophie und Geschichte. Sodann sind die Übertragungen (transpositions) zu nennen, die das theologische Denken entwickeln muß, wenn die Religion ihre Identität behalten und zugleich Zugang zu Geist und Herz der Menschen aller Kulturen und Klassen finden soll. Und schließlich bedarf es der Anpassungen, die nötig sind, um die verschiedenen Kommunikationsmittel, die an verschiedenen Orten und Zeiten jeweils zugänglich sind, voll und angemessen zu nutzen. (141; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: unknown, pursuit, ideal of knowledge, Pythagoras, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Einstein

Kurzinhalt: Wissensstreben: Suche des Unbekannten; Ideal des Unbekannten in d. Wissenschaft: von der Zahlenharmonie zur Statistik u. Quantenmechanik,

Textausschnitt: () It is not merely a tendency towards an object, it is a conscious tendency. But in seeking knowledge, not only do we tend towards it, not only do we do so consciously, but we also do so intelligently. Moreover, we do so critically
()
The pursuit of knowledge, then, is the pursuit of an unknown, and the possibility of that pursuit is the existence of an ideal.
()
... there is a connection between mathematics and the sounds that are harmonious!
()
All of these further discoveries are analogous to the Pythagorean discovery of harmonic ratios: Archimedes' law relating displacement and buoyancy; Galileo's law of falling bodies; Kepler's three laws of planetary motion. In each case there was formulated a mathematical expression verifiable in concrete data.
()
I have illustrated the development of an ideal of knowledge. What is the ideal? It is the mathematization of nature. It starts from particular laws; it moves towards a system; and its great achievement was Newtonian system. It lasted for a few hundred years, but it had been on the basis of Euclidean geometry. Einstein moved it to another basis, a more general geometry, and quantum mechanics has taken us right out of the field of law and system. The fundamental ideal has become states and probabilities.
()
When scientists still fail to obtain theories that satisfy all the data, they change the ideal itself from law and system to states and probabilities.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Aristoteles, scholastic, analysis, synthesis, Thomist Trinitarian theory

Kurzinhalt: Scholastisches Wissenschaftsideal, Wissen durch Ursachen, resolutio, compositio; Trinität (Augustinus, Thomas) : Verschwinden d. Dinge, Verbleiben der Relationen, Periodensystem

Textausschnitt: () The scholastic definition of a science is 'certain knowledge of things through their causes.' ... The scholastics called the first part of this movement resolution into the causes, resolutio in causas, analysis. The second part of the movement was compositio ex causis, synthesis.
()
What happened is that analysis and synthesis survived, but not the things and causes as understood by Aristotle.
()
There is nothing in the New Testament about persons or nature; these technical terms do not occur. ... Augustine explained the processions by a psychological analogy. He said they were something like the movement in the mind from understanding to conception, from judgment to willing. So first we have missions, then persons and nature, then properties, relations, processions.
()
In Trinitarian theory, then, we have analysis and synthesis. We have the analytic movement up to St Thomas, and the synthetic movement in St Thomas' Summa theologiae. But we do not have things, and we do not have causes. God is not a thing in the sense of the Aristotelian predicaments, and the generation of the Son by the Father is not a matter of causality. The Son is not another God, and neither is the Holy Ghost. Things and causes vanish, but analysis and synthesis remain.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: self-appropriation, dynamism, presence, introspection, empirical, intelligent, rational consciousness

Kurzinhalt: Selbstaneignung: von außen zur Dynamik der inneren Bewegung, Beispiel: Präsenz, Introspektion, 4 Stufen des Bewusstseins,

Textausschnitt: () The trick in self-appropriation is to move one step backwards, to move into the subject as intelligent - asking questions; as having insights - being able to form concepts; as weighing the evidence - being able to judge. We want to move in there where the ideal is functionally operative prior to its being made explicit in judgments, concepts, and words.
()
Moving in there is self-appropriation; moving in there is reaching what is prepredicative, preconceptual, prejudicial.
()
To sum up: there is a merely material sense of presence - the chairs are present in the room; there is a second sense - one person is present to the other; there is a third sense - a person has to be somehow present to himself for others to be present to him.
()
What is important, in other words, is the looker, not the looked-at, even when the self is what is looked at. So it is not a matter of introspection in any spatial sense, in any sense of 'looking back into,' because what counts is not the presence of what is looked at, but the presence of the subject that looks, even when he is looking at himself.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: self-appropriation, ready made ideal, blocking self-appropriation, summary

Kurzinhalt: Selbstaneignung gemäß des eigenen Ideals, Qualis quisque est, Blockierung der inneren Tendenz gemäßt des selbstgemachten Ideals, Zusammenfassung

Textausschnitt: () Now there is a joker in this business of self-appropriation. We do not start out with a clean slate as we move towards self-appropriation. We already have our ideals of what knowledge is, and we want to do self-appropriation according to the ideal that is already operative in us ...
()
... self-appropriation is not a simple matter of moving in and finding the functionally operative tendencies that ground ideals. It is also a matter of pulling out the inadequate ideals that may be already existent and operative in us.
()
Qualis quisque est, talis finis videtur ei.
()
Why is it, ... that in the course of seven hundred years only seven scholastics advert to the possibility, and only some of those accept it? It is this existential problem. It is the presence of a ready-made ideal of what knowledge must be, blocking self-appropriation.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: 'already out there now real'

Kurzinhalt: Lonergans Erklärung des already out

Textausschnitt: Because the consciousness is practical, and because practical consciousness is concerned with dealing with situations, and because the situation is already there to be dealt with, we have the 'already.' The consciousness is extroverted, its focus is 'out.' Because the consciousness is in a body, it is 'out there'; the body is always in one place, and 'there is what is 'out.' Consciousness has memories, and it has anticipations, but it is active in the 'now.' It can be deceived by appearances in a very momentary way perhaps; the kitten might be deceived by an extremely realistic picture of a saucer of milk, but then it would not be 'real' milk because, when the kitten tried it, it would not obtain the ordinary satisfactions it obtains when it tries a saucer of 'real' milk.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Malinowski, Trobriand Islanders, Hitler, Vakuum, Hauptproblem

Kurzinhalt: Bronislaw Malinowski's Magic, Science, and Religion; Lonergans Vergleich zwischen uns u. den Eingeborenen;

Textausschnitt: Now in our civilization, there has been a very marked tendency - it is not a universal rule or a necessary law - for scientific thinking to be positivist, pragmatist, antimetaphysical. One can discern a dichotomy (in a much more cultivated form, of course) existing in this mentality which is similar to the dichotomy in the mentality of the Trobriand Islanders.
()
But while the person who is a scientist or a mathematician does not suffer too much from that blank, the general population does suffer. For example ... But then the country was taken over , Hitler. If a vacuum exists in the popular mind, a terrific irrational national convulsion can result. This is one of the main problems of our time.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Urteil, Satz, non asserendo sed recitando

Kurzinhalt: Judgment and Propositions, Unterschied zw. Urteil und Proposition

Textausschnitt: () The act of judgment is the act that adds assent to a proposition, that changes a proposition from the expression of an object of thought, the expression of some bright idea that comes into your mind, into an object of affirmation.
()
Questions on the second level are questions for intelligence: What? Why? How often? But questions on this third level are questions for reflection: Is it? Is it so? Whether this or that? The answers on the third level are of the type yes or no. It is or it is not. There are two basic alternatives. Those answers can also be modal: they can be qualified in as many ways as one pleases - possibly, probably, certainly, I don't know, we'll see. However, they are all of the basic type, it is and it is not.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Aristoteles, Einsicht, quidditas, Wasfrage, Warumfrage

Kurzinhalt: Insight in Aristotle, Mondfinsternis, 4 Typen von Fragen, What is a man?: was bedeutet warum -> Materie, Form,

Textausschnitt: () Aristotle divides questions into four types:
(1) What? What is it?
(2) Is it?
(3) Why is it so?
(4) Is it so?
()
Aristotle's answer was, What means why. How can what mean why? In some cases, he says, it is quite easy to see.
()
His doctrine of matter and form arises out of this problem. When you ask, 'What is a man?' you mean, 'Why is this a man?' You have this, what you point to, the materials. You ask, 'Why is this a man?' The answer is the soul.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: 3 Arten von Definition: Wortdefinition, erklärende u. implizite; Hilbert

Kurzinhalt: Nominal, Explanatory, and Implicit Definition, Hilbert's Geometrie: Punkte und Linien; die implizite (implicit) Definition sieht völlig von der materie ab -> Relation

Textausschnitt: () three types of definition: nominal, explanatory, and implicit. Nominal definition supposes insight into the use of words.
()
An explanatory definition adds a further element which, if not added in the definition, would have to be added by way of a postulate.
()
Finally, the postulational element of the explanatory definition can be used alone, and then the definition is implicit. Implicit definition is of far greater generality. In Hilbert's Foundations of Geometry, points and straight lines are defined by the postulate, A straight line is determined by two and only two points. Two points and a straight line are set in correlation; if we have two points, that will determine what we mean by a straight line, and if we have a straight line, that will determine what is meant by a point. The only thing that is settled is the relation between the two points and a straight line.
()
By 'point' Hilbert does not mean position without magnitude, something that you approximate by a dot, nor does he mean by 'line' something with length but without breadth or thickness. That is one case of his definition, but his definition is satisfied equally directly if by a straight line you mean ...
()
Implicit definition, then, prescinds from the matter; it gets entirely away from the matter. It is just the expression of the relational element, and it picks out what is of scientific significance, introducing us to complete generality.
()
When you base your geometry on implicit definitions, you are dealing purely with relations; you have moved on to a further stage of abstraction. Implicit definitions are simply relational structures, and the terms of the relations are left indeterminate. When definitions are implicit, the concrete meaning can be anything that will satisfy them.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Hilbert, Lonergan's Schema -> Relation, self-appropriation

Kurzinhalt: 4-fältige Struktur: the four terms are defined by their relations to one another; die Bedeutung dieser Relation erwächst im Maße der Selbstaneignung

Textausschnitt: () Insofar as you have no self-appropriation whatever, the four terms stand as do Hilbert's points and lines in their implicit definition. There is a purely relational structure; the four terms are defined by their relations to one another,
()
the definitions have to remain merely implicit if you have no self-appropriation at all. But in the measure that you have some degree of self-appropriation, the four terms take on a meaning from your experience of yourself;
()
These terms, then, have a fixed element - their mutual relations - and a variable element that increases with self-appropriation. So they are analogous - something fixed and something variable - and consequently they are open.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Aristoteles, Syllogismus, to ti ên einai, quod quid erat esse: intelligibile in sensibilibus

Kurzinhalt: Mond: causa cognoscendi, causa essendi; Mittelterm als Antwort auf die Frage; Unterschied zw. Definition (to ti estin) und Form;

Textausschnitt: () ... The example states: if the moon has phases, then it is a sphere; the moon goes through phases; therefore, it is a sphere. ... When phases is the middle term, we have the causa cognoscendi, the reason why we know. But when the sphere is the middle term, we have the causa essendi, the reason why the thing is so.
()
Aristotle's doctrine of the explanatory syllogism shows that he is trying to do in his logic something that the symbolic logician is trying to avoid.
()
Aristotle holds that the answer to all questions is a matter of finding the middle term. It must be found not only when there are three terms but even in the case of the simple question, What is the moon?
()
What is the difference between to ti ên einai and to ti estin, between the form and the definition? It is the difference, with which we have already dealt, between the content of the insight and the conception, the general definition. Aristotle moved back as best he could - and it is marvelous that he did as well as he did - from conception to insight, by talking about their objects: to ti ên einai, the form; to ti estin, the definition; and also ousia (essence).
()
'What is a man?' He says that ti estin means dioti, or why is it, or propter quid; that quid means propter quid; and that what means why. But how can one ask, 'Why is a man?' That does not seem to make much sense; but one can make it make sense by asking, 'Why is this a man?' just as 'Why are these bricks and stones a house?'
()
The to ti ên einai is what you understand before you are able to formulate it; it is the form, intelligibile in sensibilibus (the intelligible in the sensible).

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Urteil, hinreichende Begründung (sufficiency), Trinität (Thomas, Augustin)

Kurzinhalt: von reflektiven Verstehen zum Urteil; hinreichende Begründung -> entweder Urteil oder Selbstwiderspruch; rationale Notwendigkeit zum Urteilen,

Textausschnitt: () He has the sufficiency of the evidence, and it is up to him to judge; and if he does not judge he is introducing a contradiction within himself. He is rational, he is a reasonable being, and yet he is defaulting on his rationality if he grasps the sufficiency of the evidence and does not judge.
()
That is the rational necessity of judging. Judging, then, in the third place, is the fruit of the actual rationality of consciousness, and that aspect of judgment provides Augustinian and Thomist Trinitarian theory with its psychological analogy: the procession of the Son from the Father is not a matter of causing; it is a matter of the 'because' that occurs within a spiritual being.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Untergliederung von Lonergan' Schema

Kurzinhalt: 1 ensation, perception, (free) images 2 inquiry, insight, conception 3 reflection, reflective understanding, judgment

Textausschnitt: () The terms for that level are now: sensation, perception, (free) images. For the second and third levels, they are the same as in Insight, with minor variations: inquiry, insight, conception; and reflection, reflective understanding, judgment.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Urteil, Verpflichtung, Gedächtnis, La Rochefoucauldm memory, judgement

Kurzinhalt: Urteil als persönlicher Akt; Ausdruck der eigenen Vernünftigkeit ohne jeden Zwang; Verantwortlichkeit für das Urteil; Judgment is something that is entirely yours;

Textausschnitt: () There is the person who understands, and there is the intellect by which, the act by which, he understands. And from that aspect, as related to the person, the judgment is a personal commitment. One of de La Rochefoucauld's witty remarks ... Memory is not completely under our control. But the judgment is a personal act, a personal commitment.
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Judgment is something that is entirely yours; it is an element in personal commitment in an extremely pure state. Because it is so personal, so much an expression of one's own reasonableness apart from any constraint, because all alternatives are provided for, it is entirely one's own responsibility. Because it is entirely one's own responsibility, one does not complain about one's bad judgments; one is responsible for them.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Urteil an sich, Bestandteile des Urteils, Urteil als Setzung (nicht Bildung) einer Hypothese; Thomas, Aristoteles

Kurzinhalt: Urteil als Verbindung, Teilung; Thomas: Verbindung of essence with existence; judgment in which one posits synthesis; Wahrheit als Kern des Urteils; proper, borrowed content; implicit content: truth

Textausschnitt: () However, from the Thomist viewpoint the relevant composition is composition of essence with existence on the objective side. The act of judgment is not an act of synthesis, but an act in which one posits synthesis. A theory, a hypothesis, a proposition, a definition, already contains a synthesis. Judgment does not add further synthesis; it simply posits the synthesis that is the object of thought.
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Since judgment is positing synthesis, we can distinguish in the judgment between its proper content and its borrowed content. The proper content is the positing, the 'Yes,' the 'No,' 'It is,' 'It is not.' The borrowed content is the object of thought which is reached by conception on the second level.
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Besides the explicit content of the synthesis and its positing - one borrowed, one proper - there is the implicit content. When I say, 'It is,' I also mean, 'It is true that it is.' Truth is the implicit content of every judgment. The implicit content can be made explicit; but it is really included in the simple statement, 'It is.'

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Struktur des rationalen Bewusstseins

Kurzinhalt: Rational Consciousness, principle of noncontradiction, Prinzip des ausgeschlossenen Dritten, Nichtwiderspruchsprinzip, Element d. Absolutheit und Objektivität

Textausschnitt: () On the first level we have sensations, perceptions, and images. On the second level we understand, and understanding yields objects of thought - 'It may be heavy, and it may be light; if I could only get my hand around it and move it quickly, I would know which it is.' Then one performs the experiment, makes the judgment, and says, 'This is heavy.' When one says that, one does not mean 'It feels heavy' or 'There is pressure on my hand.' One is talking about it. There is an element of objectivity entering in.
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These four points characterize the whole process of rational consciousness. The process begins with the question, Is it or is it not? It includes the principle of excluded middle, provided the question is fairly put -either it is or it is not, either one or the other. It includes the principle of noncontradiction - it cannot be both. It involves an element of the absolute, the ground of what we mean when we speak of the eternality of truth. Finally, it involves an element of objectivity. When we judge we go beyond all question of feelings and appearances, and we say, 'It is so' or 'It is not so.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: allgemeine Form des reflektiven Verstehens, Urteil; das bedingte Unbedingte; Syllogismus

Kurzinhalt: virtually unconditioned; if A, then B; but A; therefore B; Funktion des Syllogismus; Gründung der Prämisse von wenn A, dann B im Prozess des Denkens selbst

Textausschnitt: () The general form of the grasp of the virtually unconditioned may be put syllogistically: If A, then B; but A; therefore B, where A and B severally represent one or more propositions. In the major, B is presented as a conditioned: If A, then B. In the minor, the condition is fulfilled: A. We have the conclusion because the combination of major and minor exhibits B as virtually unconditioned.
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is that it puts into form the object of reflective understanding. Reflective understanding is aided by the syllogistic form of exposition because the syllogism exhibits the conclusion, the prospective judgment, the conditioned, as a virtually unconditioned.
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In other words, if A and B, as representing the conditions and conditioned in a virtually unconditioned, must always be judgments, then we are driven back to an infinity of prior judgments before we can have one. There has to be an infinity, because every final judgment, every judgment B, depends upon other judgments. If, however, we can find A and the major premise, If A, then B, within the prior process of knowing, and reflective understanding capable of using A and B as they exist in this prior state, then we can get the judgment.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Urteil, Tatsachenurteil, Syllogismus

Kurzinhalt: Concrete Judgments of Fact; Beispiel: es wird etwas geschehen; Syllogismus eines Tatsachenurteils,

Textausschnitt: () We can put this syllogistically. If the same set of things is in different states at different times, then in the intervening time something has happened; but this same set of things was in one state this morning and now is in another state; therefore, something has happened.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Urteil; Kriterium der Richtigkeit: keine weiteren relevanten Fragen

Kurzinhalt: Judgments on the Correctness of Insights; wann ist eine Einsicht richtig; Thomas: Syllogismus im Traum; Urteil als Verpflichtung - Gedächtnis

Textausschnitt: () Insights head towards a limit. When you reach that limit you have the invulnerable insight, that is, you have reached a point where further questions de facto do not arise. There can be further questions, but they are not relevant. The man comes home and says, 'Something happened.'
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One needs for judgment a fuller control of all faculties than one needs for insight. The control of judgment requires the poise of consciousness and the control over sensitive presentations and images that can be disturbed in the human makeup. If that control is disturbed, judgment is disturbed. St Thomas says that we can syllogize in our dreams, but when we wake up we find that we have made some mistake.
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In other words, besides the alternatives of 'is' and 'is not,' 'certainly,' 'probably,' and 'possibly,' there is also an indefinite number of alternatives that can be introduced by qualifying the judgment, paring it down, making it still less and less that you are asserting. The more you qualify the judgment, the easier it is to arrive at the point where your insights are invulnerable
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The point is not that no further relevant questions occur to me, but that there are no further relevant questions.
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Good judgment is a personal commitment; people complain about their memory but not about their judgment. Judgment is a personal commitment that involves one's own rationality. It is a contingent event; it usually depends upon an extremely large number of factors. But it is something that does happen; we do judge; there are things we are absolutely certain about, things that it would be silly to have any doubts about no matter how hesitant we may be.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Urteile im Bereich d. Wissenschaft; Masse: Euklid, Einstein; logische Form

Kurzinhalt: Probable Judgments; wahrscheinliche Urteile; allgemeine Form des wissenschaftlichen Arguments: If A, then B; but B; therefore A; logisch nicht zwingend

Textausschnitt: () However, insofar as this law is understood on the assumptions of a Euclidean space, it has to be revised when special relativity is introduced and space is no longer strictly Euclidean. In other words, assumptions that lie on a remote level may be changed, and then the law will not be used in exactly the same sense as before. In general, ...
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In mechanics and dynamics, the concept of mass is fundamental; in relativity, mass does not have exactly the same properties as it has in Newtonian mechanics. Insofar as special relativity is said to have been sufficiently established, that is, to be still more probable than Newtonian mechanics, there is a change in that fundamental notion.
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The scientist does not reach the virtually unconditioned. The scientific argument from verification is generally of the following type: If A, then B; but B; therefore A. If the theory, A, is true, then we have all these things that we account for; but we have all these things accounted for; therefore, the theory is a fairly good account of them. This is not a logically valid argument; but ...

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Anylatische Propositionen und Prinzipien; Anselm: ontologisches Argument; kontingent; Kausalgesetz

Kurzinhalt: Analytic Propositions and Principles; if A, then B; A; therefore B; Übergang von analyt: Proposition -> Prinzip: Tatsachenurteil;

Textausschnitt: () If you define any A as what has a relation to B, that is, if by definition A is what has a relation R to B, then you can say ... We have here, then, an example of a virtually unconditioned. The proposition 'If there is an A there is a relation R to B' is conditioned; it is true under certain circumstances or conditions. What are the conditions? The conditions to be fulfilled are fulfilled by a definition:
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Analyticity is simply the structure of the judgment: If A, then B; A; therefore B. The judgment, as resting upon a virtually unconditioned, is resting upon that structure; and that structure, as a structure, is something that can be satisfied by rules of syntax and definitions made ad hoc.
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In other words, an analytic proposition becomes an analytic principle in the measure that the defined terms in their defined sense occur in concrete judgments of fact.
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Let us take an illustration from the ontological argument for the existence of God. Necessary existence exists necessarily. This is at least an analytic proposition; ... However, if you can say that there exists a necessary existence, that there is something that exists necessarily, then you transform the analytic proposition into an analytic principle. In other words, the ontological argument is valid if God exists.
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Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: 3 Klassen von analytischen Prinzipien

Kurzinhalt: Analytische Prinzipien in: Philosophie, empirischen Wissenschaften, Mathematik

Textausschnitt: I divide analytic principles into three classes. First, there are those in which the verifying judgments, so to speak, the concrete judgments of fact that transform analytic propositions into analytic principles, are affirmed simply. That is the philosophic case. Secondly, there are those in which the concrete judgments of fact that effect the transformation are affirmed provisionally. That is what occurs in the empirical sciences. Finally, there is the third case for mathematics, and I speak of these as serially analytic principles.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Self-appropriation; Selbstaneignung; implizite Definition; Füllung einer relationalen Struktur

Kurzinhalt: Selbstaneignung als Inhalt einer Definition (postulational definition) eines Satzes von Ausdrücken, die durch Relationen bestimmt werden; die Affirmation setzt die hypothetische Struktur als Faktum

Textausschnitt: 71/5 What we have been doing is determining the knowing subject by implicit definitions; and the meaning of those implicit definitions is given a positive content by one's own self-appropriation, insofar as I am aware of myself as experiencing, inquiring intelligently, and judging rationally. The fulness of my self-appropriation is the measure of the meaning, the significance, that I can give to a merely postulational definition of that set of terms by their internal relations. In other words, self-appropriation is the experiential element that is expressed in the set of relations defined by this set of terms; and the judgment of self-affirmation, treated in chapter 11 of Insight, is the judgment relevant to self-appropriation. If you think of the knowing in this judgment 'I am a knower' as our knowing external objects, we must then add that this knowing, on all its levels, is something that enters into my presence to myself. In the first sense of presence, the chairs are present in the room. In the second sense, you are present to me. But in the third sense, I have to be present to myself for anyone to be present to me. In self-appropriation, it is this third presence with which we are concerned.
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The whole set of definitions in these lectures could be only a relational structure. Self-appropriation gives it meaning, but as a hypothetical construct. Chapter 11 of Insight will add affirmation, will determine the hypothesis as fact, will make my presence to myself known.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Prozess der self-affirmation; Verifikation der bewussten Vorgänge

Kurzinhalt: Vorgang der Selbstaffirmation; Urteil über sich als eines Erkennenden, Einsehenden usw.,

Textausschnitt: 1.1 Verification of a Set of Events
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But we do not see that the pressure is 64 when the volume is 1, and that the pressure is 32 when the volume is 2. Those are statements, judgments. What we can see, by taking a look, is a measuring rod set against the dimensions of the volume. Similarly ...
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In the measure that one has achieved self-appropriation, one is capable of verifying in oneself that one is a unity-identity-whole that senses, perceives, imagines, inquires, understands, formulates, reflects, grasps the unconditioned, and judges. But there is a difference between verifying in the one case and verifying in the other. In the first case, one uses one's external senses, and one simply sees the position of the needle on a dial

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Self-affirmation; transzendentales Ego

Kurzinhalt: Schluss auf eine Einheit (transzendentales Ego), die den verschiedenen Tätigkeiten zugrunde liegen muss; verification of the transcendental ego

Textausschnitt: () If we have perceptions and empirical presentations by themselves, and inquiry completely separate, the inquiry will not be about the presentations. For inquiry to be about the presentations, we have to have a unity.
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One at least must postulate a transcendental ego that performs all of these activities, even if it is not given in consciousness. Even if one's consciousness is simply of the single acts and there is no consciousness of one subject of the series of acts, still one has to postulate such a subject, the transcendental ego, the condition of the possibility of knowing.
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They are my perceiving, my inquiring, my understanding, long before the perceiving, inquiring, and understanding are distinguished from one another. The unity of the subject is given prior to any thinking about it.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Self-affirmation als Objektivation seines selbst

Kurzinhalt: Selbstaneignung als Objektivation; kurze Frage nach dem Bewusstsein Christi; Widerspruch zwischen: what explicitly I say and what implicitly I am

Textausschnitt: () ... The self is appropriated in the sense that we conceive it and judge it, but that very conceiving and judging enables us to find it; and, fundamentally, we can find it insofar as we ask questions.
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So self-knowledge - the process from being present to oneself, and finding typical activities in that self, to understanding how these activities are combined, and from that combination working out a theory of what it is to be a knower - is an objectification of oneself.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: self-affirmation als description und explanatory definition; das Ich ist nicht bloß "hypothetisch"

Kurzinhalt: Aussagen über die Selbstaneignung: Synthese der Vorteile von Beschreibung und erklärender Definition; behaviorist, linguistic analyst

Textausschnitt: () Is this a descriptive account of the knower, or is it an explanatory account? Our distinction between description and explanation was between the type of knowledge that appeals ultimately to the relations of things to us and the type of knowledge that involves relations of things to one another. It is clear that this is an explanatory account, insofar as it isolates fundamental elements, distinctive steps in the cognitional process, which are definable by their relations to one another.
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Again, while the account is explanatory, it is not hypothetical in the sense in which explanatory science is hypothetical. Each of the elements is directly verifiable.
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Is this account, then, descriptive or explanatory? It has the advantages of both, one may say. It has all the advantages of the concreteness of the descriptive type insofar as the elements and the unity are verifiable in consciousness. It has all the advantages of the explanatory type insofar as the different elements are of their very nature interdependently linked together in the process.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Selbsterkenntnis, Unmöglichkeit einer Revision

Kurzinhalt: self-knowledge; die Möglichkeit einer Revision setzt immer schon diese 3-fältige Struktur voraus; fundamental invariant pattern

Textausschnitt: () Let us suppose that there occurs a revision. The revision will be based upon further data. The further data may be given either by external sense or by internal consciousness, by the subject present to himself; so to have a reviser there must be external sense or internal consciousness. Unless we have that we cannot get further data; we cannot have any data at all. Moreover, if there is to be a new theory, we hope it is something intelligent. If it is intelligent, it will result from insight. Again, we hope we will be able to express it. It is not enough to say, 'I have a wonderful insight into what knowledge really is, but I can't tell you what it is.' We hope we will be able to conceive it. Moreover, it will have to be not simply a theory but a verified theory. When the new theory is proposed we will want to know whether it is right, or if it is better than the old one; so there will have to be critical reflection in the new theory. Again, if we are going to accept the new theory we will want to grasp the unconditioned; so there will have to be the grasp of the 'nconditioned. On that grasp of the unconditioned will depend the judgment, otherwise we would be unreasonable. So the possibility of a revision presupposes this analysis.
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... we have arrived at a fundamental invariant pattern. Any future advance in self-knowledge may fill out this pattern with further details, may enrich it with all sorts of conclusions; but to be a revision it has to preserve this pattern.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Selbstaffirmation als Tatsachenurteil

Kurzinhalt: Self-affirmation and Judgment of Fact; jedes Tatsachenurteil setzt voraus: Erfahrung, Intelligenz, Urteil

Textausschnitt: () What we mean by fact is what is known through experience, understanding, and judging. Fact is not simply sensible presentation; it is not simply seeing my hand outstretched with something across it. ... To put it more simply, any judgment presupposes the unconditioned or it is not absolute. The unconditioned presupposes a conception; otherwise you do not have a conditioned, something determinate about which to make your judgment. This conditioned inherent in the conception results from inpsight and inquiry, and you have to have something to have insight into and to inquire about; so you need experience.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: 3 Arten von Objekten: agent object, the terminal object, and the final object

Kurzinhalt: final object: motus in imaginem est idem ac motus in imaginatum; Unterschied zw. Bild und "Gebildetem"; Urteil und Begriff als Zielobjekt u. Finalobjekt

Textausschnitt: () One can speak of objects metaphysically, and then one distinguishes three types of objects: the agent object, the terminal object, and the final object. The agent object is illustrated by seeing.
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motus in imaginem est idem ac motus in imaginatum. Imagining both produces an image and wants to represent some object, what is imagined. There is a distinction between the image and what is imagined. We do not produce in ourselves what is imagined, otherwise we could produce in ourselves anything sensible. But we form the image within ourselves to move to the final object.
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As in the imagination, so in judgment we can speak of a terminal and a final object. The terminal object which you produce in yourself is the concept and the judgment, and through that concept and judgment there is a finality, a final object. But is that final object, known through the concept and the judgment - is that really what is real?

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Unbegrenztheit des Strebens nach Wissen, Obskurantismus

Kurzinhalt: The Range of Knowing; Unbegrenztheit des Wissensstrebens; the range of our desire to know is unrestricted;

Textausschnitt: () In the sense of radical potency, radical teleology, radical finality, I think it can be shown that our knowing is unlimited.
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We can ask if there is anything beyond our total range. If we ask that, we have already asked a question about existence with regard to what lies beyond any hypothetical range one might like to set.
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Is there a radical limitation to our mind, such that the question cannot even arise? There is not such a limit if we ask whether there are objects beyond the natural range; when we put that question our interest already transcends any hypothetical range. If this is so, then the range of our intellect, the radical range and not the range of what will fall within actual achievement at any future date, is unlimited. The range of our radical capacity, the range of our desire to know, then, is unrestricted. The object is everything about everything.
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To brush questions aside in principle ... is to run counter to the nature of one's intellect. It is an obscurantism. The radical meaning of obscurantism is implicitly or explicitly holding the thesis that the range of our knowledge, the range of our desire to know, is limited.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Begriff (notion) des Seins; Sein als Zielobjekt der Vernunft

Kurzinhalt: The Notion of Being, Sein als Ausdruck eines uneingeschränkten Strebens; intellect: potens omnia facere et fieri; Sein als Objekt des transitiven Verbs "wissen"; Obskurantismus

Textausschnitt: () When St Thomas wants to prove that the object of our intellect is ens, he adduces the Aristotelian account of intellect, the potens omnia facere et fieri, able to make and become all things, a potential omnipotence, and he says that because it is omnia, it is ens, being. ... Being, then, is a final object, the term of an unrestricted tendency, desire, effort to know. We work towards it. As through imagination we have an immanently produced object, an image, and through the image have a representation of what is imagined, so through understanding and judgment we have immanently produced objects, what is conceived and what is affirmed, through which we know what is, being. And that being can be considered in either of two ways, distributively or collectively. Distributively, one talks about beings; collectively, one talks about the totality of everything that is.
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If being is the object towards which our intellectual knowledge tends, then to know is to know being; being is the object of the transitive verb 'to know.' We have a fundamental identity: intellectual knowing of the type we have described and explained is identical with knowing being.
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If your intellect were something that was confined within a finite range, then there could possibly be questions that you could brush aside without any reason whatever, and so a certain measure of radical obscurantism would be justified. But if no obscurantism whatever is justified, then in principle there is no finite limit to our knowing.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Intelligente und rationale Finalität

Kurzinhalt: Intelligent and Rational Finality; bewusste u. unbewusste Finalität (Aristoteles, Stein - Hunger); Staunen als Audruck d. intelligenten Finalität; Reflexion als Audruck d. rationalen Finalität

Textausschnitt: () A fundamental distinction is made between unconscious and conscious finality. According to Aristotle, any object has a finality to be at the center of the earth,
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Intellectual and rational consciousness has a finality to the unlimited objective, to being. The finality is in what is present to itself when it is intellectually alert or critically reflective. To wonder is to manifest the finality of an intelligent subject, and to be critically reflective is to manifest the finality of a rational subject. We move from a level of sense presentations, perception, and images to a level of insight and conception, inasmuch as we are intellectually alert, inasmuch as we have not only verbal questions or questions conceptually expressed, but also that root of questioning that is intellectual curiosity, wanting to understand something.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Finalität und Inhalt des Wissens; Wesen und Sein; Cajetan (Menschheit - Mensch)

Kurzinhalt: Finality and the Contents of Knowing; die intelligente und rationale Finalität durchdringt alles Denken; Form als Begrenzung der Finalität

Textausschnitt: () Intelligent and rational finality underpins all contents in our knowing; it penetrates them all; and it goes beyond them all.
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The matter may be illustrated by a consideration of the standard question, What is subsistence? There is a whole series of scholastic opinions on it. ... The question is put by Cajetan in terms of the difference betwen humanity and man. ... If it is just matter and form, what you conceive as a result of grasping soul in these data is humanity; but if it is this matter and form as a determination of being, it is a man. Humanity, id quo est, is abstract; man, id quod est, is concrete. Humanity is a principle limiting the being to being a man.
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What is it that you conceive? If you attend only to the sensible presentation and the insight, then what you conceive is humanity, a compound of matter and form. But if you consider the finality of intellect towards being, what you are trying to conceive is being, and matter and form are a determination of that being, and you conceive a man. De facto, we form concrete terms before abstract ones because of the finality of intellect towards being. We have the content 'being' from the desire to know, and the determination of the content from the intelligible form in the sensible matter. According to Cajetan's theory of subsistence, 'man' adds to 'humanity' a mode. On the present analysis, 'man' means a being. You do not know a being until you make a judgment, but you are thinking about being on the level of intelligence.
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In cognitional process there are not merely data of sense and the form grasped in insight, but also finality, the intellectually and rationally conscious finality of intellect towards being. Because of the finality, this humanity is thought as part of a whole, as the matter and form of something that is compounded not merely of matter and form but also of existence. This illustrates the penetration of all contents by being. Your questions are questions about being: What is it? Is it so? Your questions have their root in this fundamental finality.
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This finality also goes beyond all contents. Any degree of understanding gives rise to further questions, to further understanding, and when you reach the further understanding you ask whether it is so. Affirming 'It is so' will itself give rise to further questions. When you grasp the unconditioned, you want to move to the level of knowing being.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Seins als proportioniertes Objekt, Intelligibilität des Seins, Thomas: Weisheit

Kurzinhalt: Finality as a Structured Notion (potency, form, and act), Sein ist intelligibel: ens per essentiam, ens per participationem; Weisheit im Zusammenhang mit geistiger Finalität bei Thomas

Textausschnitt: () Insofar as knowing develops on three stages, it is inevitable that the known involves a combination of three contents. If knowing is experiencing and understanding and judging, and if all three are required to have the known, then the known will involve a content from the experiencing, a content from the understanding, and a content from the judging, all combined into a single object.
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This combination of all three contents in a single object is what is classically termed the proportionate object of our intellect - potency, form, and act ..
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Again, if being is the object of the verb 'to know,' and our knowing is by inquiry and insight, reflection and judgment, then to say that something is a being is also to say that it is intelligible. The intelligible is what you can know by understanding and judging.
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So we have arrived at a notion of being that is unrestricted, that includes everything about everything, that is not within any genus. It underpins, goes before, penetrates, runs into, coincides with, and goes beyond any particular act of knowing and any particular content of knowing which we may have. It is the core of all meaning, and it is a structured notion.
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For Aquinas, the highest intellectual habit is wisdom. It is wisdom that selects the terms that determine the principles which determine everything in our knowledge. But how do we acquire wisdom? We cannot use principles here, for wisdom is their source. Aquinas would derive wisdom from two sources: ... One's choice of the notion of being is going to determine everything else. So we have to have the right notion of being to acquire wisdom, but also we have to have wisdom to settle what the right notion of being is.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Debatte um a priori als Folge der Erkenntnis als taking a look; stattdessen: Erkenntnis als antologische Vollkommenheit

Kurzinhalt: The Notion of the A Priori; Schluss: a priori, a posteriori, a simultaneo; synthetische Aussagen a priori (Kant); spiritual x-rays; anstelle: Frage nach a priori: Fr. nach Bedeutung

Textausschnitt: () 'The a priori' is a term used in three contexts. First, it is used with regard to reasoning or inference. An a priori inference is from the cause to the effect; an a posteriori inference is from the effect to the cause; an a simultaneo inference is from the mere concept of the thing. You cannot have an a priori proof of the existence of God because God has no cause. Any argument for God's existence in terms of cause and effect has to be from the effect to the cause, an a posteriori argument.
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Kant spoke of the a priori particularly with regard to propositions or judgments. His notion of an a priori proposition or judgment is that it is absolutely independent of experience.
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Kant assigns absolutely a priori propositions two characteristics, necessity and universality.
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Kant further divides a priori propositions into analytic and synthetic, ...
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On the other hand, if knowing is conceived not as looking but as an ontological perfection of the subject,
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A third sense of the a priori was also introduced by Kant with regard to intuitions and concepts. Kant holds that there are a priori intuitions, a priori concepts, and also a priori ideas. He reaches an a priori intuition by removing from intuition all of its contingent elements. If you are looking at a body and you remove the color, shape, hardness, its impenetrability, and so on, you are left with empty space; you don't remove that: it is intrinsic to having an intuition. So the space is a priori. Similarly, with regard to the concept, ...
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Now the real issue is, How much of knowing is from the subject, and how much is from the object?
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Knowing can be conceived as intrinsically or essentially a matter of confrontation, of taking a look, seeing what is there, intuition. Since knowing, on this account, is what comes from the look, anything that comes from the subject is not knowing at all; and if it comes from the subject, that just means it is not knowing. Knowing is what is given in the look, and what is known is what is out there to be looked at and seen when one looks. One may go further and distinguish between sensible looks (looks through one's senses) and spiritual looks (looks with one's intellect, interior and spiritual x-rays that penetrate the essence of things and see the essence that is there).
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If you conceive knowing as a perfection, then the question of the a priori, of what comes from the subject and what comes from the object, is of minor moment. ... We have, then really two questions, a question of fact and a question of significance. It is the question of significance that concerns us, ...
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Our account certainly involves a dependence of knowing on the subject. But it is not simply our account. We know because it is natural to us. Plants do not know, because it is not natural to them to know. Animals have sense knowledge, but not intellectual knowledge. But we know. Why?

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: natürliche "Erkenntnis" Gottes, Sein als a priori by nature; Sein als das zuerst Erkannte (Thomas)

Kurzinhalt: The Notion of Being as Natural; Erkenntis von Natur aus und durch Erwerb; Engel, Möglichkeit zu Erkennen und intellectus agens by nature; natural desire to know God; knowing being is natural insofar

Textausschnitt: () First, in ordinary scholastic terms the distinction is between what is known by nature and what is known by acquisition.
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Consequently, while by nature we have knowing in potency, it is by acquisition that we move to knowing in act. Our potency to know, our capacity to know, is from nature, but any actual knowing involves some influence from the object. ... An object is needed to effect the transition from the potency to see to. the act of seeing. Again, sight sees nothing but the colored, the luminous; by nature it is restricted to that. The potency determines the range of possible objects attained by ocular vision.
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So, in traditional theory, with regard to intellectual knowledge we have by nature the agent intellect that uses our sensible knowledge to produce acts of understanding. The capacity to understand, the agent intellect, the sensitive potencies, and correlations among these three are from nature; but an actuation of the process requires, first, the actual perceptions and the formation of images, and then the intervention of inquiry at that occasion.
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Moreover, in intellect the habits of science in general are all acquired. The human intellect, at the start, is like a blackboard on which nothing is written. It is only gradually that we acquire the sciences. Still, there is a reference to something known by nature in Aristotle, namely, the principle of contradiction, and in St Thomas the habitus principiorum is described not as an acquired habit but as a natural habit. ... St Thomas also affirms that being is naturally known. Just as sense - sight, for example - is a potency that by nature is determined to a certain range of possible objects, so also intellect has by nature a determinate range. It is potens omnia facere et fieri; its range is everything. According to St Thomas, because its range is everything, its range is being.
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St Thomas also speaks of a natural desire to know God by his essence. ... A desire to know God by his essence is something natural. It is not something acquired, produced in us, something we get out of objects.
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In the doctrine found in St Thomas there is the equation between knowing and knowing being: knowing is natural; therefore, knowing being is natural. Being is somehow a priori? The answer to that problem is that traditionally being is said to be known by nature; it is natural knowledge.
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If we acknowledge a natural habit, if we acknowledge that there are not only acquired habits in the intellect, but that there is also a natural habit of first principles on which absolutely everything else depends, then ... Knowing is natural, and therefore knowing being is natural. Knowing being is natural insofar as we have natural potencies and some natural habits. The whole of our knowing is not by acquisition, by the action of objects on us; part of it is had from nature. We have some resemblance to God, who is completely independent of all objects, and to the angels, who are largely independent of objects.
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The fundamental moment in the notion of being lies in the capacity to wonder and reflect, and that as potency we have from nature. If a person naturally does not have the capacity to wonder, to be surprised by what he sees or hears or feels, to ask why, to ask what's happening, what's up then there is no remedy; there is nothing we can do. We cannot endow people with intelligence. Intelligence fundamentally is this capacity to ask questions, and this capacity is entirely from nature.
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Because our questions are about being, and the range of our capacity for asking questions is unlimited, being is absolutely universal and absolutely concrete, the object towards which knowing moves.
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What our knowing aims at is knowing everything about everything. On the level of potency, this is from nature, and it is independent of experience. We must have it to be able to ask questions, to wonder, to set the process going. However, the occurrence of actual wonder, actual inquiry, is not absolutely independent of experience. ... The potency is from nature; the exercise involves experience.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Menschheit: allgemeine Materie und Form; Mensch: Form + Materie im Hinblick auf Sein; id quo -> id quod

Kurzinhalt: Understanding and Experience; Bilder (image) nicht bloß Anreiz für Einsicht, sondern ihr Objekt wie Farbe für Sicht; abstract essence, particularized essence; von der Wesenheit zum Seienden

Textausschnitt: () ... images are not simply an occasion for insight, as Plato held; they are not simply a disposition, as Avicenna held, but they are the object. The images present to our intellects, to our understanding, their object. And he quotes the familiar phrase from Aristotle that images stand to understanding as colors stand to sight. The image is an object with respect to the insight: it is the object in the same sense as the color is the object of seeing.
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There is a point to notice about the intelligibility of the image. Qua image, it is simply potential intelligibility, it is not actually intelligible; qua understood, it is the intelligible in act, identical with the act of understanding. Color as seen is not on the wall actually, it is there potentially; color as seen is identical with the act of seeing. Not that the intelligibility grasped is only in the act of understanding: it is potentially in the imaged from the fact that the image causes it.
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... There are three cases: abstract essence, 'humanity'; particularized essence, 'this instance of humanity'; and the universal or particular thing, 'man' or 'this man.'
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By your insight into the image you are able to formulate the conditions, the elements in the image, necessary to having the insight. If you see in this circle that the curve must be perfectly round if all of the radii are equal, if that is what insight grasps in the image, then you can proceed to the definition of a circle, which is something like a definition of man. But you can proceed in more abstract fashion. You can select simply what is grasped by insight, namely, necessity and the conditions for that necessity, and then you have an abstract essence. Implicit definitions are of this sort.
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When the content of the insight into the phantasm is formulated in a conception, the conception may simply express form and common matter, and then you have 'humanity' or 'circularity.' It may express individual matter and form, and then you have 'this instance of humanity' or 'this instance of circularity.' Or, you can go further, and in the form and individual matter understand the full potentiality of being, and then you make the step from the id quo to the id quod
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If you think simply of the insight and the experiential data, then what you formulate is just how much of the data is necessary for having the insight, and you get abstract essence. Recalling the example of the circle, you have to have a plane surface, a curve, and equality of all radii; but you need not have this plane, this curve, and radii of this size, because that is irrelevant. If you consider the process, as starting from insight into phantasm, as heading towards conception, as concerned with picking out the essential, you get abstract essence - humanity, or circularity, so to speak - form and common matter. If you think of this process as serving a different end, if you have grasped the abstract essence and you want to consider this instance of it, then, since what is operating is an intelligent consciousness, you can pick out the data that de facto fall under the present insight, and you get a particularized essence, this instance of humanity. But insofar as this wonder, this inquiry, represents a fundamental finality, intelligence grasps, when it goes on to the particularized essence, the potentiality of being.
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The insight and the experience together can give you either an abstract essence or a particularized essence, depending on your point of view; but insofar as that essence satisfies the requirements of intelligence with respect to its finality, insofar as it meets the criterion of intrinsic intelligibility, you move from essence to being, from the id quo to the id quod.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Erfahrung - Urteil; die Erfassung des virtuell Unbedingten sowohl by nature als auch in Abhängigkeit

Kurzinhalt: Judgment and Experience; Thomas über Habitus: das Ganze ist größer als der Teil -> Lonergans Erklärung: Übergang vom id qou zum id quod; Zusammenfassung (summary) über Finalität (a priori - a posteriori)

Textausschnitt: () When St Thomas discusses the habit of first principles, he gives a great deal of attention to the fact that the whole is greater than the part, and that that is fundamental in all cognitional theory. But he does not explain what he means. At least I found no text in which he did explain it. What might be the relevance of the whole being greater than the part, as something fundamental in all cognitional process, is the transition from the id quo to the id quod, ...
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Now insofar as there is a requirement, a criterion of the virtually unconditioned, there is operative something that we have from nature; but insofar as we grasp the virtually unconditioned, we are dependent. We are certainly not knowing something, grasping something, that is absolutely independent of experience. You cannot have the fulfilment of the conditions for a virtually unconditioned without the experiential level, without the experience either of outer sense or of inner consciousness. Again, ... So the act of grasping the virtually unconditioned is in no sense absolutely independent of experience. 0n the other hand, the requirement that you have to have the virtually unconditioned if you are to judge, and that if you have the virtually unconditioned you cannot be rational and not judge - not without doing violence to your own rational consciousness - that is had from nature.
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Briefly, then, the intention of being functions as a finality. It is radically from nature, and it functions in knowledge as a finality, a guide, a criterion, a requirement. It is absolutely transparent; it is not an a priori that determines what you will know, but it demands, it initiates, the process of knowing, guides the process, and sets criteria by which one carries out the process correctly or incorrectly. It sets the process going as inquiry, and it guides it by a requirement of intelligibility through which one effects the transition from essence to being, from essentia to ens.
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To put the question in terms of independence, Is your knowing being independent of experience absolutely? The answer is simply, No, it is not absolutely independent. On the other hand. Is there anything in your knowing of being that comes from nature? Yes, there is but that which we have by nature is a perfect transparence. It does not prejudge any issue. ...
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The a posteriori and the a priori, experiencing and not experiencing, however, are not the fundamental categories in which a satisfactory answer to the question is obtained. The fundamental categories are what we know by nature and what we know by acquisition.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: absolute Objektivität; Urteil als Brücke zw. Subjekt u. Objekt

Kurzinhalt: Notion of Objectivity, Absolute Objectivity, A is; B is; C is; A is not B nor C..., die Erfassung des virtuell Unbedingten als Brücke; Objektivität: Reich der realen Distinktionen

Textausschnitt: () A is; B is; C is; A is not B nor C; B is not C nor A, and so on. If you have a set of affirmative and negative judgments in that pattern, then A, B, and C are distinct objects. By an object we mean what you know through a set of true judgments.
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In other words, there is no problem of a bridge. If you can reach the judgment, you are there. An object means no more than that A is. If I am A, and A is, and B is, and A is not B, then we have a subject: I am a knower (established in chapter 11); and we have an object: something that A knows, that I know, that is not myself, that is not the subject. Through true propositions, you can arrive at an objective world. That is the principal notion of objectivity.
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The virtually unconditioned is an unconditioned, and an unconditioned is an absolute. An unconditioned is not dependent, qua unconditioned, on anything. Not depending on anything, it is not dependent on the subject. The process of knowing when you grasp the unconditioned and affirm it, moves beyond subjectivity by the mere fact that you reach an unconditioned. You step in, through the judgment, into an absolute realm.
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The bridge between subject and object is through absolute objectivity positing an absolute realm within which real distinctions occur. What are distinct objects? A is, B is; A is not B; consequently, there are two. If that is true, then in this absolute realm there are two. If one of them is a knower and the other is not, then one is the subject and the other is not a subject but just an object. ... That judgment does not give you a sense of yourself; you have to have that sense to be able to make the judgment properly - to go through the argument of chapter 11. You have to be familiar with your own experience and intelligence and reasonableness. But that familiarity is just the experiential side. When you know yourself through the judgment, you know yourself as objectified.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Finalität als Kriterium für wahre und falsche Subjektivität;

Kurzinhalt: Normative Objectivity, wahre Objektivität und Subjektivität im Gefolge der "geistigen" Finalität

Textausschnitt: () There is another way of conceiving subjectivity. This process has a guide in the pure desire to know, in its finality. That finality as such withraws a man from other concerns; it gives the detachment, the disinterestedness, of the inquirer, of the one who is concerned to know what is. Objectivity is yielding to the dominance of that finality; it is not allowing desires and fears to interfere with it. Insofar as your desires and fears are interfering with this process, you have subjectivity in the sense that is opposed to objectivity. Again, inquiry, the demand for intelligibility, the demand for the unconditioned, are norms immanent within this cognitional process itself. Insofar as one is meeting those requirements, one is objective. Insofar as one's desires or fears or any other factor in one's makeup are interfering with the execution of this process according to its own immanent norms, one's judgments will be merely subjective.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Objektivität und psychische Abnormalität

Kurzinhalt: Experiential Objectivity; Einsicht und Erfahrung als per se infallible and per accidens; die Welt des psychische Abnormlen: nicht Gegenstand d. Physik usw.; Kriterium für richtige Erfahrung: Intelligenz, Urteil

Textausschnitt: () However, what one is imagining may not be the same as what there is to be sensed, what can be sensed, what is given. Insight is per se infallible and per accidens makes mistakes. It is infallibleg because it is insight into what we imagine, and it is per accidens mistaken insofar as what we imagine may be very different from what is to be seen or heard or tasted or smelt or felt.
()
The freely produced or what is produced by psychological aberration is a perfect counterfeit of what is given. Still, it is given not for normal living but for the science of abnormal psychology. From that given, you arrive at a true account of abnormal psychology. It is not a suitable given for doing physics, ...
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However, while the person in the pathological state cannot spot what is wrong, those who are not in that state can spot what is wrong with him. He does not have the freedom of control of the sensitive processes that permit correct judgment. You cannot settle this question of the difference between the given and the abnormally produced by saying that when you are normal you are able to take a look to see what is there, and when you are not normal you look and see what is not there. In either case, all you have is the look, and to know whether you are normal or abnormal you would have to have a super-look in which you would look not merely at your looking but at what it was looking at.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: 3 Probleme d. Objektivität, Tonquédec, Maréchal (Kant), Selbstwiderspruch im Subjekt

Kurzinhalt: The Problem of Objectivity, Erkennen nicht als Schau, sondern als Vervollkommnung (perfection), contradiction within the subject; Qualis unusquisque est, talis et finis videtur ei

Textausschnitt: () ... the notion of absolute objectivity as such does not exclude relativism. A relativist could admit that notion of absolute objectivity, but he would say we never actually reach it; we never reach the virtually unconditioned. It is only when we understand everything about everything that we really get hold of the unconditioned.
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Which way is right? Are we right in saying that normative objectivity is meeting the exigences of the pure desire to know? Or would it be more correct to say that normative objectivity is paying attention to the object, seeing what is out there to be seen?
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De Tonquédec works out a complete theory of knowledge in terms of seeing, confronting. His approach is entirely in terms of objectivity in the sense of taking a look, and he has a bit of difficulty handling judgment. Knowing is looking, and that position dominates his entire exposition and investigation. In Maréchal, however, we have just the opposite. For Maréchal, finality is the dominant notion.
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Different answers here will determine different criticisms of Kant. Thus de Tonquédec holds that what is wrong with Kant is his ideal of pure reason and the categories of understanding; Kant should be content with intuition, and put more stress on it. Maréchal, however, criticizes Kant for putting too much stress on intuition and not enough on judgment. My own position is that for Kant you have knowing when intuition operates in such a way that you have concepts. But he does not recognize judgment and grasp of the unconditioned; he does not make the unconditioned a key point.
There is, then, a problem of objectivity, and the problem has different aspects. The first of these is the question of the starting point.
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The point is to complete the circle. One way to complete the circle is to begin from knowing. But one can begin with the metaphysics of the object, proceed to the metaphysical structure of the knower and to the metaphysics of knowing, and move on to complement the metaphysics of knowing with the further psychological determinations that can be had from consciousness. From those psychological determinations one can move on to objectivity and arrive at a metaphysics. One will be completing the same circle,
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The second aspect of the problem of objectivity regards the directive notion of knowing. This is the basic issue. What is your dominant opposition? Is knowing, with de Tonquédec, a looking? Or is it, with Maréchal, basically a perfection? ... Consequently, Kant's position does not square with his theory.
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What is the fascination of the view of knowing as looking? Is it merely a mistake? Not entirely. There is involved another factor, the subject himself. We saw that self-appropriation involves development of the self which is to be appropriated, and the same problem recurs here.
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There is a contradiction within the subject. There is a dynamic of events in human development; it is animal, intelligent, and rational. Consequently, the weight that can be carried by the rational part of man is a variable, but we are always living. To meet the problem, one must shift one's basis. The shift from animal to intelligent level occurs philosophically as the shift from sensism and related positions to essentialism. The shift from intelligent to rational level occurs philosophically as the shift from essentialism to existentialism in our sense, that is, to a position which makes truth dominant and operative in a fundamental way in one's philosophy. Qualis unusquisque est, talis et finis videtur ei:
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There is, finally, a third aspect to the problem of objectivity, the cognitional problem of fact. What is true? What do we know? The conversion, on the intellectual side, is effected by the study of facts. Whether one adverts to it or not, the finality of the subject is operative; but through the study of facts one can bring the subject to a fruitful advertence to the conflict between what he holds as theory and what he does in actual knowing and practice.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Metaphysik, Dialektik zw. desire to know und "Welt" (Sorge); Kriterium: Realität, Objektivität

Kurzinhalt: Definition of Metaphysics, The Underlying Problem, Nacht des Mystikers, Spannung zw. Welt u. pure desire to know, 3 Elemente einer Dialektik

Textausschnitt: () ... we acknowledge a pure desire to know correlated with a universe of being. On the subjective side there is a desire to know by correct understanding in true judgment, and the objective of this desire is a universe of being whose reality corresponds to the totality of true judgments - knowing everything about everything. () Now this universe of being is not identical with 'my world' - Heidegger' s Welt.
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The night of sense of the mystics is the destruction of one's Welt, but our aim is not to destroy it or to bring it into coincidence with the universe of being, or to transpose it into that universe, but rather to highlight the idea of the real, and so to remove the conflict.
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The trouble, then, lies with the notion of the real. Is the real to be identified with the universe of being, or is it to be settled by my autobiography? ... But the pure desire to know can also become a dominant Sorge, and then, though there will not be a complete elimination of merely personal concern, still this world of one's concern will move into coincidence with the universe of being.
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Now if our view is right - that the underlying problem is a tension between the Welt and the pure desire to know - then the solution is dialectical. Dialectic is concerned with three factors. First, it is concerned with the concrete: in the present case, with the concrete subject and his Sorge. Secondly, dialectic is concerned with the contradictory: the contradiction is not in propositions but in the subject, for the subject as intelligent and rational consciousness is not identical with the subject of Sorge, hence what is real in the Welt is not real in the universe of being, and vice versa. Thirdly, dialectic is concerned with change: the contradiction involves a tension, a tension in the concrete, and so heads for change.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Position - Gegenposition: desire to know - Erkennen als Schau (Kriterium Realität),

Kurzinhalt: Positions and Counterpositions, Selbstwiderspruch, basic set - consequent set, Selbstaufhebung der Gegenposition; Entwicklung bei position - wechselnder Grund bei counterposition, Descartes, Hume

Textausschnitt: () The totality of propositions can be divided into a basic set and a consequent set. The basic set, in the present approach, has to do with knowledge. What is it to know? What is objectivity? What is reality? ... In our philosophy the answer to these questions is determined by the subject as intelligently and rationally conscious, but in the opposed notions knowing is looking, objectivity is what can be seen, and reality is what's there. Besides the basic set, there is the consequent set of propositions, ... the meaning of consequent propositions changes with the meaning of the basic: with every basic meaning of knowing, objectivity, and reality, you give a meaning as well to all other propositions.
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Now basic propositions are either positions or counterpositions. They are positions if propositions on knowing, objectivity, and reality are expressions of intelligent and rational consciousness and compatible with its orientation to the universe of being. They are counterpositions if they are expressions which are contradictory to the positions and incompatible with orientation to the universe of being. The counterpositions express Sorge and its Welt insofar as Sorge differs from the pure desire to know and the Welt differs from the universe of being.
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implicitly intelligence and reasonableness are criteria for his utterance; explicitly, if he is in a counterposition, his utterance is opposed to these criteria. He is uttering a counterposition, but his utterance as human claims to be intelligent and rational.
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Positions develop. ... On the other hand, counterpositions tend to their own reversal: when the content of the utterance is contrasted with its fundamental implicit claim, there is a manifest contradiction, and the counterposition will collapse.
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Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Metaphysik als alles über alles (konkret und allgemein); als Synthesis zw. Sorge und Sein Grundlage aller Wissenschaften

Kurzinhalt: Metaphysics as Synthesis; Sein als everything about everything, Beziehung zw. Metaphysik und anderen Wissensgebieten

Textausschnitt: () Being is completely universal: it includes everything. Being is completely concrete: it includes everything about everything. It is in terms of that notion of being that we developed a notion of metaphysics. Metaphysics is not a concern with the reality of the candlestick or the snuffbox; it is a concern with the universe as opposed to a world determined by a Sorge, by a concern. It is concerned with a synthesis.
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First, metaphysics underlies all other departments, because all other departments are specializations of the total basic inquiry.
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First, metaphysics underlies all other departments, because all other departments are specializations of the total basic inquiry.
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Secondly, metaphysics penetrates all other departments.
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Thirdly, metaphysics transforms the results of other departments.
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While this tension, on the moral level, is familiar, it exists equally on the cognitional level. There is development not merely on the moral side of man, there is a more fundamental development on the cognitional side, in the transition from a world defined by Sorge to a world defined by the pure desire to know, and all the implications in that.
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Finally, metaphysics unifies other departments.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Metaphysik: implizit, problematisch, explizit

Kurzinhalt: Implicit and Problematic Metaphysics, Humanwissenschaften erweisen die Notwendigkeit einer Metyphysik

Textausschnitt: () The metaphysics with which we are concerned is a metaphysics that is implicit in everyone by the simple fact that he is a conscious subject that experiences, understands, and judges.
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Besides the implicit stage in metaphysics, there is a problematic stage. The need for making the implicit explicit is felt, but the explicitation is not achieved. The problematic stage can be general or particular,
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The problematic stage arises, in particular, insofar as there is a desire for a satisfactory method for the human sciences. In The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Husserl makes the point that,

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Explizite Metaphysik, Definition: integrale heuristische Struktur des proportionierten Seins

Kurzinhalt: Explicit Metaphysics

Textausschnitt: () Metaphysics becomes explicit insofar as the implications of the pure desire to know and its unfolding are worked out with regard to the structure of reality and the unification of knowledge. So we come to our definition: explicit metaphysics is the conception, affirmation, and implementation of the integral heuristic structure of proportionate being.
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... metaphysics in two steps. There is, first of all, metaphysics with regard to this world and, secondly, there is the question of the existence of God ... The experiental element is what differentiates proportionate being from being in general.
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What the being is in each particular case - even what proportionate being is - is a question to be answered by a particular science. But, as we have very briefly indicated in these lectures, and as we have attempted to indicate more fully in Insight, the sciences are heuristic. ... Where we ordinarily ask, 'What is the nature of [...]?' the physicist, with a somewhat more elaborate heuristic structure, asks, 'What is the function that governs these phenomena?' and he attempts to determine that function in two ways. First,
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The scientist is heading for something, inquiring into something - 'Think about it precisely; give it a symbol.' What is happening? He is anticipating an act of understanding in which he will understand the data in question and all similar data. The scientist not only anticipates the act of understanding, but he also anticipates the expression of the act of understanding in some conception. Where the mathematician says 'x' and the physicist mentions 'some indeterminate function,' in ordinary speech one says 'the nature of...' What is the nature of light? The nature of light is what we will understand, what we will know, when we understand light. This heuristic procedure anticipates the future act of understanding and its conceptualization, and it uses that anticipation to guide the process towards attaining the act of understanding in question.
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Just as there is heuristic structure with regard to acts of understanding, so there is a total heuristic structure; there is the total goal of intelligent and rational consciousness as such. We have named that goal 'being'. When we speak of knowing being, we mean knowing everything about everything. But we do not know everything about everything; we are simply anticipating the totality of acts of understanding and judgment by which we could completely achieve the ideal, the goal, set us by our desire to know.
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The metaphysician not only posits a general x, being, what one will know when one understands correctly everything about everything, but he can also break being up: into being completely, and being that is proportionate being.
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Any proportionate being will involve what corresponds to the three contents - this is a fundamental premise in our movement towards a metaphysics of proportionate being - and we can name them potency, form, and act. When science reaches its ideal goal of complete understanding of all phenomena, what will science be?
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What is explicit metaphysics? It is the subject achieving self-appropriation, knowing himself as a knower, and using that knowledge to determine the general structure of his possible object and the relations between the particular departments in knowing that object.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Metaphysik, Kategorien, erklärendes Wissen

Kurzinhalt: Metaphysics and Explanatory Knowledge; Feuer - phlogiston

Textausschnitt: () We have three accounts of fire. How can those three accounts be of the same thing? Phlogiston is precisely not one of the four elements, and a chemical process is not any substance but just process. Where do we find the common point between the three successive theories, so that we may say that Aristotle's notion of fire was wrong?
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... there is a fundamental difference between the notion of metaphysics we are presenting and what has become fairly common down a number of centuries in scholastic notions of metaphysics. In Aristotle, the predicaments are clearly distinguished; but that is a list of descriptive categories.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Metaphysik: analoges Verstehen, Verhältnis zwischen Wesen und Sein; x1/y2, x2/y2 (x: Wesen - y: Sein);

Kurzinhalt: When one has proper knowledge of a thing, one is understanding it by its essence; but when one has analogical knowledge, one also has some understanding, an understanding of a proportion, of an analogy ...

Textausschnitt: 1. Metaphysical Analysis

1/9 If intellect is intelligence, it seems a fair question to ask,1 What does the metaphysician understand? If he does not understand anything, he does not seem to be using his intelligence. If he does understand something, what is it? Traditionally, the definition of metaphysics is that it is the science of being qua being. This suggests that it is not the science of any particular class of beings. It is not understanding what the physicist understands, what the chemist understands, what the biologist understands, what the anthropologist understands, or what the theologian understands. There does not seem to be anything left for the metaphysician to understand. (200; Fs)

2/9 Again, what he understands does not seem to be being as an abstract residue. One can say that common to all men is intelligence, common to all men and animals is sense, common to men and animals and plants is life, common to those three and the inorganic world is matter, common to all of them and to the angels and to God is substantiality, and common to substances and accidents there is something. What finally is left, after you have taken away what is proper to everything, one may say, is what the metaphysician studies. However, that which is finally left is not anything that exists; it seems to be nothing. Whatever you understand, you understand some essence; essence is what you know when you understand. What is finally left after you have removed what is proper to everything does not seem to be any essence. (200f; Fs)

3/9 Again, one could conceive metaphysics as understanding the essence of God, the essence of the ens per essentiam. God, understanding his own essence, understands absolutely everything else, everything that is possible and everything that is actual, all in a simple intellectual apprehension that is identical with himself. In that case, if one had God's understanding of himself by which God also understands everything else, one would be a metaphysician who understood something; and indeed, the object of that understanding would be being in its total extension. However, we are not God, and in this life we do not have the beatific vision by which we participate in God's knowledge. Moreover, the beatific vision is something beyond the proportion of our natures; consequently, it does not seem to be what constitutes the metaphysician qua metaphysician. (201; Fs)

4/9 What, then, does the metaphysician understand, if it is not any particular class of beings, not the abstract residue of all beings, and not the ens per essentiam? I do not think that the answer is that the metaphysician understands nothing whatever. What does he understand? (201; Fs)

1.1 Analogous Understanding

5/9 I think we have to distinguish between two types of understanding. In theology at least, it is necessary to distinguish between proper knowledge of a thing - knowledge of a thing by its essence - and analogical knowledge; and this suggests two types of understanding. When one has proper knowledge of a thing, one is understanding it by its essence; but when one has analogical knowledge, one also has some understanding, an understanding of a proportion, of an analogy. (201; Fs)

6/9 One may say, then, that the knowledge of the essences of different types of beings pertains to the particular departments of knowledge, and the metaphysician leaves knowledge of those essences to the people working in the particular departments. What will be determined in the various departments are the essences of the different kinds of beings, and that is proper knowledge. But the metaphysician has analogical knowledge. For him, the essences function as a series of x's. When we were discussing the concept of being,2 we saw that in essence intelligence grasps the possibility of being; because of essence, it raises the question of existence. There is a connection, then, between essence and being, essence and existence; beings are compounded of essences and existences. One might say as a first approximation that the metaphysician is concerned with the proportion between essences and existences, with the analogy of the series x1/y1, x2/y2, etc., where existences are indicated by the y's and essences by the x's. That analogy is the occupation of the metaphysician. His understanding is analogous. It is an understanding of being and of all being, but it is not a matter of understanding essences proper to each being. Metaphysics is understanding and exploiting the analogy in all being. This account of metaphysics at least introduces a familiar element. (201f; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Analogie in der Metaphysik leitet sich vom Verstehen d. Verstehens ab; Aristoteles (Metaphysik, Buch 9): Form - Potenz : Einsicht - Daten; Verständnis des proportionierten Seins -> analoges Verständnis des absoluten Seins

Kurzinhalt: We can examine in some detail just precisely what is the relation between what is grasped by insight and what is presented in data ... It is not simply that potency is the determinable and form is whatever determines, ...

Textausschnitt: 1.2 The Fundamental Set of Analogies

7/9 If, however, we go on to ask, 'Just what are these proportions? How do we obtain these proportions?' I should say that, in the fundamental case, it is by understanding understanding, by insight into insight. The metaphysician's understanding is analogous, and fundamentally the analogies come from an understanding of understanding. In the first instance, they come from an understanding of human understanding, and so we have a metaphysics of proportionate being. In the second instance, one goes beyond the first stage to the absolute being by analogy, and one has some analogous understanding of absolute understanding. That is the root of the analogies employed in metaphysics. It is a matter of understanding understanding, insight into insight. (202; Fs)

8/9 A standard analogy in metaphysics, that has its origin with Aristotle, is the analogy of form to potency.a Aristotle gives an account of it in the ninth book of the Metaphysics, in terms of a first type of the analogy of potency to act. What is that analogy in its fundamental case? It is the analogy of insight to data, of what is grasped by insight to what is presented by imagination. Aristotle illustrates this analogy by saying that as sight is to eyes, so hearing is to ears, and taste is to the palate, and so on. This illustration is exact. Sight is what we know by insight. We can take a look at eyes, but when we understand the eyes we say that they are organs of sight; sight is the form of the organ that is the eye. (202f; Fs)

9/9 Again, Aristotle elsewhere remarks that the soul is to the whole animal as sight is to seeing.1 Existence is to essence as judgment is to conception, as affirmation is to what is the affirmed content. As conception results from the combination of insight and data, so essence results from the combination of form and potency. But there we have a second instance of potency and act. Aristotle's illustration for this second instance of potency and act - the relation of form to act - is that as sight is to seeing, so the faculty of hearing is to the act of hearing, auditus ad audiendum.2 We happen to use the same word in English both for the faculty of hearing and for the act, but still, the faculty is the form of the organ, the ear, and the act is distinct from both the organ and the faculty, for there are times when we are not hearing anything.3 (203; Fs)

10/9 Our study of knowledge introduces us into the traditional analogies in a fundamental form in which we can control them.c We can examine in some detail just precisely what is the relation between what is grasped by insight and what is presented in data. That is a fundamental instance that can be illustrated wherever you can illustrate the relation of form and potency. On the other hand, you will also note that this analogy gives precision to the relation between form and potency. It is not simply that potency is the determinable and form is whatever determines, and you can apply that distinction wherever you please, ad infinitum. We have form and potency when we have the analogy of insight and data. Again, we have the analogy of existence and essence where we have the analogy of judgment and conception. We may have a triple-termed analogy: potency to form to act, as data in the intellectual pattern of experience to insight to judgment. (203; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Zwei Klassen von Einsicht: zentrale - konjugate Form; Substanz - Akzidenz; Hierarchie der konjugaten Formen

Kurzinhalt: Central and Conjugate Forms; When data are considered as particular, and a multiplicity of data are referred to a single unity, you have a grasp of form of one type, which we may call central or substantial form.

Textausschnitt: 1.3 Central and Conjugate Forms

11/9 Let us return to the relation between what is grasped by insight and what is presented in data, and examine it in further detail. Forms, insights, divide into two fundamental classes that are quite distinct. When data are considered as particular, and a multiplicity of data are referred to a single unity, you have a grasp of form of one type, which we may call central or substantial form. We have insights into data as particular. It is in considering these data that I have insight into the unity of this man. Consequently, there is a central form in beings, a central form which corresponds to what is grasped when you say it is one and the same over a spatiotemporal volume of particular data. (204; Fs)

12/9 But when you compare data with one another, build up classifications by similarity, and proceed to work out the relations of things to one another, you arrive at scientific laws. Those laws involve relations, determinate relations of things to one another. A law is an expression of an intelligibility; it involves something corresponding to form. This gives us a second type of form, conjugate or accidental form. There is a determinateness in potency and act that comes from the form. Judgment only says 'Yes.' The form corresponds to data, but it is the ground of the intelligibility grasped in the data. If there are different types of form, there must be different types of potency and different types of act. (204; Fs)

13/9 Again, we have spoken of higher viewpoints. For a while, intelligence works along with data, under the guidance of certain insights and formulations. When it comes up against difficulties, intelligence starts all over again, reformulating all of its fundamental conceptions. That is the result of further insights that constitute a higher viewpoint with respect to the previous set of insights. In the first instance, higher viewpoints regard the development of human intelligence. But higher viewpoints also have a relevance to the hierarchy in things. (The notion of a hierarchy in things involves a very complex argument that I had best not attempt to summarize.1) For the forms on any given level, there is a set of laws. From that set of laws a certain number of schemes of recurrence can be developed. The schemes of recurrence can be brought to light by a physicist, a chemist, and so on. The regular events that occur on that level may be entirely explained by the laws and schemes on that level; but it may also happen that they are not. (204; Fs)

14/9 In the biological unit of the cell, there is taking place a continuous release of chemical actions, and every one of those actions occurs in accordance with the laws of chemistry. But if it is not possible through chemical laws and the schemes of recurrence that can be devised in chemistry to account for the regularity with which those chemical processes take place in the cell, you have to appeal to a higher viewpoint to account for the regularity, and you introduce conjugate forms on the biological level with their laws and schemes. If in the animal you find regularities that cannot be accounted for by the totality of laws and schemes of recurrence on the biological level, you postulate another higher level. You have grounds for another higher viewpoint, in which are introduced the conjugates of the sensitive level. If you find, with regard to men, that all of the laws and schemes of sensitive psychology, which pertain to the psychic level, do not account for the intelligible talk that men carry on, you have to go on to a still higher level and posit intellectual forms that account for human behavior. (205; Fs)

15/9 The idea of a higher viewpoint, while it was first developed in terms of the development of human intelligence, also provides us with an analogy for the hierarchy of conjugate forms, accidental forms, that are found in single beings. The conjugate acts of a lower level, insofar as they occur regularly and are accounted for by the laws and schemes of recurrence of the lower level, pertain simply to that lower level. If, on the other hand, there is a regularity in the conjugate acts of a lower level that is not accounted for by that level, then there is an information of that lower level by conjugate forms of a higher level. (205; Fs)

16/9 For example, take the flow of images in an animal (insofar as the animal has a flow of images): you do not need to postulate intelligence to account for it. However, the flow of images in a man, with all of the subsequent psychology resulting from the images and ending up in talk, is not accounted for without introducing higher integrations. We can all witness and experience the process of learning, and discover that to be able to talk intelligently, properly, on a matter, one has to have a prior development of understanding. Teaching is principally an encouragement, a help, in that development of understanding. Consequently, Aristotle says2 that to teach, the fundamental requirement is that you understand. If you do not understand, you are not going to help anyone else to understand. Now it is insofar as there is a higher integration of images and the motor activities involved in speech on the level of intelligence that you have the recurrence of intelligible content in speech, and the domination of speech by an intellectual intention. The relation of insight to data is, in its proper meaning, a case in which a higher conjugate form is controlling an otherwise coincidental multiplicity of conjugate acts on a lower level. When this analogy is pushed to the lowest level, we have, on the side of the accidents, the multiplicity3 - the empirical residue involved in space-time; and on the substantial, central side, we have prime matter. (205f; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Kritik an der Phänomenologie (phenomenology) am Beispiel des Kreises

Kurzinhalt: Teile der Materie, der Form (Aristoteles); der Begriff geht über das Vorstellbare hinaus;

Textausschnitt: The concept steps beyond the level of what can be presented empirically. The circle that satisfies the definition is not anything we can imagine; it can only be conceived. The selection from the data of what is essential to the insight leaves behind elements that are necessary for having any empirical presentation at all, or at least it can do so.
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In this connection, Aristotle in his Metaphysics (book 7, chapter 10) distinguished between parts of the matter and parts of the form. It is the same distinction we made with respect to the image in the example of the circle. In the circle, parts of the matter are the color of the background, the color of the line, ... Parts of the form are the elements that have to be there to have the insight: radii, center, perimeter, and equality.
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The Aristotelian distinction between parts of the matter and parts of the form offers, I think, a fundamental clue to what the phenomenologist is after. The phenomenologist does not want to describe absolutely everything. He gives a selective description, a description of what is significant or, as he himself says, of what is essential, of what is relevant. That description, the presentation of data that communicates to us what is essential, is a selection of the parts of the form that are in the matter. It is not discussion on the level of conception, where one tries to give a general formula that covers all possible cases. The phenomenologist presents us with a concrete situation, and in that concrete situation he picks out the parts of the form from the viewpoint of certain insights. It is a concrete mode of communicating insights. I do not say, of course, that this formulation of phenomenology is that of any phenomenologist, but I think it is a good clue to understanding what phenomenologists are doing.
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Epistemological, metaphysical, and philosophical questions arise on a level that we have not dealt with yet, while phenomenology as engaged in phenomenological description is not even talking on the level of conception.
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**Phenomenologists are communicating insight through the concrete, and not through the general conception that selects what is essential and is found in every case.** Phenomenology is talking to the Athenians the way the Athenians could understand, not in the way Socrates did, for which he was put to death.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Intelligibilität der Wahrscheinlichkeit = per accidens = kata symbebekos; Lonergan, Aristoteles

Kurzinhalt: What is the intelligibility of probability? Aristotle's conception of the terrestrial process is that it is a coincidental process. Any event presupposes a cause acting *now*

Textausschnitt: Now with regard to the intelligibility: What is the intelligibility of probability as I affirm it? Well, probability as I affirm it is the intelligibility in what Aristotle would call the per accidens - that's St Thomas - the kata symbebekos. Aristotle's conception of the terrestrial process is that it is a coincidental process. Any event presupposes a cause acting now. Why does this cause act now? Well, you have to invoke some other cause to account for the 'now.' And why does that cause act now? You have to invoke some further one. And the cause that accounts for this other agent acting now is a cause per accidens. There is no nature that is such that it will cause other things to act now. Its nature is some universal property.

This is the Aristotelian theory.a Consequently Aristotle deduces the eternity of the world, and the fact that this terrestrial process is a coincidental process. To account for the regularity and continuity of terrestrial process he goes on to his theory of the influence of the heavens. That's where the theory of the influence of the heavens comes in, in Aristotelian theory.

Where does probability make a difference between Aristotle's account and the coincidental process? It's insofar as probability is the assertion of an intelligibility in the coincidental itself. Probability as conceived in Insight is an affirmation of an intelligibility within a field that classical law is not capable of handling.

So probability is not simply unintelligible as we conceive it. It presupposes the inverse insight that classical law cannot handle certain types of event, cannot provide a systematic general explanation of certain types of event. But through probability theory, you get the next best: you get something that's general, regards all cases, and so on.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Intelligibilität der Form und des Aktes; Unintelligibilität des Aktes; Frage nach Gott

Kurzinhalt: Form is intelligible in itself. Potency has an intelligibility, not in itself, but from its form. Act is not intelligible in itself

Textausschnitt: Form is intelligible in itself. It's what you know by insight, by understanding. It's as much of the thing as you know insofar as you're understanding it. And that is a pure intelligibility. But potency, the empirical residue, is not intelligible in itself. It's intelligible in form. The empirical residue as such is a limit to the intelligibility we find in data. But insofar as one fully grasps the nature of form, I believe one finds a certain intelligibility in the empirical residue, in potency. Potency has an intelligibility, not in itself, but from its form.
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Again, act - existence, or event - is not intelligible in itself. It's contingent. You know existence or event through judgment, through the proper content of judgment. That proper content results from a grasp of the virtually unconditioned. The virtually unconditioned is a conditioned whose conditions happen to be fulfilled. Because the conditions merely happen to be fulfilled, the act is contingent. There is a defect of intelligibility in act. Act is not intelligible in itself. The existents in this world of our experience have not an intelligibility in themselves - we postulate a cause for them. If the universe were completely intelligible in itself, it would be impossible to argue from the universe to the existence of God, because you'd have no reason to go beyond the universe to attain complete intelligibility.
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If the universe were in itself completely intelligible, then intelligence would have no lever, no fulcrum, by which it could go beyond the universe. There has to be a defect in the intelligibility of this universe to have arguments that will take us beyond the universe, to complete the intelligibility.
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And that's quite clear from any of the arguments that are employed. In any of the arguments from causality you argue from the contingency. Or, you argue from the order of the universe not being accountable for by the universe; in other words, it's there as a fact, but if you have an intelligible order, the existence of that intelligible order is not accounted for without an intelligence. And so on. You are always arguing from some defect in the intelligibility of this universe.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Isomorphismus, Parallelität zwischen Erkennen und Welt; distinctio realis zw. Sein und Wesen

Kurzinhalt: Why is this structure in knowledge a structure in reality? real distinction between essence and existence

Textausschnitt: Now, is that the real world? Might not the real world be something totally different from that? That's the question?
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Well, first of all, the answer to that question is of course to ask the man what he means by the real world. And if he means by the real world what he knows intelligently and rationally, then he means being by the real world. And if he doesn't mean something that's the fruit of his intelligence and rationality, well, we needn't bother about him.
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Now you can either say that intelligibility is identical with being, so that if there are differences in intelligibility there'll be a structure in being; or, you can say the intelligibility is only in the subject, it's not in the object. If you take the first, it's a matter of comparing the different senses of intelligibility - intelligibility in itself, intelligibility in the other, and different types of intelligibility in the other - to see that there'll be that structure in the being. If you say the intelligibility is just in the knower and not in the being, then you're making the being an unknowable. Because what you know by understanding correctly is intelligible.
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The further question: Why is this structure in knowledge a structure in reality?
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I think in other words that that problem in its traditional form is the problem of the real distinction between essence and existence. And historically we've had all sorts of people holding there is a distinction, but it's just a distinction in our minds. And for me the point to the controversy is: The problem doesn't lie in the word 'distinction,' it lies in what you mean by reality.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Struktur, Begriff, intelligent - intelligibel

Kurzinhalt: A technician makes a machine. The machine is not intelligent but the man who makes it; The concept is intelligible, it isn't intelligent, but the insight

Textausschnitt: A technician makes a machine. The machine is not intelligent but the man who makes it, who designs it, has to be intelligent ... The man is intelligent, the machine is intelligible. Your relations in cognitional structure are of the type 'intelligent'; your relations in the material thing, for example, are of the type 'intelligible.' The concept is intelligible, it isn't intelligent, but the insight is the act of a man qua intelligent, and the concept is intelligible because it's a product of the insight, or of the man with the insight.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: (Schulbuch) Konzeptualismus; Ding -> Sprung zu Begriff; Newman: illative sense; Thomas - Averroes, Avicenna

Kurzinhalt: Intellect as Intelligence; the first element of intellectual knowledge is the concept. Then you compare concepts, and they're either contradictory...

Textausschnitt: Latin scholastic manual ... you form concepts, and they're little nuggets. And they're functions of the thing; they're not dependent upon any intelligently conscious process; they're first; the first element of intellectual knowledge is the concept. Then you compare concepts, and they're either contradictory, or necessarily related, or neither the one nor the other. Then you make judgments, and you make judgments in virtue of the sufficiency of the evidence. And what's the evidence? Well, it's your concept ... From your sense data you can build up your theory of sensation in terms of knowing the sense data. From the words you can say we have to have knowledge of universals. You have principles, because these universals are necessarily linked together. And they're analytic: the predicate says just what's in the subject. There aren't any synthetic ones; if you say there are, you're a Kantian. There's no relevance of inquiry, understanding, the development of understanding, the way understanding develops, and no clear, explicit account of what exactly critical reflection is. We ask the question, An sit? But what goes on? What precisely is that moment in your knowing? Where does it come from, and what does it lead to?
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Again, we speak of weighing the evidence. I believe that my account of reflective understanding is, in different terms, but roughly equivalent to, what Newman calls the illative sense. Newman was concerned with that same problem, What's the ground of the assent? The ground of the assent is grasping the sufficiency of the evidence. I worked it into a formula for an insight, the virtually unconditioned, that eliminates the metaphors.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Form und Akt; Erkennbarkeit der Form, Form als Kern, Wirkursache; Akt zu Form wie Urteil zu Begriff

Kurzinhalt: Form is intelligible in itself. Contingent act, finite act, is not intelligible in itself. It is intelligible in the other; material essence is intelligible in itself because

Textausschnitt: Form is intelligible in itself. Contingent act, finite act, is not intelligible in itself. It is intelligible in the other. Existence and events are contingent; they're what corresponds to the proper content of judgment. The proper content of judgment depends upon a virtually unconditioned. A virtually unconditioned is what in fact is unconditioned - in fact has its conditions fulfilled. There's a limitation on the intelligibility there, and for that reason you are led to postulate efficient causes to account for contingent existence and contingent events.
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Form is the nucleus. It's what we know insofar as we understand. But only an object that is exclusively form is totally intelligible in itself - an object, a reality, in which its form is also its act, by identity. Then you have total intelligibility in itself.
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Form, where it's just a component of the real, is the nucleus of intelligibility intrinsic to that reality. Essence is intelligible in itself; material essence is intelligible in itself because, while essence includes both form and potency, or form and matter, and the matter or potency is not intelligible in itself, still it is intelligible in the form, and you've included the form in the essence.
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Now just as the judgment of existence is related to the concept of essence, so existence is related to essence - there is an isomorphism.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Einsicht und visio beatifica

Kurzinhalt: Insight and the Beatific Vision; knowing the ens per essentiam is the beatific vision in Thomist theory

Textausschnitt: But what's behind my concept of the notion of being is this: once you set down, posit, that intellect is intelligence, that abstraction is an intelligent operation in which you omit the irrelevant and grasp the essential - such a notion of abstraction means that you cannot have an abstraction of a concept, being, because to have abstraction in that sense, you have to grasp the essence of being; and to grasp the essence of being you have to have the ens per essentiam as the object of your knowledge, and know that object by its essence. And knowing the ens per essentiam is the beatific vision in Thomist theory.
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Just as in God essence and existence are identical, so in the beatific vision grasp of essence is also knowledge of existence.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Common sense als Spezialisierung des Verstehens

Kurzinhalt: Just as there are certain types of knowing that are no business of the chemist, but belong to the physicist, so common sense is another specialization of human understanding

Textausschnitt: And common sense is a specialization of knowledge. Just as there are certain types of knowing that are no business of the chemist, but belong to the physicist, and so on all along the line, so common sense is another specialization of human understanding. It's for dealing with the concrete in practical living. And the man of common sense de facto is guided by his judgment. If you stop him and ask him whether the real is what's already out there now, or what you know in a true judgment, he'll say, 'It's what's already out there now.' But then he's talking outside his specialty; you're asking him a philosophic question. If you ask him, ... But if you get commonsense people to do some commonsense action, you'll see that they use their judgment -when they're not sure, they hem and haw and avoid the issue, put it off, and so on.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Das Problem der Sozialwissenschaften

Kurzinhalt: Social Science; Unterschied zw. Der Erforschung eines Dinges oder Menschen; bei Ausschluss der Freiheit Rechtfertigung von Propaganda und psychologische konditionierung

Textausschnitt: I think so. The problem is that where your object is an empirically, intelligently, rationally conscious subject that develops in his intelligence and reasonableness, you're dealing with an entity that, even from the viewpoint of your scientific method, has to be approached in a manner essentially different from the study of atoms or plants or animals. And it's only insofar as the human sciences will be willing to expect some philosophic commitments or, on the other hand, be masters of all possible philosophic commitments that they'll be able to think on a level that is truly human in their human sciences.
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But if he thinks of economic activity as predictable events in the same manner as the nineteenth-century physicists did, or as statistically probable events, he's dealing with an objective manifold, and his only way of dealing it will be through government, or through propaganda, or through psychological conditioning, or through the police state, or what you please. The link between the human science and its application will not be human; it will be subhuman. It's a problem of considerable dimensions - a number of dimensions that are all pretty enormous.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Aristoteles, Widerspruch in seinen Prinzipien; Physik; Unveränderbarkeit Gottes

Kurzinhalt: einerseits: Wissenschaft je nach den Ursachen; anderseits: Erklärung der Physik als Theorie der Bewegung -> unvollständige Verwirklichung der Kategorien (Ort, Qualität, Quantität)

Textausschnitt: I think that Aristotle in his Physics violated his own principles. He, or at least the Aristotelian corpus - it's very difficult to say what is from Aristotle - but in that body of writings he distinguished his predicaments from causes, and science is conceived in terms of causes. But Aristotle's Physics is fundamentally a theory of motion, and motion is defined as the incomplete realization of three of the predicaments.
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Again, quality, or change of quality - what's called alteration, alloi-ôsis - is change in the sensibilia propria, in color, hot and cold, wet and dry, smooth and rough, and so on. What is 'becoming white'? Well, it's an incomplete realization of 'being white.' What is 'heating'? It's an incomplete realization of 'being hot, at a certain intensity of heat,' and so on. (366; Fs)
Similarly, for quantity.
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The categories, the predicaments, form the basis, then, on which he develops his theory of motion. Science becomes not a reduction of reality to its causes - certain knowledge of things through their causes -but knowledge of things through the predicaments, so that science, instead of advancing from description to explanation in causes, starts circling around within the descriptive field.
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The definitions I worked out, of potency, form, and act, are exactly what Aristotle uses in his psychology. Eye, sight, seeing, are potency, form, act. The capacity to will, habits of will, and acts of will are potency, form, act. The possible intellect, habits of intellect (the acquisition of a science), and acts of understanding are potency, form, act, again - all analogous to prime matter, substantial form, and existence. And that in Aristotle, I believe, survives, when systematically collected. But Aristotelian physics has doubled back on the descriptive element, and that's why it was a block to the development of science. And that's what sets the problem of just what kind of a department of philosophy cosmology is.
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... there are other types of argument for that exclusion of change from God. If you have change, you have some sort of finality. You have some sort of potentiality, imperfection, some perfection to be acquired. And if you posit unlimited act, well, you're excluding the possibility of change in quite a different way from the argument from the supposition of matter. In other words, matter isn't the only type of potency. It's by the negation of potency, capacity for development, that you get the immutability of God.
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I should qualify what I said before. If you conceive metaphysics in terms of necessity and impossibility, you haven't got from change a metaphysical argument. But if you conceive metaphysics, as I do, as what is true as a matter of fact in our knowledge - there are factual conditions for it - then metaphysics differs from physics, not in terms of necessity and impossibility, but on the level at which it considers the same reality.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Kant und die praktische Vernunft; Maréchal und Finalität

Kurzinhalt: falsche Erkenntnistheorie, doch hohe Moral: Stoa, Kant; so Kant can attribute validity to the ideas of reason from the viewpoint of action that he I cannot from the viewpoint of knowledge.

Textausschnitt: It is interesting to note that the stoics had a very elevated moral doctrine, while in their epistemology and their views of reality they were materialists. It illustrates the point that one can have self-appropriation and grasp its implications in the moral field and not do so in the more complicated field of cognitional theory and metaphysics.
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In Kant, one has something similar: a theory of knowledge that excludes, to a great extent, knowledge of reality and, at the same time, an ethical doctrine of remarkable elevation.
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In the Critique of Pure Reason the conditions for a possible experience are not the same as the conditions for a possible course of action. A possible course of action regards something in the future, something you are going to do, not something you know. The conditions are not exactly the same, and so Kant can attribute validity to the ideas of reason or the ideals of reason from the viewpoint of action that he I cannot from the viewpoint of knowledge.
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But at least part of Maréchal's idea seems to have been that to introduce finality in the intellect would be to confer on speculative intellect the same type of validity that Kant acknowledges in practical intellect. But because of the role that Kant ascribes to intuition in knowledge, he cannot at the same time give primacy to judgment, and he cannot at the same time give primacy to a finalistic view of knowledge, namely, that knowledge is something we move towards, not something we build upon intuitions.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Leiden und Gerechtigkeit Gottes; Auferstehung

Kurzinhalt: In the death and resurrection of Christ we have the tremendous symbol of Christianity that interprets for us the meaning of life

Textausschnitt: In the death and resurrection of Christ we have the tremendous symbol of Christianity that interprets for us the meaning of life. The Christian knows that if the master has suffered, there is nothing incongruous in his own suffering; and he knows that as the master rose again, so the Father is able to transform, to make all things work unto the good. That understanding of the meaning of human life that is mediated to us through the death and resurrection of Christ, as through a symbol, an image, is something on which our intellectual and moral and spiritual lives can develop, and in their development see more and more of its profundity. And that is God's expression of himself to us.
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As you see, the question of suffering, like all concrete existential questions, heads on to the religious, to the supernatural. Just as there is a self-appropriation that involves a development in us and implies a development in us - to be men - so the situation that is the human condition leads us on further to what we name the supernatural life, to a life in which God loves us in the full sense of love. Love involves a quasi identification. ... It presupposes an advance made by God as a lover, in the full sense of loving, and it means our response, and it means our response in which we love one another because we love God - and if we don't love one another we don't know God, in the words of St John's epistle

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Problem der Geschichte, der historische Jesus, Huizinga - Relativismus; Geschichte auf d. Ebene des Urteils

Kurzinhalt: Collingwood - Dedektivgeschichte mit falschen Zeugen; Exegeten: not seeking to arrive at truth, it is seeking to reconstitute the image of the past

Textausschnitt: illustrates his concept of history as science, at least one aspect of it, by a detective story in which all the clues were planted and all the witnesses were lying. The detective's problem was to find out what really happened by seeing why the clues would be planted and why the people were lying. In other words, ...
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There can be false ideals in historical inquiry. German exegetes during the nineteenth century spent a great deal of time trying to reach the historical Jesus, to get behind the gospel to what really happened and what really was said, and they came to the conclusion that it couldn't be done. You can't reach the historical Jesus. ... It is not seeking to arrive at truth, it is seeking to reconstitute the image of the past, the cinema of the past, and the soundtrack of the past, where you haven't got the evidence for doing so. The astronomer
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You can have history under a relativist influence ... and it was to the effect that history is a culture interpreting its past to itself, and the interpretation varies with the present, so that you have German history of, say, 1810, 1840, 1870, ..
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Can there be an approach to history in terms of truth, the third level, judgment? I think that there can be. ... The fundamental problem is the problem of interpretation, and how you arrive at a correct interpretation. Insofar as there are counterpositions active and successful within the field of those writing history, insofar as most historians certainly would not be interested in any methodical discussion, this more or less puts the historians, the people who did the work, in the same class as the physicists who are very good at performing experiments but not so hot at the mathematics. A situation is created by quantum mechanics and relativity: the people who could do the experiments, for a while anyway, were complaining,

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Objektivität und Isomorphismus; Grundfrage: Intelligibilität des Seins

Kurzinhalt: fundamental decision: Is or is not being intelligible? If it is not; Sorge - oder: this tiny little thread of the pure desire to know that is found in us at times; Beispiel: Fleischeternal light

Textausschnitt: I'm putting the cart before the horsec for people who know by taking a look!
There is a fundamental decision; you can't have it both ways. With regard to the precise issue: Is or is not being intelligible? If it is not, there is no reason for supposing that you could know it by understanding or by judgment, and, if it is something you can't know at all, then it is outside the field of possible questions or suspicions. It is nothing. Insofar as being is what is to be known by intelligent grasp and reasonable affirmation, then being is intelligible, because the intelligible is just what is grasped.
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The 'real world' for people with that difficulty is what corresponds to one's Sorge, one's concern, and one's concern is not exclusively a matter of the pure desire to know. One's concern includes all of one's sensitivity, all of one's intersubjectivity, all of one's affectivity, and so on and so forth. It involves the whole man, not this tiny little thread of the pure desire to know that is found in us at times - when you do an awful lot of arguing and proving, then it's there. And that is what the real world corresponds to, and that real world is had by us in a more elevated fashion.
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These things become clearer by taking a step further and going into the metaphysics. Why is it that our minds are capable, by understanding and judgment, of knowing what really is? It is because they are created participations of the uncreated light. St Augustine held that we knew truth not by looking outside us, but within, and not properly looking within but in a changeless light, an incommutable light, contemplating the eternal reasons. And St Thomas takes up this doctrine, which was current among Augustinians in the Middle Ages, and he says, 'Do we look at the eternal reasons? Do we judge things by the eternal reasons?' ... And, St Thomas says, we judge things by the eternal reasons not in the sense that we take a look at the eternal reasons, but in the sense that the very light of our intelligence is a created participation of the uncreated light that is God himself. Just as the uncreated light that is God himself is the ground of all possibility and actuality - it is a real omnipotence - so this created participation of the eternal light, that is our intelligence, that comes to light in intelligent and rational consciousness, is an intentional omnipotence, a capacity to ask questions about everything and, by understanding and forming concepts and making judgments, to know them.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Isomorphismus; Intelligens als Teilnahme (Partizipation) am ungeschaffenen Licht, Augustin, Thomas

Kurzinhalt:

Textausschnitt: These things become clearer by taking a step further and going into the metaphysics. Why is it that our minds are capable, by understanding and judgment, of knowing what really is? It is because they are created participations of the uncreated light. St Augustine held that we knew truth not by looking outside us, but within, and not properly looking within but in a changeless light, an incommutable light, contemplating the eternal reasons. And St Thomas takes up this doctrine, which was current among Augustinians in the Middle Ages, and he says, 'Do we look at the eternal reasons? Do we judge things by the eternal reasons?' ... And, St Thomas says, we judge things by the eternal reasons not in the sense that we take a look at the eternal reasons, but in the sense that the very light of our intelligence is a created participation of the uncreated light that is God himself. Just as the uncreated light that is God himself is the ground of all possibility and actuality - it is a real omnipotence - so this created participation of the eternal light, that is our intelligence, that comes to light in intelligent and rational consciousness, is an intentional omnipotence, a capacity to ask questions about everything and, by understanding and forming concepts and making judgments, to know them.
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Let us try, therefore, to distinguish the different stages in this isomorphism. We have three levels in our cognitional process, an experiential, an intellectual, and a rational. And to take the simplest type of example, we will suppose that there does exist a perfect circle, and on the experiential level we see it, ...
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Now we have three acts, or three levels of activity, and they presuppose one another -just as cooking the meat presupposes buying it, and eating it presupposes cooking it. These three levels are mutually related, and complementary
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Now those three components are distinct as notions, they are notionally distinct. With regard to the three components as contents in my mind, you can say that P is not Q and P is not R and Q is not R, where P, Q, and R are these three, and you consider them as notions - there is a notional distinction, as contents in the mind. And the proof is that what is grasped here, what is grasped by insight, is intelligible in itself; the data are not intelligible in themselves, they are merely given, they are intelligible in the other. One and the same cannot have contradictory predicates. A cannot be both B and not-B. You cannot say the content 'data' and the content 'intelligible necessity' are really just one content with two predicates, two aspects, because the aspects are contradictory: one is intelligible in itself, the other is not, and intelligibility is a relevant predicate to these contents.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Spannung zw: Augustinus: mens, animus - anima (Aristoteles); Aristoteles: Potenz - Akt Objekt (Kausalität, nicht Interiorität)

Kurzinhalt: De anima; Seele - Potenz - Akt - Objekt; our immediate concern is to find in Aristotle the point of insertion for Augustinian thought; bei Aristo. u. Thomas: introspective skills

Textausschnitt: The Aristotelian framework was impressive. First, it was a general theory of being, a metaphysics. Secondly, it was a general theory of movement, a physics in that now antiquated sense. Thirdly, it was a general theory of life, a biology. Fourthly, it was a general theory of sensitivity and intelligence, a psychology.
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The interlocking of each part with all the others precluded the possibility of merely patchwork revisions. As Professor Butterfield has observed, to correct Aristotle effectively, one must go beyond him; and to go beyond him is to set up a system equal in comprehensiveness and more successful in inner coherence and in conformity with fact. Still, such attempts have been made and, indeed, in two quite different manners.
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It is not difficult to discern. I distinguished above four components in the Aristotelian framework. I must hasten to add that, in a sense, the distinction between the third and fourth, between biology and psychology, is not as clear, as sharp, as fully developed as may be desired. ... At the same time, it fails to bring out effectively the essential difference between an investigation of plant life and an investigation of the human mind ...
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Souls are differentiated by their potencies; potencies are known by their acts; acts are specified by their objects. But what is meant by an object? That is the decisive question. For the meaning given the term 'object' will settle the specification given acts; the specification of acts will settle the distinction between potencies; and the distinction between potencies will settle the essential differences between the souls of plants, animals, and men.
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A modern reader is apt to take it for granted that by an object Aristotle must mean the intentional term of a conscious act. But quite evidently Aquinas was of a different opinion. In his commentary he defines objects in terms, not of intentionality, but of causality:
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If vegetative acts are not accessible to introspection, sensitive and intellectual acts are among the immediate data of consciousness; they can be reached not only by deduction from their objects but also in themselves as given in consciousness. Finally, when conscious acts are studied by introspection, one discovers not only the acts and their intentional terms but also the intending subject, and there arises the problem of the relation of subject to soul, of the Augustinian mens or animus to the Aristotelian anima.
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As we shall see, Aquinas explicitly appealed to inner experience and, I submit, Aristotle's account of intelligence, of insight into phantasm, and of the fact that intellect knows itself, not by a species of itself, but by a species of its object, has too uncanny an accuracy to be possible without the greatest introspective skill. But if Aristotle and Aquinas used introspection and did so brilliantly, it remains that they did not thematize their use, did not elevate it into a reflectively elaborated technique, did not work out a proper method for psychology, and thereby lay the groundwork for the contemporary distinctions between nature and spirit and between the natural and the human sciences.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Die Bedeutung des Wortes (verbum) bei Augustin; Ausdruck des Wissens des Geistes um sich selbst; Stoa: verbum insitum, prolatum; verbum intus prolatum

Kurzinhalt: Augustinus, verbum prolatum, verbum insitum, verbum intus prolatum; verbum verum de re vera, nihil de suo habens ..., what his own mind knew immediately about itself

Textausschnitt: 10/I It is time to turn to Augustine: a convert from nature to spirit; a person that, by God's grace, made himself what he was; a subject that may be studied but, most of all, must be encounteredd in the outpouring of his self-revelation and self-communication. The context of his thought on verbum was trinitarian, and its underlying preoccupation was anti-Arian. It followed that the prologue to the fourth Gospel had to be freed from any Arian implication. To achieve this end Augustine did not employ our contemporary techniques of linguistic and literary history. He did not attempt a fresh translation of the Greek word logos, but retained the traditional verbum. Church tradition, perhaps, precluded any appeal to the Stoic distinction between verbum prolatum and verbum insitum.1 In any case he cut between these Stoic terms to discover a third verbum that was neither the verbum prolatum of human speech nor the verbum insitum of man's native rationality but an intermediate verbum intus prolatum. Naturally enough, as Augustine's discovery was part and parcel of his own mind's knowledge of itself, so he begged his readers to look within themselves and there to discover the speech of spirit within spirit, an inner verbum prior to any use of language, yet distinct both from the mind itself and from its memory or its present apprehension of objects. (6; Fs) (notabene)

11/I Though I cannot attempt here to do justice to the wealth of Augustine's thought or to the variety of its expression,2 at least it will serve to illustrate my meaning if, however arbitrarily, I select and briefly comment on a single passage. (7; Fs)

Haec igitur omnia, et quae per se ipsum, et quae per sensus sui corporis, et quae testimoniis aliorum percepta scit animus humanus, thesauro memoriae condita tenet, ex quibus gignitur verbum verum, quando quod scimus loquimur, sed verbum ante omnem sonum, ante omnem cogitationem soni. Tunc enim est verbum simillimum rei notae, de qua gignitur, et imago eius, quoniam de visione scientiae visio cogitationis exoritur, quod est verbum linguae nullius, verbum verum de re vera, nihil de suo habens, sed totum de ilia scientia de qua nascitur. Nec interest quando id didicerit, qui quod scit loquitur (aliquando enim statim ut discit, hoc dicit), dum tamen verbum sit verum, id est, de notis rebus exortum.3

FN 8:
['All these things, therefore, those perceived (by the human mind) through itself, and those perceived through the senses of its body, and those perceived by the witness of others, all these things which the human mind knows, it holds firmly established in the treasury of memory; from these is brought forth a true word when we utter what we know, but a word that is before all sound, (indeed) before all thought of sound. For then a word is most like the known thing from which it is brought forth and most an image of that thing, since from the vision of knowledge a vision of thought arises, which is a word of no language, a true word of a true thing, having nothing of its own, but everything from that knowledge from which it is born. Nor does it matter when the one who utters what he knows learned it - for sometimes he speaks as soon as he learns - provided however that the word is true, that is, having its origin in things known'] Augustine, De trinitate, XV, xii, 22; ML 42, 1075. [We add an English translation of Latin words and phrases in Lonergan's next paragraph: linguae nullius, of no language; gignitur, is brought forth; nascitur, is born; nihil de suo habens, having nothing of its own; sed totum de illa scientia de qua nascitur, but everything from that knowledge from which it is born; quod scimus loquimur, we utter what we know; de visione scientiae visio cogitationis exoritur, from the vision of knowledge a vision of thought arises; qui quod scit loquitur, who utters what he knows; verbum simillimum rei notae, a word most like the known thing; imago eius, an image of [that thing]; verbum verum de re vera, a true word of a true thing; dum tamen verbum sit verum, id est, de notis rebus exortum, provided however that the word is true, that is, having its origin in things known.] (notabene)

12/I In this passage, then, the Augustinian verbum is a nonlinguistic utterance of truth. It differs from expression in any language, for it is linguae nullius. It is not primitive but derived: gignitur, exoritur, nascitur. Its dependence is total: nihil de suo habens, sed totum de illa scientia de qua nascitur. This total dependence is, not blind or automatic, but conscious and cognitive: quod scimus loquimur; de visione scientiae visio cogitationis exoritur; qui quod scit loquitur. Finally, this total dependence as conscious and known is the essential point. It makes no difference whether the verbum has its ground in memory or in recently acquired knowledge. What counts is its truth, its correspondence with things as known: verbum simillimum rei notae; imago eius; verbum verum de re vera, nihil de suo habens, sed totum de illa scientia de qua nascitur; dum tamen verbum sit verum, id est, de notis rebus exortum. (7f; Fs)

13/I Such, at least in one passage, is what Augustine had to say about verbum. Many more passages might be cited, and they would reveal him saying different things or the same things in a different manner. But sooner or later it would be necessary to advance from the simpler question of what he said to the more difficult question of what he meant. Since I am writing not a study of Augustine but an introduction to a study of Aquinas, I must leap at once to the more difficult question, though not to answer it in detail, but only to indicate the source from which the answer must proceed. (8; Fs)

14/I A blind man may listen to a disquisition on color, but he is bound to find it obscure. A person who is deaf may read a book on music, but he will have a hard time deciding whether the author is talking sense or nonsense. In similar fashion it is only by introspection that one can discover what an introspective psychologist is talking about. If what Augustine had to say about verbum was true, then it corresponded exactly to what Augustine knew went on in his own mind. If what Augustine had to say about verbum was universally true, then it corresponds exactly to what Augustine knew goes on in any human mind. If one supposes Augustine to be right and, at the same time, entertains an admiration for Newman, one is going to ask whether the Augustinian couplet of memoria and verbum is parallel to Newman's couplet of illative sense and unconditional assent.e But if one desires to get beyond words and suppositions to meanings and facts, then one has to explore one's own mind and find out for oneself what there is to be meant; and until one does so, one is in the unhappy position of the blind man hearing about colors and the deaf man reading about counterpoint. (8; Fs)

15/I About such matters Augustine was explicit. Unde enim mens aliquam mentem novit, si se non novit? Neque enim ut oculus corporis videt alias oculos et se non videt... Mens ergo ipsa sicut corporearum rerum notitias per sensus corporis colligit, sic incorporearum per semetipsam. Ergo et semetipsam per se ipsam novit...4 (8; Fs)
FN: ['For whence does the mind know some (other) mind, if it does not know itself? Nor (does it see) the way the eye of the body sees other eyes and does not see itself... Our mind itself therefore, as it gathers knowledge of corporeal things through the senses of the body, so also (does it gather knowledge) of incorporeal things through itself. Therefore it knows itself too through itself] Ibid. IX, iii, 3; ML 42, 962 f.

16/I Moreover, for Augustine, the mind's self-knowledge was basic; it was the rock of certitude on which shattered Academic doubt; it provided the ground from which one could argue to the validity both of the senses of one's own body and, with the mediation of testimony, of the senses of the bodies of others. So the passage we have quoted and explained begins with this threefold enumeration: quae per se ipsum, et quae per sensus sui corporis, et quae testimoniis aliorum percepta scit animus humanus. The enumeration merely summarizes what had been set forth at greater length in the immediately preceding paragraph;5 and that paragraph, of course, only resumes a theme that is recurrent from Augustine's earliest writings on. (9; Fs)

FN: Ibid. XV, xii, 21; ML 42, 1073-75. [Translation of Latin in text: 'those things which the human mind perceives through itself, and those it perceives through the senses of its body, and those it perceives by the witness of others, all these things which the human mind knows']

17/I Clearly enough, it was neither per sensus sui corporis nor by alienorum corporum sensus that Augustine knew of a verbum that was neither Latin nor Greek, neither sound nor even the thought of sound. The Augustinian affirmation of verbum was itself a verbum. For it to be true, on Augustine's own showing, it had to be totally dependent on what Augustine's mind knew through itself about itself. On the existence and nature of such knowledge Augustine had a great deal to say, and there is no need for us to attempt to repeat it here. Though it cannot be claimed that Augustine elevated introspection into a scientific technique, it cannot be doubted that he purported to report in his literary language what his own mind knew immediately about itself. (9; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: verbum bei Thomas im Zusammenhang von Lonergans Buch

Kurzinhalt: Thomas in der Tradition von Augustinus und Aristoteles; Gliederung des Buches entsprechend der Bedeutung von verbum bei Thomas; quid sit, an sit

Textausschnitt: So we come to Aquinas. Because he conceived theology as in some sense a science, he needed Aristotle, who more than anyone had worked out and applied the implications of the Greek ideal of science. Because his theology was essentially the expression of a traditional faith, he needed Augustine, the Father of the West, whose trinitarian thought was the high-water mark in Christian attempts to reach an understanding of faith. Because Aquinas himself was a genius, he experienced no great difficulty either in adapting Aristotle to his purpose or in reaching a refinement in his account of rational process - the emanatio intelligibilis - that made explicit what Augustine could only suggest. Because, finally, Aquinas was a man of his time,
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The first two chapters are concerned with the core of psychological fact. Aquinas identified verbum with the immanent terminal object of intellectual operation; he distinguished two intellectual operations, a first in answer to the question quid sit, and a second in answer to the question an sit.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: inneres Wort: Wirkursache (causa efficiens) -> äußeres Worte; Syllogismus: inneres, vorgestelltes, äußeres Wort

Kurzinhalt: Gegensatz und Beziehung zw.: inner - outer word, inner word is an efficient cause of the outer, the inner word is what can be meant (significabile) or what is meant (significatum) by outer words, and inversely ...

Textausschnitt: 6/1 The first element in the general notion of an inner word is had from a contrast with outer words - spoken, written, imagined, or meant. Spoken words are sounds with a meaning: as sounds, they are produced in the respiratory tract; as possessing a meaning, they are due to imagination according to Aristotle, or, as Aquinas seems to have preferred, to soul; it is meaning that differentiates spoken words from other sounds, such as coughing, which also are produced in the respiratory tract.1 Written words are simply signs of spoken words;2 the issue was uncomplicated by Chinese ideograms. A similar simplicity is the refreshing characteristic of the account of imaginatio vocis:3 a term that seems to embrace the whole mnemonic mass and sensitive mechanism of motor, auditory, and visual images connected with language. Finally, the outer word that is some external thing or action meant by a word is dismissed as a mere figure of speech.4 (14; Fs)

7/1 There is a twofold relation between inner and outer words: the inner word is an efficient cause of the outer; and the inner word is what is meant immediately by the outer. The aspect of efficient causality seems to be the only one noticed in the commentary on the Sentences: the inner word is compared to the major premise of a syllogism; the imagined word to the minor premise; and the spoken word to the conclusion.5 Later works do not deny this aspect6 but I think I may say that subsequently the whole emphasis shifted to the second of the two relations mentioned above. Repeatedly one reads that the inner word is what can be meant (significabile) or what is meant (significatum) by outer words, and inversely, that the outer word is what can mean (significativum) or what does mean (significant) the inner word.7 (14f; Fs)

8/1 There is no doubt about this matter, though, frankly, it is just the opposite of what one would expect. One is apt to think of the inner word, not as what is meant by the outer, but as what means the outer; the outer word has meaning in virtue of the inner; therefore, the inner is meaning essentially while the outer has meaning by participation. That is all very true, and St Thomas knew it.8 But commonly he asked what outer words meant and answered that, in the first instance, they meant inner words. The proof was quite simple. We discourse on 'man' and on the 'triangle.' What are we talking about? Certainly, we are not talking about real things directly, else we should all be Platonists. Directly, we are talking about objects of thought, inner words, and only indirectly, only insofar as our inner words have an objective reference, are we talking of real things.9 The same point might be made in another fashion. Logical positivists to the contrary, false propositions are not meaningless; they mean something; what they mean is an inner word, and only because that inner word is false, does the false proposition lack objective reference.10 (15; Fs)

9/1 Such is the first element in the general notion of an inner word. It is connected with the well-known anti-Platonist thesis on abstraction that the mode of knowing need not be identical with the mode of reality, that knowledge may be abstract and universal though all realities are particular and concrete. It also is connected with the familiar Aristotelian statement that 'bonum et malum sunt in rebus, sed verum et falsum sunt in mente.'11 Because outer words may be abstract, and true or false, because real things are neither abstract nor true nor false, the immediate reference of their meaning is to an inner word. (15f; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: 7 Elemente: general notion - inneres Wortes

Kurzinhalt: Verhältnis zw. innerem u. äußerem Wort; Einteilung des inneren Wortes keine point-to-point correspondence; wie Funktion zum Abhängigen; Urteil, Begriff; Vergleich mit Erfinder

Textausschnitt: Aquinas, in his commentary, denied a point-to-point correspondence between inner and outer words, arguing that inner words correspond to realities, while outer words are the products of convention and custom, and so vary with different peoples. However, since the inner word is in the intellect, and since apprehension of the singular involves the use of a sensitive potency it should seem that the correspondence of realities to inner words is, at best, like the correspondence between a function and its derivative; as the derivative, so the inner word is outside all particular cases and refers to all from some higher viewpoint.
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A third element in fixing the nature of the inner word is connected intimately with the preceding. What is the division of inner words? On this question, four major works of Aquinas and a large number of his commentators are silent. On the other hand, silence is no argument against positive statement. Four other works of recognized standing divide inner words into the two classes of definitions and judgments, and three of these recall the parallel of the Aristotelian twofold operation of the mind ... This clearly supposes that the judgment is an inner word, for only in the judgment is there truth or falsity. ... Finally, as stated above, the correspondence of inner words is mainly, not to outer words, but to reality; but reality divides into essence and existence; and of the two Aristotelian operations of the mind 'prima operatic respicit quidditatem rei; secunda respicit esse ipsius.
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A fourth element in the general notion of an inner word is that it supplies the object of thought. What is abstract, what is true or false is not, as such, either a real thing or a mere copy of a real thing. It is a product of the mind. It is not merely a product but also a known product; and as known, it is an object. The illuminating parallel is from technical invention. ... there is the same general form of intellectual process, for in both certain general principles are known, in both a determinate end is envisaged, in both the principles are applied to the attainment of the end, and in both this application leads to a plan of operations that as such is, not knowing what is, but only knowing the idea of what one may do.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Lonergans "dritter" Weg der Erkenntnis, nichtrationale Erklärung d. Wirklichkeit: Empirist, Sensist, Positivist, Pragmatist, Idealist

Kurzinhalt: in und durch dem Intellekt kommt es zur Erkenntnis von Dingen, Erkennen: Tier, Mensch; accept the sense of reality as criterion of reality, and you are a materialist, ... accept reason as a criterion but retain

Textausschnitt: A fifth element in the general notion of an inner word is that in it and through it intellect comes to knowledge of things. ... Take it as knowledge of reality, and there results the secular contrast between the solid sense of reality and the bloodless categories of the mind. Accept the sense of reality as criterion of reality, and you are a materialist, sensist, positivist, pragmatist, sentimentalist, and so on, as you please. Accept reason as a criterion but retain the sense of reality as what gives meaning to the term 'real,' and you are an idealist; for, like the sense of reality, the reality defined by it is nonrational. Insofar as I grasp it, the Thomist position is the clearheaded third position: reason is the criterion and, as well, it is reason - not the sense of reality - that gives meaning to the term 'real.' The real is what is; and 'what is' is known in the rational act, judgment.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Zweifache Tätigkeit des Intellekts; Idee als Gewusstes und Medium des Wissens

Kurzinhalt: quod quid est, to ti estin; Belege durch Thomas

Textausschnitt: The first act of intellect is knowledge of the quod quid est, to ti estin, the 'What is it?' By definition, this knowledge involves neither truth nor falsity, ...
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On the other hand, the second operation of intellect ... introduces the duality of idea and thing and makes the former the medium in and through which one apprehends the latter. Thus, our knowledge of God's existence is just our knowledge of the truth of the judgment 'Deus est.' ... For just as the inner word is a medium between the meaning of outer words and the realities meant, so also the inner word is a medium between the intellect and the things that are understood.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Aristoteles, Syllogismus, Mondphasen
Syllogismus, middle term, Mondphasen

Kurzinhalt: Die Mondphasen als Mittelterm, der Mond als Subjekt, die Kugel als Prädikat

Textausschnitt: The phases are the causa cognoscendi of the sphericity of the moon; we know the moon is a sphere because it goes through these phases. If it were just a disc the whole circle would always be illuminated; because it has a spherical surface, we see its phases. The phases are the middle term; the moon, the subject; sphericity, the predicate. In that case, syllogism expresses an insight. But syllogism is relevant to the third level, as exhibiting the virtually unconditioned. Syllogism is an expression of the idea of validity; the idea of the virtually unconditioned connects judgment with the absolute.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Aristoteles, Mondphasen, Syllogismus

Kurzinhalt: What is an eclipse of the moon?' and 'Why is the moon thus darkened?' are, not two questions, but one and the same

Textausschnitt: Again, to take Aristotle's stock example, 'What is an eclipse of the moon?' and 'Why is the moon thus darkened?' are, not two questions, but one and the same. Say that the earth intervenes between the sun and the moon, blocking off the light received by the latter from the former, and at once you know why the moon is thus darkened, and what an eclipse is. The second and fourth questions, then, ask about causes; but a cause supplies the middle term in the scientific syllogism; and if the cause exists, its consequent necessarily exists. Hence, all four questions are questions about the middle terms of scientific syllogisms. The first and third ask whether there is a relevant middle term; the second and fourth ask what the relevant middle term is.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Lonergan, was ist X;

Kurzinhalt: (1) whether there is an X, or (2) what is an X, or (3) whether X is Y, or (4) why X is Y. Meno; Grasping the cause is, not an ocular vision, but an insight into the sensible data

Textausschnitt: The superficial eye will pair off the first two questions together and the last two; but the significant parallel is between the first and the third, and between the second and the fourth. In modern language the first and third are empirical questions: they ask about matters of fact; they can be answered by an appeal to observation or experiment. But the fourth question is not empirical; it asks for a cause or reason; and, at least in some cases, the second question is identical with the fourth, and hence it too is not empirical, but likewise asks for a cause or reason. Thus, 'Why does light refract?' and 'What is refraction?' are, not two questions, but one and the same. Again, to take Aristotle's stock example, 'What is an eclipse of the moon?' and 'Why is the moon thus darkened?' are, not two questions, but one and the same. Say that the earth intervenes between the sun and the moon, blocking off the light received by the latter from the former, and at once you know why the moon is thus darkened, and what an eclipse is. The second and fourth questions, then, ask about causes; but a cause supplies the middle term in the scientific syllogism; and if the cause exists, its consequent necessarily exists. Hence, all four questions are questions about the middle terms of scientific syllogisms. The first and third ask whether there is a relevant middle term; the second and fourth ask what the relevant middle term is.
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But this answer only raises a further question. Granted that we know what is meant by 'What is X?' when that question can be recast into an equivalent 'Why V [sic] is X?' yet one may ask, quite legitimately, whether there always is a V. It is simple enough to substitute 'Why does light refract?' for 'What is refraction?' But tell me, please, what I am to substitute for 'What is a man?' or 'What is a house?'
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In the Posterior Analytics he remarked that, if a man were on the moon during its eclipse, he would not have to ask the first question - whether there is an eclipse - for the fact would be obvious; moreover, he would not even have to ask the second question - what an eclipse is - for that too would be obvious; he would see the earth cutting in between the sun and himself, and so at once would grasp the cause and the universal. Grasping the cause is, not an ocular vision, but an insight into the sensible data. Grasping the universal is the production of the inner word that expresses that insight.
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And, Aquinas explains, if one reached the universal from such brief acquaintance, that would be a matter of conjecturing that eclipses of the moon always occurred in that fashion.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Was ist ein Mensch, Transformation der Frage: klarere Sicht bei Thomas

Kurzinhalt: Umwandlung der 2. in die 4. Frage; What is a man?' = 'Why is V a man?; Sinn: Subjekt - Einsicht in Daten: Mittelterm - Begriff: Prädikat; causa essendi, Formalursache;

Textausschnitt: ... how to transform questions of the second type into questions of the fourth type in such ultimate and simple cases as, What is a man? What is a house? The clue lies in the fact of insight into sensible data. For an insight, an act of understanding, is a matter of knowing a cause. Presumably, in ultimate and simple cases, the insight is the knowledge of a cause that stands between the sensible data and the concept whose definition is sought. Though Aristotle's predecessors knew little of such a cause - for the cause in question is the formal cause - Aristotle himself made it a key factor in his system; and it was to the formal cause that he appealed when, in the Metaphysics, he attempted to settle the meaning of such questions as, What is a man? What is a house? The meaning is, Why is this sort of body a man? Why are stones and bricks, arranged in a certain way, a house? What is it that causes the matter, sensibly perceived, to be a thing? To Scholastics the answers are self-evident. That which makes this type of body to be a man is a human soul. That which makes these stones and bricks to be a house is an artificial form. That which makes matter, in general, to be a thing is the causa essendi, the formal cause.
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'What is a man?' is equivalent to 'Why is V a man?' - where V stands for the sensible data of a man, and the answer is the formal cause, the soul. Now this does not imply that one is to answer the question, What is a man? by the proposition, A man is his soul. That answer is patently false. The formal cause is only part of the whole, and part can never be predicated of the whole. The fallacy that leads to this false conclusion is that, while we have transposed 'What is X?' into 'Why V is X?' we have yet to transpose the formal cause, which answers 'Why V is X?' back to the answer of 'What is X?' That transposition is from formal cause to essence or quiddity. Neglect of this second transposition by Aristotle has led to considerable obscurity: for among the meanings of 'substance' Aristotle will write the causa essendi, the to ti en einai, the form. Very accurately Aquinas hit upon the root of the confusion: 'Essentia enim et forma in hoc conveniunt quod secundum utrumque dicitur esse illud quo aliquid est. Sed forma refertur ad materiam, quam facit esse in actu; quidditas autem refertur ad suppositum, quod significatur ut habens talem essentiam.' Questions of the second type ask about the suppositum: for example, What is a man? Transposed to the fourth type, they ask about the matter: for example, Why is this type of body a man? Common to both questions is inquiry into the quo aliquid est, which, relative to the matter, is the form, but relative to the suppositum, is the essence, that is, the form plus the common matter.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Die Einsicht

Titel: Die Einsicht Bd. I und II

Stichwort: Beschränkung des Traktats in der Behandlung des Menschen

Kurzinhalt: Wiederum: kurze Zusammenfassung im Kontext des: jetzt schon da draußen; die logische stringente Art des Traktates wird der Erfassung des Menschen nicht gerecht

Textausschnitt: Noch weitere Einschränkungen treten zutage, wenn wir uns der menschlichen Ebene zuwenden. Zu den Komplexitäten der genetischen Methode kommen hier die noch schwerer wiegenden Komplexitäten der dialektischen Methode. Um die Sache zu vereinfachen, haben wir unsere philosophische Position in den Termini eines einfachen Gegensatzes ausgearbeitet: Entweder ist das Reale das Sein, oder es ist eine Unterabteilung des "jetzt schon da draußen"; entweder wird die Objektivität durch intelligente Untersuchung und kritische Reflexion erreicht, oder sie ist eine Sache des genauen Hinschauens auf das, was "da draußen" ist; entweder besteht das Erkennen in einem Aufstieg von der Erfahrungsebene zur Ebene des Verstehens und Formulierens und weiter zur Ebene des reflektierenden Erfassens und Urteilens, oder aber ist sie ein unaussprechbares Gegenübertreten, das das Erkannte dem Erkennenden gegenwärtig macht.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Die Einsicht

Titel: Die Einsicht Bd. I und II

Stichwort: Isomorphie in Metaphysik und Logik; Logik als Wissenschaft

Kurzinhalt: Metaphysik: Isomorphie der Strukturen von Erkenntnis und proportioniertem Sein; Logik: Parallele zwischen den Bedingungen der Erkenntnis und den Bedingungen der möglichen Termini der Bedeutung

Textausschnitt: Derart sind also die Einschränkungen des Traktates, und sie offenbaren recht überzeugend die Wichtigkeit einer Unterscheidung zwischen Logik als Wissenschaft und Logik als Technik. Die Logik als Wissenschaft kann aus der Erkenntnisanalyse abgeleitet werden. So wie die Metaphysik auf dem Obersatz der Isomorphie der Strukturen von Erkenntnis und proportioniertem Sein beruht, so beruht die Logik auf dem Obersatz der Parallele zwischen den Bedingungen der Erkenntnis und den Bedingungen der möglichen Termini der Bedeutung. So sind die Termini möglicher Bedeutung den Prinzipien der Identität und des Nicht-Widerspruchs unterworfen, weil das Urteil ein innerlich rationaler Akt ist, der bejaht oder verneint.
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Schließlich, der Grund des Urteils im reflektierenden Erfassen des virtuell Unbedingten offenbart die ganz verschiedene Basis der gültigen Ableitung, die von der Form "Wenn 577 A, dann B; aber A; deshalb B" ist, wobei A und B Aussagen oder Sätze von Aussagen sind.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Materialist; Leugnung der Existenz der Seele; Leugnung der Objektivität des Intelligiblen

Kurzinhalt: ... for the denial of soul today is really the denial of the objectivity of the intelligible, the denial that understanding, knowing a cause, is knowing anything real.
leer leerleer

Textausschnitt: 36/1 For the materialist, the real is what he knows before he understands or thinks: it is the sensitively integrated object that is reality for a dog; it is the sure and firm-set earth on which I tread, which is so reassuring to the sense of reality; and on that showing, intellect does not penetrate to the inwardness of things but is a merely subjective, if highly useful, principle of activity. To the Pythagoreans the discovery of harmonic ratios revealed that numbers and their proportions, though primarily ideas, nonetheless have a role in making things what they are; and for Aristotle the ratio of two to one was the form of the diaposon.1 Socratic interest in definition reinforced this tendency,2 but the Platonist sought the reality known by thought, not in this world, but in another. (33; Fs) (notabene)

37/1 Aristotle's basic thesis was the objective reality of what is known by understanding: it was a commonsense position inasmuch as common sense always assumes that to be so; but it was not a commonsense position inasmuch as common sense would not be ablej to enunciate it or even to know with any degree of accuracy just what it means and implies. Aristotle is the representative of unconscious common sense; but conscious common sense found voice in the eminent Catholic doctor and professor of philosophy whom I heard ask, 'Will someone please tell me what all this fuss is about ens?' When, then, Aristotle calls the soul a logos, he is stating his highly original position, not indeed with the full accuracy which his thought alone made possible, but in a generic fashion which suited his immediate purpose; and it is that generic issue that remains the capital issue, for the denial of soul today is really the denial of the objectivity of the intelligible, the denial that understanding, knowing a cause, is knowing anything real. (33f; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Einsicht verhält sich zum Phantasma wie Form zu Materie

Kurzinhalt: Einsicht erfasst das Objekt; von hier aus eröffnet sich der Weg zur philosophischen Form

Textausschnitt: ... the essential definition proceeds from an act of understanding; the real thing is what it is because form has actuated matter. The Aristotelian term T2 was a logical effort to isolate understanding and form, and one has only to consider the difficulties of such isolation to grasp why Aquinas dropped this Aristotelian effort as abortive and proceeded on lines of his own. Because the act of understanding - the intelligere proprie - is prior to, and cause of, conceptualization, because expression is only through conceptualization, any attempt to fix the act of understanding, except by way of introspective description, involves its own partial failure; for any such attempt is an expression, and expression is no longer understanding and already concept. Again, in a sense, the act of understanding as an insight into phantasm is knowledge of form: but the form so known does not correspond to the philosophic concept of form;n insight is to phantasm as form is to matter; but in that proportion, form is related to prime matter, but insight is related to sensible qualities; strictly, then, it is not true that insight is grasp of form; rather, insight is the grasp of the object in an inward aspect such that the mind, pivotingo on the insight, is able to conceive, not without labor, the philosophic concepts of form and matter. (38; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Einsicht in Phantasma als erster Teil des Prozesses hin zur wesentlichen Definition

Kurzinhalt: Erfahrung: Einsicht in Phantasma; Scotus, Kant: Leugnung dieser Sicht

Textausschnitt: Insight into phantasm is the first part of the process that moves from sense through understanding to essential definition. Though Aquinas derived the doctrine from Aristotle, he also affirmed it as a matter of experience: 'Quilibet in se ipso experiri potest, quod quando aliquis conatur aliquid intelligere, format sibi aliqua phantasmata per modum exemplorum, in quibus quasi inspiciat quod intelligere studet.' However, to many profound minds, so brief a description seems to have been insufficient. Scotus flatly denied the fact of insight into phantasm.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: phantasma; Unterschied zwischen Lernen und wissenschaftlicher Tätigkeit; Prozess von Sinneserfahrung, über Gedächtnis ...

Kurzinhalt: phantasm has to produce the act of insight whereas ... Prozess: Sinne, Gedächtnis, Erfahrung; Thomas: Erkennen des Universalen im Sinn; Intellect: nicht nur Erkennen des Universalen

Textausschnitt: The difference between invention or learning and use of science is that, in the first instance, phantasm has to produce the act of insight whereas, in subsequent instances, informed intellect guides the production of an appropriate phantasm; in other words, in the first instance we are at the mercy of fortune, the subconscious, or a teacher's skill, for the emergence of an appropriate phantasm; we are in a ferment of trying to grasp we know not what; but once we have understood, then we can operate on our own, marshaling images to a habitually known end.
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Though theoretical science proceeds from principles known of themselves, yet these principles are obtained from sense, as explained in the second book of the Posterior Analytics. There the account is of a process from many sensations to a memory, from many memories to an element of experience, and from many elements of experience to grasp of a universal.
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Aquinas, at least when commenting on Aristotle, could affirm the necessity of some knowledge of the universal in sense ... This position is impossible if one defines intellect as that which alone knows the universal; it is inevitable if by intellect one means the faculty which is subject of acts of intelligence, understanding, etc.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Intellekt als intellect-in-process; Einsicht der Engel; Aristoteles: verschiedene Substanzen; Thomas: Einsicht der Engel,

Kurzinhalt: Abhängigkeit des Intellekts vom Phantasma: contra Kant; Platon, Aristoteles: Extrapolation; aristotelische und thomistische Theorie des Intellekts: verschiedene Substanzen - Engel

Textausschnitt: This dependence of human intellect on sense for its object and for the preparatory elaboration of its object implies that human intellect is essentially intellect-in-process or reason. We do have occasional flashes of insight; but angelic, and still more, divine knowledge is exclusively that sort of thing, a continuous blaze of the light of understanding. ... Hence the theory of innate ideas - and, one may add, of Kantian a priori forms - contradicts the experience we all have of working from, and on, a sensible basis towards understanding.
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As soon as Aristotle arrived at the meaning of the question, What is a man? he immediately concluded that the separate substances must be objects of a different type of knowledge and inquiry. The Platonist extrapolation to higher regions was modeled on the universal concept, and Aristotle rightly criticized the anthropomorphism of such a procedure. Aristotle's own extrapolation is not from universal concepts, but from the act of insight: ... Thus the pure Aristotelian theory of intellect is to be sought in the Aristotelian account of his separate substances ... Similarly, the pure Thomist theory of intellect is to be sought in the Thomist account of angelic knowledge, and from that account J. Peghaire rightly begins his investigation of Thomist notions of intellect and reason.
Now, just as human intellect is mainly reason, because it operates from sense as a starting point, so the quiddity known by the human intellect is different in kind from that known by the angelic. The angel has no senses, and so his acts of understanding cannot be insights into sensibly represented data

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Emanatio Intelligibilis; Unterschied zwischen dem Hervorgehen des inneren Wortes und dem nat. Werden

Kurzinhalt: emanatio intelligibilis; 3 Unterschiede: Potentialität - reine Intelligibilität

Textausschnitt: 54/1 The procession of the inner word, we are told, is an emanatio intelligibilis. This brings us to our main point. All causation is intelligible, but there are three differences between natural process and the procession of an inner word. The intelligibility of natural process is passive and potential: it is what can be understood; it is not an understanding; it is a potential object of intellect, but it is not the very stuff of intellect. Again, the intelligibility of natural process is the intelligibility of some specific natural law, say, the law of inverse squares, but never the intelligibility of the very idea of intelligible law. Thirdly, the intelligibility of natural process is imposed from without: natures act intelligibly, not because they are intelligent, for they are not, but because they are concretions of divine ideas and a divine plan.
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On the other hand, the intelligibility of the procession of an inner word is not passive nor potential; it is active and actual; it is intelligible because it is the activity of intelligence in act; it is intelligible, not as the possible object of understanding is intelligible, but as understanding itself and the activity of understanding is intelligible. Again, its intelligibility defies formulation in any specific law; inner words proceed according to the principles of identity,

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Der menschliche Verstand als Bild, nicht bloß als Spur der Trinität

Kurzinhalt: because its processions are intelligible in a manner that is essentially different from ... other natural process

Textausschnitt: Now it is only to restate the basic contention of this and subsequent articles to observe that the human mind is an image, and not a mere vestige, of the Blessed Trinity because its processions are intelligible in a manner that is essentially different from, that transcends, the passive, specific, imposed intelligibility of other natural process. Any effect has a sufficient ground in its cause; but an inner word not merely has a sufficient ground in the act of understanding it expresses; it also has a knowing as sufficient ground, and that ground is operative precisely as a knowing, knowing itself to be sufficient. To introduce a term that will summarize this, we may say that the inner word is rational, not indeed with the derived rationality of discourse, ... For human understanding, though it has its object in the phantasm and knows it in the phantasm, yet is not content with an object in this state. It pivots on itself to produce for itself another object which is the inner word as ratio, intentio, definitio, quod quid est.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Thomas: Intellekt ist quod quid est; inner word (inneres Wort) als Produkt des Verstehens

Kurzinhalt: Intellekt = Verstehen; intelligere is understanding; we do not know anything by sight unless it is colored. But the proper object of intellect is quod quid est

Textausschnitt: It remains that the principal meaning of intelligere is understanding. ... He repeatedly affirmed that the quod quid est is the proper object of intellect ...
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Whatever intellect knows, it knows through the quod quid est which is the substance of the object: just as whatever is known by sight is known through color, so what is known by intellect is known through the quod quid est. What cannot be known by intellect in that manner cannot be known at all. However,
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Apart from certain natural concepts, of which we shall speak later, it cannot even be suggested that Aquinas thought of conception as an automatic process. Conceptualization comes as the term and product of a process of reasoning. As long as the reasoning, the fluctuation of discourse, continues, the inner word is as yet unuttered. But it also is true that as long as the reasoning continues, we do not as yet understand; for until the inner word is uttered, we are not understanding but only thinking in order to understand.
'Again, no cognitive power knows anything except in relation to its proper object; for example, we do not know anything by sight unless it is colored. But the proper object of intellect is quod quid est, that is, the substance of the thing, ...
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In the second place, Aquinas considered the inner word to be a product of the act of understanding

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Conceptualization, inneres Wort, Begriffsbildung als Produkt des Verstehens (reasoning)

Kurzinhalt: inner word, in jeder Frage geht es um einen Mittelterm: when one asks what a stone is, one asks for the middle term between

Textausschnitt: Apart from certain natural concepts, of which we shall speak later, it cannot even be suggested that Aquinas thought of conception as an automatic process. Conceptualization comes as the term and product of a process of reasoning. As long as the reasoning, the fluctuation of discourse, continues, the inner word is as yet unuttered. But it also is true that as long as the reasoning continues, we do not as yet understand; for until the inner word is uttered, we are not understanding but only thinking in order to understand. Hence understanding and inner word are simultaneous, the former being the ground and cause of the latter.
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f one is willing to take a broad view on reasoning, to conceive syllogism with some of the intellectual suppleness of Aristotle, one will be willing to grant that every question either asks whether there is a middle term, or asks what the middle term is; that when one asks what a stone is, one asks for the middle term between the sensible data and the essential definition of the stone; between those two, there has to occur an act of understanding, and leading up to such understanding there is the discourse or reasoning of scientific method ... Already we have seen that from the fact that human understanding had its object in phantasm, Aquinas deduced that human intellect was mostly reason; one should not be surprised when he goes on to affirm that we have to reason in order to form concepts.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Abstraktion als Weglassen des Unwichtigen; 3 Grade von Abstraktion

Kurzinhalt: materia individualis, materia designata, materia signata; time and place as such explain nothing; interessant: to know the past as past ... is the work of sense; wieder: Beispiel Kreis

Textausschnitt: As a second preliminary, we may explain that by a psychological account of abstraction we mean the elimination by the understanding of the intellectually irrelevant because it is understood to be irrelevant. That, we submit, is the very point of the celebrated three degrees of abstraction. What is variously termed materia individualis, materia designata, materia signata, the hic et nunc, cannot be an explanatory factor in any science; it is irrelevant to all scientific explanation; it is irrelevant a priori; time and place as such explain nothing, ... Intellect abstracts from the hic et nunc. ... Properly, intellect does not remember; to know the past as past, like knowing the present, is the work of sense.
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In other words, the 'here and now,' or the 'there and then,' as such are irrelevant to understanding, explanation, the assigning of causes; and from them intellect abstracts, inasmuch as and because it understands that irrelevance. The datum 'round' is understood as necessitated by equal radii in a plane surface; 'equal radii in a plane surface' is abstracted as common matter from phantasm and spoken in an inner word
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The second degree of abstraction is similar to the first: as all science prescinds from the 'here and now,' so all mathematics prescinds from all sensible qualities - from colors, sounds, tactile experiences, tastes, odors; the color of the geometrical figure, of the arithmetical or algebraic symbol, is never relevant to the mathematical theorem.
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Finally, the third degree of abstraction prescinds from all matter, individual and common, sensible and intelligible, to treat of 'ens, unum, potentia et actus, et alia huiusmodi.' It does so, because metaphysical theorems are valid independently of any sensible matter of fact and of any condition of imagination.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: 3 Grade von Begriffsbildung, emanatio intelligibilis; Begriff als Ergebnis einer Einsicht

Kurzinhalt: Abstraktion nach Thomas (Aristoteles): abgeleitet vom Akt des Verstehens; Selbstbesitz des Verstehens als Bedingung der Begriffsbildung;

Textausschnitt: Conceptualization is the self-expression of an act of understanding; such self-expression is possible only because understanding is self-possessed, conscious of itself and its own conditions as understanding; insofar as the understanding has its conditions all within the intelligible order, the expression abstracts from all that is sensible and imaginable, and so is in the third degree; insofar as the understanding has conditions in the imaginable, but not in the empirical, order of sensible presentations, the abstraction is of the second degree; insofar as the understanding has conditions within the empirical order of sensible presentations, the abstraction is of the first degree; but there is always some abstraction; for the 'here and now' of sensible presentation or of imagination is never relevant to any understanding. ... The Aristotelian and Thomist theory of abstraction is not exclusively metaphysical; basically, it is psychological, that is, derived from the character of acts of understanding. On the other hand, it is in the self-possession of understanding as the ground of possible conceptualization that one may best discern what is meant by saying that the self-expression of understanding is an emanatio intelligibilis, a procession from knowledge as knowledge, and because of knowledge as knowledge.
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The concept is the definition, provided there is a definition. Perhaps enough has been said to make the point that defining is a fruit of intelligence, the quid rei of understanding the thing, and the quid nominis of understanding the language. But what about ultimate concepts that defy definition?

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: auch "letzte" Begriffe (hier: Potenz, Akt, ens) abgeleitet von Einsicht,

Kurzinhalt: Akt und Potenz abgeleitet von Einsicht, Intelligibilität als Grund von Potentialität, bumpkin, actus essendi

Textausschnitt: But what about ultimate concepts that defy definition? ... In closed eyes we discern the possibility of actual seeing; in eyes we discern the possibility of sight; what is possible is the act, and its possibility is the potency; both are objective, but the act is objective when it occurs, the potency when the act is possible; and that objectivity of possibility is, for instance, what makes die difference between an invention and a mere bright idea. Ultimate concepts, like derived concepts, proceed from understanding.
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I think much less ink would be spilt on the concept of ens were more attention paid to its origin in the act of understanding. Tell any bumpkin a plausible tale and he will remark, 'Well now, that may be so.' 'Well now, that may be so.' He is not perhaps exercising consciously the virtue of wisdom, which has the function of knowing the 'ratio entis et non entis.' But his understanding has expressed itself as grasp of possible being. Intelligibility is the ground of possibility, and possibility is the possibility of being; equally, unintelligibility is the ground of impossibility, and impossibility means impossibility of being.
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Hence, the first operation of intellect regards quiddities, but the second, judgment, regards esse, the actus essendi. Note, however, that being is not reduced through possibility to intelligibility as to prior concepts; being is the first concept; what is prior to the first concept is, not a prior concept, but an act of understanding

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Erfahrung ist nicht eigentlich die Quelle des Seins, sonst wäre das Sein reduziert auf Erfahrung - Kant

Kurzinhalt: though it is not as such the source of the concept of being - else, as Kant held,

Textausschnitt: To affirm actual being, more than a plausible tale is wanted; for experience, though it is not as such the source of the concept of being - else, as Kant held, the real would have to be confined to the field of possible experience - still it is the condition of the transition from the affirmation of the possibility to the affirmation of the actuality of being. Hence, the first operation of intellect regards quiddities, but the second, judgment, regards esse, the actus essendi. Note, however, that being is not reduced through possibility to intelligibility as to prior concepts; being is the first concept; what is prior to the first concept is, not a prior concept, but an act of understanding; and like other concepts, the concept of being is an effect of the act of understanding.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: der Begriff des Seins (Seinsbegriff) als conceptualization des Intellekts selbst u. die Folgerungen daraus

Kurzinhalt: but the concept of being, on the above showing, is the conceptualization of intelligibility as such; potens omnia fieri; d. Seinsbegriff ist nicht analog

Textausschnitt: From this it follows that the concept of being is natural to intellect; for intelligibility is natural to intellect, for it is its act; and conceptualization is natural to intellect, for it is its activity; but the concept of being, on the above showing, is the conceptualization of intelligibility as such, and so it too is natural to intellect.
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Again, it follows that the content of the concept of being is indeterminate; for it is conceived from any act of understanding whatever; it proceeds from intelligibility in act as such. Again, it follows that the concept of being cannot be unknown to intellect; for its sole condition is that intellect be in any act of understanding. Again, it follows that being is the object of intellect: for intellect would not be intellect were it not at least potens omnia fieri, in potency to any intelligibility; but what of its nature is potens omnia fieri must have being as its object. Finally, it is impossible to recount in a sentence or so the position of Aquinas on analogy; but one may note briefly that, on the above showing, the concept of being cannot but be analogous; being is always conceived in the same way - as the expression of intelligibility or intelligence in act

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Zwei Arten der processio: Definition, Urteil; Ähnlichkeit und Unterschied

Kurzinhalt: parallel between the two types of procession of inner words. Both definition and judgment proceed from acts of understanding

Textausschnitt: It may be helpful to indicate at once the parallel between the two types of procession of inner words. Both definition and judgment proceed from acts of understanding, but the former from direct, the latter from reflective understanding. Both acts of understanding have their principal cause in the agent intellect, but ... Again, both acts of understanding have their instrumental or material causes, but the direct act has this cause in a schematic image or phantasm, while the reflective act reviews not only imagination but also sense experience, and direct acts of understanding, and definitions, to find in all taken together the sufficient ground or evidence for a judgment. Hence, while the direct act of understanding generates in definition the expression of the intelligibility of a phantasm, the reflective act generates in judgment the expression of consciously possessed truth through which reality is both known and known to be known.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Compositio vel divisio: zweites inneres Wort; Thomas über "ist" (est)

Kurzinhalt: origin in the Aristotelian use of grammar for..., est, simpliciter dictum, significat in actu esse, but consequently and implicitly, 'est' means the true or false

Textausschnitt: Compositio vel divisio is the usual Thomist name for the second type of inner word. Its origin lies in the Aristotelian use of grammar for the specification of philosophic problems. In the Categories one is told to distinguish between simple and composite forms of speech: the latter are illustrated by 'the man runs,' 'the man wins'; the former by 'man,' 'runs,' 'wins.' In the Peri hermeneias ...
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This passage Aquinas discussed at length, drawing an illuminating distinction between the primary and the consequent meanings of the verb 'est.' Primarily, '[...] est, simpliciter dictum, significat in actu esse'; but consequently and implicitly, 'est' means the true or false. For the primary meaning of 'est' is the actuality of any form or act, substantial or accidental; but consequently (because actuality involves synthesis with the actuated), and implicitly (because the actuated subject is understood when actuality is affirmed), there is the connotation of truth or falsity in this and other verbs.
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In Aristotle, it is true, this distinction between the merely synthetic element in judgment and, on the other hand, the positing of synthesis is not drawn clearly.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Compositio: im Ding, im inneren und äußeren Wort; Wahrheit als Synthese im Geist und Ding

Kurzinhalt: Sokrates ist ein Mann; truth is not merely the subjective, mental synthesis. It is the correspondence between mental and real synthesis; incomplexa erkannt als complex und inversely

Textausschnitt: there is the real composition in things themselves; there is the composition of inner words in the mind; there is the composition of outer words in speech and writing. The last of these three is obvious:
... However, there is no doubt about the existence of an inner composition: ... Finally, the ground and cause of the composition that occurs in the mind and in speech is a real composition in the thing. Thus, the proposition 'Socrates is a man' has its ground and cause in the composition of a human form with the individual matter of Socrates; the proposition 'Socrates is white' has its ground and cause in the composition of a real accident 'whiteness' with a real subject 'Socrates.'
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The one point to be noted here is that truth is not merely the subjective, mental synthesis. It is the correspondence between mental and real synthesis. More accurately, in our knowledge of composite things, truth is the correspondence of mental composition with real composition or of mental division with real division; falsity is the noncorrespondence of mental composition to real division or of mental division to real composition.
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But besides our knowledge of composite substances there are three other cases in which the foregoing account of truth suffers modal variations: in our knowledge of simple substances the incomplexa are known complexe; inversely, when simple substances know composite objects, the complexe are known incomplexe; finally, in the self-knowledge of the absolutely simple substance, knowing and known are an identity, and so truth can be named a correspondence in that case only by the artifice of a double negation

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Methode in der Theologie

Titel: Methode in der Theologie

Stichwort: Entfremdung; Nichtbeachtung der transzendentalen Vorschriften; Die Grundform der Ideologie

Kurzinhalt: ... nach der hier vorgelegten Analyse besteht die Grundform der Entfremdung in der Nichtbeachtung der transzendentalen Vorschriften: Sei aufmerksam; sei einsichtig; sei vernünftig; sei verantwortungsbewußt!

Textausschnitt: 81/II Der Begriff Entfremdung wird in vielfältig verschiedenem Sinn gebraucht, doch nach der hier vorgelegten Analyse besteht die Grundform der Entfremdung in der Nichtbeachtung der transzendentalen Vorschriften: Sei aufmerksam; sei einsichtig; sei vernünftig; sei verantwortungsbewußt! Die Grundform der Ideologie ist demnach eine Lehre, die solche Entfremdung zu rechtfertigen sucht. Von diesen Grundformen können alle anderen abgeleitet werden, da die Grundformen das Sozialgut verderben. Wie die Selbst-Transzendenz den Fortschritt fördert, so wendet die Verweigerung der Selbst-Transzendenz den Fortschritt in kumulativen Niedergang. (66; Fs) (notabene)

82/II Abschließend möchten wir anmerken, daß eine Religion, die die Selbst-Transzendenz nicht nur bis zur Gerechtigkeit, sondern bis zur sich-selbst-aufopfernden Liebe vorantreibt, in der Menschengemeinschaft eine Erlösungsrolle spielen wird, insofern eine solche Liebe das Unheil des Niedergangs rückgängig machen und den kumulativen Prozeß des Fortschritts wiederherstellen kann.1 (66; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Aristoteles: Synthese des Verstandes vielleicht gebildet nach Empedokles' Vorstellung der Entstehung

Kurzinhalt: Beispiel: Diagonale, Maß, irrationale Zahl: ich kann jedes dieser Elemente einzeln verstehen: it is a third to see that an irrational cannot be a measure; 2 Begriffe verschmelzen in einem

Textausschnitt: Mental synthesis is of concepts. As one defined term proceeds from one insight into phantasm, so two defined terms proceed from two insights. Such multiple insights and definitions may be separate, isolated, atomic. But it also happens that one insight combines with another,
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For he appealed to the naive evolutionary theory of Empedocles that fancied an initial state of nature in which heads existed apart from necks and trunks apart from limbs ...
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In like manner, Aristotle contended, intellect puts together what before were apart. It is one thing to understand that the diagonal stands to the side of a square as root two to unity; it is another to grasp that that proportion is an irrational; it is a third to see that an irrational cannot be a measure.
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Note the nature of the conjunction: it is not that two concepts merge into one concept; that would be mere confusion; concepts remain eternally and immutably distinct.b But while two concepts remain distinct as concepts, they may cease to be two intelligibilities and merge into one.
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where before there were two acts of understanding, expressed singly in two concepts, now there is but one act of understanding, expressed in the combination of two concepts. This combination of two, as a combination, forms but a single intelligible, a single though composite object of a single act of understanding.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Thomas: intelligere multa per unum: auch bei Prinzipien

Kurzinhalt: Psychologische Tatsache: Einsichten bilden höhere Einheiten,

Textausschnitt: The psychological fact that insights are not unrelated atoms, that they develop, coalesce, form higher unities, was fully familiar to Aquinas. ... Knowledge of first principles is not exclusively a matter of comparing abstract terms or concepts; no less than the terms, the nexus between them may be directly abstracted from phantasm, so that, just as the concept, so also the principle may be the expression of an insight into phantasm.
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The summit of such sweep and penetration is the divine intellect; for the divine act of understanding is one, yet it embraces in a single view all possibles and the prodigal multiplicity of actual beings

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Thomas, natürlich gewusste Prinzipien, 2 Arten von ersten Prinzipien; ens als Objekt, principle of noncontradiction

Kurzinhalt: Such a natural habit differs both from acquired habit and from infused habit, Satz vom Widerspruch, Ganzes - Teil,

Textausschnitt: Reasoning not merely terminates in understanding; equally it begins from understanding; for unless we understood something, we never should begin to reason at all. Accordingly, to avoid an infinite regress, it is necessary to posit a habitus princpiorum, which naturally we possessc. Such a natural habit differs both from acquired habit and from infused habit. The natural habit, though it has a determination from sense, results strictly from intellectual light alone; the acquired habit ... Nowhere, to my knowledge, did Aquinas offer to give a complete list of naturally known principles. His stock examples are the principle of noncontradiction and of the whole being greater than the part. But it does not follow that the list of such principles is quite indeterminate. As there are naturally known principles, so also there is an object which we know per se and naturally. That object is ens; and only principles founded upon our knowledge of ens are naturally known.
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If we are correct in urging that intelligibility is the ground of possibility and that possibility is possibility of being, so that the concept of being is known naturally because it proceeds from any intelligibility in act (= any intelligence in act), then it is equally clear that the principle of noncontradiction is known naturally; for ...
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The other stock example of a naturally known principle is that the whole is greater than the part. ... For, as every being is one, so every finite being is a whole compounded of parts, an ens quod made up of entia quibus. Moreover, we know this naturally. Natural form stands to natural matter, as intelligible form stands to sensible matter; and when by a natural spontaneity we ask quid sit, we reveal our natural knowledge that the material or sensible component is only a part and that the whole includes a formal component as well.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Thomas: Prinzip: das Ganze ist größer als das Teil

Kurzinhalt: Zwei Fragen offenbaren die Gültigkeit dieses Prinzips: quid sit? An sit?

Textausschnitt: The other stock example of a naturally known principle is that the whole is greater than the part. ... For, as every being is one, so every finite being is a whole compounded of parts, an ens quod made up of entia quibus. Moreover, we know this naturally. Natural form stands to natural matter, as intelligible form stands to sensible matter; and when by a natural spontaneity we ask quid sit, we reveal our natural knowledge that the material or sensible component is only a part and that the whole includes a formal component as well. Similarly, when by a natural spontaneity we ask an sit, we again reveal our natural knowledge that the whole is not just a quiddity but includes an actus essendi as well.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Composition or Division: Zusammenfassung

Kurzinhalt: Fifthly, reasoning in its essence is simply the development of insight; it is motion towards understanding. In the concrete such development is a dialectical interplay of sense, memory, imagination, insight, definition, critical reflection, judgment ...

Textausschnitt: Next, many insights into many phantasms express themselves severally in many definitions; none of these singly is true or false; nor are all together true or false, for as yet they are not together. Thirdly, what brings definitions together is not some change in the definitions; it is a change in the insights whence they proceed. Insights coalesce and develop; they grow into apprehensions of intelligibility on a deeper level and with a wider sweep; and these pro-founder insights are expressed, at times indeed by the invention of such baffling abstractions as classicism or romanticism, education, evolution, or the philosophia perennis, but more commonly and more satisfactorily by the combination, as combination, of simple concepts. Fourthly, such synthetic sweep and penetration comes at first blush to the angel, but man has to reason to it; his intellect is discursive. Still, it is not pure discourse. Without initial and natural acts of understanding, reasoning would never begin; nor would there be profit or term to reasoning, did it not naturally end in an act of understanding in which the multiple elements of the reasoning process come into focus in a single view. Fifthly, reasoning in its essence is simply the development of insight; it is motion towards understanding. In the concrete such development is a dialectical interplay of sense, memory, imagination, insight, definition, critical reflection, judgment; we bring to bear on the issue all the resources at our command. Still, the more intelligent we are, the more we are capable of knowing ex pede Herculem; then the more rapid is our progress to the goal of understanding, and the less is our appeal to the stylized reasoning of textbooks on formal logic. Again, once we understand, we no longer bother to reason; we take in the whole at a glance. With remarkable penetration Aquinas refused to take as reason the formal affair that modern logicians invent machines to perform. He defined reason as development in understanding; and to that, formal reasoning is but an aid.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Urteil: Wissen und Sinneswahrnehmung ist weder wahr noch falsch, erst die Reflexion darüber

Kurzinhalt: The issue, then, is not knowledge as true or false but knowledge as known to be true or false;

Textausschnitt: The issue, then, is not knowledge as true or false but knowledge as known to be true or false. Even sense knowledge may be true or false. Just as good and bad regard the perfection of the thing, so true and false regard the perfection of a knowing. True knowing is similar, false is dissimilar, to the known. But though sense knowledge must be either similar or dissimilar to its object, it neither does nor can include knowledge of its similarity or dissimilarity. Again, a concept must be either similar or dissimilar to its object; but intellectual operation on the level of conceptualization does not include knowledge of such similarity or dissimilarity. It is only in the second type of intellectual operation, only in the production of the second type of inner word,

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Problem der Übereinstimmung zw. Gewusstem und Ding; Thomas Antwort auf den naiven Realist

Kurzinhalt: a comparison between the knowing and its standard; Thomas wusste um den Maß im Urteil, The Thomist standard lay in the principles of the intellect itself:

Textausschnitt: Such reflection presents a familiar puzzle. To judge that my knowing is similar to the known involves a comparison between the knowing and its standard; but either the standard is known or it is not known; if it is known, then really the comparison is between two items of knowledge, and one might better maintain that we know directly without any comparing; on the other hand, if the standard is not known, there cannot be a comparison. This dilemma of futility or impossibility frightens the naive realist, who consequently takes refuge in the flat affirmation that we know,
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Not only did he admit the necessity of a standard, but also he does not seem to have considered as standard either of the alternatives against which the above dilemma is operative; for his standard was neither the thing-in-itself as thing-in-itself and so as unknown, nor was it some second inner representation of the thing-in-itself coming to the aid of the first in a futile and superfluous effort to be helpful.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Schlaf: Form außerhalb von Raum u. Zeit; Urteil immer in Zeit; Mathematik, Naturwissenschaft

Kurzinhalt: quod quid est takes us outside time and space; but the act of compositio vel divisio: specification of time; Wahrheit immer im mind; nur in Gott ewige Wahrheit

Textausschnitt: Knowledge of the quod quid est takes us outside time and space; but the act of compositio vel divisio involves a return to the concrete. In particular, whatever may be hymned about eternal truths, human judgments always involve a specification of time. Indeed, since truth exists only in a mind, and since only the mind of God is eternal, there can be but one eternal truth.
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Automatically, the natural scientist who neglects sense falls into error; his work is to judge things as they are presented to the senses. On the other hand, the mathematician is not to be criticized because no real plane surface touches no real sphere at just one point; the criterion of mathematical judgment is not sense but imagination. Similarly, metaphysical entities are not to be called into question because they cannot be imagined; for metaphysics transcends not only sense but imagination as well.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Urteil: material und formal, zweifache Quelle: Sinn, intelletktuelles Licht; 'ratio terminatur ad intellectum'

Kurzinhalt: materially from developing insight (which unites distinct intelligibilities into single intelligibilities); formally from a reflective activity of reason

Textausschnitt: Judgment, then, may be described as resulting remotely and, as it were, materially from developing insight, which unites distinct intelligibilities into single intelligibilities, but proximately and, as it were, formally from a reflective activity of reason. This reflective activity involves the whole man, and so it is conditioned psychologically by a necessity of being wide awake. Again, human knowledge has a twofold origin - an extrinsic origin in sensitive impressions, and an intrinsic origin in intellectual light in which virtually the whole of science is precontained. Hence the reflective activity whence judgment results is a return from the syntheses effected by developing insight to their sources in sense and in intellectual light.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Urteil als Hervorgang des 2. inneren Wortes; processio, emanatio intelligibilis; Urteil: Zusammenfassung

Kurzinhalt: For no less than the first type of inner word, the second also proceeds from an intelligere; Intellekt: 1 Ebenen von Aktivität

Textausschnitt: ... and we may infer that the reflective activity of reason returning from the synthesis of intelligibilities to its origin in sense and in naturally known principles terminates in a reflective act of understanding, in a single synthetic apprehension of all the motives for judgment, whether intellectual or sensitive, in a grasp of their sufficiency as motives and so of the necessity of passing judgment or assenting. For no less than the first type of inner word, the second also proceeds from an intelligere. No less than the procession of the first type, the procession of the second is an emanatio intelligibilis.
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The general outline of Thomist analysis of human intellect is now, perhaps, discernible. There are two levels of activity, the direct and the reflective. On the direct level there occur two types of events: there are insights into phantasm which express themselves in definitions; there is the coalescence or development of insights which provides the hypothetical syntheses of simple quiddities. On the reflective level these hypothetical syntheses are known as hypothetical; they become questions which are answered by the resolutio in principia. This return to sources terminates in a reflective act of understanding, which is a grasp of necessary connection between the sources and the hypothetical synthesis; from this grasp there proceeds its self-expression, which is the compositio vel divisio, the judgment, the assent.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: 3 Arten von intellekturellen Habitus, duale Weisheit; Weisheit als Grund von Intellekt u. Wissenschaft

Kurzinhalt: science, intellect, wisdom; habit of intellect: the first principles of demonstrations; habit of wisdom: the first principles of reality; Intellekt u. Weisheit in Bezug auf Erfassung d Prinzipien; virtus quaedam omnium scientiarum

Textausschnitt: There are, then, three habits of speculative intellect. Most easily recognized of the three is the habit of science, which has to do with the demonstration of conclusions. However, demonstration does not admit indefinite regress, and so there must be some prior habit that regards first principles. In fact, two such prior habits are affirmed, intellect and wisdom ... For the habit of intellect regards the first principles of demonstrations, while the habit of wisdom regards the first principles of reality. The habit of intellect is comparatively simple: grasp of first principles of demonstrations results from knowledge of their component terms; if one knows what a whole is and what a part is, one cannot but see that the whole must be greater than its part; the habit of such seeing is the habit of intellect.
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On the other hand, the habit of wisdom has a dual role. Principally, it regards the objective order of reality; but in some fashion it also has to do with the transition from the order of thought to the order of reality. ... While art orders human products, and prudence orders human conduct, science discovers the order which art prudently exploits; but there is a highest, architectonic science, a science of sciences - and that is wisdom.
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The habit of intellect is the habit of knowing the first principles of demonstrations; but knowledge of first principles is just a function of knowledge of their component terms. If the simple apprehension of these terms is a matter of direct understanding, still it is wisdom that passes judgment on the validity of such apprehensions and so by validating the component terms validates even first principles themselves.
... Hence both intellect and science depend upon the judgment of wisdom. Intellect depends upon wisdom for the validity of the component terms of principles; science depends upon wisdom for the validity of its consequence from intellect; so that wisdom, besides being in its own right the science of the real as real, also is 'virtus quaedam omnium scientiarum.'

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Lonergan, Aristoteles Metaphysik: Buch 1: Ursachen, 2-5: epistemologisch ... 6: Substanz, Potenz

Kurzinhalt: Epistemologie in Metaphysik schon bei Aristoteles; Philosophie als Weisheit; Eule, Straße; thus truth and reality are parallel:

Textausschnitt: Acknowledgment of an epistemological element in the habit of wisdom goes back to its classical exposition in the Metaphysics of Aristotle. ... But for a resumption of the objective viewpoint so established, one must leap to book 6 (E). There one finds an account of the real, followed by accounts of substance or essence, of (potency and act, of unity and opposition, and of the separate substances. But the intervening books 2 to 5 are gnoseological, methodological, almost epistemological. Knowledge of causes has to be true.
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One may say that philosophers are in the position of people walking the streets; to know the facades of houses is easy, but to know their interiors difficult. So too, there are palpable truths and hidden truths. In particular, knowledge of the separate substances is hard to come by, for in their regard we are just owls in daylight
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Thus truth and reality are parallel: what has a cause of its reality, also has a cause of its truth; again, as the reality that grounds other reality is the more real, so the truth that grounds other truth is the more true; as an infinite regress in the demonstration of truths is untenable, so also is an infinite regress in the grounding of one reality by another. There is, then, something of which the reality is most real and the truth most true, and it is the object of wisdom.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Unvollständigkeit der arstotelischen Metaphysik

Kurzinhalt: Identität im Verstehen, der Akt des Dinges als esse naturale, aber dieses esse ist nicht identisch mit dem Wissen selbst (außer bei Gott)

Textausschnitt: Again, the wise man knows the difference between appearance and reality. He is ready to refute the sophistries that would confound the two, but he is not prepared to discuss how our immanent activities also contain a transcendence. Aristotelian gnoseology is brilliant but it is not complete:e knowledge is by identity; the act of the thing as sensible is the act of sensation; the act of the thing as intelligible is the act of understanding; but the act of die thing as real is the esse naturale of the thing and, except in divine self-knowledge, that esse is not identical with knowing it.
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But the problem of knowledge, once it is granted that knowledge is by identity, is knowledge of the other. As long as faculty and object are in potency to knowing and being known, there is as yet no knowledge. Inasmuch as faculty and object are in act identically, there is knowledge indeed as perfection but not yet knowledge of the other. Reflection is required, first, to combine sensible data with intellectual insight in the expression of a quod quid est, of an essence that prescinds from its being known, and then, on a deeper level, to affirm the existence of that essence. Only by reflection on the identity of act can one arrive at the difference of potency. And since reflection is not an identity, the Aristotelian theory of knowledge by identity is incomplete.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Unterschied zw. Plato und Aristoteles im Hinblick auf das Wissen: Identität - Anschauung

Kurzinhalt: One knows by what one is; the reason why we know is within us; It is the light of our own intellects

Textausschnitt: But it is well to grasp just where the strength of the Aristotelian position lies. One might side with Plato and say knowing of its nature is knowing the other. But this brings up insoluble difficulties with regard to knowledge in the absolute being; for even Plato was forced to admit, in virtue of his assumptions, that absolute being, if it knows, must undergo motion.
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Aquinas was quite aware of this profound cleavage between Platonist and Aristotelian gnoseology: 'Et hoc quidem oportet verum esse secundum sententiam Aristotelis, qui ponit quod intelligere contingit per hoc quod intellectum in actu sit unum cum intellectu in actu ... Secundum autem positionem Platonis, intelligere fit per contactum intellectus ad rem intelligibilem, [...]"
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The Thomist validation of rational reflection is connected with the Augustinian vision of eternal truth. Augustine had argued that we know truth not by looking without but by looking within ourselves.
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Now the Platonism of this position is palpable, for its ultimate answer is not something that we are but something that we see; it supposes that knowledge essentially is not identity with the known but some spiritual contact or confrontation with the known. Such a view Aquinas could not accept. One knows by what one is. Our knowledge of truth is not to be accounted for by any vision or contact or confrontation with the other, however lofty and sublime. The ultimate ground of our knowing is indeed God, the eternal Light; but the reason why we know is within us. It is the light of our own intellects; and by it we can know because 'ipsum enim lumen intellectuale quod est in nobis, nihil est aliud quam quaedam participata similitudo luminis increati.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Thomas und Epistemologie; Unterschied zw. Sinn u. Intellekt

Kurzinhalt: Thomas wusste darum, dass sich die Wahrheit vom Wissen um uns selbst herleitet

Textausschnitt: The act of the thing as sensible is the act of sensation; the act of the thing as intelligible is the act of understanding; but we can proceed from these identities to valid concepts of essence and true affirmations of existence, because such procession is in virtue of our intellectual light, which is a participation of eternal Light. Such is the Thomist ontology of knowledge. But is there also a Thomist epistemology?
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Now there happens to be a text in which Aquinas did maintain that our knowledge of truth is derived from our knowledge of ourselves. Sense knowledge, because unreflective, is irrelevant to the procession of the Word.
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Sense knowledge is true; sense is aware of its own acts of sensation. But sense, though true and though conscious, nevertheless is not conscious of its own truth; for sense does not know its own nature, nor the nature of its acts, nor their proportion to their objects. On the other hand, intellectual knowledge is not merely true but also aware of its own truth. It is not merely aware empirically of its acts but also reflects upon their nature; to know the nature of its acts, it has to know the nature of their active principle, which it itself is; and if it knows its own nature, intellect also knows its own proportion to knowledge of reality. Further, this difference between sense and intellect is a difference in reflective capacity. In knowing, we go outside ourselves; in reflecting, we return in upon ourselves. But the inward return of sense is incomplete,

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Erkenntnis d. Seele, Intellekt: in genere intelligibilium

Kurzinhalt: human intellect: in genere intelligibilium just a potency; Sehen: nicht seiner selbst bewusst, darum schon untauglich für die Erklärung des Intellekts

Textausschnitt: Knowledge of soul, then, begins from a distinction of objects; specifying objects leads to a discrimination between different kinds of act; different kinds of act reveal difference of potency; and the different combinations of potencies lead to knowledge of the different essences that satisfy the generic definition of soul.
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Thus the human soul does not know itself by a direct grasp of its own essence; that is the prerogative of God and of the angels. ... The fact is that human intellect is in genere intelligibilium just a potency; unless its potency is reduced to act, it neither understands nor is understood. On the other hand, the acquisition of an understanding of anything, of any habitual scientific knowledge, makes our intellect habitually capable not only of understanding the scientific object in question but also of understanding itself. ... It was by scrutinizing both the object understood and the understanding intellect that Aristotle investigated the nature of possible intellect. And, indeed, we can have no knowledge of our intellects except by reflecting on our own acts of understanding. Evidently, the Aristotelian and Thomist program is not a matter of considering ocular vision and then conceiving an analogous spiritual vision that is attributed to a spiritual faculty named intellect. On the contrary, it is a process of introspection that discovers the act of insight into phantasm and the definition as an expression of the insight, that
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... there is to be found in the independent Thomist writings not a few additional points of introspective psychology. Of these the most fundamental is the distinction between what we should call an empirical awareness of our inner acts and a scientific grasp of their nature. The scientific grasp is in terms of objects, acts, potencies, essence of soul.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Argument gegen Averroisten; thomistische Psychologie

Kurzinhalt: The standard argument against the Averroists was the affirmation 'hic homo intelligit'; grasp the nature of your acts of understanding, and you have the key to the whole of Thomist psychology.

Textausschnitt: The standard argument against the Averroists was the affirmation 'hic homo intelligit': deny such a proposition, and since you too are an instance of hic homo, you put yourself out of court as one who understands nothing; but admit it, and you must also admit that each individual has his own private intellectus possibilis by which he understands.
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... grasp the nature of your acts of understanding, and you have the key to the whole of Thomist psychology.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: intellektuelles Licht, light of agent intellect: known per se ipsum; Vergleich: intellektuelles, körperliches Licht

Kurzinhalt: agent intellect: known per se ipsum; soul: does not know its own essence by its own essence; but its own intellectual light by its own intellectual light

Textausschnitt: For Aquinas the term 'intellectual light' is not simply a synonym for the Aristotelian term 'agent intellect.' He debated with the Avicennists whether agent intellect was immanent or transcendent. But he never thought of debating whether intellectual light is immanent or transcendent. Indeed, when he argued that agent intellect was immanent, he was arguing for an identification of agent intellect with the ground of intellectual light. Hence ... Both the nature of agent intellect and, in particular, Aristotle's comparison of agent intellect with light, lead one to identify agent intellect with the immanent cause of "What we call the flash of understanding, the light of reason. What is, then, this lumen animae nostrae?
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Just as corporeal light is seen in seeing any color, so also intelligible light is seen in apprehending any intelligibility. Again, just as corporeal light is seen, not as an object, but in knowing an object, so also intelligible light is seen, not as an object, but 'in ratione medii cognoscendi." Thirdly, intellectual light is a medium not in the sense that it is a known object by means of which another object is known; it is a medium in the sense that it makes other objects knowable. Just as the eye need not see light except insofar as colors are illuminated, so a medium in the given sense need not be known in itself but only in other known objects. Fourthly, with these restrictions we may say that the light of agent intellect is known per se ipsum. The soul does not know its own essence by its own essence; but in some fashion it does know its own intellectual light by its own intellectual light, not indeed to the extent that that light is an object, but inasmuch as that light is the element making species intelligible in act.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Manifestation des intellektuellen Lichtes, prima lux, zweifache Quelle unserer Erkenntnis, visio beatifica

Kurzinhalt: the light of agent intellect is said to manifest first principles, our intellectual light derives its efficacy from the prima lux which is God, beatific vision, Kunst

Textausschnitt: There is, then, a manner in which the light of our souls enters within the range of introspective observation. The most conspicuous instance seems to be our grasp of first principles. Scientific conclusions are accepted because they are implied by first principles; but the assent to first principles has to have its motive too, for assent is rational; and that motive is the light that naturally is within us. ... Just as conclusions are convincing because principles are convincing, so our intellectual light derives its efficacy from the prima lux which is God. Hence the divine and the human teachers may collaborate without any confusion of role. The human teacher teaches inasmuch as he reduces conclusions to principles; but all the certitude we possess, whether of conclusions or of principles, comes from the intellectual light within us by which God speaks to us.
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However, the experienced effects of intellectual light, as the evidence of principles, the motive of assent, the immanent ground of certitude, are not the only instances in which intellectual light, in its indirect fashion, enters into the range of consciousness. It is constitutive of our very power of understanding. It is the principle of inquiry and of discourse ...
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As the principle of inquiry, intellectual light is the source of that search for causes which reveals the natural desire of man for die beatific vision. Our knowledge has a twofold source - an extrinsic origin on the level of sense, but an intrinsic origin in the light of our intellects. Sense is only the materia causae of our knowledge. The object of understanding is supplied and offered to us, as it were materially, by the imagination; formally, as object of understanding, it is completed by intellectual light. Perhaps, agent intellect is to be given the function of the subconscious effect of ordering the phantasm to bring about the right schematic image that releases the flash of understanding; for agent intellect is to phantasm as art is to artificial products.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: intellectus possibilis; Rahner scheint über Loergan hinauszugehen

Kurzinhalt:

Textausschnitt: With regard to the act of understanding itself, at all times a distinction is drawn between possible intellect, habit of science, and the actuation of this habit; but in earlier writings there is a further distinction introduced within the habit of science between an element of light and, on the other hand, species as element of determination. ... Hence, while phantasm caused in possible intellect the determination of the act of understanding, agent intellect caused the element of immaterialization, of intelligibility in act.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Thomas, Aristoteles, Urteil im Verhältnis zum intellektuellen Licht; Prophet: Urteil

Kurzinhalt: relation of intellectual light to judgment -> beyond the Aristotelian theory of agent intellect; Urteil des Propheten, cognitional potency ->s fixed by the light under which it operates

Textausschnitt: Inasmuch as the act of understanding grasps its own conditions as the understanding of this sort of thing, it abstracts from the irrelevant and expresses itself in a definition of essence. But inasmuch as the act of understanding grasps its own transcendence-in-immanence, its quality of intellectual light as a participation of the divine and uncreated Light, it expresses itself in judgment, in a positing of truth, in the affirmation or negation of reality.
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For it is the light of intellect that replaces the Augustinian vision of eternal truth; and regularly one reads that we know, we understand, we judge all things by a created light within us which is a participation, a resultant, a similitude, an impression of the first and eternal light and truth. ... The range of a cognitional potency is fixed by the light under which it operates: ... Knowing truth is a use or act of intellectual light, and so judgment occurs according to the force of that light. Hence the prophet judges according to an infused light, and the essence of prophecy lies in such judgment; for a prophet need not be the recipient of a revelation but only pass judgment on data revealed to another; such was the case of Joseph, who judged Pharaoh's dreams; such also perhaps was the case of Solomon, who judged with greater certitude and from a divine instinct what naturally is known about nature and human morals.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Thomas: Betonung der Unbegrentzheit des natürlichen Lichtes; Seinsbegriff

Kurzinhalt: as active is potens omnia facere; as passive, it is potens omnia fieri; intellectual light is referred to its origin in uncreated Light

Textausschnitt: ... Thomist thought does stress that native infinity, and on the other hand, from such infinity one can grasp the capacity of the mind to know reality.
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as active is potens omnia facere; as passive, it is potens omnia fieri. This is not merely an Aristotelian commonplace which Aquinas endlessly repeated; he also knew how to transpose and apply it in rather startling fashion. Any finite act of understanding has to be a pati, because intellect as intellect is infinite. Because of its infinite range, the object of intellect must be ens; this object cannot be unknown; it is known per se and naturally. As there are different types of intellect, so there are different modes of knowing ens. Since ...
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For the concept of ens is not just another concept, another quod quid est, another but most general essence; the concept of ens is any concept, any quod quid est, any essence, when considered, not as some highest common factor nor again simply in itself, but in its relation to its own actus essendi, which is known in the act of judgment. ... further, since we know we know by knowing what we are, it is by reflection on the nature of intellect that we know our capacity for truth and for knowledge of reality. But the native infinity of intellect as intellect is a datum of rational consciousness. It appears in that restless spirit of inquiry, that endless search for causes which, Aquinas argued, can rest and end only in a supernatural vision of God. ... Just as Thomist thought is an ontology of knowledge inasmuch as intellectual light is referred to its origin in uncreated Light, so too it is more than an embryonic epistemology inasmuch as intellectual light reflectively grasps its own nature and the commensuration of that nature to the universe of reality.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Leben -> Aktualisierung der Potentialität des natürlichen Lichtes (Schema); Prinzip des Auschluss des Dritten

Kurzinhalt: child -> learn to distinguish between fact and fiction; to say that any X is real is just to assign it a place in that scheme; how do we grasp the scheme itself? At its root it is just the principle of excluded middle

Textausschnitt: The child has to learn to distinguish sharply between fact and fiction; the young man has not yet acquired a sufficiently nuanced grasp of human living for the study of ethics to be profitable; each of us, confronted with something outside the beaten track of our experience, turns to the expert to be taught just what it is. Still, in all this progress we are but discriminating, differentiating, categorizing the details of a scheme that somehow we possessed from the start. To say that any X is real is just to assign it a place in that scheme; to deny the reality of any Y is to deny it a place in the universal scheme.
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But how do we grasp the scheme itself? At its root it is just the principle of excluded middle: X either is or else is not. And in its details the scheme is just the actuation of our capacity to conceive any essence and rationally affirm its existence and its relations. Since within that scheme both we ourselves and all our acts of conceiving and of judging are no more than particular and not too important items, the critical problem - and this is our second remark - is not a problem of moving from within outwards, of moving from a subject to an object outside the subject. It is a problem of moving from above downwards, of moving from an infinite potentiality commensurate with the universe towards a rational apprehension that seizes the difference of subject and object in essentially the same way that it seizes any other real distinction. Thus

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Kritisches Problem: Bewegung nicht von Subjekt zu Objekt, sondern von "oben" nach "unten"; Realismus

Kurzinhalt: Problem of moving from an infinite potentiality commensurate with the universe towards a rational apprehension ...; unmittelbarer Realismus

Textausschnitt: the critical problem - and this is our second remark - is not a problem of moving from within outwards, of moving from a subject to an object outside the subject. It is a problem of moving from above downwards, of moving from an infinite potentiality commensurate with the universe towards a rational apprehension that seizes the difference of subject and object in essentially the same way that it seizes any other real distinction. Thus realism is immediate, not because it is naive and unreasoned and blindly affirmed, but because we know the real before we know such a difference within the real as the difference between subject and object. Again, the critical problem has the appearance of insolubility only because the true concept of the real is hidden or obscured, and in its place there comes the false substitute that by the real we mean only another essence, or else that by the real we mean the object of modern existentialist experience - the mere givenness of inner or outer actuality, which truly is no more than the condition for the rational transition from the affirmation of possible to the affirmation of actual contingent being.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Weisheit, Trinität

Kurzinhalt: In us the principle and term of that doubling are not identical; procession of the divine Word: the principle and the term of the doubling are identical ... Even in the Godhead the duality of wisdom is not overcome utterly

Textausschnitt: We know by what we are; we know we know by knowing what we are; and since even the knowing in 'knowing what we are' is by what we are, rational reflection on ourselves is a duplication of ourselves. In us the principle and term of that doubling are not identical. In the procession of the divine Word the principle and the term of the doubling are identical, but the relations of principle to term and of term to principle remain real, opposed, subsistent, eternal, equal personalities - Father and Son in the consubstantiality of intellectual generation. Even in the Godhead the duality of wisdom is not overcome utterly; even there in some sense one may speak of a sapientia genita. But though the duality of wisdom never disappears totally, yet it tends towards that limit. Some remarks on the approach towards the limit are our concluding concern.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Dualität d. Weisheit; intellektuelles, ungeschaffenes Licht; Aristoteles, Thomas übersteigt ihn

Kurzinhalt: It never is pure understanding but always understanding this or understanding that; Thomas geht im Erfassen des unbeschränkten Strebens über Aritstoteles hinaus

Textausschnitt: This pure quality is intellectual light. But in its pure form we have no experience of it. It never is just inquiry but always inquiry about something. It never is pure understanding but always understanding this or understanding that. Even so, we may discern it introspectively, just as externally we discern light in seeing color. But ... But Aquinas measured that desire, to find in the undying restlessness and absolute exigence of the human mind that intellect as intellect is infinite, that ipsum esse is ipsum intelligere and uncreated, unlimited Light, that though our intellects because potential cannot attain naturally to the vision of God, still our intellects as intellects have a dynamic orientation, a natural desire, that nothing short of that unknown vision can satisfy utterly. For Augustine our hearts are restless until they rest in God; for Aquinas, not our hearts, but first and most our minds are restless until they rest in seeing him.
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The basic duality of our wisdom is between our immanent intellectual light and the uncreated Light that is the object of its groping and its straining. The same duality is also the basic instance of the opposition and distinction between what is first quoad nos and what is first quoad se: ontologically the uncreated Light is first; epistemologically our own immanent light is first, for it is known not by some species but per se ipsum as the actuating element in all intelligible species. ... Towards it we are moved in a dialectical oscillation, envisaging more clearly now one pole and now another, with each addition to either at once throwing more light on the other and raising further questions with regard to it.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Selbsterkenntnis: 3 Arten; Norm und Sollen können nicht erreicht werden vom bloß Faktischen

Kurzinhalt: Now knowledge of the norm, of the ought-to-be, cannot be had from what merely happens to be and, too often, falls far short of the norm. Normative knowledge has to rest upon the eternal reasons. But this resting, ...

Textausschnitt: 77/2 Perhaps in this connection we may note most conveniently a particular aspect of the soul's self-knowledge. The most nuanced account of this is to be found in the De veritate,1 where three types of self-knowledge are distinguished. There is the empirical self-knowledge, actual or habitual, based upon the soul's presence to itself; there is the scientific and analytic self-knowledge that proceeds from objects to acts, from acts to potencies, from potencies to essence; but besides this pair, with which we are already familiar, there is also a third. It lies in the act of judgment which passes from the conception of essence to the affirmation of reality. Still, it is concerned not with this or that soul, but with what any soul ought to be according to the eternal reasons; and so the reality of soul that is envisaged is not sorry achievement but dynamic norm. Now knowledge of the norm, of the ought-to-be, cannot be had from what merely happens to be and, too often, falls far short of the norm. Normative knowledge has to rest upon the eternal reasons. But this resting, Aquinas explained, is not a vision of God but a participation and similitude of him by which we grasp first principles and judge all things by examining them in the light of principles.2 (101; Fs)

78/2 Wisdom through self-knowledge is not limited to the progress from empirical through scientific to normative knowledge. Beyond the wisdom we may attain by the natural light of our intellects, there is a further wisdom attained through the supernatural light of faith, when the humble surrender of our own light to the self-revealing uncreated Light makes the latter the loved law of all our assents. Rooted in this faith, supernatural wisdom has a twofold expansion. In its contact with human reason, it is the science of theology, which orders the data of revelation and passes judgment on all other science.3 But faith, besides involving a contact with reason, also involves a contact with God. On that side wisdom is a gift of the Holy Spirit, making us docile to his movements, in which, even perceptibly, one may be 'non solum discens sed et patiens divina.'4 (101; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Mystisches Erlebnis, Erfahrung der Seele von sich selbst; Gott im Gedächtnis; memoria

Kurzinhalt: the soul is present to itself in rational consciousness, that from the divine presence in the soul intellect receives the light necessary for understanding, Taste and see how the Lord is sweet

Textausschnitt: mystical experience. Early in the Sentences, in discussing the imago Dei in the human soul, it is asked whether knowledge and love of God and of self are constantly in act. In the Summa this question is answered negatively for the peremptory reason that everyone now and then goes to sleep. But in the early work the answer is affirmative, and it is given in two forms - first ...
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It amounts to saying that the soul is present to itself in rational consciousness. But from that presence to oneself it is not too easy a step to the presence of God to oneself. ... Now it is true that, apart from prying introspection, self-knowledge within rational consciousness is neither a discernere, nor a cogitare, nor an intelligere with a fixed object. But must one not enter into the domain of religious experience to find this awareness of one's spiritual self prolonged into an awareness of God?
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A similar, if less acute, question arises in the De veritate, where one reads that the presence of God in the mind is the memory of God in the mind.
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A necessary condition of understanding is within nature, and we are told that from the divine presence in the soul intellect receives the light necessary for understanding. Further, if one goes back to Aquinas's explicit accounts of the term memoria, one finds that it is habitual knowledge, and even that the mind is present to itself and God present to the mind before any species are received from sense, so that the human imago Dei has its constitutive memoria before any conscious intellectual act is elicited. To the casual reader it may seem that a presence of God which is a memory must be a known presence; but Aquinas's own explanation of his terms does not substantiate that conclusion.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Zusammenfassung Urteil, Thomas: Gegenseitigekeit von Introspektion und Metaphysik

Kurzinhalt: are above all psychological facts; inner word: insight into phantasm, expression of a reflective act of understanding

Textausschnitt: ... that Aquinas did practice psychological introspection and through that experimental knowledge of his own soul arrived at his highly nuanced, deeply penetrating, firmly outlined theory of the nature of human intellect. Hence the light of intellect, insight into phantasm, acts of defining thought, reflective reasoning and understanding, acts of judgment are above all psychological facts. The inner word of definition is the expression of an insight into phantasm, and the insight is the goal towards which the wonder of inquiry tends. The inner word of judgment is the expression of a reflective act of understanding, and that reflective act is the goal towards which critical wonder tends.
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No doubt, as expressed by Aquinas, these psychological facts are embedded in metaphysical categories and theorems. But without first grasping in some detail the empirical content so embedded, one risks, if not emptying the categories and theorems of all content, at least interpreting them with an impoverished generality that cannot bear the weight of the mighty superstructure of trinitarian theory. Conversely, it will be found, I believe, that our preliminary concern with psychological fact will lend a sureness, otherwise unattainable, to the interpretation of the metaphysical categories; for ...

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: processio bei Thomas: processio operationis, processio operati

Kurzinhalt: verschiedene Formulierung von processio bei Thomas; Unterschied zw. Wille und Verstand

Textausschnitt: Is there any notable significance to be attached to the foregoing variations? I do not think so. In all cases the same term is reached, namely, opposed relations of origin.
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On the contrary, it seems a plain matter of fact that for Aquinas the second procession grounding real relations is not the procession of the act of love from the will, nor the procession of something else from the act of love within the will, but the procession in the will of the act of love from the inner word in the intellect. Advertence to this repeatedly affirmed dependence of love on inner word puts an end, very simply and very clearly, I think, to an exceptional amount of labored interpretation.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Aristoteles, Thomas; actus perfecti - imperfecti -> operatio - motus (energeia - kinesis); actus existentis in actu

Kurzinhalt: The substance of what Aquinas meant by actus perfecti and actus imperfecti is contained in the foregoing account of Aristotle. He referred to this contrast variously as a difference between operatio and motus?

Textausschnitt: 8/3 Excessive attention to the metaphysical framework with insufficient attention to the psychological content of the Thomist concept of verbum has led to a good deal of obscure profundity on the meaning of Aquinas's actus perfecti. It is necessary for us to set forth the evidence on the meaning of the phrase, and in doing so it will be well to begin from Aristotle, first because it is only a translation of Aristotle's energeia ton tetelesmenou,1 and secondly, because Aquinas, when first he uses it,2 takes it for granted that the reader knows his Aristotle and so knows what it means. Our account of Aristotle may be divided into three parts: general contrasts between operation (energeia) and movement (kinesis); the analysis of movement in the Physics; and the recurring embarrassment in the De anima occasioned by the specialization of terms in the Physics. (110f; Fs)

9/3 In the Ethics >ARNE_09_10> there is considered a Platonist argument to the effect that pleasure is not the good because pleasure is a movement and so incomplete, while the good must be complete and perfect. It is met with the observation that all movements have velocities, that pleasure has no velocity, and so pleasure cannot be a movement nor be incomplete.3 On a later page the incompleteness of movement and the completeness of operation are described at greater length. A movement becomes in time; one part succeeds another; and a whole is to be had only in the whole of the time. On the other hand, an operation such as seeing or pleasure does not become in time but rather endures through time; at once it is all that it is to be; at each instant it is completely itself. In a movement one may assign instants in which what now is is not what later will be. In an operation there is no assignable instant in which what is occurring stands in need of something further that later will make it specifically complete.4 (111f; Fs) (notabene)

10/3 A similar general contrast occurs in the Metaphysics. There is a difference between action (praxis) distinct from its end and action coincident with its end. One cannot at once be walking a given distance and have walked it, be being cured and have been cured, be learning something and have learned it. But at once one is seeing and has seen, one is understanding and has understood, one is alive and has been alive, one is happy and has been happy. In the former instances there is a difference between action and end, and we have either what is not properly action or, at best, incomplete action - such are movements. In the latter instances action and end are coincident - such are operations.5 (112; Fs)

11/3 The characteristics of movement, described in the Ethics and the Metaphysics, are submitted to analysis in the Physics. The nature of movement is difficult to grasp because it is a reality that, as reality, is incomplete and so involves the indeterminate.6 Still, movement may be defined as the act of what is in potency inasmuch as it is in potency, or as the act of the movable just as movable.7 Again, one may say that what is about to be moved is in potency to two acts: one of these is complete and so admits categorial specification; but this act is the term of another which is incomplete and so does not admit categorial specification; movement is the latter, incomplete act.8 Since this definition does not presuppose the concept of time, it is employed in defining time.9 Next it is shown that the incomplete act, movement, can occur in only three categories, namely, place, sensible quality, and physical size.10 It is insisted that movement can be had only in a corporeal, quantitative, indefinitely divisible subject.11 From the indefinite divisibility of distance and time it is concluded that in a local movement not only is there a moveri prior to every assignable motum esse but also there is an assignable motum esse prior to every assignable moveri;12 thus analysis pushes to the limit the descriptive contrast between the specific completeness of operation and the specific incompleteness, the categorial indeterminacy, of movement.13 But just how the demonstrable paradox of local movement was to be extended to alteration, growth, generation, and illumination was for the commentators an obscure and disputed point.14 (112f; Fs)

12/3 As the Physics analyzes movement, so one might expect the De anima to analyze operation. But if that expectation is verified substantially,15 there is a far more conspicuous embarrassment caused by the specialization of terms in the Physics. For in the De anima, despite the alleged wealth of the Greek language, Aristotle needed such words as kinesis, alloiosis, pathesis, in a fresh set of meanings; but instead of working out the new meanings systematically, he was content, in general, to trust his reader's intelligence and, occasionally, to add an incidental warning or outburst. Three examples of this may be noted. First, there is the remark that, because movement (kinesis) is an act (energeia) even though it is an incomplete one, we may take it that undergoing change (paschein) and being moved (kineisthai) and operating (energein) are all the same thing.16 Again, there is the explanation that the phrase 'undergoing change' (paschein) is not univocal: when the scientist's science becomes actual thought, the becoming is not an alteration or, if it is, then it is alteration of a distinct genus.17 In similar vein the third book of the De anima contains the statement to which Aquinas regularly referred18 when contrasting actus perfecti and actus imperfecti: the movement of a sense is movement of a distinct species; for movement has been defined as the operation or act (energeia) of the incomplete, but operation simply so called is of the completed.19 (113f; Fs)

13/3 The substance of what Aquinas meant by actus perfecti and actus imperfecti is contained in the foregoing account of Aristotle. He referred to this contrast variously as a difference between operatio and motus?20 or as a twofold operatio21 or finally as a twofold motus.22 Actus imperfecti was explained by noting that what is moved is in potency, that what is in potency is imperfect, and so that movement is the act of the imperfect.23 Both early and late works testify to a full awareness that movement is intrinsically temporal and specifically incomplete.24 In contrast the actus perfecti is defined as 'actus existentis in actu,'25 and even as 'actus existentis in actu secundum quod huiusmodi';26 it is specifically complete, an 'operatio consequens formam,'27 the 'operatio sensus iam facti in actu per suam speciem,'28 without need or anticipation of any ulterior complement to be itself,29 and intrinsically outside time.30 (114f; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: actus perfecti (Definition: actus existentis in actu) u. imperfecti; Negation: Essentialismus: die Realität erschöpft sich nicht in Wesenheiten; Hoffnung: 'quasi quidam motus' u. 'sicut actus imperfecti'

Kurzinhalt: There are elements in reality that correspond to what we know by defining; they are called essences; but they are not the whole of reality. There are also elements of reality that are less than essences ...

Textausschnitt: 14/3 What, I may be asked, does this all amount to? In current terminology, then, it is a brilliant and penetrating negation of essentialism. There are elements in reality that correspond to what we know by defining; they are called essences; but they are not the whole of reality. There are also elements of reality that are less than essences, that are, as it were, essences-on-the-way; they are movements, acts that actualize incompletely, acts intrinsically in anticipation of completion and so intrinsically in time. But there also are elements of reality that are over and above essence; sight is an essence, but seeing is more than that essence; still, seeing is not a further essence, for seeing and sight have the same definition, which they share as act and potency; this more-than-essence is act, act of what already is completely in possession of essence, act that does not need or anticipate something further to become what it is to be, act that intrinsically stands outside time. (115; Fs) (notabene)

15/3 Such is the substance of what Aquinas meant by actus perfecti and actus imperfecti. But there are also accidental variations; for, so far was Aquinas from the stereotyped terminology that sometimes is attributed to him that he could write 'sapienus enim est non curare de nominibus.'1 A first variation is had inasmuch as the term 'operatio' is suggestive of efficient causality; hence the contrast between operation and movement is taken as ground for denying that divine activity presupposes an uncreated matter.2 A second variation arises by a natural transition from the imperfection of the material continuum with its indefinite divisibility to the imperfection of anything that has not, as yet, attained its end; in this transferred sense the Sentences speak of an actus imperfecti,3 where also one may read the more cautious statement that the act of hope is 'quasi quidam motus' and 'sicut actus imperfecti.'4 A third variation arises from the fact that what exists in act is a ground of efficient causality; thus, an angel moves locally by an application of his virtue to a continuous series of places; this local movement is described as 'motus existentis in actu.'5 I believe that only poor judgment would desire to take such instances as these, not as incidental variations, but as key passages to the meaning of the repeated statement that sensation, understanding, and willing are actus perfecti. (115f; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Erleiden, pati; pati proprie - pati communiter; "actus perfectus" als "pati"; operatio und actio im Sinne von Seinsakt; pathesis, pathos - poiesis , poiema

Kurzinhalt: ... the influence of Aristotle did lead Aquinas to use operatio and actio in the sense of act or of being in act; and in that sense there is no absurdity - on the contrary, there is a necessity - in saying that such act in a creature is a patii communiter

Textausschnitt: 3. Pati

16/3 There is no difficulty in thinking of movement in the strict sense of actus imperfecti as a pati. But there appears to be enormous difficulty in thinking of movement in the broad sense, which includes the actus perfecti, as a pati. Since that difficulty necessarily tends to the substitution of what someone else thinks for what Aquinas said, we must endeavor to surmount it at once. We begin from the variety of meanings of the term pati in Aquinas's source. (116; Fs)

17/3 In the Ethics Aristotle recognizes in the soul three things: potencies, habits, and pathê. The last are illustrated by desire, anger, fear, boldness, envy, joy, friendliness, hate, longing, rivalry, pity, and in general the feelings accompanied by pleasure or pain.1 Secondly, in a logical context Aristode will speak of idia pathê, which are attributes or properties, even of ideal numbers.2 Thirdly, and this is the fundamental usage, pathos is connected with the species of movement called alteration. In general, alteration is defined as change of quality,3 but the quality subject to such change is restricted to the sensibilia per se et propria such as the white and black, the heavy and light, the hot and cold, the hard and soft, and so forth.4 Pathê are such qualities as such; they are also the process of change of such qualities; especially, they are such change when it is for the worse.5 Fourthly, in close connection with the foregoing there is the account of the affective qualities in the Categories?6 though the feelings of the Ethics are also relevant here.7 Fifthly, with reference to any movement in the strict sense Aristotle distinguishes the passive process (pathêsis) and the received term (pathos) of the incomplete act, and these he maintains to be really identical with the production (poiêsis) and the effected term (poiêma) respectively of the same incomplete act.8 Sixthly, in an extended sense already noted, paschein is employed to denote sensation which is an act of the completed;9 it is to be observed that the theorem of the identity of action and passion is extended to this usage on the ground that without such an identity it would be necessary for every mover to be moved.10 (116f; Fs)


183 The complexity of Aristotelian usage pours into the writings of Aquinas. In the Sentences some nine meanings of pati are distinguished; the basic meaning is considered to be 'alteration for the worse,' and other meanings are allowed greater or less propriety according to their approximation to what is considered basic.1 In later works this jungle growth is cut through with a distinction between pati proprie and pati communiter?"2 To pati proprie is assigned the province of Aristotelian physics and, as well, the linguistic associations of pati with suffering and of passio with human passions. On the other hand, pati communiter is a purely metaphysical idea; it is somewhat less general than 'being an effect,' for it presupposes a subject; it is described as recipere, as something found in every creature, as something following necessarily from the potentiality involved in every creature However, there seems to be a concentration on the moment of reception,3 and it is pointed out that, since this pati involves no diminution of the recipient, it might be better named a perfici.4 (117f; Fs)

184 The question before us is whether operation or action as actus perfecti can be called a pati in the sense of a received perfection. The difficulty here, insofar as I have been able to grasp it, lies in distinguishing between the grammatical subject of a transitive verb in the active voice and, on the other hand, the ontological subject of the exercise of efficient causality.a When it is true that 'I see,' it is also true that "I" is the grammatical subject of a transitive verb in the active voice. But it is mere confusion to conclude immediately that "I" also denotes the ontological subject of the exercise of efficient causality. Further, it may or may not be true that one must conclude mediately from the transitive verb to the efficient cause; with such abstract questions I am not concerned. But it is false to suppose that either Aristotle or Aquinas acknowledged or drew such a conclusion. I quote: (118; Fs)

Videbatur enim repugnare, quod sentire dicitur in actu, ei quod dictum est, quod sentire est quoddam pati et moveri. Esse enim in actu videtur magis pertinere ad agere. Et ideo ad hoc exponendum dicit [Aristoteles], quod ita dicimus sentire in actu, ac si dicamus, quod pati et moveri sint quoddam agere, idest quoddam esse in actu. Nam motus est quidam actus, sed imperfectus, ut dictum est in tertio Physicorum. Est enim actus existentis in potentia, scilicet mobilis. Sicut igitur motus est actus, ita moveri et sentire est quoddam agere, vel esse secundum actum.5

185 The question is, How can one speak of sensing in act, when one has maintained that sensing is a matter of undergoing change and being moved? For sensing in act seems to be just the opposite of being changed and being moved, namely, acting. The answer is that there is an acting which is simply being in act, and simply being in act is not opposed to being changed and being moved. On the contrary, movement itself is defined as an act. If there is no difficulty about defining movement as an act, though it is an imperfect one, there is no difficulty in saying that the pati of sensation is an act and in that sense an acting. (119; Fs) (notabene)

186 Next, one may ask whether this Aristotelian viewpoint is to be found in Aquinas's independent writings. Let us begin by noting two senses of the term 'operatic.' In many contexts it denotes the exercise of efficient causality, for example, 'Deus operatur in omni operante.' But such usage certainly is not exclusive, and, I believe, it is not the most fundamental. For operatio also means simply 'being in act,' as does the etymologically parallel energeia; and in this sense it is a perfection which, in a creature, is received and so is a pati or a passio of the operating subject. Thus, Aquinas spoke of an 'operatio non activa sed receptiva.'6 He urged that the fact that sense had an operation did not make sense an active potency; for all powers of the soul have operations but most of them are passive potencies.7 He pointed out that nature provides suitable principles for operations; when the operation is an action, the principle is an active potency; and when the operation consists in a passion, the principle is a passive potency.8 He distinguished the operation of a mover, such as heating or cutting, the operation of what is moved, such as being heated or being cut, and the operation of what exists in act without tending to effect change.9 He defined potency as just the principle of operation, whether that be action or passion.10 (119; Fs)

187 Finally, so familiar to Aquinas was the notion of operation as passive, as something to be predicated not of the mover but of the moved, that in speaking of operative grace he found it necessary to explain that in this instance operation was to be attributed to the mover because it was the operation of an effect: 'operatio enim alicuius effectus non attribuitur mobili, sed moventi.'11 That explanation would seem to be rather superfluous today when people think it a contradiction in terms to speak of the operating subject as being moved. (119f; Fs)

188 What is true of operatic also is true of actio. In an early period these terms are contrasted,12 but later they are juxtaposed in opposition to factio,13 and such equivalence subsequently seems to be maintained. Frequently enough, then, actio means the exercise of efficient causality. But this meaning is not the only meaning. It also means simply actus. It is actio in the sense of actus that is the actuality of virtue, as being is the actuality of substance.14 It is actio in the sense of actus that is the complement of potency and stands to potency as second act to first.15 It is actio in the sense of actus that pertains to an active potency or to a passive potency.16 It is actio in the sense of actus that makes it possible to define passion as the actio of alterable quality,17 and as the actio of the patient.18 Finally, the action that goes forth into external matter would seem to have a prescriptive claim to denoting the exercise of efficient causality; but in an earlier work one may read that transient action is the act and perfection of the patient;19 and in later works one may read that transient action is the action and perfection of the patient,20 and the action and perfection of the transformed matter.21 Presumably, passive potencies and patients and transformed matter have an actio not in the sense that they are exercising efficient causality but in the sense that they are in act. (120; Fs)

189 To conclude, the influence of Aristotle did lead Aquinas to use operatio and actio in the sense of act or of being in act; and in that sense there is no absurdity - on the contrary, there is a necessity - in saying that such act in a creature is a pati communiter. However, before making any applications to the act, the action, the operation of understanding, it will be necessary to consider the notion of active potency. (120f; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Duplex actio; Unterschied zw. 'processio operati' und 'processio operationis'; Wirkursache benötigt keine materia; Unterschied zw. Der Wirkursache, die im Tätigen bleibt und jener, die von der From seinen Ausgang nimmt; operatio ist mehr als Form

Kurzinhalt: ... actio that remains in the agent does not involve efficient causality inasmuch as it proceeds from form, species, or informed potency; for that procession is not 'processio operati' but 'processio operationis' ...

Textausschnitt: 5. Duplex Actio

202 Frequently Aquinas distinguished two types of actio, one which remains in its subject, another which goes forth into external matter to effect its transformation. This distinction has led subsequent writers to make metaphysical ultimates of what they term immanent and transient action, and, as not rarely happens, such speculative constructions are a barrier rather than a help to a grasp of St Thomas's thought, for they give an air of finality and completeness to what, in point of fact, contained not a little of the incidental and was not complete. (128; Fs)

203 Aquinas alleges two different sources in Aristotle for his duplex actio. Contrasts between actio and factio, and so between agere and facere, activum and factivum, agibile and factibile stem from Aristotle's Ethics.1 In the relevant passage Aristotle was distinguishing art, science, prudence, wisdom, and intellect; three of these (science, wisdom, and intellect) regard the necessary; the other pair (art and prudence) regard the contingent; the distinction between them is set forth by a parallel distinction between production (poiesis) and moral conduct (praxis).2 Now in medieval Latin both poiesis and praxis might be rendered by actio, and in such cases Aquinas's distinction was between the actio of moral conduct, which is a perfection of the agent, and the actio, more properly factio, which transforms external matter. (128f; Fs)

204 A corollary may be noted. When Aquinas restricts actio to beings that have dominion over their acts, actio has at least an association with moral conduct. 'Bruta aguntur et non agunt,' because St John Damascene said so;3 but also because Aristotle remarked that sense is not a principle of moral conduct, since brutes have senses yet have no part in moral conduct.4 The 'non agunt' does not mean that brutes do not act in the sense of 'aliquam actionem exercere,' which may mean simply being in act;5 it does not even deny that brutes move themselves locally inasmuch as one part in act moves another part in potency. (129; Fs)

205 Evidently this source in the Ethics lacks generality.6 But the other source in the ninth book of the Metaphysics is so general that it deals not with action but with act. The problem under discussion is the essential priority of act over potency, because act is the end of potency, the end is a cause, and a cause is prior.7 The point was evident in cases in which only potency and act existed; but when besides potency and act there was also an ulterior product, the apparent difficulty was met by noting that then the act was in the thing produced and that it emerged simultaneously with the product.8 There followed the familiar corollary on the twofold subject of the act (energeia).9 (129; Fs)

206 The medieval translator laid no stress on actio: the energeia that is in the agent was translated by actio; the one that is in the product was translated by actus.10 The opposite usage may be found in the Prima pars.11 General Thomist usage is variable. In the Sentences and in the De veritate an attempt is made to reserve operatio for the act that remains and actio for the act that goes forth.12 In the Contra Gentiles, factio is proposed for the act that goes forth and operatio or even actio for the act that remains.13 (130; Fs)

207 In the Depotentia, the Contra Gentiles, and the Prima pars, the distinction is drawn with respect to a duplex operatio.14 However, it is duplex actio that is regular in the Prima pars.15 Still, in the De potentia mention was made of a duplex actus secundus16 and this viewpoint returns in the Prima secundae,17 where also one may find an identification of the act that goes forth with the actio in passo of the Physics.18 As a final observation, one may note that Aquinas did not keep his two sources distinct; in both the Contra Gentiles and the Prima secundae he refers to the ninth book of the Metaphysics and proceeds to speak of factio, a term that implicitly is present in the Metaphysics but explicitly only in the Ethics.19 (130; Fs)

208 This fluidity of terminology is not surprising unless one indulges in an anachronistic projection of present usage upon the past. On the other hand, the meaning of these passages and their significance are quite clear. There is an act that remains in the agent and is the perfection of the agent; there is another act that goes forth into external matter and effects a change of it. The pair spontaneously come together in thought - grammatically because both are expressed by transitive verbs in the active voice, and historically because both proceed from the 'principium actionis' that was Aquinas's initial definition of active potency. (130f; Fs)

209 Even though later Aquinas did manifest a preference for a different definition of potentia activa, there was a deeper root in Aristotle himself to keep the two types of act associated; for it is a form that is the principle both of the act remaining in the agent and of the act that goes forth. In the Physics it was pointed out that the mover possesses a form which is principle of movement; for it is a man in act that makes a man out of what is a man only in potency.20 In his Sentences Aquinas refers to this passage and applies it both to transient and to immanent acts: 'causa autem actionis est species, ut dicitur in III Phys.; quia unumquodque agit ratione formae alicuius quam habet [...] sicut ignis qui desiccat et calefacit per caliditatem et siccitatem, et homo audit et videt per auditum et visum.'21 (131; Fs)

210 Even in his latest works Aquinas will speak of active potency as pertaining to things because of their forms,22 and will explain differences of efficacy because of differences in the perfection of forms; thus, fire heats and illuminates; what is so heated or illuminated can do the same but only in a lesser degree, while merely intentional forms cannot have natural effects.23 But form is not only the ground of efficiency but also the principle of operation: 'propria forma uniuscuiusque faciens ipsum esse in actu, est principium propriae operationis ipsius.'24 Such operation is the end of the operator and more perfect than his form;25 it is what is last and most perfect in each thing, and so it is compared to form as act to potency, as second act to first act.26 (131; Fs)

211 But however germane to Aquinas's thought as it actually developed, duplex actio is not a capsule of metaphysical ultimates. The act that goes forth into external matter corresponds to the predicament of action as defined in the Sentences: 'actio secundum quod est praedicamentum dicit aliquid fluens ab agente et cum motu.'27 But later Aquinas wrote that there are two actions, one that involves movement (in the sense of incomplete act), and another that does not, as when God causes grace in the soul. On the latter he remarked, 'Quod quidem difficile est ad intelligendum non valentibus abstrahere considerationem suam ab actionibus quae sunt cum motu.'28 (131f; Fs)

212 This tart observation would seem to be relevant to the passage in the commentary on the Physics where, after explaining Aristotle's concept of action and passion,29 he goes on to give his own quite different and quite universal definitions of the predicament of action and passion.30 As causal efficiency does not require external matter and movement, so also it need not go forth: there is a 'processio operati' of the inner word within the intellect.31 On the other hand, actio that remains in the agent does not involve efficient causality inasmuch as it proceeds from form, species, or informed potency; for that procession is not 'processio operati' but 'processio operationis';32 as we have just seen, operation is more perfect than form, and only an instrument is less perfect than its effect. The idea that efficient causality occurs in this type of actio has, I fear, little more basis than a failure to distinguish between the two different ways in which Aquinas defined his potentia activa. (132f; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: species, eidos: Begriff bei Thomas; Form als Prinzip des Verstehens und des inneren Wortes; operatio u. actio

Kurzinhalt: entsprechend d. Tätigkeit als principium actionis u. p. effectus -> Form als Prinzip d. Verstehens u. d. Gedachten; ebenso species: Aktuierung des Intellekts und inneres Wort; actio - operatio: Trinität

Textausschnitt: 6. Species, Intelligere

213 The Latin term species translates Aristotle's term eidos and shares its ambiguity. It may mean a form, and then it includes neither common nor individual matter; and it may mean a universal, and then it includes common but not individual matter.1 In cognitional contexts species occurs in both senses: 'similitude rei intellectae, quae est species intelligibilis, est forma secundum quam intellectus intelligit';2 'intellectus igitur abstrahit speciem rei naturalis a materia sensibili individuali, non autem a materia sensibili communi.'3 The former species is a form; the latter is a universal. To determine in which sense the term species is employed is not always as easy as in the above cases. However, our criteria may be extended: a form is known only by metaphysical analysis; but the universal enters into the knowledge of everyone. To the objection that intellect does not abstract species because, according to Aristotle, intellect knows species in the phantasm, Aquinas answered: (133; Fs)

Dicendum quod intellectus noster et abstrahit species intelligibiles a phantasmatibus, inquantum considerat naturas rerum in universali; et tamen intelligit eas in phantasmatibus, quia non potest intelligere ea quorum species abstrahit, nisi convertendo se ad phantasmata, ut supra dictum est.4

214 The generality of this statement, the fact that universals are being considered, the fact that the species are known in the phantasm, all favor taking species in the sense of a universal. On the other hand, to the objection that names signify things known and that, according to Aristotle, names are signs of the passions of the soul so that the things known are passions of the soul, Aquinas answered: (134; Fs)

Et utraque haec operatic coniungitur in intellectu. Nam primo quidem consideratur passio intellectus possibilis, secundum quod informatur specie intelligibili. Qua quidem formatus format secundo vel definitionem vel divisionem vel compositionem, quae per vocem significatur. Unde ratio quam significat nomen est definitio; et enuntiatio significat compositionem et divisionem intellectus. Non ergo voces significant ipsas species intelligibiles, sed ea quae intellectus sibi format ad iudicandum de rebus exterioribus.5
215 Here we have metaphysical analysis revealing the passion of the possible intellect being informed by species and its activity in forming definitions and judgments; species means form, and though the universal is referred to as the 'ratio quam significat nomen,' it is not here called a species. (134; Fs)

216 Our present purpose is to discuss the relation between species as form and the act intelligere. Our view is that this relation is expressed by Aquinas in two different manners - one according to what we have ventured to name the Avicennist definition of active potency, the other according to the Aristotelian concept of form as natural potency. (134f; Fs)

217 First, then, just as the De potentia conceives active potency as the principle of operation or action which takes place in virtue of form,6 so one may read that (intellect actuated by) species is the 'principium actus intelligendi,'7 the 'principium actionis,'8 the 'principium formale actionis,'9 the 'principium formale quo intellectus intelligit.'10 Again, just as the De potentia conceives passive potency as potency to the reception of form,11 and contrasts this passive potency with the active potency to operation and action, so one may read a parallel contrast between the reception of species, which is named a passio, and the subsequent operatio, which is an actus perfecti.12 (135; Fs)

218 Thirdly, just as the De potentia distinguishes between 'principium actionis' and 'principium effectus,13 and again between action and the term of action,14 so there is a contrast between the form which is the principle of the act of understanding and the thought-out form of a house which is the term of the act of understanding and, as it were, its effect;15 similarly contrasted are the species which is the form that actuates the intellect and is its principle of action, the action of the intellect, and the inner word which is term to the action and, as it were, something constituted by it.16 Finally, while we have seen that the terms operatio and actio sometimes mean simply act or being in act and sometimes mean the exercise of efficient causality, we now find that the precision of trinitarian theory led Aquinas to distinguish exactly between these two meanings with regard to the operation or action of intellect; when that operation is meant in the sense of act, it is termed intelligere; but when by operation is meant that one act is grounding another, it is termed dicere.17 (135f; Fs)


219 So much for a sketch of one scheme of metaphysical analysis applied by Aquinas to intellect. For it is only to be expected that there should be in his writings some evidence of another scheme of analysis that stands in more immediate conformity with Aristotelian thought. The most impressive example of such conformity occurs in the following incidental statement. (136; Fs)

... forma recepta in aliquo non movet illud in quo recipitur; sed ipsum habere talem formam, est ipsum motum esse; sed movetur ab exteriori agente; sicut corpus quod calefit per ignem, non movetur a calore recepto, sed ab igne. Ita intellectus non movetur a specie iam recepta, vel a vero quod consequitur ipsam speciem; sed ab aliqua re exteriori quae imprimit in intellectum, sicut est intellectus agens, vel phantasia, vel aliquid aliud huiusmodi.1 (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Form, species: in der 2-fachen Bedeutung in Übereinstimmung mit Lehre und Einsicht

Kurzinhalt: Beispiel: Wille aktuiert als Habitus setzt noch nicht den Willensakt zum Ziel; operatio mehr als Form; processio operationis u. p. operati; so wie die Form nicht Wirkursache des Seins ist, so die species WU des intelligere

Textausschnitt: 220 It may not be out of place to note how exactly this fits in both with general doctrine and with intellectual theory. It is in accord with the general doctrine that the efficient cause not merely produces the form but also produces the movement consequent to the form1 that what produces the species should also produce the consequent intelligere. It is in accord with the general doctrine that form is less perfect than operation2 and so not its proportionate cause, that the species should not move intellect to the act intelligere. It is in accord with the general doctrine 'quidquid movetur ab alio movetur'3 that intellect actuated by species should not produce its acts of understanding, just as the will actuated by a habit does not produce its act of willing the end; on the other hand, just as will actually willing the end moves itself to willing the means4 so intellect actually understanding is able to utter, constitute, produce its inner word of definition or judgment. (137; Fs)

221 Further, the passage before us accords with specific intellectual doctrines. It makes it quite clear why the procession of the act of understanding is only a 'processio operationis,' while the procession of the act of defining or of judging is a 'processio operati.'5 It is quite in harmony with the statement, 'sicut enim esse consequitur formam, ita intelligere sequitur speciem intelligibilem,'6 for no form is efficient cause of its esse and similarly species is not the efficient cause of intelligere. Again, it harmonizes with the parallel statement that '[...] intelligere, quod ita se habet ad intellectum in actu, sicut esse ad ens in actu';7 for the ens in actu is not the efficient cause of its esse. Finally, of course, there is no opposition between this scheme of analysis and the preceding; when (intellect actuated by) species is said to be the principle of action or the principle of operation, it is not said to be the principle of an effect; as we have seen, these two are repeatedly distinguished by St Thomas. (137f; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Das Objekt der passiven Potenz ist aktiv -> auch das intelligere ist ein pati; auch der Wille als pati

Kurzinhalt: that sentire is a pati and that intelligere is a pati; he will moves itself only inasmuch as it is in act with respect to the end

Textausschnitt: 225 In the passages quoted Aquinas states that the object of the passive potency is active, not with respect to the species alone, but with respect to the act, the action, the operation of the potency. The coherence of this position with general Thomist doctrine has engaged us through considerations of actus perfecti, pati, potentia activa, and duplex actio. We may perhaps be permitted, after this somewhat lengthy preamble, to point out that Aquinas as a matter of fact actually does say that sentire is a pati and that intelligere is a pati, and then to present our daring hypothesis that perhaps Aquinas meant what he said. In the following passages the reader will note that Aquinas is speaking not of some prior condition of sensation but of sensation itself and that Aquinas does not say that sensation has a prior condition or cause in some change but that it consists in a change and is completed in a change. I quote: (140; Fs)

... sentire consistit in moveri et pati.1 ... sentire consistit in quodam pati et alterari.2 ... cognitio sensus perficitur in hoc ipso quod sensus a sensibili movetur.3 Anima igitur sensitiva non se habet in sentiendo sicut movens et agens, sed sicut id quo patiens patitur.4... si vero operatio ilia consistit in passione, adest ei principium passivum, sicut patet de principiis sensitivis in animalibus.5 ... sensum affici est ipsum eius sentire.6... sentire perficitur per actionem sensibilis in sensum.7 ... duplex operatio. Una secundum solam immutationem, et sic perficitur operatio sensus per hoc quod immutatur a sensibili.8 ... cognitio sensus exterioris perficitur per solam immutationem sensus a sensibili.9

226 With regard to external sense it would seem that the object is active, not merely inasmuch as it causes the species, but also inasmuch as it causes the act, action, operation of the sensitive potency. (142; Fs)

227 Aquinas had the habit of quoting Aristotle to the effect that 'intelligere est quoddam pati.' In the Sentences, discussing the mutability proper to creatures, he concludes that creatures are mutable both inasmuch as they can lose what they possess and inasmuch as they can acquire what they do not possess; the latter is a true mutability, though in a broad sense, as when all reception is said to be a pati and moveri, for example, 'intelligere quoddam pati est.'10 Again, discussing the meanings of pati, he urges that there is no pati proprie in the intellect because it is immaterial, but still there is there an element of passion inasmuch as there is reception; and that is the meaning of 'intelligere est pati quoddam.'11 (142; Fs)

228 Again, meeting the objection that the divine essence cannot be the object of created knowledge because the judged is to the judge as passive, he answered that on the contrary the sensible and intelligible objects are to sense and intellect as agent inasmuch as sentire and intelligere are a pati quoddam!12 Arguing against Averroes, he made an antithesis of agere and pati and then urged, 'Posse autem intelligere est posse pati: cum 'intelligere quoddam pati sit.'13 Proving that the possible intellect was a passive potency, he concluded, 'Sic igitur patet quod intelligere nostrum est quoddam pati, secundum tertium modum passionis. Et per consequens intellectus est potentia passiva.'14 (142; Fs)

229 In these passages it is quite clear that Aquinas said that the act of understanding itself, intelligere, was a pati. Such statements fit in perfectly with the general doctrine of agent object and passive potency; they fit in perfectly with the general Aristotelian scheme of analysis that distinguishes neatly between nature, which is a principle of movement in the thing moved, and efficient potency, which is a principle of movement in the other or, if in self, then in self as other; nor is there any incompatibility between them and the Avicennist scheme of analysis except the merely apparent incompatibility that arises from the blunder of confusing what Aquinas distinguished - active potency as the principle of an operation and active potency as the principle of an effect. (142f; Fs)

230 But this, the reader will perhaps say, is all impossible. I am afraid I have not here the space to discuss abstract impossibilities. I am concerned with matters of fact, with what Aquinas said; and lest there be any misapprehension about Aquinas's ideas on the actio manens in agente, I proceed to observe that not only sentire and intelligere but also velle can be a pati.b For with respect to the interior act of the will, the grace of God is operative and the will of man is 'mota et non movens.'15 Though not stated so explicitly, the same is true with respect to the act of willing the end as conceived in the De mala and the Prima secundae; for in these works the will moves itself only inasmuch as it is in act with respect to the end, but to that act it is moved by an external principle, God.16 Finally, what is true of these later works with respect to willing the end is true more generally in earlier works in which there appears no mention of self-movement in the will.17 (143; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Wille, bewegt von Gott; operatio receptiva

Kurzinhalt: what does ... the will moved by God, when it is moved by God, while it is moved by God, confer or contribute?

Textausschnitt: On the other hand, as soon as the theory of God moving the will to the act of willing the end was proposed, Aquinas immediately perceived a difficulty; that difficulty to a modern Scholastic would be in all probability that man must be the efficient cause of his own operation, action, act, willing; but to Aquinas the difficulty was that the act must be not violent but natural; he noticed it both in the De malo and in the Prima secundae, and his answers run as follows:
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Now what does the patient, the will moved by God, when it is moved by God, while it is moved by God, confer or contribute? It operates. It wills. In this case the operation is an operatio receptiva, just as sentire is a pati of sense and just as intelligere is a pati of the possible intellect. The will operates inasmuch as it is the will that is actuated. The will contributes inasmuch as an act received in the will has to be a 'willing,' not because it is act, nor merely because of the extrinsic mover, but proximately because act is limited by the potency in which it is received.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Zusammenfassung Kap. 3; Unterscheidungen; intellectus agens - possibilis; aktive - passive Potenz

Kurzinhalt: distinction between: efficient - natural potency; agent - possible intellect (intellectus agens, possibilis); intelligere - dicere; agent - terminal - final object; habit: science, wisdom

Textausschnitt: 240 First, there seem to be no notable variations in the concept of procession, and in particular there seems no reason for supposing that the doctrine of De veritate, q. 4, a. 2, ad 7m was retracted or revised later: the act of love with respect to an end is, as proceeding from the will, 'processio operationis,' but as proceeding from the inner word, 'processio operati.' (147f; Fs)

241 Second, the actio manens in agente is act and perfection; as act, it admits no further description; for description is of limitation, and limitation is due not to act but to potency; but as act of someone, it has the characteristic of being an ulterior actuation of what already is completed and perfected by the specific essence of the act; it is act beyond essence and so is contrasted with the act of the incomplete, which is act as process towards essence. Incidentally, it was Scotus who affirmed immanent action to lie in the first species of the predicament, quality.1 I have not noticed such a statement in Aquinas, but I suggest that it would be Thomistic to affirm that, as esse is substantial, so immanent act is qualitative;2 for the essence that esse actuates is substance and the essence that immanent act actuates is a quality. (??? 148; Fs)

243 Thirdly, among the various meanings of passio, pati, many are opposed to immanent act; but pati in the metaphysical sense of receiving is opposed only to the exercise of efficient causality in an equally strict metaphysical sense; hence pati is not incompatible with immanent act or with actio or operatio in the sense of immanent act; on the contrary, inasmuch as immanent act is a perfection received in a creature, necessarily it is a pati. (148; Fs) (notabene)

244 Fourthly, a distinction is necessary between efficient potency, principle of act in the other or in self as other, and natural potency, principle of act in the selfsame; the active and passive potencies of De potentia, q. 1, a. 1, and the active and passive principles of Contra Gentiles, 3, c. 23, are subdivisions of natural potency, and so both are receptive potencies and principles; hence the apparent paradox that an active potency or principle is also receptive. This paradox is only apparent: what is opposed to receptive potency is efficient potency and not some subdivision of natural potency. On the other hand, the appearances are impressive: just as Aristotle was handicapped in writing his De anima by the technical elaborations of his Physics, so Aquinas was handicapped both by Aristotle's lack of generality in conceiving the efficient cause and by the initial strong influence of Avicenna; for him to clarify the notion of potentia activa by appealing to the notion of causal efficiency was impossible, for the latter notion was just as much in need of clarification; hence only indirectly can we observe differences that are crucial: inasmuch as 'principium motus' and even 'principium activum motus' is not the 'movens' or the 'motor'; inasmuch as 'principium operationis vel actionis' does not mean the same thing as 'principium effectus, operati, termini producti' and does not even necessarily imply it; inasmuch as form is cause of esse and operation; inasmuch as subject is cause, active principle, somehow active cause, and productive of accidents which nonetheless emanate by a natural resultance. (148f; Fs)

245 Fifthly, the foregoing clarification of Thomist usage and principles is of paramount importance in grasping Thomist metaphysics as applied to psychology; a failure to distinguish between efficient and natural potency results in a negation of the division of objects into agent and terminal, and the elimination of the agent object provides a metaphysical scheme into which Thomist psychology does not fit; further, natural potency which, though receptive, nonetheless makes a most significant contribution to its act, tends to disappear to be replaced by efficient forms and habits in need of a divine praemotio physica which, I have argued elsewhere,3 cannot be said to be a doctrine stated or implied by Aquinas; and incidentally, we may ask whether this neglect of natural potency has not some bearing on unsatisfactory conceptions of obediential potency. (149; Fs)

246 The coherence of present conclusions with the psychological data already assembled may be noted briefly. The distinction between agent intellect and possible intellect is a distinction between an efficient potency that produces and a natural potency that receives. The distinction between the possible intellect of one that is learning and the possible intellect of one in possession of a science is a distinction between the De potentia's passive potency to the reception of form and its active potency to the exercise of operation in virtue of form. (149; Fs) (notabene)

247 The distinction between intelligere and dicere is a distinction between the two meanings of action, operation: intelligere is action in the sense of act; dicere is action in the sense of operating an effect. The distinction between agent object and terminal object is to be applied twice. On the level of intellectual apprehension the agent object is the quidditas rei materialis, not to ti estin but to ti ên einai, known in and through a phantasm illuminated by agent intellect; this agent object is the obiectum proprium intellectus humani; it is the object of insight. Corresponding to this agent object there is the terminal object of the inner word; this is the concept, and the first of concepts is ens, the obiectum commune intellectus. Again, on the level of judgment the agent object is the objective evidence provided by sense and/or empirical consciousness, ordered conceptually and logically in a reductio ad principia, and moving to the critical act of understanding. Corresponding to this agent object, there is the other terminal object, the inner word of judgment, the verum, in and through which is known the final object, the ens reale. (149f; Fs)

248 Here, as is apparent, metaphysics and psychology go hand in hand, and the metaphysical analysis is but the more general form of the psychological analysis. Souls are distinguished by their potencies, potencies by their acts, acts by their objects. The final object of intellect is the real; the real is known through an immanent object produced by intellect, the true; the true supposes a more elementary immanent object also produced by the intellect, the definition. This production is not merely utterance, dicere, but the utterance of intelligence in act, or rationally conscious disregard of the irrelevant, of critical evaluation of all that is relevant, of intelligere.4 This intelligere can be what it is only if there are objects to move it as well as the objects that it produces: the intelligere that expresses itself in judgment is moved by the relevant evidence; the intelligere that expresses itself in definition is moved by illuminated phantasm. But evidence as relevant and phantasm as illuminated are not mere sensible data; hence besides the sensitive potencies and the possible intellect there is needed an agent intellect. (150; Fs)

249 Finally, as the contrast between the labor of study and the ease of subsequent mastery manifests, there are forms or habits to be developed in the possible intellect - understanding for the grasp of principles, science for the grasp of implications, wisdom for right judgment on the validity both of principles and of conclusions; they come to us through acts of understanding; they stand to acts of understanding as first act to second; and like the second acts, they are produced by agent objects which themselves are instruments of agent intellect. (150f; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Analogie der materia prima bei Aristoteles; Folgen dieser Sicht: gegen Materialisten, Plato, Kant

Kurzinhalt: ... sicut se habet aes ad statuam et lignum ad lectum, et quodlibet materiale et informe ad formam, hoc dicimus esse materiam primam

Textausschnitt: 1. The Analogy of Matter

255 The old naturalists had concluded, not only from beds and tables to an underlying subject 'wood,' but also from wood and bones to an element 'earth' and from gold and bronze (they could be melted) to an element 'water.' Aristotle accepted the principle of such analysis: any change is defined for thought by stating the underlying subject and the variable determination or form; and what holds for defining thought, also holds for the real thing .1 But while he accepted the principle, he corrected the conclusion. The ultimate subject of change in the older philosophies had always been some sensible body; that was the stuff of the universe; it alone was substantial and permanent; all else was accidental and mutable.2 Against this materialism Aristotle argued that every assignable object was subject to change; the element 'air' could be changed into the element 'water'; and so he concluded that the ultimate subject of change could not be an assignable object; it could be neither quid nor quantum nor quale nor any other determinate type of reality;3 it could not, of itself, be knowable;4 its nature could be stated only by recourse to analogy. (154; Fs)

Quod igitur sic se habet ad ipsas substantias naturales, sicut se habet aes ad statuam et lignum ad lectum, et quodlibet materiale et informe ad formam, hoc dicimus esse materiam primam.5

... materia prima... se habet ad formas substantiales, sicut materiae sensibiles ad formas accidentales.6

... (materia prima) ita se habet ad omnes formas et privationes, sicut se habet subiectum alterabile ad qualitates contrarias.7

256 Such is the defining analogy of matter. In its limit it defines prime matter, which is proportionate to substantial form. And as prime matter of itself is not knowable, so substantial form has the complementary distinction of being knowable by intellect alone.8 (155; Fs)

257 The full significance of this analogy is not easy to measure. It eliminates the materialism of the old naturalists for whom the real was the sensible.9 It corrects the misguided intellectualism of Plato, for whom the intelligible was real but not of this world. One might even say that by anticipation it puts in its proper place and perspective, that of prime matter, what Kant thought was the thing-in-itself. It does all this because it places in the most material of assignable material things an intelligible component known by our intellects and identifiable in our knowledge; that intelligible component, form, species, quiddity, has as much title to being named 'cause' and 'nature' as has matter itself; and what it is is fixed by its relation to the ratio rei, the ratio definitiva rei, the ratio quidditativa rei.10 Conversely, it is only because Aristotle's real thing is not the materialists' real thing that Aristotle was able to satisfy his own epistemological law: unless particulars are identical, at least inadequately, with their quiddities, then the former cannot be objects of scientific knowledge and the latter cannot be realities.11 (155; Fs)

258 But the significance of the analogy is not confined to its metaphysical limit of prime matter and substantial form. Besides prime matter, there are sensible and intelligible matter, common and individual matter, appendages of matter, parts of the matter, material and individual conditions. What are all these? The answer is simple if one grasps that natural form stands to natural matter as the object of insight (forma intelligibilis) stands to the object of sense (materia sensibilis).12 But to convince conceptualists, a more detailed approach is necessary. Just as the correspondence between definitions and things was the ultimate ground of the analysis of change into subject, privation, and form,13 whence proceeded the notion of prime matter, so the more detailed correspondence between parts of the definition and parts of the thing should bring to light the other elements in the analogy. Accordingly we proceed to sample a lengthy and complex Aristotelian discussion.14 (155f; Fs)

259 Segments are parts of circles, and letters are parts of syllables. Why is it that the definition of the circle makes no mention of segments, while the definition of the syllable must mention letters? A typical solution is found in the contrast between 'curvature' and 'snubness': curvature is curvature whether in a nose or not; but snubness is snubness only in a nose. In general one may say that, as without proportionate matter there cannot be the corresponding material form (just as without a proportionate phantasm there cannot be the corresponding insight), so for different forms different measures of matter are necessary. There must be letters if there are to be syllables; but the necessary letters are not necessarily in wax or in ink or in stone; hence letters are de ratione speciei or partes speciei; but letters as in wax or as in ink or as in stone are partes materiae. Similarly, one cannot have a particular circle without having potential segments; but the notion of circle is prior to the notion of segment, since the latter cannot be defined without presupposing the notion of the former; and so one can appeal either to the potentiality of the segments or to the priority of the definition of circle to conclude that segments are, with respect to the circle, partes materiae.15 (156; Fs) (notabene)

260 The notion of priority is of wide and nuanced application. The right angle is prior to the acute; the circle to the semicircle; and man to hand or finger. In each of these instances the former is a whole and the latter a part; in each the definition of the former must be presupposed by a definition of the latter; in each, accordingly, the latter does not enter into the definition of the former and so is a pars materiae. But complex cases are not to be solved so simply. Parts of a living body cannot be defined without reference to their function in the whole; again, the whole itself cannot be defined without reference to its formal principle, which constitutes it as a whole; accordingly, the soul and its potencies must be prior to the body and its parts. Still, it does not follow that parts of the body are mere partes materiae, that 'man' can be defined without bothering about corporeal parts just as 'circle' can be defined without bothering whether it be made of wood or of bronze. The difference arises because the principle of priority must here be complemented by the principle of proportion between form and matter; a circle requires no more than intelligible matter; man requires sensible matter;16 and so while bronze and wood are not de ratione speciei circuli still flesh and bones are de ratione speciei hominis.17 (156f; Fs)

261 A sufficient sample has been taken from Aristotle's involved discussion to make it plain that matter is not merely prime matter but also the matter that is sensibly perceived and imaginatively represented. If further one wishes to understand why the discussion is so complex, why Aristotle warned against simple rules of solution,18 even perhaps a conceptualist might consider the hypothesis that the real principle of solution is neither one rule nor any set of rules but rather the fashioner of all rules, intelligence itself in act, determining what it takes as relevant to itself and so de ratione speciei and what it dismisses as irrelevant to itself and so pertaining to the partes materiae. (157; Fs)

262 In any case let us close this section with a summary account of the analogy of matter. In the first instance, matter is the matter of common sense, the wood of the table and the bronze in a statue. But unless corrected, that notion easily leads to materialism, whether the crude materialism of the old naturalists or the elaborate materialism of the nineteenth-century atomists, who equally considered the real to be the sensible. On the other hand, the material world is neither sheer flux, as for Plato, nor unknowable in itself, as for Kant. The higher synthesis of these opposites lies in defining matter as what is known by intellect indirectly. Directly intellect knows forms, species, quiddities; but these knowns have antecedent suppositions, simultaneous suppositions, and consequents, all of which, as such, are indirectly known. (157; Fs) (notabene)

263 Antecedent suppositions are matter in the sense that genus is named matter and specific difference is named form, and again in the sense that substance is named matter and accident is named form; such usage is Aristotelian and Thomist but still somewhat improper. Simultaneous suppositions fall into two classes: if they pertain to the intelligible unity of the form, as letters to syllable, they are parts of the form, de ratione speciei, and in Thomist usage common matter; if they do not pertain to the intelligible unity of the form yet are ever included in some fashion in the concrete presentation, they are partes materiae or material conditions or individual matter. Finally, consequents that are contingent and potential, as segments to circles, are again partes materiae. Clearly, it is the second of these three types of indirectly knowns that offers the principal meaning of the term 'matter,' and it is this meaning that the analogy of matter considers chiefly. The general analogy is the proportion of wood to tables and bronze to statues; but the specifically Aristotelian analogy is that natural form is to natural matter as intelligible form is to sensible matter,19 that is, as the object of insight is to the object of sense. (157f; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: materia prima; materia: Unterscheidung; partes materiae - formae; BeispieL Kreissegment, Buchstabe; proportionale Materie

Kurzinhalt: Besides prime matter, there are sensible and intelligible matter, common and individual matter, appendages of matter, parts of the matter, material and individual conditions. What are all these?

Textausschnitt: 258 But the significance of the analogy is not confined to its metaphysical limit of prime matter and substantial form. Besides prime matter, there are sensible and intelligible matter, common and individual matter, appendages of matter, parts of the matter, material and individual conditions. What are all these? The answer is simple if one grasps that natural form stands to natural matter as the object of insight (forma intelligibilis) stands to the object of sense (materia sensibilis).1 But to convince conceptualists, a more detailed approach is necessary. Just as the correspondence between definitions and things was the ultimate ground of the analysis of change into subject, privation, and form,2 whence proceeded the notion of prime matter, so the more detailed correspondence between parts of the definition and parts of the thing should bring to light the other elements in the analogy. Accordingly we proceed to sample a lengthy and complex Aristotelian discussion.3 (155f; Fs)

259 Segments are parts of circles, and letters are parts of syllables. Why is it that the definition of the circle makes no mention of segments, while the definition of the syllable must mention letters? A typical solution is found in the contrast between 'curvature' and 'snubness': curvature is curvature whether in a nose or not; but snubness is snubness only in a nose. In general one may say that, as without proportionate matter there cannot be the corresponding material form (just as without a proportionate phantasm there cannot be the corresponding insight), so for different forms different measures of matter are necessary. There must be letters if there are to be syllables; but the necessary letters are not necessarily in wax or in ink or in stone; hence letters are de ratione speciei or partes speciei; but letters as in wax or as in ink or as in stone are partes materiae. Similarly, one cannot have a particular circle without having potential segments; but the notion of circle is prior to the notion of segment, since the latter cannot be defined without presupposing the notion of the former; and so one can appeal either to the potentiality of the segments or to the priority of the definition of circle to conclude that segments are, with respect to the circle, partes materiae.4 (156; Fs) (notabene)

260 The notion of priority is of wide and nuanced application. The right angle is prior to the acute; the circle to the semicircle; and man to hand or finger. In each of these instances the former is a whole and the latter a part; in each the definition of the former must be presupposed by a definition of the latter; in each, accordingly, the latter does not enter into the definition of the former and so is a pars materiae. But complex cases are not to be solved so simply. Parts of a living body cannot be defined without reference to their function in the whole; again, the whole itself cannot be defined without reference to its formal principle, which constitutes it as a whole; accordingly, the soul and its potencies must be prior to the body and its parts. Still, it does not follow that parts of the body are mere partes materiae, that 'man' can be defined without bothering about corporeal parts just as 'circle' can be defined without bothering whether it be made of wood or of bronze. The difference arises because the principle of priority must here be complemented by the principle of proportion between form and matter; a circle requires no more than intelligible matter; man requires sensible matter;5 and so while bronze and wood are not de ratione speciei circuli still flesh and bones are de ratione speciei hominis.6 (156f; Fs)

261 A sufficient sample has been taken from Aristotle's involved discussion to make it plain that matter is not merely prime matter but also the matter that is sensibly perceived and imaginatively represented. If further one wishes to understand why the discussion is so complex, why Aristotle warned against simple rules of solution,7 even perhaps a conceptualist might consider the hypothesis that the real principle of solution is neither one rule nor any set of rules but rather the fashioner of all rules, intelligence itself in act, determining what it takes as relevant to itself and so de ratione speciei and what it dismisses as irrelevant to itself and so pertaining to the partes materiae. (157; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Zusammenfassung: Analogie der materia: drei Arten von materia: Gattung, Buchstabe (Holz), Kreissegment

Kurzinhalt: höhere Einheit (im Ggs zu Plato und Kant): indirekte Erkenntnis der materia: antecedent, simultaneous, consequents suppositions; natural form is to natural matter as intelligible form is to sensible matter

Textausschnitt: 262 In any case let us close this section with a summary account of the analogy of matter. In the first instance, matter is the matter of common sense, the wood of the table and the bronze in a statue. But unless corrected, that notion easily leads to materialism, whether the crude materialism of the old naturalists or the elaborate materialism of the nineteenth-century atomists, who equally considered the real to be the sensible. On the other hand, the material world is neither sheer flux, as for Plato, nor unknowable in itself, as for Kant. The higher synthesis of these opposites lies in defining matter as what is known by intellect indirectly. Directly intellect knows forms, species, quiddities; but these knowns have antecedent suppositions, simultaneous suppositions, and consequents, all of which, as such, are indirectly known. (157; Fs) (notabene)

263 Antecedent suppositions are matter in the sense that genus is named matter and specific difference is named form, and again in the sense that substance is named matter and accident is named form; such usage is Aristotelian and Thomist but still somewhat improper. Simultaneous suppositions fall into two classes: if they pertain to the intelligible unity of the form, as letters to syllable, they are parts of the form, de ratione speciei, and in Thomist usage common matter; if they do not pertain to the intelligible unity of the form yet are ever included in some fashion in the concrete presentation, they are partes materiae or material conditions or individual matter. Finally, consequents that are contingent and potential, as segments to circles, are again partes materiae. Clearly, it is the second of these three types of indirectly knowns that offers the principal meaning of the term 'matter,' and it is this meaning that the analogy of matter considers chiefly. The general analogy is the proportion of wood to tables and bronze to statues; but the specifically Aristotelian analogy is that natural form is to natural matter as intelligible form is to sensible matter,1 that is, as the object of insight is to the object of sense. (157f; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Identität: Erkennender - Erkanntes, actio - passio; Thomas: identity -> assimilation; intellectus possibilis (possible intellect)

Kurzinhalt: the sense in potency is unlike the sensible in potency but ...; je nach Gesichtspunkt: Potenz und Form, Immaterialität des Erkennens; immaterielle Rezeption

Textausschnitt: 264 It will be most convenient to begin from the theorem that knowing involves an identity in act of knower and known. This identity is an extension of the theorem in the Physics that affirms the identity of action and passion; one and the same real movement as from the agent is action and as in the patient is passion.1 Now in the De anima it is seen that this theorem holds no less with regard to operations (actus perfecti) than with regard to movements (actus imperfecti).2 The one operation 'sensation' is effected by the sensible object and received in the sensitive potency; as from the object, it is action; as in the subject, it is passion; thus sounding is the action of the object, and hearing the passion of the subject, and so, by the theorem of identity, sounding and hearing are not two realities but one and the same.3 (158; Fs) (notabene)

265 From this theorem Aristotle immediately deduced, first, an alternative account of sensitive empirical consciousness,4 secondly, a solution to the question whether unseen things are colored,5 and thirdly, an explanation of the fact that excessive stimuli destroy senses.6 Aquinas fails to manifest the slightest difficulty concerning this theorem in his commentary, yet rarely if ever does he employ it in his independent writings. There one may read repeatedly that 'sensibile in actu est sensus in actu, et intelligibile in actu est intellectus in actu.' But the meaning is not the original Aristotelian identity in second act7 but rather assimilation on the level of species.8 Quite probably the cause of this shift from identity to assimilation was the terminological imbroglio of 'action' to which we have referred already.9 (158f; Fs)

266 That knowing is by assimilation is a theorem offering no special difficulty. It was a matter of common consent: 'hoc enim animis omnium communiter inditum fuit, quod simile simili cognoscitur.'10 Its grounds in specifically Aristotelian theory are reached easily: as the thing is the thing it is in virtue of its form or species, so too the knowing is the ontological reality it is in virtue of its own form or species; further, unless the form of the thing and the form of the knowing were similar, there would be no ground for affirming that the knowing was knowing the thing. (159; Fs) (notabene)

267 It is a short step from a theorem of assimilation to a theorem of immaterial assimilation. If knower and known must be similar on the level of form, there is no necessity, indeed no possibility, of assimilation on the level of matter. The contrary view had been advanced by Empedocles, and against it Aristotle marshaled no less than ten arguments.11 His own view was in terms of potency and act, action and passion: the sense in potency is unlike the sensible in potency;12 but the sense in act is like the sensible object on the general ground that effects are similar to their causes;13 it followed that the senses were receptive of sensible forms without the matter natural to those forms, much as wax is receptive of the imprint of a seal without being receptive of the gold of which the seal is made.14 (159f; Fs) (notabene)

268 In human intellect immaterial assimilation reaches its fulness in immaterial reception: not only is the matter of the agent not transferred to the recipient, as the gold of the seal is not transferred to the wax; not only is the form of the agent not reproduced in matter natural to it, as in sensation; but the form of the agent object is received in a strictly immaterial potency, the possible intellect. Thus the structures of sense and intellect differ radically. The sensitive potency, such as sight, is form of the sensitive organ, the eye; just as soul is the form of the body.15 Sensation itself is the operation not merely of the organ nor merely of the potency but of the compound of organ and potency.16 Directly, the sensible object acts on the sensitive organ;17 but since matter and form, organ and potency are one, the movement of the organ immediately involves the operation of its form, the sense.18 (160; Fs) (notabene)
Kommentar (19/05/2007): da wäre ein Ansatzpunkt von Rahners Theorie ...

269 On the other hand, the possible intellect is not the form of any organ;19 it has no other nature but ability to receive;20 it stands to all intelligible forms as prime matter stands to all sensible forms;21 and precisely because it is in act none of the things to be known, it offers no subjective resistance to objective knowing.22 Thus possible intellect stands to its first act, which is science, as the sensitive organ stands to its first act, which is the sensitive potency;23 both sensation and understanding are the operations of compounds, but sensation is the operation of a material compound, while understanding is the operation of an immaterial compound; since, then, operari sequitur esse, the substantial form of man must be subsistent but the substantial form of a brute cannot be subsistent.24 (160f; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Theorem: Wissen ist durch Immaterialität und Assimilation; Immaterialität -> intentionale Existenz

Kurzinhalt: general theorem that knowledge is by immateriality; the knower need not be the known; Form unterschiedlich je nach Rizipient

Textausschnitt: But if the object does not have to be material, nor the subject immaterial, and the action of the object on the subject has no particular claim to immateriality, what can be the meaning of the general theorem? In the first place, its meaning is negative; the knower need not be the known; assimilation indeed is necessary, but it is on the level of form and not that of matter; complete assimilation, both material and formal, would make the knower be the known but would give no guarantee of knowledge. Out of this negative and anti-Empedoclean meaning there arises a positive meaning. The form of the knowing must be similar to the form of the known, but also it must be different; it must be similar essentially for the known to be known; but it must differ modally for the knower to know and not merely be the known. Modal difference of forms results from difference in recipients: the form of color exists naturally in the wall but intentionally in the eye because wall and eye are different kinds of recipient; similarly, angels have a natural existence on their own but an intentional existence in the intellects of other angels. Thus the negative concept 'immateriality' acquires a positive content of intentional existence; and intentional existence is a modal difference resulting from difference in the recipient.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Warum Formen 2 Arten der Existenz haben: natürlich und intentional: Vollkommenheit als Totalität

Kurzinhalt: Thomist system conceives perfection as totality: if finite things which cannot be the totality ...;

Textausschnitt: There remains a still further step to be taken. Why have forms two different modes of existence, natural or intentional, according to difference in recipients? It is because Thomist system conceives perfection as totality: if finite things which cannot be the totality are somehow to approximate towards perfection which is totality, they must somehow be capable not only of being themselves but also in some manner the others as others; but being themselves is natural existence, and being the others as others is intentional existence. Moreover, if potency and especially matter are the principles of limitation, tying things down to being merely the things they are, it follows that the intentional mode of existence results from the negation of potency and specifically from the negation of matter. It is only in the perspective of such systematic principles that the general theorem `knowledge is by immateriality' can be understood.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Apprehensive Abstraction; Identität: forma intelligibilis, quidditas rei (species intelligibilis), object of intellect

Kurzinhalt: quidditas rei materialis, primo et per se cognitum, human intellect: potency of a form that actuates matter; the agent object of apprehensive abstraction (insight)

Textausschnitt: In the universal hierarchy of cognoscitive potencies human intellect holds an intermediate place. Sense is the first act of a material organ, and so its object is a form existing in matter as it exists in matter. Angelic intellect is the potency of a pure form, and so its object is a pure form. But human intellect is neither the act of an organ, as sense, nor the potency of a pure form, as angelic intellect; it is the potency of a form that actuates matter, and so its object must be a form, existing indeed in matter, but not as it exists in matter.
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one must first distinguish conversion to phantasm from reflection on phantasm, and secondly, settle precisely what is meant by conversion. Now conversion and reflection are quite distinct both in themselves and in their consequents. They are distinct in themselves:
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But plainly there is no difficulty in reconciling the necessity of sight converting to color with the fact that color is what sight first and directly knows; similarly, there is no difficulty in reconciling the necessity of possible intellect converting to phantasm to know the quiddity with the statement that possible intellect first and directly knows the quiddity in the phantasm.
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In the Contra Gentiles the actual intelligibility of phantasm is clarified: in the dark colors are visible in potency; in daylight they are visible in act but seen in potency; they are seen in act only inasmuch as sight is in act; similarly, prior to the illumination of agent intellect, phantasms are intelligible in potency; by that illumination they become intelligible in act but understood only in potency; they are understood in act only inasmuch as the possible intellect is in act. Moreover, there occurs a description of the intelligibility in act of phantasm: the species intelligibilis is said to shine forth in phantasm as the exemplar does in the example or image.
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As has been already explained, the object of insight into phantasm is preconceptual, so that any expression of it is as conceived and not as such, just as any expression of the object of sight is of it as conceived and not as such. It is this fact that accounts for the variety of the descriptions one finds.
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In the In Boetium De Trinitate there occurs an identification of
(1) 'forma intelligibilis,'
(2) 'quidditas rei,' and
(3) object of intellect. Since 'species' translates Aristotle's eidos, which regularly means form, it is not surprising that the object of insight should be named not only 'forma intelligibilis' but also 'species intelligibilis.' Thus, the species that shines forth in phantasm is an object of intellectual knowledge; again, the species that intellect understands, knows, apprehends in phantasm, plainly is an object; and in such statements not only the thought but also the expression is Aristotelian.
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Finally, the object of insight, besides being 'quidditas sive natura rei materialis,' 'forma intelligibilis,' and 'species intelligibilis,' also is the universal which is not posterior but prior, not with, but without the 'intentio universalitatis,' and concretely though inadequately identical with the particular material thing, just as the Aristotelian quiddity is concretely though inadequately identical with the particular.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: apprehensive abstraction as second act, actus perfecti; species intelligibilis quae, qua, in qua

Kurzinhalt: the act of apprehensive abstraction (insight), an immaterial similitude of the form that is received materially in the known thing

Textausschnitt: But though apprehensive abstraction is itself cognitional and abstracts from sensibly known individual or sensible matter, still it may be considered insofar as it enters under metaphysical categories. From that viewpoint it is an operation, a second act, an actus perfecti. Because it involves psychological necessity and universality, metaphysically the form whence it proceeds must be received universally, immaterially, and immovably ... Such a form is not the essence itself of the soul but an immaterial similitude of the form that is received materially in the known thing. It is not innate, nor derived from separate substances out of this world, nor consisting exclusively of intellectual light; but it is received from material things inasmuch as phantasms are made intelligible in act by agent intellect; hence neither the acquisition nor the use of science can occur without conversion to phantasm; nor can we even judge properly unless sense is functioning freely.
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Now this form also is called a 'species intelligibilis'; obviously it is quite different from the species of our preceding paragraph, which is an object. If the latter be named 'species quae,' then this form is 'species qua intelligitur'; the 'species quae' is one of various attempts to characterize the preconceptual object of insight; the 'species qua' is not a direct object but a conclusion of metaphysical reflection. When the possible intellect is actuated by the 'species qua,' it is constituted in the first act of apprehensive abstraction; this first act of apprehensive abstraction stands to the second act as does form to esse and as principle of action to action.
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the reception of the 'species qua' is a passion, and the consequent second act is similarly a pati in the general sense of that term; by that second act the preconceptual 'quidditas rei materiallis' or 'forma intelligibilis' or 'species quae' or universal in the particular is known; but in virtue of that second act there is formed the definition, the act of defining thought, the act of meaning; and this, at times, is said to be or to contain a third 'species intelligibilis,' which may be distinguished from the 'species quae' and the 'species qua' by being called a 'species in qua.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Zwei Arten von Intelligibilia, Weise des Erkennens nur im Modus verschieden

Kurzinhalt: Divine substance: wie ein zu starkes Licht; actuated intelligibility of sensible things: abstracts from space and time, spiritual substances: outside space and time

Textausschnitt: As the sensible is the object of sense, so the intelligible is the object of intellect. The sensible is confined to material reality, but the intelligible is coextensive with the universe: whatever can be can be understood. The supreme intelligible is the divine substance, which lies beyond the capacity of human intellect, not as sound lies outside the range of sight, but as excessive light blinds it.
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Further, there are two classes of intelligibles and two modes of understanding: ... But while the difference between the two classes of intelligible is real and intrinsic, the difference between the two kinds of understanding is only a difference in mode; hence, whether the soul is in or out of the body, it is the same human intellect, specified by the same formal object, but operating under the modal difference that actual intelligibility is presented or is not presented in phantasms. Again, just as understanding the actuated intelligibility of sensible things abstracts from space and time, so the spiritual substances that are in themselves actually intelligible exist outside space and time.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: 3 Fragen hinsichtlich des phantasmas; Plato: kein intellectus agens?

Kurzinhalt: was wird erhellt; worin besteht die Erhellung / Immaterialisierung; wie kann das ein Objekt im intellectus possibilis hervorrufen?

Textausschnitt: How can the act existing in a material organ, such as the phantasm, be the agent object of immaterial intellect? Now Aquinas himself was concerned with this possibility. He pointed out that, since the objects of Platonist science were immaterial ideas, Platonist doctrine had no use for an agent intellect; on the other hand, since the objects of Aristotelian science were material things and only potentially intelligible, there had to be a power of the soul to illuminate phantasms, make them intelligible in act, make them objects in act, produce the immaterial in act, produce the universal, by way of abstracting species from individual matter or from material conditions. (182; Fs) (notabene)

317 Such statements raise three questions: what precisely is illuminated, immaterialized, universalized; in what does the illumination, immaterialization, universalization consist; and how can that provide an object in act for the possible intellect?
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More precisely, it is phantasm, not in the sense of act of the imagination, but in the sense of what is imagined, that is illuminated; for what is illuminated is what will be known; and certainly, insights into phantasm are not insights into the nature of acts of imagination but insights into the nature of what imagination presents; as Aquinas put it, insight into phantasm is like looking in, not looking at, a mirror.
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As to the second question, there is an interesting Thomist objection against a possible Averroist alternative that would account for our knowing by a separate possible intellect on the ground that species in the separate intellect irradiate our phantasms. The objection runs:
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The foregoing is negative. On the positive side there is a list of four requirements: the presence of agent intellect; the presence of phantasms; proper dispositions of the sensitive faculties; and, inasmuch as understanding one thing depends on understanding another, practice. The first two requirements recur in ...
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The imagined object as merely imagined and as present to a merely sensitive consciousness (subject) is not, properly speaking, intelligible in potency; but the same object present to a subject that is intelligent as well as sensitive may fairly be described as intelligible in potency. Thus, pure reverie, in which image succeeds image in the inner human cinema with never a care for the why or wherefore, illustrates the intelligible in potency.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Abstraktion; 3 Stufen: objektive, apprehensive, formtive

Kurzinhalt: There are three stages to physical and mathematical abstraction: the objective, the apprehensive, the formative.

Textausschnitt: 330 There are three stages to physical and mathematical abstraction: the objective, the apprehensive, the formative. Objective abstraction is the illumitiation of phantasm, the imagined object; it consists in treating the imagined object as something to be understood as far as its specific nature goes; like action and passion, it is one reality with two aspects; as effected by agent intellect, it may be named efficient; as affecting the imagined object, it may be named instrumental. Next, with regard to apprehensive abstraction, one has to distinguish between first act and second act: first act is the possible intellect informed and actuated by a species qua; second act proceeds from first as esse from form and action from principle of action; accordingly, the procession is processio operationis; the second act consists in grasping, knowing, considering an intelligible species quae in the imagined object. Per se this second act is infallible; consequent to it by a sort of reflection, there is indirect, intellectual knowledge of the singular, that is, a reflective grasping that the universal nature understood is the nature of the particular imagined. Thirdly, there is the act of formative abstraction; this consists in an act of meaning or defining; but whenever there is an act of meaning or defining, by that very fact there is something meant or defined; accordingly, formative abstraction may also be described as positing a universal ratio or an intentio intellecta. (187f; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Critical Point in philosophy; Hauptunterschied zw Realismus, Idealismus und Lonergan

Kurzinhalt: For a materialist the terms are real, the intelligible unification subjective; for an idealist the terms cannot be reality, and ...

Textausschnitt: This is the critical point in philosophy. For a materialist the terms are real, the intelligible unification subjective; for an idealist the terms cannot be reality, and the intelligible unification is not objective; for the Platonist the terms are not reality but the intelligible unifications are objective in another world; for the Aristotelian both are objective in this world; Thomism adds a third category, existence, to Aristotelian matter and form. (Fußnote zu Absatz 333)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Wissen als Bewegung (Plato) u. Vervollkommnung (Aristoteles); menschl. Intellekt erkennt sich selbst

Kurzinhalt: For the Aristotelian confrontation is secondary. Sense in act is the sensible in act. Intellect in act is the intelligible in act; Potenz, Habitus und Akt

Textausschnitt: The conception of knowing as movement appears in Plato's dilemma that the subsistent Idea of Being either must be in movement or else must be without knowing. The same dilemma forced Plotinus to place the One beyond knowing; Nous could not be first, because Nous could not be simple. In St Augustine the notion that knowing is by confrontation appears in the affirmation that we somehow see and consult the eternal reasons. ...
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For the Aristotelian, on the other hand, confrontation is secondary. Primarily and essentially, knowing is perfection, act, identity. Sense in act is the sensible in act. Intellect in act is the intelligible in act. In this material world, of course, besides the knower in act and the known in act, there are also the knower in potency and the known in potency; and while the former are identical, still the latter are distinct. Nonetheless, potency is not essential to knowing, and therefore distinction is not essential to knowing. It follows that in immaterial substances, as one negates potency, so also one negates distinction: 'In his quae sunt sine materia, idem est intelligens et intellectum.' A Platonist subsistent Idea of Being would have to sacrifice immobility to have knowledge; but Aristotle, because he conceived knowing as primarily not confrontation but identity in act, was able to affirm the intelligence in act of his immovable mover.
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Unlike the natures of material things, which can be known only by what they do, human intellect can be known by what it is. Efficiently, it is the light of intelligence within us, the drive to wonder, to reflection, to criticism, the source of all science and philosophy. Receptively, it offers the three aspects of potency, habit, and act. As potency, human intellect is the capacity to understand; it is common to all men, for even the stupidest of men at least occasionally understand. As habit, human intellect is fivefold:
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For intellectual habit is not possession of the book but freedom from the book. It is the birth and life in us of the light and evidence by which we operate on our own. It enables us to recast definitions, to adjust principles, to throw chains of reasoning into new perspectives according to variations of circumstance and exigencies of the occasion.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Von der Identität zur Konfrontation; Notwendigkeit des inneres Wortes beim Menschen; Unmöglichkeit d. Beweises bei Gott

Kurzinhalt: quidditas rei -> res: humantias -> homo; understanding moves from identity with its preconceptual object to confrontation with its conceived object

Textausschnitt: The essential necessity of inner words in our intellects is the necessity of effecting the transition from the preconceptual quidditas rei materialis, first to the res, secondly to the res particularis, thirdly to the res particularis existens. The transition from quidditas rei to res, say from humanitas to homo, occurs in conception, in which there emerges intellect's natural knowledge of ens. In virtue of this step, understanding moves from identity with its preconceptual object to confrontation with its conceived object;b but as yet the object is only object of thought. The second step is a reflection on phantasm that enables one to mean, though not understand nor explanatorily define, the material singular. In this step intellect moves from a universal to a particular object of thought. Finally, by a reflective act of understanding that sweeps through all relevant data, sensible and intelligible, present and remembered, and grasps understanding's proportion to the universe as well, there is uttered the existential judgment through which one knows concrete reality.
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We turn to our second question. Why cannot natural reason demonstrate the existence of the divine Word from the premise of divine selfknowledge? First, the demonstration cannot be effected by contrasting the proper object of understanding with the divine essence. God is simply intelligible. He is pure form identical with existence. There is no distinction between his essence or his existence or his intellect or his understanding. There is not even a distinction' between his esse naturale and his esse intelligibile. Secondly, the demonstration cannot be effected by arguing that without an inner word there would be no confrontation between subject and object. For one cannot demonstrate that such confrontation is essential to knowledge. Primarily and essentially, knowing is by identity. The natural light of reason will never get beyond that identity in demonstrating the nature of self-knowledge in the infinite simplicity of God.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: verschiedene innere Wörter als das esse intelligibile (intentionale) im Gs. zum esse naturale

Kurzinhalt: one act of understanding expresses itself in many inner words ... these inner words are the esse intelligibile or the esse intentionale of soul as distinct both from the esse naturale of soul itself and from the esse intellectum ...

Textausschnitt: Further, once understanding of the human soul has developed, there are not two acts of understanding but one, which primarily is of intellective soul and secondarily, in the perfection of intellective soul, is of the sensitive and vegetative souls. Finally, our one act of understanding expresses itself in many inner words, in which are defined intellective, sensitive, and vegetative souls and the relations between them; further, these inner words are the esse intelligibile or the esse intentionale of soul as distinct both from the esse naturale of soul itself and from the esse intellectum, which is an extrinsic denomination from an intelligere of soul whether real or intentional.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Wort Gottes, inneres Wort, inner word: natürlich Vernunft reicht nicht aus; Psychological trinitarian theory; Trinität, Augustinus

Kurzinhalt: hat divine knowledge of the other provides no premise whence the procession of the divine Word could be established by natural reason; Psychological trinitarian theory

Textausschnitt: Now on Thomist analysis the divine essence formally is itself but eminently it contains all perfection. The divine act of understanding primarily is of the divine essence but secondarily of its virtualities. The divine Word that is uttered is one, but what is uttered in the one Word is all that God knows. Moreover, the divine essence, the divine act of understanding, and the divine Word considered absolutely are one and the same reality; hence there can be no real distinction between 'contained eminently in the essence' and 'secondary object of the understanding' or between either of these and 'uttered in the one Word.' Further, utterance in the one Word does not confer on the ideas an esse intelligibile that otherwise they would not possess; for in God esse naturale and esse intelligibile are identical. It remains, then, that divine knowledge of the other provides no premise whence the procession of the divine Word could be established by natural reason. The plurality of divine ideas within divine simplicity is accounted for by an infinite act of understanding grasping as secondary objects the perfections eminently contained in the divine essence and virtually in divine omnipotence. As we can understand multa per unum all the more so can God.
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Hence, though our intelligere is always a dicere, this cannot be demonstrated of God's. Though we can demonstrate that God understands, for understanding is pure perfection,d still we can no more than conjecture the mode of divine understanding and so cannot prove that there is a divine Word. Psychological trinitarian theory is not a conclusion that can be demonstrated but a hypothesis that squares with divine revelation without excluding the possibility of alternative hypotheses. Finally, Aquinas regularly writes as a theologian and not as a philosopher; hence regularly he simply states what simply is true, that in all intellects there is a procession of inner word.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: processio operati u. operationis; inner word (inneres Wort) Analogie zu Gott

Kurzinhalt: the inner word is to our intelligence in act as is act to act ...: processio operati; inasmuch as dicere does not involve the imperfection of processio operationis: analogy to the divine procession

Textausschnitt: Secondly, Aquinas developed a more general notion of efficient causality than that defined by Aristotle. Thus principium operati, principium effectus, processio operati include the idea of production but do not include the Aristotelian restrictions of in alio vel qua aliud. The act of understanding is to the possible intellect, the act of loving is to the will, as act to potency, as perfection to its perfectible; the procession is processio operationis and cannot be analogous to any real procession in God. But the inner word is to our intelligence in act as is act to act, perfection to proportionate perfection; in us the procession is processio operati; in us dicere is producere verbum, even though it is natural and not an instance of Aristotelian efficient causality. Inasmuch as dicere does not involve the imperfection of processio operationis it offers an analogy to the divine procession. (205f; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: inneres Wort in uns: zugleich processio operati und processio intelligibilis; reale Distinktion; intentio, res intelleca

Kurzinhalt: our inner word and act of understanding are two absolute entities really distinct; inner word in God: also natural generation

Textausschnitt: In us inner word proceeds from act of understanding by a processio intelligibilis that also is a processio operati, for our inner word and act of understanding are two absolute entities really distinct. In God inner word proceeds from act of understanding as uttering by a processio intelligibilis that is not a processio operati, at least inasmuch as divine understanding and divine Word are not two absolute entities really distinct.
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It may be doubted that a pure processio intelligibilis is a real procession. If A is because of B without being caused by B, the dependence of A on B seems to be merely mental. It is true that a processio intelligibilis cannot be real except in a mind. On the other hand, in a mind it necessarily is real; just as the mind itself and its operation are real, so the intelligible procession within the mind and the consequent relations of origin are all real. 'Mental' is opposed to 'real' only inasmuch as one prescinds from the reality of mind.
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Indeed, the divine procession of the Word is not only real but also a natural generation. In us that does not hold. Our intellects are not our substance; our acts of understanding are not our existence; and so our definitions and affirmations are not the essence and existence of our children. Our inner words are just thoughts, just esse intentionale of what we define and affirm, just intentio intellecta and not res intellecta. But in God intellect is substance, and act of understanding is act of existence; it follows that the Word that proceeds in him is of the same nature and substance as its principle, that his thought of himself is himself, that his intentio intellecta of himself is also the res intellecta. As there is an analogy of ens and esse, so also there is an analogy of the intelligibly proceeding est. In us est is just a thought, a judgment.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Sünde als Unterlassung; Notwendigkeit der Bewegung vom Intellekt zum Willen; Sünder; Unruhe, Umkehr

Kurzinhalt: necessity: intelligible procession from intellect to will -> sin is failure to act; ontologische Begründung der Rationalisierung der Fehler einer Person oder Gesellschaft

Textausschnitt: Evidently so, for without an intelligible procession of love in the will from the word of intellect, it would be impossible to define the will as rational appetite. Natural appetite is blind; sensitive appetite is spontaneous; but rational appetite can be moved only by the good that reason pronounces to be good. Because of the necessity of intelligible procession from intellect to will, sin is not act in the will but failure to act; it is failure to will to do the good that is commanded, or it is failure to will to inhibit tendencies that are judged to be wrong. Because of the same necessity of intelligible procession from intellect to will, the sinner is driven by a fine disquiet either to seek true peace of soul in repentance or else to obtain a simulated peace in the rationalization that corrupts reason by making the false appear true that wrong may appear right. Finally, however much it may be disputed whether there is any processio operati from the word of our intellects to the act in our wills, it cannot be denied that there is a processio intelligibilis from the word of intellect to the act of rational appetite.
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Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Procession (Hervorgang) des Wortes - aber nicht der Liebe: generatio; Identität zw. Akt d. Liebens und d. Geliebtem

Kurzinhalt: the amari of the beloved in the lover is one and the same act as the amare of the lover for the beloved; the object of intellect is in intellect 'per similitudinem speciei -> generatio

Textausschnitt: Similarly, by final causality there results from the beloved the amari of the beloved; and this amari of the beloved is not in the beloved but in the lover. Next, the appeti of the term in the motive principle is one and the same act as the appetere of the motive principle for the term; similarly, the amari of the beloved in the lover is one and the same act as the amare of the lover for the beloved ... Finally, if the presence of the beloved in the lover is exactly the same entity as the act of love in the lover, why does Aquinas bother about it? Obviously because he wishes to determine the nature of love and so to show that, while the procession of the Word is a generation, still the procession of Love is not. The object of intellect is in intellect 'per similitudinem speciei,' but the object of will or love is in the will not by reproduction but as a goal is in tendency to the goal.
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There cannot be the dynamic presence of the beloved in the lover's will, unless there first is intellectual conception. Further, it is not the concept but the conceived that is loved; hence divine love necessarily is related both to the Word and to God from whom the Word proceeds.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Trinität, psychologische Analogie, Vergleich: Physiker, Quantentheorie

Kurzinhalt: the psychological analogy truly gives a deeper insight into what God is. Still, that insight stands upon analogy ... Just as an experimental physicist may not grasp ...

Textausschnitt: By natural reason we know that God is absolute being, absolute understanding, absolute truth, absolute love. But natural reason cannot establish that there are in God processiones intelligibiles, that the divine Word is because of divine understanding as uttering, that divine Love as proceeding is because of divine goodness and understanding and Word as spirating. Such further analogical knowledge of quid sit Deus pertains to the limited but most fruitful understanding that can be attained when reason operates in the light of faith. Thus, the Augustinian psychological analogy makes trinitarian theology a prolongation of natural theology, a deeper insight into what God is.
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In other words, the psychological analogy truly gives a deeper insight into what God is. Still, that insight stands upon analogy; it does not penetrate to the very core, the essence of God, in which alone trinitarian doctrine can be contemplated in its full intelligibility; grasping properly quid sit Deus is the beatific vision. Just as an experimental physicist may not grasp most of quantum mathematics, but under the direction of a mathematician may very intelligently devise and perform experiments that advance the quantum theory, so also the theologian with no proper grasp of quid sit Deus but under the direction of divine revelation really operates in virtue of and towards an understanding that he personally in this life cannot possess.
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Hence it is that the psychological analogy enables one to argue that there are two and only two processions in God, that the first is 'per modum intelligibilis actionis' and a natural generation; that the second is 'per modum amoris' and not a generation; that there are four real relations in God and three of them really distinct; that the names verbum and imago are proper to the Son, while the names amor and donum are proper to the Holy Spirit. But do not think that Aquinas allows the psychological analogy to take the place of the divine essence as the one sufficient principle of explanation. The psychological analogy is just the side door through which we enter for an imperfect look.
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Thus, though the generation of the Son is 'per modum intelligibilis actionis,' though a proper name of the Son is the Word, still Aquinas did not conclude that the principle by which the Father generates is the divine intellect or the divine understanding. In us the inner word proceeds from understanding, and our understanding is really distinct from our substance, our being, our thought, our willing. But in God substance, being, understanding, thought, willing are absolutely one and the same reality. Accordingly, ...

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Konzeptualist: Sicherheit des Denkens; Verstehen d. Trinität

Kurzinhalt: Remove the effort to understand, and understanding will decrease. Imperfectly we grasp why God is Father, Word, and Spirit ...

Textausschnitt: ... for one can be certain only because one understands, or else because one believes someone else who certainly understands. It is only inasmuch as different concepts proceed from one act of understanding that different concepts are seen to be joined by a necessary nexus. Remove the effort to understand, and understanding will decrease; as understanding decreases, fewer concepts are seen to be joined by a necessary nexus; and as this seeing decreases, certitudes decrease. To stop the process, either one must restore the effort to understand or one must appeal not to intellect but to some higher or lower power.
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Imperfectly we grasp why God is Father, Word, and Spirit, inasmuch as we conceive God, not simply as identity of being, understanding, thought, and love, but as that identity, and yet with thought because of understanding, and love because of both, where 'because' means not the logical relation between propositions but the real processio intelligibilis of an intellectual substance. What is truly profound is also very simple.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Erziehung; Position: Modernisten - Traditionalisten; Zusammenfassung

Kurzinhalt: f the modernist position. There were five points: first, nothing is to be taken for granted or accepted on blind faith; secondly, there is no fixed reality to be known - knowledge is a component in an ever changing process; thirdly,

Textausschnitt: 13/1 So much for the philosophy of the modernist position. There were five points: first, nothing is to be taken for granted or accepted on blind faith; secondly, there is no fixed reality to be known - knowledge is a component in an ever changing process; thirdly, the methods of empirical science are the only valid methods; fourthly, these are to be applied to the whole of traditional wisdom, which is simply the product of a prescientific, preindustrial, predemocratic age and society, and consequently is notto be expected to be very relevant to our quite different times; and finally, the great appeal is to be to experience. (8f; Fs)

14/1 The traditionalist position is set out at greater length by Adler and Mayer.1 They urge that the traditionalist would say that things exist prior to changing, and change does not eliminate all previous properties; some are permanent. Within the field of science methods differ widely, and there are still greater differences between these scientific methods and the methods proper to mathematics or philosophy or ethics.2 Finally, there are certain truths accessible to a prescientific, preindustrial, and predemocratic age, and these truths hold for any age. (9; Fs)

15/1 You can see that there is a weakness in that answer, at least in the way I have summed it up. An educational philosophy that appeals to the immutable elements in things, to their eternal properties, to the truths that hold in any age, and simply urges that empirical methods are not the only methods, really is defending a negative position. It is not offering a vision, an understanding, a principle of integration and judgment, and the great power that are offered on the modernist side by their close correlation between fundamental philosophic notions and educational theory.3 If one appeals simply to what is immutable, then one appeals to what holds equally for the education of primitives, ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, medieval and Renaissance men, people at the time of the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, and people today. And that is not meeting the challenge. It grounds an abstract education for abstract human beings.4 (9; Fs)

16/1 It will not do, then, to ascribe a merely negative value to the philosophy of education.5 Let us attempt, then, to grasp the idea of a philosophy of education as something positive, as providing the vision missing in the traditionalist response.6 (9f; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Philosophie der Aufklärung als absolute Norm > Philosophie der Erziehung; Descartes, Newton, Husserl

Kurzinhalt: Drei Stufen in Philosophie: Unterschied zwischen Theologie und Philosophie, Philosophie und Wissenschaft; Philosophie als Nachfolgerin von Religion

Textausschnitt: 17/1 At the beginning of his posthumously published work Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften and die transzendentale Phänomenologie,1 Edmund Husserl made a point that I think will be helpful to us. He urged that 'Western man'2 can be conceived simply as an anthropological classification, a technical term in anthropology, a geographic designation of a civilization; or, on the other hand, it can be conceived as the Renaissance conceived man. The Greeks of fourth-century Athens took current words in their culture - epistêmê, sophia, alêtheia - and gave them a meaning, imposed upon them an Umdeutung; a shift of meaning, with the result that the words came to signify something of which the average Athenian had no notion whatsoever. The Renaissance discovery of the ancients retrieved an idea of man that involved the negation of merely traditional power and merely traditional norms, and the affirmation of human reason and human freedom as the ultimate principles in individual life and in human society. According to Husserl, the ideal of man as endowed with reason and freedom, and as destined to base his life and the life of human society upon reason and freedom - upon reason as opposed to merely traditional norms, and upon freedom as opposed to merely traditional power - was the ideal that captured the Renaissance. (10f; Fs)

18/1 The implement and carrier of that ideal was philosophy. But since the Middle Ages philosophy has been understood in any of three quite different manners, and, I submit, none of them is satisfactory for our purposes.3 (11; Fs)

First, there was philosophy as it functioned in the context of the medieval symbiosis of theology, philosophy, the liberal arts, and the sciences.4 (11; Fs)

Second, there was philosophy as a distinct discipline and department, completely autonomous, recognizing the right and the truth of a revealed religion, but still proceeding exclusively in the light of its own criteria and its own methods. From about the year 1230,5 the distinction between philosophy and theology was clearly drawn, but the separation of philosophy and theology emerges in full clarity in the work of Descartes. What is not clear in Descartes, of course, is the distinction between philosophy and science. He proves the conservation of momentum, for example, from the immutability of God. And while there is effectively the distinction between philosophy and science in Newton, there is not yet the verbal distinction. Newton named his great work Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica - The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. He thought he was doing philosophy in presenting his theory of universal gravitation. (11; Fs) (notabene)

19/1 So first, you can conceive philosophy in the sense of the medieval living together with theology, and secondly you can conceive philosophy as a totally distinct and independent department that appeals to reason and acknowledges the existence of revealed truth, but that itself is something different and separate. A third conception of philosophy regards philosophy as the successor to religion, as the supreme arbiter in all things. The philosophy of the philosophes, the thinkers of the Enlightenment,6 was philosophy in this third sense, philosophy as an affirmation of human reason and human freedom as the ultimate basis of human life. It emphasized in particular the negation of merely traditional norms and merely traditional power, the negation that in the French Revolution dispossessed the king, the feudal nobility, and the church. The fertility of this idea, ramifying into countless fields of thought and activity, steadily promoted individualism, democracy, and state-controlled secularist education. It did so both directly and indirectly, though of course with varying degrees of consistency and efficacy. Philosophy, not merely in the sense of something distinct and separate from theology, but as the ultimate norm, an absolute self-affirmation by man, has been the inspiration of philosophies of education, as of the whole modern movement. (11f; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: 2 Formen der Philosophie im 3. Sinn: in d. englisch-sprachigen Welt u. in Deutschland: naturwissenschaftliche Orientierung u. Historizismus

Kurzinhalt: Unterschied in der säkularistischen Tradition zwischen Frankreich, England u. USA und Deutschland; säkularistische Philosophie führt zu einer säkularistischen Erziehung

Textausschnitt: 20/1 Philosophy in this third sense has taken two main forms: naturalism in the English-speaking world and to a large extent in France, and historicism in Germany. For the naturalists, the model of science and of all human knowledge is natural science. Specifically at the time of the Enlightenment, it was Newton's mechanics. Later the evolutionary doctrine of Darwin would replace this model. But historicism differs fundamentally from both. Here the human spirit is to be distinguished from nature. The basic category is not mechanical nor evolutionary law, but meaning. Meaning is the vehicle that brings men together, that guides their enterprises, that provides the field in which the human spirit develops and human freedom is exercised. There is a radical difference, then, between secularist thought in the German tradition and secularist thought in France, England, and the United States.
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21/1 Secularist philosophy, of course, led spontaneously to a secularist education. If the basis of human life is human reason and human freedom and nothing else, if we are to have in 'Western man' a fundamental affirmation of human dignity as the basis of the whole of human life and society, then education simply has to be secularist. It is not quite consistent, of course, that it also be state-controlled. After all, state control is just the opposite of human freedom, since it sets up a machine. State control seems

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: 2.1 The Masses

Kurzinhalt: Is it possible to extend higher civilization to the lower classes without debasing its standard and diluting its quality to the vanishing point?

Textausschnitt: 25/1 The first new factor is the masses. In 150 years the population of the earth has increased by 1,000 million. The increase has been possible in virtue of modern commerce, industry, and technology. To think of liquidating our industrial and technological societies is to think of liqudating the greater part of the earth's present population.
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... Is it possible to extend higher civilization to the lower classes without debasing its standard and diluting its quality to the vanishing point? Is not every civilization bound to decay as soon as it begins to penetrate the masses?

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: das Gute; 2.1 Not Abstract; ens et bonum convertuntur

Kurzinhalt: For example, it is not true to say that only substances are good

Textausschnitt: 7/2 We will start from the well-known tag ens et bonum convertuntur, being and the good are convertible. The good exists, and what exists is good. Philosophy speaks of the good as a transcendental. That is to say, the good is not confined to one of Aristotle's ten predicaments. For example, it is not true to say that only substances are good and accidents are not, or that, among the accidents, only quantity or quality or relation is good. Rather, the good is found in all of the descriptive categories. The good is not an abstract notion. It is comprehensive. It includes everything. When you speak of the good, you do not mean some aspect of things, as though the rest of their reality were evil. The good is a notion that is absolutely universal, that applies to whatever exists; and at the same time it is totally concrete. This is what I mean by saying it is a comprehensive term.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Aspekte des Guten; human good, good of order

Kurzinhalt: 2.2 Not an Aspect; 2.3 Not Negative; 2.4 Not a Double Negation; 2.5 Not Merely an Ideal; 2.6 Not Apart from Evil; 2.7 Not Static; 2.8 The Good Known Analogously; 2.9 The General Notion of the Human Good

Textausschnitt: Siehe Word-Text

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Augustinus über das Böse: Gott hätte eine andere Welt erschaffen können

Kurzinhalt: 2.6 Not Apart from Evil; God could have created a world without any evil whatever, but thought it better to permit evil and draw good out of the evil

Textausschnitt: 12/2 Again, as I have already remarked, the good is not apart from evil in this life. In his Enchiridion ('Handbook') St Augustine made perhaps one of the most profound remarks in all his writings, and for that matter in the whole of theology, when he said that God could have created a world without any evil whatever, but thought it better to permit evil and draw good out of the evil. We must not forget that what God wants, the world God foreknew from all eternity in all its details and freely chose according to his infinite wisdom and infinite goodness, is precisely the world in which we live, with all its details and all its aspects. This is what gives meaning to a phrase that might at times be considered trite: resignation to the will of God.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Mt, Mk: Einer ist der Gute; Plato - Aristoteles: Erkenntnis reicht - Aneignung von Habitus

Kurzinhalt: 2.8 The Good Known Analogously; contrast between Plato and Aristotle; Tillich

Textausschnitt: 'What is good by its essence?' 'What is good?' asks for the essence, and there is only one thing that is good by its essence, and that is God. Everything else is good by participation; just as there is only one thing that exists by its essence, and everything else exists by participation. That good, that being, is known properly, as opposed to analogously, only in the beatific vision. You know what is the good, what is being, by its essence, when you have the beatific vision. Otherwise you know them only analogously. In other words, ... Consequently, as one's knowledge of finite beings and finite goods becomes more full, more perfect, more adequate, in the same proportion one has a fuller, more adequate, more perfect basis for forming an analogous notion of what the good is. (30f; Fs) (notabene)
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15/2 Perhaps this will help us see what lies behind the profound contrast between Plato and Aristotle. In the Republic Plato wants to find out what the good man would be, and seeks to answer this question by describing the good society. At the term of the argument, he says that, if the good society is to exist, the guardians will have to know the Idea of the good. Knowing the Idea of the good is the ultimate solution to all human problems. But Aristotle said in his Ethics that whatever may be the case with regard to the Idea of the good, obviously it cannot make much difference to the goodness of concrete human living. That is a matter of acquiring the right habits. Aristotle studies things in the concrete. (31; Fs) (notabene)
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Now there is a sense in which both Plato and Aristotle are correct. The Idea of the good really is God himself. The divine essence is the essence of the good, and the only essence of the good, the only place where the essence of the good is found. And that is the measure of all other good. And the good is mysterious because God is mysterious. As Isaiah says, 'My thoughts are above your thoughts, and my ways are above your ways' (Isaiah 55:8). On the other hand, anything that exists and is good by participation is finite, and because it is finite it is not perfect in every respect; it can be criticized. The possibility of noting that it is not good in every respect, that it can be criticized, is for St Thomas the basis of human freedom. One cannot choose between God and anything else, but one can always choose between finite things, because they are finite in their being and in their goodness. They are not good from every possible viewpoint. Criticism is possible. Hence one can say that what is beyond criticism is either God or an idol,

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: das menschliche Gute - Zusammenfassung: Wahl und Verstehen

Kurzinhalt: 2.9 The General Notion of the Human Good; The good is human insofar as it is realized through human apprehension and choice;

Textausschnitt: 16/2 Now, while most of my illustrations thus far have been from the human good, we have not yet attended to what is specific in the human good. The good is human insofar as it is realized through human apprehension and choice. Without human apprehension and choice we would not exist - we are children of our parents. We would not have our cities, and so on. Everything in human life that we know about, apart from 'the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks' depends upon human apprehension and choice. That is the distinctive feature of the human good - it is what comes out of human apprehension and choice. Furthermore, human apprehension develops, so that one age understands things better and knows more than the preceding age; and human choice is good or evil; and so the human good is a history, a cumulative process where there is both advance of apprehension, and distortion, aberration, due to evil. (32; Fs)
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Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: The Good of Order; Ordnungsgut; Zusammenarbeit, Voraussetzungen (Habitus, Institutionen, Material, Status)

Kurzinhalt: Now what are the general characteristics of a human good of order? It includes a number of things. We will discuss four: ...

Textausschnitt: 3.1.2 The Good of Order

20/2 The good of order is the setup. The family, for instance, is not a particular good, but a flow of particular goods for father and mother and children. Another instance of the good of order is technology-economy-polity. The most obvious aspect here is the economy. There can be a depression, and it is not for lack of raw materials, nor for lack of factories and railways, nor for lack of capital - money is going begging. Nor is it for lack of people willing to work or for lack of people willing to invest. It is just that the whole setup has simply gone awry; it just will not work. That is a case of the evil in the depression. You can see the absence of the good of order. (34; Fs)

21/2 Again, an educational system is a good of order. An educational system is not the education of this child or this young man or this young lady. It is a flow of educations. It determines what flows and the direction in which it will flow. The church, too, is a good of order. It gets people to heaven - not just one, but a flow of people into heaven. The world of art, letters, sciences, philosophy - the world of learning - is a setup, a good of order. (34; Fs)

22/2 Now what are the general characteristics of a human good of order? It includes a number of things. We will discuss four: a regular recurrence of particular goods, coordinated human operations, a set of conditions of these operations, and personal status.1 (34; Fs) (notabene)

23/2 The most conspicuous aspect of a good of order is a regular recurrence of particular goods. If X is a good thing and occurs, it will recur when there is a good of order. If breakfast is a good thing, and if there is a good of order, you will have breakfast every morning. A theoretical analysis of the notion of recurrence can be found in Insight.2 The good of order is not a matter of mechanist planning. Planning has to work in every single detail or everything goes awry. But the good of order is a matter of sets of alternative schemes of recurrence.3 It is something like the way the water circulates on the surface of the earth: it goes up from the sea in water vapor and forms clouds that are carried over the land; the water then falls down in rain, which flows into brooks and streams and rivers, and finally returns to the sea. The circulation of water does not work like a machine, according to some set of rules. Rather, all along it works according to sets of probabilities. Thus, there are spots that are deserts, and others that have too much rain, and still others that have too much humidity. The regular recurrence of particular goods is a fundamental aspect of the good of order. When there is a regular recurrence of particular goods, there is a good of order behind it. (34f; Fs)

24/2 Next, that regular recurrence occurs through coordinated human operations. There is a recurrence of particular goods because men operate, and operate in some sort of coordinated fashion, with a certain interdependence. So the second element in the good of order consists in coordinated human operations. (35; Fs)

25/2 Thirdly, you can have the coordination and the operations only if certain conditions are fulfilled. We will distinguish three parts in this third element. First, there are the habits in the subject. What do I mean by a habit? A person has a habit of mind when he does not have to learn, when he already knows, when he can operate on his own, when you do not have to take the time to teach him. A person has a habit of will when you do not have to persuade him - 'Barkis is willin'.'4 A person has a habit of dexterity, of manual skills, when he does not have to learn how to do something. If he had to learn how to drive a car, there would be no use asking him to drive you downtown; you ask a person who already has the skill. Thus we can distinguish three kinds of habits: cognitional habits, volitional habits, and skills; not having to learn, not having to be persuaded, not having to acquire the skill. Habits are a condition of coordinated human operations. If every time something had to be done people had to take a year off to learn, or to be persuaded, or to acquire the skills, nothing would ever be done. (35; Fs)

26/2 The second condition of effective coordination lies in institutions. Institutions are like habits, but in the objective order. Everyone in the United States comes to an agreement about a way of doing things when the governruent passes a law. An institution is a mechanism set up for making decisions. There are many such mechanisms - not only governmental, but social institutions in general. Such institutions are objective conditions that result from human apprehensions and choices and facilitate the flow of coordinated operations. But you can count on the other fellow doing it: through these institutions individuals are socialized. For example, if every time you went out for a drive you were not sure whether there might be some lad driving around with the purpose of running into people, it would be a more hazardous enterprise; but because of socialization, we can count on no one but a madman doing that. (35f; Fs)

27/2 The third condition of coordinated operation is material equipment, the material means of facilitating cooperation.5 For example, a university without any buildings does not have the material equipment that is one element in an educational system. (36; Fs)

28/2 The final element in the good of order is personal status. When you have coordinated operations resulting in a flow of particular goods, there arise personal relations that are congruent with the structure of the good of order. Such personal relations give rise to status. Thus, the family is a good of order; a mother fulfils certain functions within the family; she plays a determinate role in the good of order that is the family, and by playing that role, fulfilling that part, she enters into certain relations with the other members of the family. Being in those relations with other members of the family is having a status in the family, a status that arises from the personal relations that result from coordinated human operations. Similar conditions obtain for pupil and teacher, doctor and client, and so on right along the line.6 The human good gives rise to determinate structures of interpersonal relations that result in status. (36; Fs)

29/2 So the good of order involves four aspects: a regular recurrence of particular goods, coordinated human operations, the triple condition of these coordinated human operations - habits, institutions, and material equipment - and finally, the personal status which results from the relations constituted by the cooperation. (36; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Value; ästhetischer, ethischer und religiöser Wert

Kurzinhalt: three kinds of value: aesthetic, ethical, and religious

Textausschnitt: 30/2 The third element in the invariant structure of the human good is value. Not only are there setups, but people ask, 'Is the setup good?' They say, 'There is nothing wrong with him, it's the setup.' Children fight about particular goods, but men fight about the value of a good of order.
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32/2 Aesthetic value is the realization of the intelligible in the sensible: when the good of order of a society is transparent, when it shines through the products of that society,
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33/2 Secondly, there is ethical value. It swings us beyond discussion of the good as developing object to the good that is the subject. Ethical value is the conscious emergence of the subject as autonomous, responsible, free

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Kennzeichen der invarianten Struktur des Guten: open structure, Interlocking Aspects, A Synthetic Structure

Kurzinhalt:

Textausschnitt: 36/2 I wish now to emphasize certain aspects of the general invariant structure of the human good. It is open; its three aspects are related to one another in an interlocking fashion; it is synthetic; and it is isomorphic with several other structures. (38f; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Thomas: Problem zwischen Individuum und Gemeinschaft; Status; das Ordnungsgut repräsentiert in Menschen

Kurzinhalt: Thomas: einmal: das Weltgute als Ausdruck des schlechtnis Guten, dann die Ordnung der Seele; Lösung: the person emerges with personal status within the order

Textausschnitt: In one place in the first part of the Summa theologiae (q. 47, a.1), he states that the good of order found in the whole universe is the closest approximation to divine perfection. But in another place (q. 93, a. 2, ad 3m), he states that the order in the soul, on which is based the Trinitarian analogy, provides the most intense, concentrated image of divine perfection. There is a conflict between order and person. Are we interested in the order that helps persons, or in persons simply? Do you sacrifice persons for the order? The law does so when people are executed and wars are fought. But the order can also be sacrificed for persons. And the two can also be united insofar as the person emerges with personal status within the order. Then the order is an order between persons, and the good of order is apprehended, not so much by studying the notion of schemes of recurrence and determining the schemes in which human goods occur, but by apprehending human relations. The most efficacious example of the human good of order is the family, and the family subsists on personal relations. It is in their personal relations with one another that the members of the family concretely perceive their good of order. Through personal relations there is a concrete, immediate apprehension of what the good of order concretely is. It is useful to have a theoretical structure, to be able to speak of the good of order generally, but the simplest and most effective apprehension of the good of order is in the apprehension of personal relations. (40f; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Kennzeichen der invarianten Struktur des Guten: Isomorphic with Other Structures

Kurzinhalt: Isomorphie zwischen dem Guten und den drei Stufen: Erfahrung ...;

Textausschnitt: The first parallel is with the structure of cognitional activity. We have distinguished particular goods, the good of order, and value. Our acquaintance with the particular good is mainly a matter of experience. But to know about the good of order, you have to understand. It is intelligence, understanding, insight, that is chiefly relevant to knowing the good of order. And it is when one reflects on different orders, different possible setups and systems, that one comes to the notion of value, and such reflection is on the level of judgment. You will recall from Insight that experience, understanding, and judgment are three fundamental levels of consciousness. They run parallel to a fundamental division in metaphysics, according to which finite being is composed of potency, form, and act, whether substantial or accidental. (41; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Differentiale des Guten: intellektuelle Entwicklung, Sünde, Erlösung; i. E.: Kultur, Zivilisation (Hutchins, Toynbee)

Kurzinhalt: Fortschritt der Technik: Vergleich mit Rad; The process functions as a wheel: situation, insight, counsel, policy, common consent, action, new situation, new insight, new counsel,

Textausschnitt: 1/3 The differentials of the human good are of three kinds.1 The first is intellectual development. Man's intellect is potens omnia facere et fieri: it is infinite potentially. Moreover, it moves through incomplete acts towards more complete actuation. The angel from the first moment of its existence knows naturally all that it will ever know, but the human race exists in time, and through time acquires its knowledge. It is natural to man to have an intellect that develops in time. That intellectual development, which is accountable for progress, is a first principle differentiating human societies.2. (49; Fs)

2/3 The second principle differentiating human societies is sin. In sin, man is the first cause. Whenever we do good, we are just God's instruments, but with respect to the radical element in sin man is the initiator, the first cause. Sin is nothing, a negation, but that is man's originality; and that makes a difference: sin is the basis of decline in human society.3 (49f; Fs) (notabene)

The third differential is redemption, victory over sin, the restoration of the order destroyed by sin.4 (50; Fs)

1.1 Intellectual Development5

1.1.1 The Development of Intelligence

3/3 As we distinguished insight or intelligence and judgment, so we shall distinguish two levels of development in the first differential. There is intellectual development, and there is reflective development. Intellectual development corresponds to civilization, reflective development to culture - if you want to distinguish between civilization and culture. Again, Hutchins in The University of Utopia distinguishes between the methods of discovery and the methods of discussion6? His distinction is approximately the same as the one I am making. Methods of discovery are scientific methods pertaining more to insight or intelligence, while methods of discussion are concerned with aims and values, educational purposes, and so on, and pertain more to the reflective level. (50; Fs)

4/3 With regard to the first level, then, we can see the structure of civilizational development from our account of insight. The act of understanding occurs with respect to imagined or sensible data. The human situation at any time includes a set of data; someone understands something, gets a bright idea, and figures out what would happen if this idea were put into effect. He takes counsel with others or with the influential people; a policy is devised; consent is won; and human action changes in the light of the new idea. The change in human action brings about a new situation, and the new situation suggests further acts of understanding. The process functions as a wheel: situation, insight, counsel, policy, common consent, action, new situation, new insight, new counsel, new policy, and so on.7 The wheel can turn indefinitely. Such an analysis of process is mainly in terms of experience and insight, and also choice. The analysis can be illustrated by what Toynbee's Study of History says about 'Challenge-and-Response.'8 Challenge is the situation, and response is guided by an insight into the situation. The response creates a new situation, which brings forth a further challenge, and so on as the process keeps going. (50f; Fs)

5/3 Now this process of new ideas can spread through the whole good of order. You start changing the situation at one point, but that change in the situation will involve repercussions all through the good of order. New ideas will start popping up everywhere. There will result augmented well-being, and it affects each of the aspects of the human good:9 the flow of particular goods becomes more frequent, more intense, more varied; new equipment is produced; institutions are remodeled; new types of goods are provided; the society enjoys more democracy and more education; new habits are formed to deal with the new equipment in the new institutions; there is status for all, because everything is running smoothly; everybody is too busy to be bothered with knifing other people; there are happy personal relations, a development in taste, in aesthetic value and its appreciation, and in ethics, in the autonomy of the subject; finally, there is more time for people to attend to their own perfection in religion. (51; Fs)

6/3 This process of change moves the situation away from the roots of chronic evils. The old evils cannot function in the new setup, simply because they pertain to the old situation, and that old situation has been changed. This process of development has no fixed frontiers. It radiates, as it were, from a center. The people in the next town, the next state, the next country start doing likewise. They can see that the new situation is good, and so they too have to change. (51; Fs)

7/3 Secondly, who are the agents? I have spoken simply of the process - situation, insight, counsel, policy, new type of action, new situation, new insight, and the snowball effect of the entire cycle. The agents may be called a succession of creative personalities. The situation can be wholly transformed if there is a succession of personalities who are not simply sunk into the existing situation, immersed in its routines, and functioning like cogs in a wheel, with little grasp of possibilities, with a lack of daring.10 They withdraw, perhops even physically, but at least mentally.11 They are detached; it is because of their detachment that they can see how things could be different. They may be accounted as nobodies while they are withdrawn, but when they return, they transform the world. In their withdrawal they become themselves, and they return with a mission.12 The return, of course, may not occur in their own lifetime. The most influential man in the twentieth century - the strongest candidate at least - is Karl Marx,13 and he spent years in the British Museum writing books that everyone else laughed at. Toynbee accounts for the process of such influence in terms of a creative minority. To begin, a creative personality influences a small group, which in turn influences other groups. Plato speaks of a spark that leaps from soul to soul.14 (51f; Fs) (notabene)

8/3 Toynbee distinguishes four periods in such a process. The first is marked by enthusiasm. In the second period people are more sedate. The third period is one of disillusion, of storm and stress. And in the fourth period, people acquiesce, and the prophets are honored by the sons of those who had stoned them.15 Thus, insights occur to individuals; these individuals have to communicate their ideas to a minority; and the minority passes through the four periods. Others then will follow, but with limited understanding and devotion, and no initiative - Toynbee calls this 'mimesis.' They are charmed, they feel something is afoot, but they need a leader, they need to be organized, and so there develop a functional hierarchy, rule, law, loyalty.16 The major weakness in Toynbee's analysis is that he presented himself as an empirical scientist. On this point he has been severely criticized. But I find his work superb at another level, as an illustration of how human intelligence works in history.17 (52f; Fs)

9/3 The first of the differentials,18 then, is intellectual development, and we are considering it first on the level of intelligence. Aristotle divided all questions into four, and the four again into two: Quid sit? and, An sit? What is it? and, Does it exist? The answer to the question Quid sit? is on the level of intelligence. We have considered intellectual development in its social aspect, that is, in the sense of civilizational order, the development of society. A concrete illustration of this type of development is provided in Schumpeter's business cycles.19 Schumpeter divides business cycles into three types, the third and longest of which lasts about sixty years. An example is the age of the railroad. The discovery of the idea of the railroad and the subsequent building of the railroads transformed the entire economy of the United States - consider what things could not exist without the railroads, and what things came into existence because of them. The idea of having railroads involved numerous concrete implications and made possible things that before were not possible. In similar fashion, we live at the present time in an age of electronics. All sorts of developments stem from the single idea of electronic devices and appliances. It is a fundamental idea that, when put into practice, releases the possibility of a whole series of other ideas. Another illustration lies in motorcars and the transformation of the roads. The roads that we have now did not exist fifty years ago, and one of the main reasons they exist now is the existence of the motorcar. The existence of roads followed the existence of the motorcar, and all sorts of other things have followed from both. One idea leads to another and makes the realization of other ideas possible. One can see this very clearly in concrete instances of the technological order, although the same sort of thing , exists, though more obscurely, in ideas of a more immaterial character. (53f; Fs)

10/3 I have used Toynbee's analysis largely, in treating the development of social intelligence, that is, of intelligence with respect to the technology-economy-polity: the process from situation, insight, counsel, policy, new action, changed situation giving rise to, making possible and significant, further insights. The cycle is ongoing, and the entire good of order of a culture or civilization can be transformed in that manner. That is just the analysis of the process, however. There are also the agents. The prime agents of such a process are creative personalities. The immediate agents Toynbee calls the creative minority, the people who catch on to the idea, and with considerable risk and sacrifice devote themselves to its realization. Finally, the rank and file, who have some notion of the idea, are led, carried on in the stream. (54; Fs)

11/3 The more specific developments of intelligence in a pure sense - the development of science, mathematics, and so on - are a little too technical for us to treat at this point without digressing too far from our present topic. We will come back to these developments later when we consider the implements at the disposal of the educator to help him realize his purposes, and ask about the good of different subjects in education. But at present we are simply trying to form some notion of our ends. So we are thinking of the good in general, in order to arrive at both a determination of what the aims of education might be or should be and a criticism of what in fact they are. (54; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Differentiale des Guten: intellektuelle Entwicklung 2; Zivilisation, Kultur: die reflektive Entwicklung; Fortschritt in Kultur durch Verschiedenheit der Kompaktheit

Kurzinhalt: The accumulation of insights results in a new civilizational order. But the structural invariants do not change; Mircea Eliade (Jung), Voegelin;

Textausschnitt: 12/3 Now, besides this first level of intellectual development, which is a development in intelligence, in the question Quid sit? What is it? there is also a reflective level of development, a development of culture as opposed to civilization. Civilization is connected with technology, economy, and the polity or state.
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The accumulation of insights results in a new civilizational order. But the structural invariants do not change. They are not the object of a new discovery. They are always there, operative though they are not noticed. You can stop the man on the street and ask him what he thinks of the distinctions among particular goods, the good of order, and values, and he will simply gape at you. Still, the structural invariants are operative in his life, in his ways of thinking and doing things, even though he does not advert to them explicitly. They are implicit in all human acts -in experience, understanding, reflection, freedom and responsibility. They are given some expression in the customs, the laws, the stories, the traditional wisdom of every society. (55; Fs)
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13/3 Nonetheless, there is a progress in the apprehension of the structural invariants. That progress is from the compactness of the symbol to the differentiation of philosophic, scientific, theological, and historical consciousness. (55; Fs) (notabene)
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17/3 A similar sort of work on a different level is being done by Eric Voegelin in Order and History. Voegelin's study reveals how the symbols of Babylonian and Egyptian thought were countered in the revelation given to Israel, and how the symbols of the Homeric age were transformed, upset, transcended by such philosophers as Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Xenophanes, and by the movement into explicitly rational consciousness that appears with the Sophists and particularly with Plato and Aristotle. Voegelin understands cultural development in terms of the movement away from the compactness of the symbol to differentiated consciousness. (57; Fs) (notabene)
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21/3 Our first differential, then, is intellectual development. Man grows in understanding of nature and himself, and there is a consequent development in civilizational order. Intellectual development explains the conspicuous difference between the Stone Age and successive periods of human life and history. But at the same time, arising in and because of this change in civilizational order, there is an enucleation, a development, in the apprehension and the realization of the structural invariants of the human good itself. (58; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Sünde: als Verbrechen, als Komponente im sozialen Prozess; Marx, Nietzsche: Hass d. Sünde;

Kurzinhalt: ... there can arise the vertical invasion of barbarians, of people who do not understand the society as it exists and are in revolt against it. Such people come from within the society. The society has failed to bring them up to its own level ...

Textausschnitt: 1.2 Sin

21/3 The second differential is sin. Sin is a category not only of theological and religious thought. One of the fundamental inspirations of Karl Marx is perhaps his hatred and critique of the sins of the bourgeoisie in the nineteenth century. There is a terrific hatred in Marx, and it is a hatred of sin. Again, in Nietzsche there is a hatred and critique of the sins of the masses, of what is all too human, of their resentment against human excellence of any kind, of their desire to bring everything down to their own level. It was against this that Nietzsche was reacting in affirming his transvaluation of values and his 'Superman,' and so on. For Nietzsche, of course, the fundamental expression of the resentment of the masses against human excellence was Christianity. Nietzsche lived fully the secularism of the modern time. For him God was dead, in the sense that God no longer exerted any influence upon human social, political, and economic life. Nietzsche wanted to think things out in full coherence with that fact. His explanation of Christianity as a resentment against excellence is, of course, a tool that can be turned against him. In Max Scheler's analysis the notion of resentment is given a twist, another application. For a while Scheler was a Catholic, and at that time he upheld the thesis that Protestant, bourgeois, capitalist society was the product of resentment against Catholicism and the feudal aristocratic hierarchy. The notion of resentment, it seems, can be used in all sorts of ways. (58; Fs; tblVrw bis 32/3)

22/3 These examples indicate that sin is a preoccupation not merely of religious and theological thought. Sin is an evident fact in human life, something one has to think of, something that accounts for the differences.

We will consider sin under three headings: sin as crime, sin as a component in social process, and sin as aberration. (59; Fs)

1.2.1 Sin as Crime

23/3 Sin as crime is, as it were, a statistical phenomenon. Everything is not going to be perfect. Sin as crime is more or less an incidental, statistical, and relatively small departure from accepted norms. It gives rise to laws, the police, law courts, tribunals, prisons. At the same time, it generates the notion of the good as 'keeping out of jail' - You're a good man if you're not in jail; that's all we can ask of you. It brings out the further notion that to attain further good is a matter of having more laws, more policemen, more courts. Against sin as crime, then, there is the law, and the law is a fundamental element in the apprehension of the good. As St Paul states in Romans 3.20, 'Through the law there is knowledge of sin.'1 And again in Romans 5.13 he writes, 'Before the law there was sin in the world, but the sin was not counted as sin since there was no law'2 (59; Fs)

24/3 Sin as crime is a matter of the crimes of passion, of moral failure, of bad will, of incomprehension. The criminal class to a greater or lesser extent is a class of those who do not understand the social setup. Criminals establish another society of their own with its own moral standards. There is a story of a gangster who shot a policeman, and when asked why he did it said he did it in self-defense3 he had moral standards of his own that gave evidence of an entirely different society, with criteria and laws of its own. In any society there can arise the vertical invasion of barbarians, of people who do not understand the society as it exists and are in revolt against it. Such people come from within the society. The society has failed to bring them up to its own level, or they have refused to ascend to the level of the society. The annual crop of infants is a potential invasion of barbarians, and education may be conceived as the first line of defense. (59; Fs)

1.2.2 Sin as a Component in Social Process

25/3 Secondly, there is sin as a component in social process, as the opposite to the development of civilizational order. Our Lord remarks in Matthew 18.7 that it is necessary that scandals come. In fact, the good of order does not develop in the glorious fashion I outlined yesterday. It develops under a bias in favor of the powerful, the rich, or the most numerous class. It changes the creative minority into a merely dominant minority. It leads to a division of classes not merely by their function, but also by their well-being. This division of classes gives rise in the underdogs to suspicion, envy, resentment, hatred, and in those that have the better end of the stick, to haughtiness, arrogance, disdain, criticism of 'sloth,' of 'lack of initiative,' of 'shortsightedness,' or in earlier times, of 'lowly birth.' Thus in the very process of the development of civilizational order, there result from sin a bias in favor of certain groups and against other groups, class opposition, the emotional charging of that opposition, and the organization of those emotions and that opposition in mutual recriminations and criticism. In time the pendulum swings from dominance by force and class law, through palliatives and concessions, to a shift of power and to punitive laws. Income tax in England at the present time seems to be an instance of punitive law. We find a great emigration of the best young brains from England, because they foresee no possibility of getting anywhere in their own country, where there is discrimination against what once was the leading class.4 Such a state of affairs interferes with creativity. It is not enough just to have a new idea, even if the idea is justwhat is wanted. The idea has to combine with power, with wealth, with popular notions, before it can be realized. It cannot simply emerge from the man on the spot, diffuse, give rise to new potentialities in a chain reaction. Developments become lopsided, curtailed. Completion of the development is demanded by disaffection, but it cannot emerge in the normal fashion of the spread of an idea. It has to come by management, from above downward, not from below upward. Management always needs more power. Without a constant increase in power, management is not able to control all the outside5 factors that might interfere with its plans. If it cannot exclude those factors, it cannot achieve its results. And so there occurs the rise and growth of a bureaucratic hierarchy. (60; Fs)

26/3 In spontaneous developments, the new ideas come where they may to the man on the spot who is intelligent, sees the possibilities, and goes ahead at his own risk. But in the bureaucracy the intelligent man ceases to be the initiator. He does not have the power, the connections, the influence, to put his ideas into practice. He becomes a consultant, an expert, called in by the bureaucracy. Activity is slowed down to the pace of routine paperwork. Style and form, that are inevitable when the man who has the idea is running things, yield to standardization and uniformity. Wisdom and faith yield to eclecticism and syncretism: Pick the best ideas, and the ideas that will suit everybody, or some of those that will suit everybody. The process of mimesis, of the people who were carried on in the movement even though they did not quite understand it, changes into drudgery and routine, with no understanding of what is going on.6 They keep on doing it because they have to live. Creativity has fewer and fewer opportunities for significant achievement. The lone individual is more and more driven onto the margin of the big process, of what is really going on.7 The masses demand security, distraction, entertainment, pleasure, and they have a decreasing sense of shame. (60f; Fs)

27/3 In this regard, I relate a story told me by a man in Montreal. His mother came from Germany and his uncles went to Detroit. His uncles put their sons through college by spending their lives working in factories. When they retired from the factories they could not just be idle, so they set up small machine shops where they worked on their own time. Their sons with the college educations were quite content to work in the factories just as their fathers had done, and they spent their spare time watching baseball games on television. Now that is not simply an individual matter. The older men belonged to a different time, when opportunities existed for the individual that do not exist today. The supermarkets have pushed out the corner grocery store, and so on all along the line. You have to be in big business to be in business at all, and in big business you have nothing to say. Thus there is a spread of frivolity. (61; Fs)

28/3 There is also esotericism: people retire into the ivory tower, and they have no intention of returning to the transformation of the situation. There is archaism: people preach the revival of the ancient virtues, but the ancient virtues are no longer relevant to the present situation; they were virtues once, but they are not what is needed now.8 There is futurism: achieve utopia by a leap; forget that the good is concrete - bonum et malum sunt in rebus: good and evil lie in the concrete, and the real ideal, the true ideal, is the potentiality in the concrete. There are what are called 'times of troubles,' wars to arouse social concern, to give people a stake in the nation, to give them the feeling that they belong together in one nation. There are the outer and inner barbarians growing to ever larger proportions. And finally, there is the universal state as an outward peace to cover over inner emptiness. Sin as a component in the social process lets the material development go ahead, and at the same time takes out of it its soul. (61f; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Sünde als Abweichung; das Böse als Gegenteil zu kultureller Entwicklung; Geschichte - menschliches Bewusstsein; Zeitgeist

Kurzinhalt: And just as consciousness floats according to the orientation of the subject ... so also history has its orientation... There is such a thing as the spirit of an age, and that spirit of an age can be an aberration, it can be folly

Textausschnitt: 1.2.3 Sin as Aberration

29/3 Thirdly, there is sin as aberration, as the evil that is opposite to cultural development, to development on the reflective level, that is, to development in the apprehension of the invariants of the human good. On sin as aberration, the New Testament is rather abundant. See Romans 1:8-32, 2:2-24. Romans 5:1 tells us; 'Sin reigned in the world.'1 John 1.92 has: 'He came unto his own, and his own received him not.' In John 3:9-21, we read, 'All that love the light come to the Son, but those whose works are evil refuse to come to the light, because they do not wish their works to become manifest.'3 Again, in John 8.42-47 and 12,37-41, there is word of the blindness of Israel.4 (62; Fs)

30/3 Now how can sin be aberration? What does that mean? Human history is like human consciousness: if I may use a metaphor, both of them float. Human consciousness is not a fully determined function of sensitive impressions and hereditary equipment. Consciousness also depends upon an orientation within the subject that is accepted and willed by the subject. There is such a thing as freedom of consciousness - principally, of course, in the sense that acts of will are free, but also and by way of a precondition in the sense that consciousness itself is not something determined uniquely by external objects or internal objects, by biological or sensitive conditions and determinants. You think of what you please. In that sense, consciousness floats. It selects. What comes to your attention depends not merely upon the thing's being there to be attended to, but much more upon your being interested. And just as consciousness floats according to the orientation of the subject - these are points on which we shall have to go into more detail later - so also history has its orientation. There is such a thing as the spirit of an age, and that spirit of an age can be an aberration, it can be folly. Whom the gods destroy they first make blind.5 As aberrant consciousness heads to neurosis and psychosis, similarly aberrant history heads to cataclysm6 (62f; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Geschichte, Bewusstsein - Sünde, Abweichung; moralische Impotenz, Gnade, Rationalisierung; Sprung (leap) - Gnade

Kurzinhalt: The moral impotence of man creates in man a demand for false philosophies in our day, for a high-level rationalization, just as it created a demand for degrading myths in ancient times

Textausschnitt: In what consists the aberration of consciousness and of history? We will deal with this in more detail later, but for the moment it will suffice to distinguish between the ideal tendencies of the human spirit to what is true, to what is right, to what is good, and on the other hand, what in the concrete individual is conjoined with these spiritual aspirations, that is, his concern. His total concern includes his ideal aspirations, but it includes more as well; and it can deform, misdirect, those aspirations. Every closing off, blocking, denial of the empirically, intelligently, rationally, freely, responsibly conscious subject is also a closing off, a blocking, of the dominance of the higher aspirations of the human spirit and the human heart. Again, historically, every failure to unblock is () That incapacity to avoid sin without grace is moral impotence. The moral impotence of man creates in man a demand for false philosophies in our day, for a high-level rationalization, just as it created a demand for degrading myths in ancient times. The objectification of sin in social process provides the objective empirical evidence for the false philosophy or degrading myth. The incomplete development and the sins of the philosopher or the bard make them incapable of conceiving and expressing a true philosophy or a true symbolic vision of life. Moreover, those who do uphold what is true give scandal by acting and writing unworthily. Again, the refutation of n false philosophies, where n is as big as you please, does not exclude - in fact it invites - the creation of the (n + 1)th false philosophy. There is in man a demand for false philosophy, for degrading myths, because of his moral impotence. What is needed in man to break away from the aberration of sin is a leap - not a leap beyond reason, as irrationalist philosophers would urge, but a leap from unreason, from the unreasonableness of sin, to reason. That leap is not simply a matter of repeating, pronouncing, affirming, agreeing with the propositions that are true, while misapprehending their meaning and significance. That is just what lies behind the decadence of philosophic schools. The leap is rather really assenting to, really apprehending - Newman's distinction between real and notional apprehension and real and notional assent. What is wanted is something existential - real apprehension and real assent to the truth. (63f; Fs) (notabene)

Now what I have said of philosophy and myth is true of all departments: of human science, of natural science, of arts and letters. All are expressions of the orientation of the human soul and the social situations produced by souls and expected in the future from souls. All are determinants of, and determined by, the social situation, which is simply the result of the influence of the group on the individual, and of each individual on the group. To surrender to this aberration produces a series of lower syntheses. Hegel spoke of the series of ascending syntheses, but one can design without any great difficulty a series of descending syntheses as well: medieval unity shattered at the Reformation on the struggles between church and state; the wars of religion disgusted men with all supernatural religion, and led to rationalism, the guidance of life not by any divine revelation but simply by man's own reason; the fact that men could not agree effected the transition from rationalism to liberalism and tolerance; and the fact that, when people merely tolerate one another's views, they cannot have any common view, and they cannot act effectively to deal with social evils, gives rise to totalitarianism. And so we can discern in that progress, which is the progress of modern thought in one of its aspects, a succession of lower syntheses. In the face of that succession of lower syntheses, the Catholic can wish to retire into an ivory tower, to condemn the new good because it is associated with new evils; but that is just another form of the aberration. (64f; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Erlösung 1: Neuanfang, neue Erde (Toynbee), Christus (keine eschatologische Transformation der Welt); Sinngebung des Leidens

Kurzinhalt: The redemption in Christ Jesus does not change the fundamental fact that sin continues to head for suffering and death. However, the suffering and death that follow from sin attain a new significance in Christ Jesus.

Textausschnitt: 1.3 Redemption

33/3 The third differential, redemption, can be conceived in various ways.

It is a break with the past, the dead hand of the past, its institutions, the mentalities it produced, the resentments and hatreds it accounted for. Mircea Eliade, in The Myth of the Eternal Return,1 sees in the rites of the vegetation cults, the Dionysian cults, the Roman Saturnalia, a symbolic wiping out of the past. The orgies connected with these rites were given the significance of wiping out the enmities, the resentments, the debts, the obligations to which the past had given rise, and making possible a new start. That idea of a new start is an element in confession, in the sacrament of penance. It involves the emergence of new men in a new situation.2 Eliade criticizes these rites as a flight from history, but one can also think of them as a primitive means on the symbolic level to deal with and dominate history. It is true that man is historical, but he is historical in the sense that his apprehensions and choices form a cumulative process; and there is no contradiction between the historical and the use of apprehension and choice to dominate and control that process in some manner. In that sense the myth of the eternal return, the return to the new situation, to starting afresh, can be thought of as a symbolic technique on a rather primitive level for dealing with the fundamental problem of history. History dominates man enough without his attempting to free himself from it. (65f; Fs)

34/3 Another type of redemption is what Toynbee calls 'New Soil'.'3 A corrupt civilization disintegrates. New people take over the achievements of the past without the memories and hatreds, the false ideas and degrading myths. Or again, there can be new soil in the more literal sense of immigration to new lands. When such an immigration occurs the society begins afresh. The cumulative problems created by sin as a component in social process and as aberration are undercut. There is a new start. (66; Fs)
35/3 There is a redemptive aspect in revolution, the violent destruction of existing institutions, existing habits, existing material equipment, and the persons that are the carriers of the institutions and the habits of a culture. Thucydides provides a terrifying description of the revolution at Corcyra,4 where the people were divided into the rich and the poor, and the rich were simply wiped out, mercilessly and completely. The French and Russian revolutions were more or less complete liquidations of the past of a country. In Marxism there is a Jewish eschatological element combined with the idea of revolution, a sudden, quasi eschatological5 transformation of the situation, produced by the revolution. (66; Fs)
36/3 There is an element of the notion of redemption that is illusory, in archaism with its revival of ancient virtues, in futurism with its leap to utopia, in esotericism with its attitude of 'Let the world go by, at least we shall live our well-regulated and happy lives by ourselves,' and, of course, in the more recent illusion of automatic progress, which is simply a denial of the problems created by sin. (66; Fs) (notabene)

37/3 However, when I spoke of redemption, what you all first thought of was redemption in Christ Jesus. That redemption was not what was expected: an eschatological transformation of this world, a complete destruction of the unjust, and a millennium of peace and prosperity for the just. The redemption in Christ Jesus does not change the fundamental fact that sin continues to head for suffering and death. However, the suffering and death that follow from sin attain a new significance in Christ Jesus. They are no longer the sad, disastrous end to the differential of sin, but also the means towards transfiguration and resurrection. Beyond death on the cross, there is the risen Savior. The antithesis between death and resurrection runs through the writings of St Paul in a series of different forms. There is the symbolic death of baptism and the symbolic life of the Eucharist; there is the ascetic death of mortification, of dying to sin, and the ascetic resurrection of the exercise of virtue. They are all spoken of by St Paul with the compactness of the symbol. (66f; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Erlösung 2: Glaube, Hoffnung, Liebe; G. (Beibehaltung der Wahrheit); H. (Kraft des Widerstehens); Sünde (zwei Wurzeln)

Kurzinhalt: ... faith reestablishes truth as a meaningful category ... there arises hope ... which enables us to resist the pressures and the determinisms ... Redemption in Christ Jesus is the answer to the problem created by sin as a component in social ...

Textausschnitt: 38/3 Faith is the fundamental answer to the problem of sin not only in the next life but also in this life. Against sin as aberration, that is, the sin that verifies the old Greek proverb 'Whom the gods would destroy they first make blind,' faith reestablishes truth as a meaningful category. Pilate asked our Lord, 'What is truth?' The modern human scientist does not ask that question if he is preoccupied with imitating the techniques of the natural sciences. For then knowledge is science only in the measure that it can verify and enable one to predict. The reestablishment of truth as a meaningful category is also a liberation of intelligence and reason. (67; Fs)

39/3 Again, against sin as a component in the social process, sin as changing social process from a matter of freedom and creativity to routine and drudgery with all its determinisms and pressures and in the limit violence, there arises hope, which liberates the pilgrim in us,1 and which enables us to resist the pressures and the determinisms that are, as it were, the necessity of sinning further. Pius XII spoke of the fact that the modern world creates situations in which people have to be heroic to avoid mortal sin. To have that heroism there is needed the virtue of hope; and without that heroism there is no victory over the cumulative effects of sin as a component in social process. (67; Fs)

40/3 Finally, against sin as self-perpetuating, as a chain reaction, there is love of one's enemies and the acceptance of suffering. Sin as a chain reaction has two bases. It has a basis first in the hearts of men, where sin leads to ever further sin insofar as hatred arises. But Christ teaches us, 'Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you.' Secondly, there is a chain reaction of sin in the logic of the objective situation,2 and against that aspect Christianity teaches the acceptance of suffering. 'The servant is not better than his master.' 'Do not resist evil, but overcome evil with good.' The acceptance of suffering puts an end, at least at one point, to the chain reaction of sin that spreads throughout a society. When everyone is dodging suffering, when no one accepts it, the burden is passed ever further on. (67f; Fs)

41/3 Redemption in Christ Jesus is the answer to the problem created by sin as a component in social process and as fundamental aberration, but it has not merely a negative office. It comes through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, through a personal communication of the life of the ever Blessed Trinity to mankind. 'In the fulness of time, God sent his Son, born of woman, made under the law, that those who were under the law might be redeemed and receive the adoption of sons. And now that you are sons, to show that you are sons, he sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba, Father!"' (Galatians 4: 4-6).3 The mission of the Son and the mission of the Holy Ghost is the basis of a new society in Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in which there is communicated to us personally, through the person of the Son and through the person of the Spirit, a participation of divine perfection, a participation of the order of truth and love that binds the three persons of the Blessed Trinity.4 Sin, suffering, and death remain, but in Christ they have become transition points to an ever fuller life on this earth with God the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, with whom we aspire to live in eternal life. The process of redemption, then, as conceived by the Catholic, is first of all the radical answer to sin - not the answer to sin that eliminates sin, but the answer to sin that endures its consequences and nullifies them and transforms man into a child of God, with a participation in the sonship that God the Father acknowledged when Jesus was baptized at the Jordan: 'This is my beloved Son. Hear ye him.'5 In baptism we become adopted sons as Christ was the natural Son of the Father.6 (68; Fs) (notabene)

42/3 So much for the three differentials of the human good. We set up an invariant structure, and then we noticed that the structure was realized differently at different times, and we distinguished three differentials: intellectual development on the two levels of civilization and culture; sin contradicting, deforming both those types of development; and finally, redemption. That analysis of the good, of course, makes it obvious why we want Catholic education. The fact of sin is not any private opinion of Catholics, but something to be noted by all. Our notion of the good cannot prescind from the tension between the good and evil. If we have an answer to the problem of evil, it will influence our education in all its aspects, because it influences our very notion of the good. (69; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Common Sense - Grammatik, Ichbezogenheit

Kurzinhalt: Again, common sense is egocentric. It is not concerned with the general question of how anyone is to behave, but with how I am to behave

Textausschnitt: 53/3 Again, common sense is egocentric. It is not concerned with the general question of how anyone is to behave, but with how I am to behave; not with' what anyone is to say, but with what I am to say; not with what is to be done by so and so, but with what I am to do and how I am to do it. It is like grammar. In grammar, place is always relative to my place -'here' is my 'here' - and time is always relative to my time - I 'am,' and what is not at the same time 'was' or 'will be.' Persons, too, are relative to the first person. What is the second person? Not myself but the one I am talking to. And what is the third person? Somebody else. Common sense is egocentric in the same fashion. (72f; Fs)

54/3 Finally, common sense is the mode of all concrete understanding and judgment. When you get really down to the concrete, you are in the situation, and the situation is before you, and to deal with the situation you do not want some universal science; and in fact complete analysis is impossible and undesirable.1 You want to make the ultimate adjustments to the concrete, beyond the generalities of science. In a way, common sense is prelogical. Lévy-Bruhl, the French sociologist, introduced the term 'prelogical' in describing primitives.2 I do not wish to use the term in that sense, but rather to mean that common sense does not use terms, propositions, and syllogisms as a technique for the clarification and development of intelligence.3 It proceeds in a much more direct fashion. The Greek discovery of the logos was the discovery of language, and consequently of concepts and judgments, and attention was drawn to the words, to the propositions, to the arguments, as a means, a tool, to make intelligence more complete and more adequate. (73; Fs)





53/3 Again, common sense is egocentric. It is not concerned with the general question of how anyone is to behave, but with how I am to behave; not with' what anyone is to say, but with what I am to say; not with what is to be done by so and so, but with what I am to do and how I am to do it. It is like grammar. In grammar, place is always relative to my place -'here' is my 'here' - and time is always relative to my time - I 'am,' and what is not at the same time 'was' or 'will be.' Persons, too, are relative to the first person. What is the second person? Not myself but the one I am talking to. And what is the third person? Somebody else. Common sense is egocentric in the same fashion. (72f; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: 4 Stufen der Integration; Common Sense, geschichtliches Bewusstsein

Kurzinhalt: Unterscheidung

Textausschnitt: 2.2.1 Undifferentiated Common Sense
2.2.2 Differentiated Common Sense
2.2.3 Classicism and the Differentiation of Consciousness
2.2.4 Historical Consciousness

2.2 Four Levels of Integration

By my formulation of common sense I have provided myself with a general basis for distinguishing four levels of integration. (73; Fs)

2.2.1 Undifferentiated Common Sense

54/3 The first level of integration is undifferentiated common sense. Undifferentiated common sense characterizes the primitive. Here there occurs the same development of intelligence in all the members of the tribe or clan. Thinking is a community enterprise. The clan or the tribe may be fruit gatherers or gardeners or hunters or fishers. They will have developed skills, a language, some tools. They will have their art and their myths and their taboos. Tribes will differ from one another - there are enormous differences between the Eskimos and the pygmies or the bushmen - but in any given group there is a common intelligence. Common sense is common in the sense that it is common to many. (73f; Fs)

55/3 The relation between undifferentiated common sense and the idea that thinking is a community enterprise may have some connection with a phenomenon at the present time, the tendency of teenagers to conformism. An education whose ideal is adjustment does not proceed much beyond undifferentiated common sense. Conversely, if one's development is merely an undifferentiated common sense, people will have to conform.1. (74; Fs) (notabene)

2.2.2 Differentiated Common Sense2

56/3 The second level of integration is differentiated common sense, differentiation of common sense by the division of labor. We may associate this level of integration with Egypt, Crete, Sumer, Babylon, Assyria, the ancient high civilizations of the Indus Valley and the Hwang Ho Valley, of the Mayas of Central America and the Incas of Peru. In those civilizations there existed large-scale agriculture, there was a great differentiation of arts and crafts, there were writing, arithmetic, bookkeeping, engineering, surveying, astronomy. There was a social hierarchy and law. There was what Voegelin calls the 'cosmological myth.'3 The divine order, the ultimate realities, the gods, were, as it were, incarnated in the social order, so that at least in Egypt and to some extent in Mesopotamia - I don't know about the others - the king was the god or the son of god. In later stages in these civilizations there emerged another aspect of differentiated common sense in the form of a wisdom literature. This stage is illustrated, for example, in the book of Proverbs. And in the breakdowns of these civilizations there occurs the emergence of individualism. (74; Fs) (notabene)

57/3 So there is a differentiation of common sense by the division of labor; there are different kinds of common sense for people in different walks of life. This specialization leads to a high development of arts and crafts and practical sciences such as astronomy, engineering, and surveying. Building the pyramids, for example, was an extraordinary achievement in engineering. (75; Fs)

2.2.3 Classicism and the Differentiation of Consciousness

58/3 The third level of integration involves the differentiation of consciousness, the emergence of the intellectual pattern of experience. We will name it the pure development of human intelligence.4 This is what is meant by classicism in its best sense, the Greek achievement. (75; Fs)

59/3 We will consider first the general characteristics of this level of integration. The individual appeals to immanent norms, to what is true against the false, to what is right against the wrong, to what is good against the evil. The autonomy of the human spirit emerges. There is a development of argument, definition, science, the critique of gods, of myths, of magic, of taboos, of institutions and manners, of aims and values. These features are all exhibited in the Sophist movement of the fifth century B.C. and the philosophic movement of the fourth century B.C. in Greece. The individual asserts his freedom to be himself. He liberates aesthetic, intellectual, scientific, moral, and religious activity from traditionally restricted functions within the collectivity.5 Prior to this pure development of intelligence all of these features existed except science, but they were functional parts within the concrete totality. In the ancient high civilizations such as Egypt or Crete, there was differentiated common sense, where the integration comes through the concrete integration of the members of society. But there was not a theoretical integration beyond the differentiated common sense of individuals engaged in different tasks and leading different kinds of lives. (75; Fs)

60/3 The emergence of individualism, of critical thought,6 gives rise to what Marx called the superstructure. There are discussion groups, wandering teachers, the formation of academies, schools, libraries, universities, universalist tendencies in intellectual, political, and religious fields. There is the pursuit of wisdom and culture for their own sake. This pure development of intelligence is not practical; it is7 proudly useless; it is the enrichment of mind, the advance of knowledge, the ennobling of will, the rationalization of manners, all for their own sake. But it involves a tendency as well to be limited to a particular class, to classical models, the depiction of ideals, the per se, the legal. It offers tables of virtues and vices, settled art forms and literary genres, types of polity, all in static concepts, principles, systems. (75f; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: das historische Bewusstsein

Kurzinhalt: Geschichte als Produkt des Menschen wurde weitgehend der säkularen Welt überlassen

Textausschnitt: We have come to realize that we are more the masters of our own destiny than we had thought. The self-assertion of modern man contains a notable measure of truth: man is responsible for his history; man is largely what man has made of man. But this self-assertion has been left largely to the initiative of the secularists, and the result has been the de-Christianization of the modern world. Even so-called Catholic countries are to a great extent either backward or de facto non-Catholic. This should not surprise us: it is not merely the Bourbons who forget nothing, learn nothing, and like things that way. But also, Christianity is a wisdom, and wisdom enters on the scene only when what is going forward becomes clear. The idea of historical consciousness arose outside the church and produced disasters, but we have to consider it seriously. In Hegel's words, 'Only with the fall of twilight does the owl of Minerva take wing.' The church moves slowly but surely. (76f; Fs)
62/3 The self-assertion of modern man has been implemented by philosophy, or, where philosophy deserted the scene, by empirical human science. There has developed a philosophy of human science, a philosophy of politics
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There is a philosophy of history, as in Vico, who began a new phase different from that which held from Augustine to Bossuet. There is the move from Vico, with his insistence on the priority of poetry and the compact symbol, vis-à-vis differentiated consciousness, to Hegel, Marx, and Troeltsch, Through Marx, there is the influence of the philosophy of history on later Russians and Chinese. There is the philosophy of education - already we have mentioned Dewey's influence not only in the United States but worldwide. And today there is the rediscovery of the symbol in depth psychology, in the work of Eliade and the history of religions, in Cassirer's Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, in Voegelin's interpretation of the ancient Near East, Israel, and Greece, and in the phenomenologists and existentialists. But there are also the social engineers and the hidden persuaders, the propaganda ministries and the advertising industry. (77; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: von der Natur zum Ideal: animal rationale, das man sein soll; der Mensch als symbolisches Wesen (Cassirer)

Kurzinhalt: THE DEVELOPING SUBJECT; 1.1 'Being a Man': From Essence to Ideal; The man that one has to be is not what one necessarily is. It is something that follows,

Textausschnitt: ... You can see from the fact of sin, which is an irrationality, that there is reason for doubting the rationality of man. On the other hand, all men use symbols, and so 'man as a symbolic animal' provides a universally true definition. (79; Fs)
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When we defend the notion of man as rational animal we appeal to what man is potentially. The Greeks defined man as zôon logikon, animal rationale, the animal that is a logical animal. If the logical, rational part of the definition is regarded as something in potency, then it is something that is common to mewling infants, to people that are asleep or unconscious, ...
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... The man that one has to be is not what one necessarily is. It is something that follows, not from having a birth certificate or citizenship, but from a decision, from the use of one's freedom, from a use of freedom that occurs despite a measure of uncertainty. We do not know all about everything,
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... Moreover, once one makes a decision, one has not exhausted the content of being a man. One has done so just for that occasion. The challenge remains with us perpetually. There are decisions and choices that have to be made all along the line, and at any time we can fail. We can be 'the man', today and fail tomorrow. Being a man is something that, if we are it, we are so only precariously. It is a continuous challenge.
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... If you consider man as a rational animal, where the word 'rational' is understood potentially, then there is no development; it is eternally true of every man no matter what he does, how intelligent or stupid he is, how wise or silly, how saintly or wicked - he is a rational animal in that sense. But there is another sense, being actually rational, that carries the implications emphasized by the contemporary group of philosophers known as existentialists Their reasons for doing so are, first of all,

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Von der Substanz zum Subjekt; Bewusstsein (Präsenz in drei Bedeutungen)

Kurzinhalt: THE DEVELOPING SUBJECT

Textausschnitt: Who is a man? Who is to be a man? The answer is 'I,' 'We.' That use of the first person supposes consciousness. What has to be a man is not just any instance of rational animal. It is one that is awake. Moreover, insofar as he is concerned with being a man, he is aware of potential triumph or potential failure, and aware of his own freedom and responsibility. (81; Fs)
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7/4 Such awareness is consciousness, and that consciousness is not to be thought of as thinking about oneself. One is conscious no matter what one is thinking about. Consciousness means that one is doing the thinking. Cognitional and volitional activity not only deals with objects, but also reveals the subject and his activity. To get hold of the notion of consciousness it is well to begin from the word 'presence.'
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8/4 There are, of course, different levels of consciousness. First, there is merely empirical consciousness: you hear the sounds but you are not worried about any meaning in them. Next, there is intellectual consciousness. Aristotle remarks that wonder is the beginning of all science and philosophy. One asks, What is it? Why? What does he mean? Where is he going? What is he up to? Then not just anyone is present, but someone intelligent is present. Empirical consciousness is simply presence in the third sense, but in intellectual consciousness, someone intelligent is present, actually intelligent, actively intelligent, wondering why and what and how and whither. Thirdly, there is rational consciousness.
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8/4

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Von der Regionalpsychologie zum Bewusstseinsstrom; Horizont - Profi (Abschattung - Horizont, Husserl), Welt

Kurzinhalt: THE DEVELOPING SUBJECT; From Faculty Psychology to Flow of Consciousness; What is this world? We will begin with a distinction between profile and horizon; eg: Horizont = die hinreichende Zahl von Profilen

Textausschnitt: 10/4 Now the flow of consciousness has a fundamental autonomy. Consciousness is not a market place into which there enters anything whatever, according to its own laws, and from which there departs anything whatever, according to its own laws. Consciousness is a structured unity. It is true that things force themselves upon us, upon our consciousness. The well into which Thales tumbled forced itself upon his consciousness. Again, it is true that consciousness is not completely autonomous, that it cannot run off in any direction it pleases. The limits to the autonomy or freedom of consciousness are exhibited in psychic illness. The orientation of consciousness can get out of touch with the demands of the nervous system. So there are two extremes: things can be forced upon consciousness, and consciousness cannot run off in any direction whatever. But normally consciousness is a directed organization of selected data. And governing that direction and selection is our concern, what we care about, care for, are interested in, aim at. Heidegger's term is Sorge, care; 'concern' is the ordinary English translation. The same notion reappears in such words as 'attention' and 'interest.' One can walk along the street with a friend and in the midst of all sorts of street noises hear just that thin trickle of sound that are his words. Meaning makes his voice audible. That is an example of the selectivity of consciousness. There are all sorts of impressions made upon our sensitive apparatus, our sense organs, but not all of them get into consciousness. It is what you are interested in that gets into consciousness. Consciousness selects; it floats upon the series of demands for attention. (83f; Fs)
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11/4 In the flow of consciousness there is not only the subjective side, the concern, what concerns me, but also its correlative, the world - not the world but one's world. There is the world of teachers,
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13/4 The distinction I have just drawn is Husserl's distinction between Abschattung and Horizont. Abschattung is, as it were, the shadow; 'horizon' will do for Horizont. But now we want to think of a horizon of the second degree. We have spoken of a horizon of Brockman Hall, or of any object that you cannot see the whole of in a single look. But what is one's world? It is a horizon of horizons. It is the totality of objects like Brockman Hall, the organized whole of intelligibly varying objects in which I happen to have any interest, for which I have any concern. And that totality is a totality that we construct out of our experience, where the construction is governed by our concern. Just as one does not see the horizon of Brockman Hall, so one never sees one's world. What is his world? Well, you don't see it. It is a construction of constructions. What you see is the profile. The horizon is an envelope containing all possible profiles, and also the knowledge of how many profiles you need in order to recognize the object. (This is an analytic account, of course, a simpler statement of the things that go on.) One's world is a horizon of horizons, a horizon of the second degree, the totality of objects for which one has any concern. Again, one can say that my world is the part of the universe determined by the horizon of my concern. (84f; Fs) (notabene)
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14/4 Thus we have four terms, four moments in concrete existence subject, concern, horizon, world. The subject's concern determines his horizon, and his horizon selects his world. With that notion of subject-concern-horizon-world, one can move from the child's world to the world of the man. These notions thus give us something that we can deal with when we speak of the developing subject. (85; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: das intellektuelle Erfahrungsmuster: pure desire to know - Universum; that intellect is potens omnia facere et fieri

Kurzinhalt: The Intellectual Pattern of Experience: consciousness is dominated by wonder, by the pure desire to know; the correlative becomes the universe

Textausschnitt: 17/4 When consciousness moves into the intellectual pattern of experience, one's concern becomes the wonder that Aristotle spoke of as the beginning of all science and philosophy. In the measure that that wonder is the dominant concern in consciousness, experience takes on a pattern of its own that is dictated by the exigences of that wonder. ... you can see that this pattern is an organized whole that has its own characteristics, and that it is quite distinct from the ordinary pattern of experience in which we are dealing with persons and mastering things. In the intellectual pattern of experience, consciousness is dominated by wonder, by the pure desire to know, by intellectual detachment and impartiality. One wants to know, What is it? and whether one's answer to that question is true. (86f; Fs)
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Still, the significance of moving into the intellectual pattern of experience is that, when concern is purely intellectual wonder, the correlative becomes the universe. As long as consciousness is directed by whatever concerns one may have, one is in one's world, but insofar as the intellectual pattern of experience is dominant, one is concerned, not with any private world, but with the universe. This is the meaning of the traditional notion that intellect is potens omnia facere et fieri. The object of intellect is omnia, everything, and an object that includes everything is not restricted to any genus of things. That object must be being. And so, while concern has as its correlative a private world, the intellectual pattern of experience has as its correlative the one universe, everything. (87f; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Erkenntnis bei Thomas: intellectus agens, i. possibilis, species intelligibilis, inneres Wort - Scotus

Kurzinhalt: The ontological structure of intellect in the writings of St Thomas may be represented schematically as follows; Scotus: kein intelligere (durchdringen des phantasmas); kein 2. inneres Wort

Textausschnitt: 1.1 Scholastic Theories

3/5 The ontological structure of intellect in the writings of St Thomas may be represented schematically as follows.1 There is an intellectus agens, on the one hand, and there are senses, imagination, phantasms, re-presentations of the data of sense, and an intellectus possibilis, on the other hand. The agent intellect illuminates the phantasm and uses it as an instrument to impress upon the possible intellect an intelligible species. The possible intellect, determined by the species, has an act, intelligere, understanding,2 and from that act there proceeds an inner word. It is a simple inner word, not a judgment, since in itself it is neither true nor false. The standard illustration of such an inner word is the definition. This simple inner word is followed by a reflective process, an activity named reductio ad principia, a reduction of the definition to its principles in intellectual light (intellectus agens) and in sense whence the phantasms were withdrawn. From that reflective process there proceeds a second inner word, the composition or division by affirmation or negation. (108; Fs) (notabene)

4/5 Such is the Thomist structure of intelligence. It can be established beyond any doubt or question from the writings of St Thomas that this is what he meant when he spoke of intellect. He gives, however, a strictly metaphysical account of the psychological process, that apparently does not appeal to data of consciousness.3 (108; Fs)

5/5 In the thought of Duns Scotus, of course, there is presented a different setup, first from the ontological point of view. Scotus speaks of the intellective power, and he does not wish to determine whether or not it is to be divided into agent and possible intellect. He also recognizes the existence of the phantasm and the use of the phantasm by the intellective power to impress upon intellect - whether agent intellect is really distinct from possible intellect or not is not settled - an intelligible species. But that intelligible species corresponds, not to the Thomist intelligible species, but to the Thomist simple inner word. Intellect takes a look at that species, and when it does so it is knowing a concept. It can form several species, take a look at two at a time, compare them, see whether they are compossible, compatible or incompatible, or necessarily connected. (108f; Fs)
(notabene)
eg: Also, Scotus' species intelligibilis entspricht dem ersten inneren Wort bei Thomas (folglich lässt er den Prozess des intelligere aus und hat die Auffassung eines Erkennens durch "Sehen"), dann verquickt er dieses innere Worte, indem er es zugleich als Begriff auffasset, mit dem, was bei Thomas das zweite innere Wort ist.

6/5 Clearly we have here two quite different ontological accounts of the structure of intellect. But there is also a difference in the psychological content. There is abundant evidence in the writings of St Thomas that the act of understanding, intelligere, regards not only the inner word but also the phantasm. Scotus denies the possibility of that. What understanding would see in the phantasm either is universal or it is particular. If it is particular, then we have not understanding, but sense, for sense knows the particular. If it is universal, then understanding is suffering from an illusion, because there is no universal in the phantasm. The traditional or regular Thomist answer to that, of course, is the distinction between the potential and the actual. The phantasm is potentially intelligible, but the intelligible in act is identical with the intellect in act. (109; Fs) (notabene)

7/5 Another difference is that the Scotist analysis leads to a conceptualized universe. Scotus saw the need for a further intellectual intuition of the existing and present as existing and present, if one is to know whether or not this conceptualized network exists. That is not the case with St Thomas. For St Thomas judgment proceeds from the reductio ad principia of reflection. (109; Fs)

8/5 We have two presentations, then, and the difference between them raises a question of fact. Does understanding regard phantasms or does it not? In general, I believe there is no possibility of doubt that understanding does occur with respect to phantasms. However, it is very difficult to get some people to admit that this is the case because, if they do, they have to face epistemological questions that otherwise they could dodge. It is the existence and the dodging of those epistemological questions that, to my mind, accounts for the fact that what Aristotle and Thomas were talking about when they spoke about the intelligible in the sensible has been totally disregarded for a number of centuries by people proclaiming themselves to be Aristotelians and Thomists.4 (109f; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Horizont: abhängig vom Streben; Widerstand gegen Horizonterweiterung; Liebe (charity)!!; übernatürlich - natürlich

Kurzinhalt: Heraklit: Logion vom Schlaf (Sorge); the known, the known unknown, the unknown unknown; docta ignorantia - indocta ignorantia; an organized resistance to going beyond one's horizon

Textausschnitt: Weiter unten!!.
Liebe / charity: To move into the practical pattern of experience without contracting one's horizon presupposes perfect charity.


21/4 There is, then, a deeper meaning to Heraclitus's statement that when men sleep each lives in a private world of his own, in his dreams, but when they wake up they live in the common world settled by the logos, by reason. Insofar as one lives in one's own world that is settled by one's own concern, by the Sorge at the root of one's flow of consciousness, one is in something of a private world,
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25/4 The horizon, is the boundary, the frontier, between docta ignorantia and indocta ignorantia. What is beyond my horizon is meaningless for me, though it may not be meaningless in itself. It is not worth while for me, but it may be worth while in itself. One's horizon, the boundary between one's docta and indocta ignorantia, corresponds to one's concern, and one knows about one's horizon only indirectly. To know about a horizon one has to have a larger horizon within which one can define the smaller one. But if this is one's horizon one does not have the larger horizon within which one can grasp where the limits lie for the individual. One's own horizon is the limit, the boundary, where one's concern or interest vanishes....
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In the general case, the subject and his concern determine a horizon that selects out of the universe a world. But there is also an intellectual pattern of experience, and correlative to it is the universe, all that exists. The intellectual pattern of experience that corresponds to the universe is beyond any particular horizon. As long as it exists, it is orientated upon totality, upon being, upon everything. But the moment the intellectual pattern of experience ceases to be dominant, then one can shift back to a narrow concern. To move into the practical pattern of experience without contracting one's horizon presupposes perfect charity. There is an intimate correlation between the natural and the supernatural, according to the doctrine of St Thomas. According to St Thomas, there is a natural desire for the beatific vision, a desire to know God by his essence. When consciousness
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In the general case, the subject and his concern determine a horizon that selects out of the universe a world. But there is also an intellectual pattern of experience, and correlative to it is the universe, all that exists. The intellectual pattern of experience that corresponds to the universe is beyond any particular horizon. As long as it exists, it is orientated upon totality, upon being, upon everything. But the moment the intellectual pattern of experience ceases to be dominant, then one can shift back to a narrow concern. To move into the practical pattern of experience without contracting one's horizon presupposes perfect charity. There is an intimate correlation between the natural and the supernatural, according to the doctrine of St Thomas. According to St Thomas, there is a natural desire for the beatific vision, a desire to know God by his essence. When consciousness is rooted in the pure desire to know, and when one knows of the existence of God, one asks what God is. To ask, What? is to desire to know something by its essence, and to know God by his essence is something that is attained only through the beatific vision. Thus the pure desire to know includes in its range the supernatural goal to which de facto we are destined in this life. St Thomas's doctrine causes difficulty chiefly, I believe, to those whose presuppositions are not Thomist but Scotist. I cannot go into that question here and now, except to say that there is no doubt that this is St Thomas's position. He develops it over thirty-five chapters or so in the third book of the Summa contra Gentiles, and it recurs at all the key points in the Summa theologiae. 'The natural moves into the supernatural; grace is the perfection and completion of nature. Such is the position in the Thomist analysis, where 'Thomist' means'of St. Thomas,' not the Thomistic school, which has various opinions on the matter. And that supernatural end correlative to the desire to know is charity. Thus it is by charity that we can move into the practical pattern of experience without contracting our horizon. (90f; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Entwicklung; Newman (Beispiel: Matrose);

Kurzinhalt: development: the orientation of one's living, of one's concern; it eliminates previous evils by finding a higher integration

Textausschnitt: ... Development depends upon, and is measured by, not so much the external objects with respect to which one operates as the organization of one's operations, their reach, their implications, the orientation of one's living, of one's concern. Development retains all that was had before and adds to it, and it can add to it enormously. It eliminates previous evils by finding a higher integration in which the problems solve themselves. It finds this higher integration by working, not at the periphery but at the root, at the Sorge, at the concern, and by effecting the shift from the concern that is all too human to the spiritual aspiration of man that has its fundamental and first appearance in the pure desire to know that grounds the intellectual pattern of experience and sets the standards for one's morality. (91f; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Philosophische Entwicklung - Ggs zum technischen Fortschritt

Kurzinhalt: Linie: Parmenides - Herakli t- Plato - Aristoteles - Thomas; Arianismus, Nestorianismus; philosophic develpment: the subject is also one of the objects

Textausschnitt: 29/4 Philosophic development is different. By philosophic development I mean developments in philosophy, in human science, in theology. In those fields there occur crises and developments of the same type as in the scientific field. Parmenides' attention to being was such a development; Heraclitus's attention to the logos was such a development; Plato's distinction between sensible and intelligible, aisthêta and noêta, was such a development. Aristotle's characterization of the intelligible as the causa essendi in the sensible - the noêton is the aition tou einai immanent in the sensible, form immanent in matter - was going beyond Platonic modes of thought. When Aquinas went beyond hylomorphism, the composition of substantial form with prime matter, to posit a third metaphysical entity - esse, existence - he was going beyond Aristotle in a profound and radical fashion. (94; Fs) (notabene)
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32/4 So there are crises and real developments within the philosophic field, just as there are in mathematics and science. However, the difference in the philosophic field is that the recession of the horizon does not result in a universal and permanent difference. The new horizon is accepted by some and not by others, ... The definition of the consubstantiality of the Son was accompanied by Arianism. The affirmation of one person in two natures in Christ was accompanied by Nestorianism and Monophysitism. The working out of the doctrines of the sacraments, grace, and the church in the medieval period was followed by the Protestant negation of all of these developments at the time of the Reformation. The moments of development within this field do not result in universal and permanent achievement. (95; Fs)
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33/4 Not only is the new development accepted by some and rejected by others - there is the formation of schools - but the new schools then tend to splinter, to have periods of decay and revival. What is happening in a period of decay within a school? The words of the master are faithfully repeated, but the meaning has been devaluated and contracted to fit into a narrower horizon, a lower stage of development. These periods of decay are followed by periods of revival, a restoration of the original meaning. What is happening is a revival in subjects who have horizons large enough to follow the thought of the original inspiration. And so we have neo-Platonism as well as Platonism, neo-Aristotelianism ...
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34/4 The ground of this difference between the scientific and the philosophic developments is not hard to find. The scientific development involves a transformation of the object, a rethinking of basic categories, postulates, and axioms. Similarly in the philosophic field. However, the difference between the scientific and the philosophic is that in the case of the philosophic the subject is also one of the objects. The subject can accept the transformation in the conception of the object only if he effects a transformation in his own living. Because the subject is one of the objects, there can occur the transformation of the object only on the condition that there occurs a radica1 conversion, a real development, in the subject. That real development in the subject is something that every subject dreads. Because of that dread of subjects there can be found down the centuries a family resemblance between materialists, between idealists, between realists, that is independent of the purely intellectual development that has been occurring. There is a fundamental philosophic difference of subjects themselves, of the capacity of subjects to broaden their horizon to the point where it includes the universe. (96; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Komplexität: Moralische Entwicklung

Kurzinhalt: Verschiedene Arten und Organisationen von "good";

Textausschnitt: 36/4 Moral development is development in the good that is one's concern. But one's emphasis or concern can fall upon particular goods, 'what's good for me'; it can fall upon the good of order; and it can fall upon values. And one's apprehension of values can be aesthetic or ethical or religious. These differences give rise to the possibility of a great variety of modes of organization of the moral subject, the possibility of different bases of moral orientation. (97; Fs) (notabene)
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37/4 Moreover, it is very difficult to draw sharp distinctions. There is a natural line of development in man. The child has to develop not only spiritually but also as an animal. The two developments are required, and both are good, both are natural.
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41/4 So what I have been saying is that the question of moral development is very complex, and one must not jump to conclusions about particular individuals. A person may be apprehending symbolically a very high morality even though he seems to be apprehending nothing but the particular good; he may be living according to

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Beispiel Kreis und die vier Ursachen

Kurzinhalt: If you examine a wheel, you can ask, 'Why is it round?'and then you are asking about its immanent intelligibility ...

Textausschnitt: ... If you examine a wheel, you can ask, 'Why is it round?'and then you are asking about its immanent intelligibility. You can ask, 'Who made it?' and 'What kind of tools did he use?' and then you are asking about the agent, the efficient cause. Or you can ask, 'What did he make it for?' and then you are asking about the final cause. You can ask, 'What did he make it out of?' and then you are asking about the material cause. But the formal cause is the immanent intelligibility, and that is what pure science is concerned with. It is applied science that is concerned with agent, end, and material. (143; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Bedingungssatz und das Unbedingte; Grund - Syllogismus

Kurzinhalt: Ableitung des modus ponens (wenn A -> dann B) aus dem virtuell Unbedingten; the major premise -> the link between the conditioned and the conditions; : ... we know that there are no further relevant questions

Textausschnitt: 24/7 There is also the virtually unconditioned, and every human judgment in this life depends, not on the vision of God, but upon the attainment of a virtually unconditioned. A virtually unconditioned is a conditioned whose conditions are fulfilled. Its formal expression is the syllogism. Where A and B stand for one or more propositions, the form is
If A, then B.
But A.
Therefore B.
The major premise is a link between the conditioned and its conditions; the minor expresses the fulfilment of the conditions; the conclusion presents the conditioned as virtually unconditioned. It is a conditioned whose conditions are fulfilled. (148; Fs) (notabene)
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25/7 On that analysis, then, syllogism is not, as Kant and sceptics generally conceive syllogism, the occasion for an infinite regress: () In general, the major premise must express explicitly the link between the conditioned and the conditions: if the series of conditions, then the conditioned. The link is grasped when one grasps that one's insight is invulnerable, that there are no further relevant questions. If A, then B. A link, a nexus between conditions and conditioned, is, in a general case, what is grasped in some insight as a possibility or a necessity. Is that connection correct? We know it is correct when we know that there are no further relevant questions. An insight is corrected insofar as one asks further questions and sees that one needs a further insight that qualifies or corrects, fills out or complements in some fashion, the insight one previously had. When one sees that there are no further relevant questions, one is sure of the link. (148; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Weisheit als 1. Gabe des Geistes; Weisheit und Naturwissenschaft

Kurzinhalt: a man who has the wisdom to know when there are no further relevant questions, when the matter can be settled,

Textausschnitt: 30/7 As you know, there is no rule of thumb for producing men of good judgment. A man of good judgment is a man who has the wisdom to know when there are no further relevant questions, when the matter can be settled, when he can say, 'Yes' or 'No.' Moreover,
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So wisdom, while it is necessary for good judgment, for knowing whether or not there are any further relevant questions, still is a foundation that lies ahead. It is not the sort of foundation that we have at the start and on which we build; it is the goal towards which we move. And we can always grow in wisdom. Complete wisdom is God's knowledge.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Weisheit, wisdom;Wahl des richtigen Verständnisses von Sein (being)

Kurzinhalt: There is no first principle that does not attain a different meaning according to the different meaning you give being; Why do you prefer Aristotle to Plato and Aquinas to Scotus?

Textausschnitt: What is the step, then, from the analytic proposition to the real world? In the Prima secundae of the Summa, question 66, article 5, ad 4m, St Thomas asks why wisdom is the highest of the intellectual virtues. He distinguishes three speculative virtues of intellect: ...
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49/7 What does that mean in language familiar to nonscholastics? It means that there is no knowledge of truth contained on the second level of consciousness, or on the first and second combined. Wisdom's selection of terms is the selection of one meaning of the term 'being' rather than another, and once that selection has been made, the rest is settled. For example, there is Parmenides' notion of being, Plato's, Aristotle's, Avicenna's, Averroes', St Thomas's, Scotus's, and Hegel's. They all differ. There is no first principle that does not attain a different meaning according to the different meaning you give being. How do you pick out which is the correct notion of being? Picking out the correct notion of being is putting in a fundamental determinant in the meaning of all possible principles you may ever appeal to. Why do you prefer Aristotle to Plato and Aquinas to Scotus? That is the function of wisdom. Wisdom governs the selection of basic terms, the selection of basic terms governs first principles, and first principles govern conclusions. Because we move up to wisdom, because wisdom is not a foundation from which we start but towards which we tend, it is by studying different philosophic systems, comparing them, and seeing the different consequences of the different systems that one arrives at the wisdom of one's own that entitles one to prefer one notion of being to another. That preferring one notion of being to another is a strategically very important judgment, and it is a judgment of fact. Which notion of being is the real? To select the notion of being that is the notion of real being as opposed to false conceptions of being is the fundamental wisdom of the philosopher. It is de facto true, and he makes it in a particular judgment in which he grasps a virtually unconditioned. Just what that judgment is, is a further question. (156f; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Ursache für philosophische Differenzen

Kurzinhalt: ... unless the conversion of the subject follows, there will be a conflict between object and subject. The subject will feel that the new theory cannot be true; the root cause of philosophic differences

Textausschnitt: 8/7 But there is a third level of development. The subject of a human science is also one of its objects; and a higher viewpoint on the object, a reformulation of the concepts expressing a fuller understanding of the objects, has implications with regard to the subject himself. A transformation of physics or chemistry, a totally new viewpoint in such a science, involves no change in human living. But in a human science such a transformation has implications for the subject himself. There is not merely transformation in the objects, but also conversion of the subject; and unless the conversion of the subject follows or has been prepared, there will be a conflict between object and subject. The subject will feel that the new theory cannot be true. This third type of development is, I believe, the root cause of philosophic differences. The subject is unprepared to be converted, to transform himself in accord with the corresponding transformation of the human object that has resulted from the development of the human science. (161; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Tertullian: Beispiel für infantile Auffassung von Realität: nur Körper sind real; Augustinus: veritas, Piaget

Kurzinhalt: Tertullian: God has to be a body-not a body such as we see and feel, but still a body; Augustine: discovery of the limitations of the infantile apprehension of reality

Textausschnitt: 29/7 Now the notion of reality formed in that manner is of the same elementary order as the kinesthetic-tactile notion of space. And quite clearly, if one holds that that is reality, then the operations of the mathematician and of the natural scientist that arise within the intellectual pattern of experience and form the enormous structures that refer to a world quite different from the world for us, a world rather of things in their relations to one another, give rise to an unreal world. Such knowing is just hypothesis. It becomes knowledge of reality insofar as you can get back to what you can deal with, what you can see with your eyes, handle with your hands, feel to be hot or cold, rough or smooth, wet or dry, heavy or light. Then the real is simply the aisthiton, the sensibile, what is given to sense. All the rest is instrumental, as Dewey would say. It is immanent, an activity of the subject. It is not knowing reality. It may help you to deal with the reality that is given to sense, but in itself it is not knowing. Activities of understanding help one, they are useful, but they are not knowing. And still less is judgment knowing. Judgment is just putting a rubber stamp upon these activities of understanding. When the scholastics held that the real, ens, is id quod est, where est is said of what you know when you make the judgment 'It is,' they were not talking about reality at all. They were caught up in a verbalism. To throw any doubts upon the convictions about reality formed in infancy is to be an idealist, a Platonist, a Kantian, a relativist, or God knows what. In any case, it is certainly getting out of this real world. (169f; Fs)
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30/7 We have here a case in which the notion of the real develops, and we have in patristic literature two brilliant instances of this. For Tertullian, only bodies are real. God has to be a body-not a body such as we see and feel, but still a body. What is not a body is not real. This is an expression of the survival of the infantile view of reality. Similarly, StAugustine, who was a man of extraordinary intelligence, was for years a materialist. He knew he was a materialist, and he said so. But he changed. And then when he wanted to talk about the real, what is really so, what word did he use? Veritas. Augustine does not talk about realitas, but about veritas, about what is true. And the truth is known not without, non foras, and not just within, non intus, but above us, in a light that he describes as incommutable and eternal. The history of Augustine's thought is the history of the discovery of the limitations of the infantile apprehension of reality and the history of the shift to the true. (170; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: The Notion of Being; Aristotle: ousia, eidos; Augustinus: veritas; Thomas: ens dicitur ab esse

Kurzinhalt: ti estin ousia, what has the same meaning as why; eclipse (moon); what is man? -> aition tou einai, the causa essendi

Textausschnitt: 31/7 Now let us take another instance, one that ties in with the preceding: the notion of being. Parmenides was the first to insist on to on. Plato carried the matter further, but Aristotle was the one who really went to work on the issue. He argues out the meaning of the word ousia in book 7 of his Metaphysics. In the last chapter of that book, after he has considered what ousia is from a whole series of different angles, he says, Now let us begin afresh, let us take matters in another way. It is this last study that will, I think, throw a shaft of light upon what Aristotle is talking about. (170; Fs)
32/7 Aristotle is asking ti estin ousia, What is being ('entity,' in Owens's translation)? He says that to ask what something is is the same question as to ask why. What do you mean when you ask what? The difficulty of that question lies not only in the term 'being' but also in what is meant by what. Aristotle says what has the same meaning as why. This can be shown from simple examples. What is an eclipse? You can change that into a why question: Why is the moon darkened in this fashion? If you can explain why the moon is darkened in this fashion, you can explain what an eclipse is. The same answer goes for both questions. The moon is darkened in this fashion because the earth comes between the moon and the sun, and so the light from the sun does not reach the moon. What, then, is an eclipse? It is the earth blocking off the light of the sun from the moon. The questions what and why are the same. (170f; Fs) (notabene)
33/7 However, Aristotle admitted that not all cases of the question, What is it? can be reduced to questions of why in the same simple fashion. In talking about an eclipse of the moon you can ask, Why is the moon thus darkened? The eclipse is the darkening, the covering up, the leaving out. But when you ask, What is a house? or What is a man? how do you change that into a why question? There is only one term. Aristotle's answer is to distinguish between the materials and the form. Why are these pieces of timber and lumps of stone a house? Because of the form, because of the way the artificial form orders together all the stones and all the pieces of timber. And why are these materials a man? Because of the form, because of the soul; the intellective soul makes this body a man. So he concludes that when you ask the question, What? you can change it into a question, Why? by asking for the formal cause in the ultimate simple instances. And so when Aristotle in book 7 asks, What is a man? the answer is the aition tou einai, the causa essendi, the reason why the materials are something. That is the form, the eidos, the morpé. At the end of book 7, he identifies ousia with eidos, with form, with the causa essendi. Then in book 8 he moves on a step, to discuss material things, and there he says that the aition, the 'What is it?' is the essence. In material things this is the combination of form and matter. In immaterial things it is the form alone. So we have the Aristotelian answer to the question of being in terms of matter and form, or, in the immaterial order, of pure form. (171; Fs) (notabene)
34/7 Now the Aristotelian answer did not satisfy St Thomas. After all, Aristotle is not asking why this man is, but why he is a man, not why this house is, but why it is a house. St Thomas notes, ens dicitur ab esse. 'Being,' the noun, is said from 'to be.' It receives its meaning from the 'to be,' from the 'is.' And the 'is' is something that is not just the same as being something. (171f; Fs) (notabene)
35/7 St Thomas does not drop the Aristotelian notion that what means why. But he has an answer to the question, What is being? - namely, Why is being what it is? He acknowledges an ens per essentiam, a being that in virtue of its own intelligibility is. Direct knowledge of that being is the beatific vision. Any other being is a being by participation. To understand an ens per participationem is to understand, not being, but a kind of being - the being of a rose, or the being of a monkey, or the being of a man, but not being simply. To know being as being is to have the beatific vision. God knows in his essence himself and everything else that is or could be. Insofar as we participate that divine knowledge in the beatific vision, we have knowledge of what being is. But until we have knowledge of what being is, we know being only by analogy, by knowing some beings and extrapolating to the others. (172; Fs) (notabene)
36/7 Now, when St Thomas goes beyond Aristotle on the notion of being, what he is doing is bringing together Augustine and Aristotle. Augustine is the man who first insisted on veritas, on truth. The Aristotelian notion of being was, Sense and understanding correspond to matter and form. But in St Thomas, sense, understanding, and judgment correspond to matter, form, and the act of essence: esse, existence. St Augustine is the one who developed the notion of judgment as fundamental in knowing, the veritas. St Thomas added its metaphysical equivalent, the esse, in the composition of the finite being. (172; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Scotus: being is 'not nothing'; Christian Wolff, Hegel

Kurzinhalt: For Scotus, being is 'not nothing.' It is not a totality that is the whole of reality.

Textausschnitt: 37/7 However, that movement that begins with Parmenides and passes through Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine to Aquinas is not the only answer to the question, What is being? For Scotus, being is 'not nothing.' It is not a totality that is the whole of reality. You do not need the beatific vision to answer the question, What is being? Being is the concept with the minimum connotation and the maximum denotation. The implications of the Scotist notion of being appear in the order of the philosophic sciences in Christian Wolff, for whom ontology is the study of possible being, and actual being is studied in other departments. Scotus's being is also the being presupposed by Hegel. The being that is not found in anything, that is just 'not nothing,' is the sort of being that never exists. Nothing is merely 'not nothing,' and consequently Hegel's dialectic of the concept goes from being to nothing, the 'not-nothing' being. 'Not nothing' is the minimum connotation with the maximum denotation, and there is nothing that exists corresponding to that; and if there is nothing that exists corresponding to the concept, the concept is a concept of nothing. And so Hegel goes from being to nothing and reconciles both in becoming. (172f; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Notion of being ; fundamental dynamism; pure desire to know; species intelligibilis; intellectus agens, possibilis

Kurzinhalt: 5 elements of the notion of being; the asking in words is an expression of that fundamental dynamism; ens quo, ens quod, judgment, being, intentio entis

Textausschnitt: 38/7 Now, if we try to put together all the elements in the notion of being, we can distinguish five points:
(1) the intention of being;
(2) the concept of being;
(3) knowing a being;
(4) knowing the notion of being; and
(5) knowing being, or knowing the idea of being. (173; Fs)
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39/7 The intention of being is the light of intellect, the origin of wonder, the origin of all questions asking Why? How? What? and again, Is it so? It is the ground of human intelligence. It is not knowing anything or conceiving anything; it is consciously discontented ignorance. One wants to understand, one wants to know, one asks. The asking in words is an expression of that fundamental dynamism, the origin of all science and philosophy. It is in virtue of the intention of being that St Thomas concludes to a natural desire to know God. When we know the existence of God, we ask, What is God? To ask what something is is to want to know it by its essence, and the only knowledge of God by his essence is the beatific vision. Consequently, when we ask, What is God? we are expressing, not any acquired or infused habit, but something that is natural to man, namely, to ask, What is it? with regard to anything he meets with or knows about. The pure desire to know is the root of the intellectual pattern of experience and is to be contrasted with Heidegger's Sorge, concern, which is man as he ordinarily is. Man's flow of consciousness is not simply an expression of the pure desire to know, but is modified by concerns of all types. (173; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Objectivity, Objektivität,

Kurzinhalt: the first spontaneous answer is that the objective is what is out there; the dividing line between objectivity and nonobjectivity or subjectivity lies in truth and falsity

Textausschnitt: 45/7 Let us now take another notion that develops, the notion of objectivity. Presumably, at a first approximation everyone assumes that we know just what is meant by objectivity. You tell people they are not being objective, and usually all you mean, of course, is that you do not agree with them. But if you ask them what they mean by objectivity, or if you ask yourself, What do I mean by objectivity? the first spontaneous answer is that the objective is what is out there; and being objective is seeing what is out there, seeing all of it, and not seeing anything that is not out there. That is what objectivity is. If one follows out logically that notion of objectivity, one agrees with the empiricists, the positivists, the pragmatists, the sensists, the modernists. (175; Fs) (notabene)
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46/7 One moves to a second notion of objectivity when one thinks of impartiality, detachment. We say a person is guided by his passions; his thinking is wishful; he is not thinking in the intellectual pattern of experience; he does not have ...
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47/7 There is a third component in the notion of objectivity, and that is when one reaches the absolute, the unconditioned. One is objective when what one says is true, and one is not objective when what one says is false. The dividing line between objectivity and nonobjectivity or subjectivity lies in truth and falsity.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Philosophic differences

Kurzinhalt: act, form, and potency; basic group: differences among philosophers; one can read fruitfully all sorts of material without losing one's way

Textausschnitt: 51/7 Those operations, as a group, determine an object. There is an object proportionate to such operations. The object will be compounded of act, form, and potency, where act is the component in the reality corresponding to the is of judgment, ..
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52/7 The basic group of operations yields the structure of material being in scholastic philosophy. We can go beyond material being by excluding potency. This leaves two possibilities:
(1) form and act, and
(2) act.
These pertain, respectively, to angels and to God. And from this basic group of operations we can go on to discuss the differences among philosophers, and so to offer a theory of philosophic differences. (177; Fs) (notabene)
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53/7 The importance of the theory of philosophic differences is that, if one gets a sufficient grasp of it, one can read fruitfully all sorts of material without losing one's way. If one is limited in one's reading and inspiration exclusively to the works written by Catholics that have been approved as safe, one is cutting down enormously one's field of study, one's sources.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Basic levels of conscious operations; Sorokin, values; positions - counterpositions

Kurzinhalt: the 3 basic levels of conscious operations: the experiential, the intellectual, and the rational or reflective; living can be organized more on the level of experience, or more on the level of intelligence, or more on the level of rational reflection

Textausschnitt: 54/7 Let us begin with the three basic levels of conscious operations: the experiential, the intellectual, and the rational or reflective. The three basic types of philosophy are organized, respectively, about the level of experience, about the level of intelligence, and about the level of rational reflection. (178; Fs) (notabene)
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55/7 De facto, in artistic and literary work the experiential level is most prominent, in mathematical and scientific work the intellectual is most prominent, and in philosophical work the rational and reflective is most prominent. Because rational reflection leads to saying A is, A is B, or A is not C, philosophy can be very jejune. And that is no harm. But that is the controlling level of the other two. Acts of understanding are much rarer than acts of experiencing, and acts of judging are much rarer than acts of understanding. ... You can deal with insights that are all X's, but the philosopher's emphasis is on the 'is' or 'is not.' (178; Fs)
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56/7 However, men in their living can be organized more on the level of experience, or more on the level of intelligence, or more on the level of rational reflection; and so there arise three basic classes of philosophy. The tendency to organize on the experiential level is manifest in the materialist, the empiricist, the sensist, the positivist, the pragmatist, the modernist. These same types of philosophy recur throughout the whole history of philosophy. There are differences in the experiential philosophies due to different objects of intellectual interest, but they are all of that basic type. On the second level, there are the philosophies of the Platonist, idealist, relativist, essentialist varieties. On the third level, there are the realists, where what is meant by the real is what is known when one truly affirms, 'It is.' As St Thomas said, for example, we know the existence of God when we know the truth of the proposition Deus est, God is. (178; Fs)
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57/7 Now these philosophic differences will radiate through the whole of life. Earlier, we considered three levels of the good: the particular good (the level of satisfactions), the good of order, and value. We distinguished aesthetic, ethical, and religious values, where the aesthetic value is apprehended by insight into the concrete, the ethical value is the individual demanding correspondence between his rationality and his activity, and the religious value is the rational individual using truth to know being, orientating himself before God within the world and history. The distinction of the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious comes, of course, from Kierkegaard. He used the three categories in speaking of three spheres of existential subjectivity. A person moves from one sphere to another only by a leap. In other words, when a person is within a given sphere of existential subjectivity, as Kierkegaard would put it, or within a given horizon, to use the terminology that we developed earlier, then it is not by arguing from that sphere that one will bring him to another sphere. That sphere becomes a closed system, and a person has to be dynamited out of it. We then related to this distinction of operations Sorokin's analysis of Western culture in terms of three types of cultures or civilizations. There are the sensate, corresponding to the experiential; the idealistic, corresponding to the intellectual; and the ideational, corresponding to the reflective, the 'It is.' Consequently, meeting those fundamental types is the approach implied in Insight in the distinction between positions and counterpositions. Fundamentally, positions are philosophic, ethical, artistic, practical views that are in harmony with the full implications of the three levels. Counterpositions are views, whether philosophic, ethical, practical, or artistic, that involve a blind spot, a limited horizon, where the limitation is either to the intellectual level or to the experiential level. The systematic formulation of the difference between positions and counterpositions is given in epistemological terms: if the real is what you know by understanding correctly, you have a position; if the real is anything but that, or if no real at all is acknowledged, you have a counterposition. (179f; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Philosophic Differences: Galileo , primary and secondary qualities, geometry; Aristotle

Kurzinhalt: For Galileo the object of science was a geometrization of the world. In proposing this he had to meet the objection that ; The fundamental Aristotelian axiom is that knowing is by identity

Textausschnitt: 58/7 What I have said thus far is very general, and now we may illustrate it. I begin with the empiricist movement. (180; Fs)
Galileo did not merely discover the idea of the natural law in the instance of the law of free fall. His real inspiration was the idea of a system of laws, and his concept of that system was a ready-made system, namely, Euclidean geometry. For Galileo the object of science was a geometrization of the world. In proposing this he had to meet the objection that it is obvious to everybody that the real world is far more than is treated in geometry. To meet that objection he drew a distinction between primary and secondary qualities. Primary qualities are ...
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59/7 Now this was a doctrine invented by Galileo to sell his theory of science. And, while his theory of science underwent subsequent revisions, the distinction between primary and secondary qualities continued to have a great influence in philosophy. Nor is this incidental. For it was the real concern of philosophers to arrive at a theory of knowledge that would ground the scientific methodology and justify how science is able to produce such results. And that aim has been attained to a great extent. But as you can see, the position of Galileo that what is really out there is the geometrical object, and the rest of it is just in the subject, is a theory about what is real. It rests upon an epistemological assumption that most people find self-evident, namely, that knowing is a matter of taking a look, that a real distinction between subject and object, and a confrontation of the object to the subject, are of the very essence of knowledge, so that Aristotle was completely wrong when he asserted that sense in act is the sensible in act, that intellect in act is the intelligible in act, and that in things that are without matter the one that understands and what is understood are identical. The fundamental Aristotelian axiom is that knowing is by identity. (181; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Kant: position (Zusammenfassung); pure desire to know, the unconditioned gets beyond the subject; Plotinus, Plato

Kurzinhalt: pure desire to know = transcendental illusion; what makes knowledge knowledge is experience, not a grasp of the unconditioned, naive assumption that knowing is taking a look

Textausschnitt: 66/7 That, very roughly, is the Kantian position. Kant dropped much of the rational level. Simply to say, 'It is,' is just to talk; it is not knowledge of anything. The pure desire to know is transcendental illusion, because it moves you beyond the level of possible experience. The Kantian criterion, the ultimate criterion that is constantly operative in the Critique of Pure Reason, is the idea of possible experience. Knowledge is possible insofar as we construct experience. When we start talking about angels and God, we are not constructing any experience, and consequently our sets of a priori forms are irrelevant. It is a fundamental Kantian assumption that what makes knowledge knowledge is experience, not a grasp of the unconditioned, not something that occurs in the judgment. (184; Fs) (notabene)
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67/7 The Kantian position is not easily transcended. If one reflects upon one's capacity to reflect, one can see that there is a demand for the unconditioned, and this demand makes one say that science is only probable, that it has not yet reached the unconditioned. This demand for the unconditioned and obtaining of the unconditioned is something that constitutes a third level in our knowing. But if one simply speaks vaguely about evidence, it is not self-evident that one has to go beyond experience and understanding to posit a third level in which the unconditioned is reached; one ignores that reflectivity and thinks simply of the fulfilment of the conditions, of verification in the materialist sense of having the requisite sensation. One does not think of having the requisite sensation as the fulfilment of the conditions that, combined with the link between the conditions and the conditioned, introduces something new, namely, a satisfaction of the demand of rational reflection for the unconditioned, a satisfaction that through the attainment of the unconditioned gets beyond the subject. If the unconditioned is attained, then there is attained something independent of the subject, something in an absolute order, that something that we name truth. Truth is absolute, and it is the means through which we know the real. (184f; Fs)
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68/7 In other words, in all that development there is the naive assumption that knowing is taking a look. I say the assumption is naive, but it has been held by very profound philosophers. Why are there subsistent universals in Plato? Well, you know the universal, and knowing is taking a look of some sort, or at least remembering a look, and therefore there has to be the universal. Why is it that in Plotinus the first, the One, does not know, is beyond knowledge? Because knowledge involves an imperfection. The first knower is had in the Intelligence, the Nous, that emanates from the One; but the One is beyond being and beyond knowing, because being and knowing imply a duality. (185; Fs) (notabene)
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69/7 That is an example. There are many other criticisms that can be made of Kant, but the fundamental objection is that the issue is not placed on the rational level. His a priori is validated insofar as it is a necessary condition of possible experience. His ultimate is experience, not truth, not the unconditioned; and that is where he differs from being. Moreover, because he does not reach the unconditioned, his doctrine is an immanentist doctrine. One gets out of merely experiencing and understanding, to reality, through an absolute, through the unconditioned. In Kant there is not that unconditioned. It is implicit, of course, in that he does acknowledge simple fact - you can prove a position by introducing a virtually unconditioned; but he does not have the unconditioned as a systematic structural element in his philosophy, and he cannot introduce it into his philosophy without destroying that philosophy. As long as the unconditioned is not recognized, implicitly or explicitly, the philosophy is an immanentist philosophy. You have the experiences, you perform acts of understanding, but you cannot use true propositions as the means through which you know reality. (185; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Science, existentialists; intellectual pattern, pure reason = speculative intellect

Kurzinhalt: If your attainments in the intellectual pattern of experience are the sort of thing that you can live out, then you are being an intelligent and rational man.

Textausschnitt: If through the intellectual pattern of experience one arrives at the unconditioned, one arrives at truth and being, and that is all that can be demanded. That is the formulation, concretely, of what is meant by speculative intellect or pure reason. If your attainments in the intellectual pattern of experience are the sort of thing that you can live out, then you are being an intelligent and rational man. You are living concretely up to the level of what you know. This is the basis of the autonomy of spirit. It is the ideal of the ethical man. Religion simply places the ethical man within the broader context of God, his creator and judge, and of human history as the field within which he exercises his autonomy. So I do not believe there is anything more than an apparent argument from group theory or from the tendencies of people like Bergson, or from idealists like Croce, to belittle science and consider it as merely practical. (187f; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Heidegger, What does Heidegger mean by das Seiende? das Man

Kurzinhalt: one is in the field in which the unconditioned, truth, and truth as the medium through which being is known have not been reached.

Textausschnitt: 76/7 In both Heidegger and Jaspers, one is in the field in which the unconditioned, truth, and truth as the medium through which being is known have not been reached. Heidegger speaks a great deal of das Seiende and of Sein. He aims at an ontology, but he is quite clear that he has not got there yet, and he does not see how one can. He deals with the ontic in the hope of being able to arrive at an ontology. (Ontology means an account of being; ontic is just being.) What does Heidegger mean by das Seiende? He means the given as merely given, as stripped of all intelligibility, which, after all, comes from the intelligence of the subject. To know das Seiende one needs a breakdown of consciousness, because consciousness intellectualizes, makes intelligible the whole flow of experience. You need a breakdown of consciousness to know what das Seiende is.
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... Das Seiende is the merely given without any intelligible embellishment attributed to it by human consciousness. And Sein is the contribution of human intelligence, what is added to das Seiende by insight.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Jaspers: existence and transcendence; set of ciphers

Kurzinhalt: fundamental concepts: Existenz and Transzendenz, existence and transcendence; for him, there is no way of breaking the Kantian immanence; to think we are knowing anything would be metaphysics

Textausschnitt: ... Jaspers's concern is also with the subject. He has a first-hand acquaintance with science because of his professional studies. His idea of science is empiricist and pragmatist. He can give you magnificent descriptions and analyses of the experiencing, intelligent, rational subject. His philosophy is mostly worked out by explanations of the meanings of German words, but it is brilliant in its nuances. (190; Fs)
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81/7 Jaspers's two fundamental concepts are Existenz and Transzendenz, existence and transcendence. As he states in his Philosophie, these words mean what is expressed by mythical consciousness with the names 'soul' and 'God.' Why is it that Jaspers uses these two terms and says that their meaning is equivalent to what the mythmaker named soul and God? It is because he sees no answer to Kant. He is in line with Kant's Critique of Practical Reason, the moral side of Kant, as well as with Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, and he made them much more profound and far-reaching. He has no idea of rational consciousness reaching the unconditioned and using truth as a medium through which reality is known. Because he does not have that idea, the only knowledge he can have is of two kinds: the knowledge you can have from pragmatic science - it works - and the experience one can have of oneself as experiencing, intelligent, reasonable, free, and responsible. In one's experiencing oneself, above all as free and responsible, one has an experience of soul. But one must not speak of soul as though one were knowing a reality through that experience. For him, there is no way of breaking the Kantian immanence. If you could break the Kantian immanence, then you could use the word 'soul' and be talking about a reality; but you cannot break it, and so to talk about soul as though it were a reality is myth. In this experience his philosophy is aimed at an illumination of Existenz. It is a matter of self-appropriation. Self-appropriation is, of course, essential to Jaspers, because he has no way of saying anything that is true, that corresponds to reality. That is blocked off by his Kantian assumptions, his failure to get beyond Kant. His philosophy aims at an illumination of Existenz, and in selfawareness, in the illumination that self can have in experiencing itself, there emerges an awareness of Transzendenz in the exercise of freedom, especially in the exercise of freedom in limiting situations, situations involving guilt, struggle, suffering, and death. (190f; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Piaget: Unterschied zu verschiedenen anderen Theorien: Gestaltstheorie

Kurzinhalt: his position explicitly differs from the associationist position, from the theory of the conditioned reflex, from Gestalt theory

Textausschnitt: As a psychological theory his position explicitly differs from the associationist position, which is in terms of images and the similarity between images. It differs, too, from a psychology of needs. Piaget has no doubt of needs, but he considers a need as simply an introspective aspect of the scheme. Again, his theory differs from the theory of the conditioned reflex. The conditioned reflex is simply an accidental elaboration of a scheme, one that lasts just as long as it gives satisfactory results. According to Piaget, conditioned reflexes do not produce permanent differences. Finally, his position differs from Gestalt theory. They are similar insofar as in each case the scheme has a structure, a form. But the structure for Piaget is an operational structure, whereas the structure in Gestalt theory is within the percept. (198; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Piaget, Group Theory (Gruppentheorie); a stage in development

Kurzinhalt: Moving up to the group, the child is able to perform a number of the operations, but not the whole system

Textausschnitt: 16/8 Some knowledge of group theory is necessary if one is to understand what Piaget is doing. He is using the idea of the group of operations. When the group or rounded whole is attained, there occurs what Piaget calls a stage in development. Moving up to the group, the child is able to perform a number of the operations, but not the whole system. Consequently, there will be points where he will be blocked, where he will not be able to do things or figure things out. Piaget is able to discern where the group of operations will be lacking. He gives the child things to do and finds that the group has not yet been attained. The child reaches an equilibrium, a capacity to act on a given level, when the group is attained. Development is occurring along a certain line, and the development is attained when the group is attained. From the notion of the group Piaget derives a theoretical structure that defines when development is still occurring and the group has not yet been attained, and again when development is attained. So his theoretical structure gives a precise meaning to stages and to the 'not yet attained' of stages. (199f; Fs) (notabene)

17/8 Piaget thinks up very implausible types of experiments. For example, he will have two large bottles full of water, and he will pour the water from one into a series of smaller bottles. He will then put the empty bottle aside and ask the children, Is there more water in the big bottle or in the series of little ones? Now the children just look; they will not know. It is only at a certain stage, when, instead of comparing the end results, they think of the process and realize that no more water was added and none was spilt, that they will know there is the same amount of water in the series of smaller bottles as in the larger bottle. And only two years later will they be able to apply the same sort of thing to another problem - if we cut something up, does the whole weigh more than the sum of the parts? Again, it is a matter of thinking of and understanding the process, not of comparing the end results. Piaget constructs endless experiments and gives surprising tests to children, but his fundamental inspiration is the idea of the group. And, of course, the notion of the group of operations is used here in a sense that is merely analogous to the use in mathematics. He is not talking about mathematical operations, but about the operations of the child in looking, grabbing, and so on. (200; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Kunst: Gefühl, Einsicht als konkrete Einsicht, Urteil als freie Wahl, verantwortliche Tätigkeit

Kurzinhalt: Art mirrors that organic functioning of sense and feeling, of intellect not as abstract formulation but as concrete insight, of judgment that is not just judgment ...

Textausschnitt: 4/9 One can put this point in a different manner and by putting it in a different manner see how the problems of apprehending the concrete can be turned to some extent by thinking about art and history. Any type of differentiated intellectual consciousness, such as mathematics, science, and philosophy, can express more or less adequately precisely what it is. But any such type of differentiated consciousness is simply a withdrawal for a return. Just as development occurs now in one direction, now in another, and then in a third, and it is only at the end of the whole spiraling process that one has the finished product, so differentiated consciousness is, as it were, a stage in the development. It is a withdrawal from total activity, total actuation, for the sake of a fuller actuation when one returns. What one returns to is the concrete functioning of the whole. In that concrete functioning there is an organic interrelation and interdependence of the parts of the subject with respect to the whole, and of the individual subject with respect to the historically changing group.1 Art mirrors that organic functioning of sense and feeling, of intellect not as abstract formulation but as concrete insight, of judgment that is not just judgment, but that is moving into decision, free choice, responsible action.2 (209; Fs) (notabene)


, so differentiated consciousness is, as it were, a stage in the development. It is a withdrawal from total activity, total actuation, for the sake of a fuller actuation when one returns. What one returns to is the concrete functioning of the whole. In that concrete functioning there is an organic interrelation and interdependence of the parts of the subject with respect to the whole, and of the individual subject with respect to the historically changing group. Art mirrors that organic functioning of sense and feeling, of intellect not as abstract formulation but as concrete insight, of judgment that is not just judgment, but that is moving into decision, free choice, responsible action. (209; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Binswanger: Traum der Nacht u. d. Morgens (Dasein)

Kurzinhalt: Binswanger distinguishes between the dreams of night and the dreams of morning. The dream of night is influenced organically, ... But the dream of morning is the Dasein, the existential subject beginning to posit himself in his world.

Textausschnitt: 5/9 Let us recall by way of a preface to what I am going to attempt to say about art what we said about the good as the developing subject. We must pass from the logical essence of man, something that is common to heroes and scoundrels, mewling infants and saints, something that is verified in everyone equally, to man as concrete potentiality and concrete duty; from man as substance to man as conscious subject; from thinking of a set of faculties and their actuation to thinking of a concrete flow of consciousness, and to thinking of that concrete flow in terms of the subject and his concern that defines the horizon of his world. The subject is not only in his world, but by his intersubjectivity, which we indicated by the phenomenology of the smile, he has a Mitwelt, a world-with-him of other persons with whom he is aware of living. Again, he has a world about him of tools, artifacts, buildings, and so on — an Umwelt.1 That flow of consciousness is captured by Ludwig Binswanger, who used Heidegger's thought to give a new angle to depth psychology.2 Binswanger wrote a little essay entitled 'Traum und Existenz.'3 There is a French translation of this essay, Le réve et l'existence,4 the advantage of which is that Binswanger's rather short essay is prefaced by a long introductory essay by the translator that runs to about 130 pages and helps one get the point. Binswanger distinguishes between the dreams of night and the dreams of morning. The dream of night is influenced organically, for example by the state of one's digestion, and is of no great significance. But the dream of morning is the Dasein, the existential subject beginning to posit himself in his world. He is doing so symbolically, but it is the first movement towards being awake. The subject with his concern will be in his world; the world and the subject are simultaneous. The reason Heidegger speaks of Dasein is that he does not want any split between subject and object. Dasein means the subject and his world; both are simultaneous and correlative. If we think of ourselves that way, we realize that if we know anything about anything it is through meaning, through the intentional order. The stuff of our lives is intentional insofar as we have any consciousness of it at all. Consciousness is not the whole of reality; there are such sciences as biology and neurology, physics and chemistry; but anything that we are above the biological level, and anything that we know, is contained within a field of intentionality, a field that includes the sensitive, intellectual, judicial, and voluntary. These transitions from logical essence to concrete potentiality, from substance to subject, and from faculty psychology to the flow of consciousness are a helpful background to what I want to say about art. And Binswanger's distinction will soon prove helpful in speaking about experiential patterns.5 (209f; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Macht, Autorität, Gemeinschaft; keine Gemeinschaft ohne: Erfahrung, Einsicht, Urteil

Kurzinhalt: Community means people with a common field of experience, with a common or at least complementary way of understanding people and things, with common judgments and common aims

Textausschnitt: 4/1 As the source of power is cooperation, so the carrier of power is the community. By a community is not meant a number of people within a frontier. Community means people with a common field of experience, with a common or at least complementary way of understanding people and things, with common judgments and common aims. Without a common field of experience people are out of touch. Without a common way of understanding, they will misunderstand one another, grow suspicious, distrustful, hostile, violent. (5; Fs) (notabene)
5/1 Without common judgments they will live in different worlds, and without common aims they will work at cross-purposes. Such, then, is community, and as it is community that hands on the discoveries and inventions of the past and, as well, cooperates in the present, so it is community that is the carrier of power. (6; Fs)
6/1 The exercise of power is twofold. For men live in two worlds. From infancy they live in a world of immediacy, a world revealed by sense and alive with feeling. Gradually they move into a world mediated by meaning and motivated by values. In this adult world the raw materials are indeed the world of immediacy. But by speech one asks when and where, what and why, what for and how often. Answers cumulatively extrapolate from what is near to what is ever further away, from the present to one's own and to others' memories of the past and anticipations of the future, from what is or was actual to the possible, the probable, the fictitious, the ideal, the normative. (6; Fs)
7/1 As exercised within the world mediated by meaning and motivated by values, power resides in the word of authority. It is that word that brings the achievements of the past into the present; it is that word that organizes and directs the whole hierarchy of cooperating groups in the present; it is that word that distributes the fruits of cooperation among the cooperating members; it is that word that bans from social intercourse those that would disrupt the cooperating society. In brief, the word of authority is the current actuality of the power generated by past development and contemporary cooperation. (6; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Authorität, Authentizität; transzendentale Gebote; Gemeinschaft, Sinn, Werte: authentisch, nicht-authentisch

Kurzinhalt: Such meanings and values may be authentic or unauthentic. Be attentive, Be intelligent, Be reasonable, Be responsible

Textausschnitt: 12/1 Such meanings and values may be authentic or unauthentic. They are authentic in the measure that cumulatively they are the result of the transcendental precepts, Be attentive, Be intelligent, Be reasonable, Be responsible. They are unauthentic in the measure that they are the product of cumulative inattention, obtuseness, unreasonableness, irresponsibility. (7; Fs) (notabene)
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13/1 Authenticity makes power legitimate. It confers on power the aura and prestige of authority. Unauthenticity leaves power naked. It reveals power as mere power. Similarly, authenticity legitimates authorities, and unauthenticity destroys their authority and reveals them as merely powerful. Legitimated by authenticity authority and authorities have a hold on the consciences of those subject to authority and authorities. But when they lack the legitimating by authenticity, authority and authorities invite the consciences of subjects to repudiate their claims to rule. However, subjects may be authentic or unauthentic. Insofar as they are authentic, they will accept the claims of legitimate authority and legitimate authorities, and they will resist the claims of illegitimate authority and illegitimate authorities. On the other hand, insofar as they are unauthentic, they will resist legitimate claims, and they will support illegitimate claims. (7; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Dialektik, Authentizität

Kurzinhalt: unauthenticity is realized by any single act of inattention, obtuseness, unreasonableness, irresponsibility. But authenticity is reached only by long and sustained fidelity

Textausschnitt: 14/1 Dialectic has to do with the concrete, the dynamic, and the contradictory. Cooperation, power, and authority have to do with the concrete and the dynamic. Authenticity and unauthenticity add a pair of contradictories. The resulting dialectic is extremely complicated. Authenticity and unauthenticity are found in three different carriers:
(1) in the community,
(2) in the individuals that are authorities, and
(3) in the individuals that are subject to authority.
Again, unauthenticity is realized by any single act of inattention, obtuseness, unreasonableness, irresponsibility. But authenticity is reached only by long and sustained fidelity to the transcendental precepts. It exists only as a cumulative product. Moreover, authenticity in man or woman is ever precarious: our attentiveness is ever apt to be a withdrawal from inattention; our acts of understanding a correction of our oversights; our reasonableness a victory over silliness; our responsibility a repentance for our sins. To be ever attentive, intelligent, reasonable, responsible is to live totally in the world mediated by meaning and motivated by values. But man also lives in a world of immediacy and, while the world of immediacy can be incorporated in the world mediated by meaning and motivated by values, still that incorporation never is secure. Finally, what is authentic for a lesser differentiation of consciousness will be found unauthentic by the standards of a greater differentiation. So there is a sin of backwardness, of the cultures, the authorities, the individuals that fail to live on the level of their times. (8; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Authentizität; Nicht-Authentizität: Fortschritt, Niedergang (decline); Erlösung

Kurzinhalt: The fruit of authenticity is progress; the fruit of unauthenticity is decline; redemption

Textausschnitt: 16/1 A more effective approach is to adopt a more synthetic viewpoint. The fruit of authenticity is progress. For authenticity results from a long-sustained exercise of attentiveness, intelligence, reasonableness, responsibility. But long-sustained attentiveness notes just what is going on. Intelligence repeatedly grasps how things can be better. Reasonableness is open to change. Responsibility weighs in the balance short- and long-term advantages and disadvantages, benefits and defects. The longer these four are exercised, the more certain and the greater will be the progress made. (9; Fs) (notabene)
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17/1 The fruit of unauthenticity is decline. Unauthentic subjects get themselves unauthentic authorities. Unauthentic authorities favor some groups over others. Favoritism breeds suspicion, distrust, dissension, opposition, hatred, violence. Community loses its common aims and begins to operate at cross-purposes. It loses its common judgments so that different groups inhabit different worlds. Common understanding is replaced by mutual incomprehension. The common field of experience is divided into hostile territories. (9; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Toynbee; kreative, herrschende Minderheit; inneres, äußeres Proletaritat

Kurzinhalt: Toynbee: creative minority, dominant minority, internal and external proletariat;

Textausschnitt:

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Finalität: absolute, horizontal, vertikal; Evolution

Kurzinhalt: finality: absolute, horizontal, vertical;

Textausschnitt: 4/3 By "finality" I would name not the end itself but relation to the end, and I would distinguish absolute finality, horizontal finality, and vertical finality. (24; Fs)
Absolute finality is to God. For every end is an instance of the good, and every instance of the good has its ground and goal in absolute goodness.
Horizontal finality is to the proportionate end, the end that results from what a thing is, what follows from it, and what it may exact.
Vertical finality is to an end higher than the proportionate end. It supposes a hierarchy of entities and ends. It supposes a subordination of the lower to the higher. Such subordination may be merely instrumental, or participative, or both, inasmuch as the lower merely serves the higher, or enters into its being and functioning, or under one aspect serves and under another participates. (24; Fs)
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5/3 The classicist view of the universe acknowledged hierarchy and the instrumental type of vertical finality. An evolutionary view adds the participative type:

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Vorsehung und Wahrscheinlichkeit, Evolution (PROBABILITY AND PROVIDENCE)

Kurzinhalt:

Textausschnitt: 7/3 A theologian, if he thinks of evolution, turns to divine providence. A contemporary scientist that does so thinks of probabilities. Darwin's accumulations of chance variations have gained respectability as probabilities of emergence. His survival of the fittest becomes probabilities of survival. What holds for living things, also holds in inanimate nature. Quantum theory has ended the long reign of mechanist determinism and has enthroned statistical law. (24f; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Das Übernatürliche (Finalität); THE SUPERNATURAL; vertikale Finalität

Kurzinhalt: the infinite absolutely transcends the finite; it regards man's vertical finality to God

Textausschnitt: 11/3 Contemporary English usage commonly associates the supernatural with the spooky. But the term has a far older meaning, to which we have already adverted in speaking of vertical finality. For in a hierarchy of beings, any higher order is beyond the proportion of lower orders and so is relatively supernatural to them. But the infinite absolutely transcends the finite. It follows that the divine order is beyond the proportion of any possible creature and so is absolutely supernatural. (25f; Fs) (notabene)
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12/3 Our inquiry is with the absolutely supernatural. It regards man's vertical finality to God. It regards such vertical finality in the strictest sense, so that man is not merely subordinate to God but also somehow enters into the divine life and participates in it. When Rahner writes on Christology within an evolutionary perspective, he very explicitly means that there is a threefold personal self-communication of divinity to humanity, first, when in Christ the Word becomes flesh, secondly, when through Christ men become temples of the Spirit and adoptive sons of the Father, thirdly, when in a final consummation the blessed know the Father as they are known by him. (26; Fs) (notabene)
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15/3 Vertical finality is obscure. When it has been realized in full, it can be known. When it is in process, what has been attained can be known, but what has not, remains obscure. When the process has not yet begun, obscurity prevails and questions abound. Is it somehow intimated? Is the intimation fleeting? Does it touch our deepest aspirations? Might it awaken such striving and groaning as would announce a new and higher birth? (26; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Aristoteles: vertikale Finalität; Psychologie (Potenz), Kirchenväter, Thomas; Theorie vor Wille; praeparatio evangelica

Kurzinhalt: that Aristotle's thought offered rather stony ground for the objectification of the life of the spirit; psychology: causality not intentionality (Intentionalität); priority of intellect over will

Textausschnitt: 18/3 In a celebrated passage Aristotle granted that his ideal of the theoretic life was too high for man and that, if one lived it, one would do so not as a man but as having something divine present within one. Nonetheless he went on to urge us to dismiss those that would have us resign ourselves to our mortal lot. He pressed us to strive to the utmost to make ourselves immortal and to live out what was finest in us. For that finest, though slight in bulk, still surpassed by far all else in power and in value. (27; Fs) (notabene; FN: Aristoteles, Ethik)
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19/3 It is not hard to discern in this passage an acknowledgment of vertical finality in its multivalence and in its obscurity. In its multivalence, for there is in man a finest; it surpasses all else in power and in value; it is to be let go all the way. In its obscurity, for what is the divine in man, and what would be going all the way? (27; Fs)
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20/3 One has only to shift, however, from the corpus of Aristotelian writings to that of the Christian tradition, to recognize in Aristotle's position a sign of things to come. So Christian humanists have spoken of a praeparatio evangelica in the Gentile world and, more bluntly, St. Paul said to the Athenians: "What you worship but do not know-this is what I now proclaim". (Acts 17:23). (27; Fs)
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21/3 If in the Greek patristic tradition theoria became the name of contemplative prayer, if medieval theologians derived from Aristotle's principles an argument that man naturally desired to know God by his essence, it still remains that Aristotle's thought offered rather stony ground for the objectification of the life of the spirit. For the priority accorded the object gave metaphysics a dominant role. Psychology had to think in terms of potencies, or faculties, that were not among the data of consciousness. Worse, since psychology envisaged plant as well as animal and human life, the relation of operation to object was conceived, not precisely as intentionality, but vaguely as causality. Further, the priority of objects entailed a priority of intellect over will, since will was conceived as rational appetite; and on the priority of intellect over will, there somehow followed a priority of speculative over practical intellect. (27f; Fs) (notabene)
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Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Metaphysik und Intentionalität; Fragen als Operatoren der Intentionalität

Kurzinhalt: It follows that the single cognitional operation is neither a merely immanent psychological event nor yet a properly objective cognitional attainment. It has the intermediate status of an intentional act:

Textausschnitt: 22/3 Intentionality analysis yields a contrasting picture of the subject. Along with the rest of modern science, it eschews dependence on metaphysics. For metaphysicians do not agree. A critically constructed metaphysics presupposes a theory of objectivity, an episte-mology. An epistemology has to distinguish between knowing, as illustrated by any cognitional operation, and adult human knowing, which is constituted by a set of cognitional operations that satisfy a normative pattern. It follows that the single cognitional operation is neither a merely immanent psychological event nor yet a properly objective cognitional attainment. It has the intermediate status of an intentional act: as given, it refers to some other; but the precise nature and validity of that reference remain to be determined; and such determination is reached through the further intentional operations needed to complete the pattern constitutive of full objectivity. In a word, phenomenology brackets reality to study acts in their intentionality. In the very measure that it prescinds from questions of objectivity, it all the more efficaciously prepares the way for a convincing epistemology. (28; Fs) (notabene)
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23/3 Intentionality analysis, like the rest of modern science, begins from the given. Unlike the rest of modern science, which dilates upon electrons and viruses, it can remain with the given, with human intentional operations dynamically related in their self-assembling pattern. (28; Fs)
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24/3 In its broad lines this dynamism rests on operators that promote activity from one level to the next. The operators are a priori, and they alone are a priori. Their content is ever an anticipation of the next level of operations and thereby is not to be found in the contents of the previous level. (28; Fs) (notabene)
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26/3 Three types of operator yield four levels of operation. Each lower level is an instance of vertical finality, and that finality is already realized as the higher levels function. The lower level, accordingly, prepares for the higher and is sublated by it. (29; Fs) (notabene)
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27/3 We experience to have the materials for understanding; and understanding, so far from cramping experience, organizes it, enlarges its range, refines its content, and directs it to a higher goal. We understand and formulate to be able to judge, but judgment calls for ever fuller experience and better understanding; and that demand has us clarifying and expanding and applying our distinctions between astronomy and astrology, chemistry and alchemy, history and legend, philosophy and myth, fact and fiction. We experience and understand and judge to become moral: to become moral practically, for our decisions affect things; to become moral interpersonally, for our decisions affect other persons; to become moral existentially, for

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Vertikale Finalität - Selbsttranszendenz (self-transcendence)

Kurzinhalt: Such vertical finality is another name for self-transcendence

Textausschnitt: 28/3 Such vertical finality is another name for self-transcendence. By experience we attend to the other; by understanding we gradually construct our world; by judgment we discern its independence of ourselves; by deliberate and responsible freedom we move beyond merely self-regarding norms and make ourselves moral beings. (29; Fs)
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33/3 But here we meet the ambiguity of man's vertical finality. It is natural to man to love with the domestic love that unites parents with each other and with their children, with the civil love that can face death for the sake of one's fellowmen, with the all-embracing love that loves God above all. But in fact man lives under the reign of sin, and his redemption lies not in what is possible to nature but in what is effected by the grace of Christ. (31; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Übergang von Logik -> Methode (Aristoteles); Faculty psychology; Psychologie und Metaphysik; Intentionalitätsanalyse

Kurzinhalt: For logic what is first is premises. Among premises come first the most universal:; Because metaphysics is first, psychology has to be a faculty psychology:; Method reverses such priorities

Textausschnitt: 34/4 The transition we envisage is from logic to method. Aristotle himself would not admit the strict application of his own Posterior Analytics outside the field of mathematics. Modern science places its reliance, not on any principles or laws it has discovered and may revise, but upon empirical method. Modern scholarship operates on similar lines in its very different field: it is a matter of growing familiarity with the data, advancing comprehension of their meaning and significance, and complete submission to the demand for revision when contrary data or a fuller comprehension come to light. My own study, Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas," would show the continuity of such ideas of method with the Aristotelian and Thomist tradition, while my larger work, Insight, sets forth a generalized empirical method that operates principally on the data of consciousness to work out a cognitional theory, an epistemology, and a metaphysics. First it asks what one is doing when one is knowing. Next, why is doing that knowing? Thirdly, what does one know when one does it? (45; Fs) (notabene)

35/4 A shift from logic to method is a change rather in structure than in content. Both logic and method start from principles, from what is first in an ordered set (primum in aliquo or dine). But the order of logic differs from the order of method. For logic what is first is premises. Among premises come first the most universal: they regard being, and so metaphysics is the first of the sciences. Because metaphysics is first, psychology has to be a faculty psychology: its basic terms are modifications of metaphysical terms, and so it has much to say of potencies and habits, which are not among the immediate data of consciousness, and it relates acts to objects not by intentionality but by efficient and final causality. Again, because metaphysics is first, a primacy goes to speculative intellect which concerns itself with metaphysics. (45f; Fs) (notabene)

38/4 Further, the shift from logic to method includes an acknowledgment of the autonomy of science and of scholarship. But the autonomy recognized is under the control of method. Such controlled autonomy ensures both openness to current views and alertness to spot needed revisions. It grounds sharp distinctions between the results of scientific work and the extrascientific opinions of scientists, between scholarly conclusions and nonscholarly pronouncements. If it permits modern science and scholarship to correct what in the Aristotelian corpus might be mistaken for philosophy, it thereby puts on a rational basis what otherwise tended to be, initially the haphazard result of a long-sustained war of attrition, but later the wholesale desertion of a venerable and still valuable tradition. (46f; Fs)

36/4 Method reverses such priorities. Its principles are not logical propositions but concrete realities, namely, sensitively, intellectually, rationally, morally conscious subjects. Among investigations the key place goes to the self-appropriation of the subject, to his discovery and acknowledgment of human authenticity and unauthenticity, to his option for authenticity and, thereby, for a philosophic foundation less showy but far more effective than an appeal to demonstrations. There follows the replacement of a faculty psychology by an intentionality analysis. Finally, as intentionality analysis distinguishes successive levels of conscious operations by the type of questions they answer, as it has questions for intelligence (what? why? how? what for?) precede questions for reflection (is that so? are you certain?) and both precede questions for deliberation (is it good? is it truly good?), so also it acknowledges the sublation of the earlier by the later. By sublation the later goes beyond the earlier, sets up a higher objective, introduces new operations, but so far from setting aside or interfering with the earlier preserves them in their integrity, refines their performance, extends their relevance, enriches their significance. On this showing speculative intellect loses its primacy. The key position now pertains to the deliberating subject, and his deliberations are existential, for they determine what he is to be; they are interpersonal, for they determine his relations with others; they are practical, for they make this earth a better or a worse place in which we are to live. (46; Fs) (notabene)

39/4 Finally, there is an important difference between method in the sciences and method in philosophy. Empirical method leaves the sciences open to radical revision, because its appeal is to the data of sense but its basic terms and relations denote not the data of sense but constructs derived from empirically established laws. In contrast, the basic terms and relations of an empirically established cognitional theory are not just constructs but also data of immediate consciousness. Its basic terms denote conscious events. Its basic relations denote stages in conscious process. Hence, to introduce new basic terms and new basic relations and thereby establish a radical revision would be, not merely the revision of a theory, but the creation of a new type of consciousness. (47; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: 5 Punkte bezüglich des Verhältnisses zwischen Aristoteles (Logik, Analytica Posteriora) und Methode

Kurzinhalt: Posterior Analytics (Aristotle, Thomas); that method, so far from excluding logic, includes it; Thomas als Lehrer (teacher);

Textausschnitt: 41/4 I now must add five observations. Three of them are theoretical. Two of them are factual. But the five together will help us make the turn from "Aristotle Today" to "Aristotle in Aquinas." (47; Fs)

42/4 The first of the theoretical observations is that method, so far from excluding logic, includes it. It adds to logic such nonlogical operations as observing, describing, comparing, stumbling on problems, discovering solutions, devising tests, checking results. But integral to such nonlogical operations there are within method itself the properly logical operations of defining terms, formulating hypotheses, working out presuppositions, and inferring conclusions. (47f; Fs) (notabene)(notabene)

43/4 The second of the theoretical observations is that inferences can be explanatory without their premises being necessarily true. Fourteenth-century theologians were very accurate logicians and they rightly contended that what necessarily is true would be true in every possible world. But modern scientists are content with explanations that hold in this world. Indeed, they are content to claim that the explanations they offer are the best available at the present time. (48; Fs)
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46/4 On three theoretical there follow two factual observations. The first is that Aristotle in his own writings left necessary premises and conclusions to the mathematicians. His own rule was to seek in each subject no greater exactitude than the matter permitted. In his eyes it was just as silly to ask a politician for demonstrations as to accept plausible reasons from a mathematician. (48; Fs)

47/4 Our second factual observation is very brief. It is that the theology of Aquinas was not more influenced by the Posterior Analytics than was the philosophy of Aristotle. It is true that Aquinas quoted the Analytics much more than Aristotle did. But it also is true that he was not thereby caught in the implications of that work. For the implications depend upon essential predication, and Aquinas consistently denied that we knew either the essence of God or the substance of material objects. (48f; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Lonergan, Thomas: 3 Gründe einer Kontinuität; mehr ein Wandel der Form als dem Inhalt nach; Gnade, Habitus

Kurzinhalt: the medieval specialization was implicitly methodical;

Textausschnitt: 55/4 First there is the continuity from the implicit to the explicit. I have argued explicitly for a method in theology. But the medieval specialization was implicitly methodical. Its commentaries and books of sentences sought to do what today is achieved in research, interpretation, and history. Its questions and summa's did the work now carried on in dogmatics and systematics. Then as now theology operated methodically, but method now is talked about and then it was not. (51f; Fs)

56/4 Secondly, (..) Where he discoursed at length on virtues as operative habits, we can think with the Greeks of arete as excellence and develop the moral feelings that promote it. Where he conceived the grace of justification as a supernatural habit, we can note his doctrine that that grace makes us choose what is right where before we chose what was wrong, and so can give it the more familiar name of conversion. For him theology was not only science but-something better-wisdom; and this we can retain in terms of the successive sublations observed in intentionality analysis, where the curiosity of sense is taken over by the inquiry of intelligence, where inquiry is taken over by rational reflection, where reflection prepares the way for responsible deliberation, where all are sublimated by being-in-love-in love with one's family, in love with the human community, in love with God and his universe. (51f; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Unterschied: sensation - perception; consciousness - self-knowledge; Infrastruktur und Suprastruktur -> Gefühle

Kurzinhalt: As outer experience it is sensation as distinct from perception. As inner experience it is consciousness as distinct from self-knowledge

Textausschnitt: For example, any scientist will distinguish sharply between his hypothesis and the data to which he appeals. To the data the hypothesis adds a suprastructure of context, problem, discovery, formulation. But the data, as appealed to, are not yet the infrastructure. For, as appealed to, the data are named; and the naming involves its own suprastructure of a technical language and of the scientific knowledge that had to be acquired to use that language accurately. Moreover, this suprastructure supposes an ordinary language, through which one advances to a grasp of scientific terminology, and a commonsense style of knowledge, through which one advances to scientific knowledge. So finally one comes to the infrastructure. It is pure experience, the experience underpinning and distinct from every suprastructure. As outer experience it is sensation as distinct from perception. As inner experience it is consciousness as distinct from self-knowledge, consciousness as distinct from any introspective process in which one inquires about inquiring, and seeks to understand what happens when one understands, and endeavors to formulate what goes on when one is formulating, and so on for all the inner activities of which all of us are conscious and so few of us have any exact knowledge. (57; Fs) (notabene)
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I say that so few have any exact knowledge of these operations, for while they are conscious, still that consciousness is not knowledge but only the infrastructure in a potential knowledge that few get around to actuating by adding its appropriate suprastructure. (57f; Fs) (notabene)

To conclude this subsection, let us note a possibility. It may be that inner religious and outer sociocultural factors come together to constitute a new religious consciousness inasmuch as (1) the inner religious factor resembles an infrastructure while (2) the outer sociocultural factor makes possible, or begins to countenance, or expresses, or interprets the religious experience. (58; Fs)

12/5 Further Illustrations of Consciousness as Infrastructure. My book, Insight, is an account of human understanding. As a book, it is an outer sociocultural factor providing expression and interpretation of events named insights. But at the same time it is inviting the reader to self-discovery, to performing in and for himself the illustrative insights set forth in successive chapters, to adverting to what happens in himself when the insights occur and, no less, to what is missing when they do not occur, until eventually as is hoped he will be as familiar with his own intelligence in act as he is with his ocular vision. (58; Fs)

13/5 What can be done for insights, can also be done for feelings. Feelings simply as felt pertain to an infrastructure. But as merely felt, so far from being integrated into an equable flow of consciousness, they may become a source of disturbance, upset, inner turmoil. Then a cure or part of a cure would seem to be had from the client-centered therapist who provides the patient with an ambiance in which he is at ease, can permit feelings to emerge without being engulfed by them, come to distinguish them from other inner events, differentiate among them, add recognition, bestow names, gradually manage to encapsulate within a suprastructure of knowledge and language, of assurance and confidence, what had been an occasion for disorientation, dismay, disorganization. (58; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Infrastruktur, Suprastruktur: Tiefenpsychologie

Kurzinhalt: I shall use the term "register" when I mean that we know what is going on within us without our being aware of it.

Textausschnitt: 14/5 I have been distinguishing between an infrastructure of insights as discoveries or of feelings as felt and, on the other hand, a suprastructure of insights as formulated in hypotheses or of feelings as integrated in conscious living. Perhaps I may add a few random indications that depth psychologists are not unaware of the existence and relevance of some such distinction. (58; Fs) (notabene)

[...] the fact that there is no strict alternative between conscious and unconscious, but that there are, as H. S. Sullivan has pointed out in a lecture, several levels of consciousness. Not only is the repressed impulse still effective - one of the basic discoveries of Freud - but also in a deeper level of consciousness the individual knows about its presence. [...] For the sake of saving repetitive explanations I shall use the term "register" when I mean that we know what is going on within us without our being aware of it. (58f; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Entfremdung: Institutionen, Bürokratie; bias

Kurzinhalt: that the large establishment and its bureaucratic organization is a fourfold source of that conjunction of dissatisfaction and hopelessness that is named alienation and foments revolutions.

Textausschnitt: 20/5 Ours is a time of very large establishments. They are conspicuous in finance, industry, commerce. They have kept growing on all levels of government with its numerous,
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21/5 The numerous tasks to be performed in a large establishment generate the type of organization named bureaucracy.
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22/5 The more precise the policies, the more efficient the procedures, the more exigent the standards and their controls, then the closer will be the approximation to the ideal bureaucracy.
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23/5 It remains that the large establishment and its bureaucratic organization is a fourfold source of that conjunction of dissatisfaction and hopelessness that is named alienation and foments revolutions. (61; Fs)

30/5 The large establishment and its bureaucratic administration, then, suffer from four defects. Its products and its services are specified by universals, but the good is always more concrete than a set of universals. Its mode of operation is rigid with little tolerance for discretionary adaptation. Its capacity for the more alert observation and the more critical reflection that generate revised ideas and remodeled operations seems no greater than that attributed to the scientific community by Thomas Kuhn. Its size, finally, its complexity, and its solidarity with other large establishments and bureaucracies provide a broad field for the ingenuity of egoists, the biases of groups, the disastrous oversights of 'practical' common sense. (63; Fs) (notabene)

24/5 For policies, procedures, standards are all expressed in general terms. Generalities never reach the full determinateness of concrete reality. But what is good has to be good in every respect, for the presence of any defect makes it bad. My point is very ancient, for over two millennia ago Aristotle pronounced equity to be virtue and defined it as a correction of the law where the law is defective owing to its universality. Like laws, the policies, procedures, standards of a bureaucracy are universal. But unlike laws, they are not tolerant of equitable correction. (61; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: 1. Aufklärung, ENLIGHTENMENT

Kurzinhalt: 1. Auklärung in Unterschied zur 2. Aufklärung

Textausschnitt: 34/5 Culturally its first underpinnings came with the relativization of Euclidean geometry: from being regarded as the unique deduction of necessary truth from self-evident principles it became just one of many possible geometric systems deduced from freely chosen postulates. Newton's mechanics suffered a similar fate when Einstein's special relativity was accepted;

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: 2. Aufklärung, ENLIGHTENMENT

Kurzinhalt: It is a profound transformation in mathematics and natural science. It is paralleled by a transformation in philosophy

Textausschnitt: 38/5 Such in summary fashion is the second enlightenment. It is a profound transformation in mathematics and natural science. It is paralleled by a transformation in philosophy. It is complemented by the vast development in human studies stemming from the initiatives of the German Historical School. It has found allies in sociological and psychological tendencies away from the reductionist postulate of positivist philosophy. (65; Fs) (notabene)

39/5 Of itself this second enlightenment is culturally significant. But it may have as well a social mission. Just as the first enlightenment had its carrier in the transition from feudal to bourgeois society, so the second may find a role and task in offering hope and providing leadership to the masses alienated by large establishments under bureaucratic management. (65; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Christentum:infrastructure, suprastructure

Kurzinhalt: As infrastructure it is the dynamic state of being in love in an unrestricted fashion,; the distinctiveness of Christianity lies in this suprastructure

Textausschnitt: 56/5 When the choice falls on Christianity, the following points may be noted: (71; Fs)

A classical formulation of Christian religious experience may be found in St. Paul's statement that God's love has flooded our inmost heart through the Holy Spirit he has given us (Rom. 5:5).

As infrastructure it is the dynamic state of being in love in an unrestricted fashion, a conscious content without an apprehended object.

Its suprastructure, however, is already extant in the account of Christian origins: God sending his only Son for our salvation through death and resurrection and the sending of the Spirit.

The distinctiveness of Christianity lies in this suprastructure. To it the adherents of non-Christian religions may wish to ascribe the characterization of religious experience as being in love.
There is to Christianity an aspiration to universalism, e.g., I Tim. 2:4. Perhaps the simplest explanation of this universalism would be that (1) the salvation of the Christian is in and through charity, and (2) this gift as infrastructure can be the Christian account of religious experience in any and all men.
From this basis one may proceed to a general account of emerging religious consciousness, whether universalist, or ecumenist, or 'bottled effervescence,' or alienated by secular or ecclesiastical bureaucracy, or seeking the integration of religious awakening with a fuller development of the second enlightenment, or distorted by human obtuseness, frailty, wickedness. (71; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Metaphysische Psychologie - Christologie; transformation of falling in love

Kurzinhalt: metaphysical psychology: has underpinned theological accounts of the person of Christ

Textausschnitt: 7/6 Scholastic psychology was a metaphysical psychology. It was a doctrine of the essence of the soul, of its potencies, of their informing habits and acts, and of the objects of the acts. So little did consciousness enter into this psychology that Aristotle treated in the same work the psychology of men, of animals, and of plants. (75; Fs)

8/6 Traditionally it has been this psychology that has underpinned theological accounts of the person of Christ, of his human perfections, and of the grace given all men but superabundantly to him. (75; Fs) (notabene)
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12/6 Now when psychology is conceived not as subalternate to metaphysics but as a science in its own right, then it proceeds from the data of consciousness. Its basic terms name conscious operations. Its basic relations name conscious processes. Its account of truly human development is of conscious subjects moving cumulatively through their operations to the self-transcendence of truth and love. (76; Fs) (notabene)

13/6 On this view of human development advance ordinarily is from below upwards. It is from experiencing through inquiry to understanding; from intelligent formulations through reflection to judgment; from apprehended reality through deliberation to evaluation, decision, action. (76; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Christologie - Philosophie; Unmittelbarkeit, Welt der Bedeutung; Offenbarung: signate not exercite

Kurzinhalt: divine revelation comes to us through the mediation of meaning; human development more commonly is from below upwards but more importantly, as we have urged, it is from above downwards

Textausschnitt: 17/6 Contemporary Catholic theology deprecates any intrusion from philosophy. The result inevitably is, not no philosophy, but unconscious philosophy, and only too easily bad philosophy. (77; Fs) (notabene)
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19/6 For all of us have lived from infancy in a world of immediacy, a world of sights and sounds, of tastes and smells, of touching and feeling, of joys and sorrows. It was from within that world (as described by Jean Piaget) that we first developed operationally by assimilating new objects to objects already dealt with, by adjusting old operations to new occasions, by combining differentiated operations into groups, and by grouping groups in an ascending hierarchy. (77f; Fs)
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22/6 In contrast the world mediated by meaning goes beyond experiencing through inquiry to ever fuller understanding, beyond mere understanding through reflection to truth and reality, beyond mere knowing through deliberation to evaluated and freely chosen courses of action. Now mere experiencing has to be enhanced by deliberate attention. Chance insights have to submit to the discipline of the schoolroom and to the prescriptions of method. Sound judgment has to release us from the seduction of myth and magic, alchemy and astrology, legend and folktale; and it has to move us to the comprehensive reasonableness named wisdom. Most of all we have to enter the existential sphere, where consciousness becomes conscience, where the cognitional yields to the moral and the moral to the religious, where we discern between right and wrong and head for holiness or sin. (78; Fs) (notabene)
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23/6 No one is simply ignorant of these two worlds, of their different procedures, of the differences between their respective criteria. But commonly this advertence is not thematic; it is only lived. As the Scholastics put it, men possess it not signate but only exercite. And because the possession is only latent and implicit, confusions easily arise. Besides the presence of parents to their infant child, there also is the presence of the parents to one another. No one would fail to notice the difference between these two instances of presence. But when a theologian gets along with a minimal philosophy, he can tell us without further ado that he argues for a Christology of presence. When the absence of philosophy is taken as proof of sincere pastoral concern, many will be entranced by his proposal. (78f; Fs) (notabene)

24/6 But the fact is that the presence of Christ to us is not presence in the world of immediacy: "Happy are they who never saw me and yet have found faith" {John 20:29). The fact is that divine revelation comes to us through the mediation of meaning. It comes through meaning transmitted by tradition, meaning translated from ancient to modern tongues, meaning here clarified and there distorted by human understanding, meaning reaffirmed and crystalized in dogmas, meaning ever coming to life in God's grace and God's love. (79; Fs) (notabene)

26/6 But this claim, I feel, would be more attractive if it were not involved in vast oversimplifications. However much the one-way traffic law may suit a Christology of presence, it runs counter to the structure and procedures of the world mediated by meaning. Human development more commonly is from below upwards but more importantly, as we have urged, it is from above downwards. Logic would have us argue from the causa essendi no less than from the causa cognoscendi, from the sphericity of the moon to its phases as well as from the phases to the moon's sphericity. In a contemporary transcendental method one clarifies the subject from objects and one clarifies the objects from the operations by which they are known. In each of the empirical sciences one proceeds not only from the data of observation and experiment to the formulation of laws, but also from the ranges of theoretical possibility explored by mathematicians to physical systems that include empirical laws as particular cases. In theology, finally, one proceeds not only from the data of revelation to more comprehensive statements but also from an imperfect, analogous yet most fruitful understanding of mystery to the syntheses that complement a via inventionis with a via doctrinae. (79f; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Christologie und Geschichte; Bultmann

Kurzinhalt: history: creation of the nineteenth century; contrast: precritical belief in testimony - critical understanding of evidence;

Textausschnitt: () History in this contemporary sense largely was the creation of the nineteenth century, and its acceptance in the Catholic church has occurred only slowly and gradually in the present century. It found its way first into church history, then into patristic and medieval studies, and finally in recent decades into biblical studies. (80; Fs)
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29/6 This contrast between precritical belief in testimony and critical understanding of evidence is of the greatest theological significance. When the New Testament is viewed as testimony to be believed because it is credible, then the greatest emphasis will be placed on the words of Jesus Christ himself, for they are supremely credible, while a fundamentalist adherence will spread indiscriminately over every aspect of every word and sentence because all are divinely inspired. Then the theologian has only to open his Bible to find convincing proof for whatever preconceived ideas he may happen to entertain. But when the New Testament is viewed as evidence, then one need hardly believe what the Synoptic Gospels affirm if one is concerned to differentiate stylistic features, discern successive strata, and compose a history of the synoptic tradition. Then what Jesus really said and did belongs to a stratum still earlier than any to be verified in the successive contributions to the synoptic tradition, and the Jesus of history becomes either Bultmann's itinerant rabbi who eventually was crucified or, more recently, the hopefully fuller figure that is the objective of the new quest of the historical Jesus.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Chrstologie, kerygma addressed to Existenz; Heilsgeschichte; Botschaft in Wechselwirkung zu unserer Entscheidung

Kurzinhalt: 5 Arten der Forschung; aber keine bezieht sich auf die Botschaft im eigentlichen Sinn; in correlation with the response it elicits, that in that response there emerges the message as message-for-us

Textausschnitt: 37/6 I have distinguished five different genera of inquiry. All five can be applied to the New Testament. The textual critic can specialize in the manuscript tradition. The exegete can master all related literatures and bring them to bear on an understanding of this or that section of the text. The factual historian can assemble the factual statements in the New Testament, submit them to his critical scrutiny, and seek to fit them in the context of other known contemporary events. The ethically oriented historian can compare the moral attitudes of New Testament personages with those of other human communities or he can subsume them under some moral code to praise them or blame them. But while all of these approaches have their significance and value, none of them deals with what manifestly is the principal concern of the New Testament. For first and last, the New Testament is a book with a message; the message is presented in a great variety of manners, in narratives and parables, in precepts and counsels, in exhortations and warnings. The message is depicted as emanating from the man, Jesus, who suffered, died, was quickened from the dead, and now sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven. The message announces the imminent coming of the kingdom of God, and, as it challenged Jew and Greek two millennia ago, so too today it challenges us with a last word about last things. As Saul on the way to Damascus heard a voice saying: "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" so each of us is to hear from the same voice either of two verdicts. That verdict may be: "[...] anything you did for one of my brothers here, however humble, you did for me." But again it may be: "[...] anything you did not do for one of these, however humble, you did not do for me." (83; Fs)

38/6 Our third step continues the second. We began from the exigence of a post-Kantian transcendental method that attends not just to the object, not just to the subject, but to each in itself and in its dependence on the other. We proceeded from that generality to the currently common view that the New Testament pertains to the genus, Heilsgeschichte, that it centers on a kerygma addressed to Existenz. We have now to note that the message is at once simple, radical, and intensely personal, that it stands in correlation with the response it elicits, that in that response there emerges the message as message-for-us. (83f; Fs) (notabene)

39/6 The message then is simple, as simple as the "Follow me" addressed to Simon and Andrew, to James and John, to Levi the publican. It is as radical as the counsel to leave father and mother and all one possesses, to renounce wealth and honors, to put up with every indignity, day after day to take up one's cross. Simple and radical, the message is intensely personal. It is "Follow me," "for my sake and for the Gospel," "for the sake of my name," "for the sake of the kingdom of God," that is, for the kingdom for which Jesus himself lived and died. (84; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Christologie - eine theologische Frage; : historischer Jesus - Christus der Glaubens

Kurzinhalt: Bezug zwischen den drei Arten einer Beschäftigung mit Geschichte und dem Christus des Glaubens; Gegenüberstellung: Fundamentalist - Wissenschaftler

Textausschnitt: () There is the contrast between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. There is the suggested option between a functional and an ontological Christology. There is the problem of uniting the concern of the inquiring subject with the objective wealth of scriptural scholarship. On each of these topics something must be said. (85; Fs)

44/6 The contrast between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith may be approached from the distinction already drawn of three kinds of historical writing, namely, writing that deals mainly
(1) with questions of fact, or
(2) with moral issues, or
(3) with matters pertaining to salvation.
Now different writing supposes difference in competence. A historian trained to deal with questions of fact also is competent to deal with factual issues that serve to introduce matters pertaining to the second and third style of historical writing. But this does not necessarily imply that he will possess the moral sensibility or the religious concern that will fit him for an open and adequate treatment of matters proper to these further fields. In brief, he can treat certain aspects of the Jesus of history, but he may be unequal to discerning the Christ of faith or to determining the factual presuppositions of the Christ of faith. (85; Fs) (notabene)

45/6 Similarly, a religious person will readily discern the Christ of faith but, unless he has been trained in the techniques of scientific history, he will be prone to a fundamentalist interpretation of the New Testament. For him any question of the Jesus of history, as understood by scientific history, will be a matter not of science but of unbelief and infidelity. Nonetheless, there are not only possible but also actually existing religious persons, committed to the Christ of faith, yet also fully cognizant of the nature and procedures of scientific history. They are aware that the New Testament was written by men of faith and addressed to men of faith; they are aware that the authors of the books in the New Testament expressed themselves far more in the vocabulary of their own later day than in the less evolved vocabulary possible in the time of the Jesus of history. And so they not only present the Christ of faith but also join in the new quest for the historical Jesus. (85f; Fs) (notabene)
()
47/6 It is in this coincidence that there is to be found the clue to Christological method. This we have characterized as selecting what is valid in current views without becoming involved in positions open to radical change. Now what is open to radical change, is the incipient and still tentative reconstruction of the thought and language of the Jesus of history. What can be valid in current views is based on the contemporary and so firsthand evidence we possess on the beliefs of the early church. By discerning Christian tradition in that evidence, by coming to grasp its immanent structure and intelligibility, by leaving open the questions still to be settled by the reconstruction of the Jesus of history, the theologian, I submit, will find a first and basic component in a methodically developing Christology. (86; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Christologie: ontologische oder funktional

Kurzinhalt: A merely functional Christology acknowledges no more than a series of religious events; ... is not strictly ontological

Textausschnitt: 48/6 A second determination of Christological method comes from asking whether New Testament Christology is ontological or functional. Our answer will be that it is neither merely functional nor yet strictly ontological. (86; Fs)
49/6 A merely functional Christology acknowledges no more than a series of religious events. There is factual evidence that people in New Testament and later times believed Jesus to have risen from the dead. Such acts of believing are historically established. They constitute the set of events referred to as Christology. (86f; Fs) (notabene)
50/6 Now this is all true enough but it ignores the notion of salvation history. It is not a factual history of acts of believing. It is history of what happened on the evidence believers discern in the light of faith. But there was no question for the New Testament writers that the Jesus who was condemned and crucified, who died and was buried, also rose from the dead. One may agree with them or one may disagree; but if one disagrees, one will not attempt Christian salvation history; one will limit oneself to factual history. (87; Fs)
51/6 At the same time New Testament Christology is not strictly ontological. It purports to deal with persons that really existed and with events that really occurred. But it does not go into the hermeneutics of its message and, least of all, does it go into that recondite department of hermeneutics that involves one in cognitional theory, epistemology, and metaphysics. (87; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Christologie: heuristische Struktur (Beispiel: Feuer); conjunction: object - subject; Erfahrung - Sohnschaft

Kurzinhalt: On the side of the data one discerns three points: ...; criterion. Our own experience of our own sonship provides a first criterion,

Textausschnitt: 54/6 A heuristic structure, then, is a conjunction both of data on the side of the object and of an operative criterion on the side of the subject. Accordingly, a Christological heuristic structure will be a similar conjunction giving rise to the succession of Christologies set forth in New Testament writings and further developed in the formulations of individuals and of communities down the ages. On the side of the data one discerns three points:
(1) that Jesus is named time and again from different viewpoints and in different contexts the Son of God;
(2) that we through faith are sons of God and by baptism are one in Christ {Gal. 3:26-28), that God sent his only Son that we might acquire the status of sons as is proved to us by the sending of the Spirit of Christ crying in our hearts "Abba! Father!" (Gal. 4:3-7; Rom. 8:14-17); and
(3) that the Spirit we have received from God knows all and has been given us that we may know all that God of his own grace gives us (1 Cor. 2:10-16; John 14:16,17, 26). (87f; Fs)

55/6 In correspondence with such data there arises in the Christian subject his or her heuristic structure. In many contexts and from many viewpoints Jesus was named the Son of God, and that gives rise to the multiple question: How are we in our own minds to understand Jesus as Son of God? Are we to suppose it is a mythic or merely honorific title such as was given to kings? Or does it simply denote the mission of the Messiah? Or does it point to an inner reality such as is our own divine sonship through Christ and in the Spirit, so that as God in us is the Spirit, so God in Jesus is the Word? Or does the sonship of Jesus mean, as the church for centuries has understood it, that Jesus was truly a man leading a truly human life but his identity was the identity of the eternal Son of God consubstantial with the Father? (88; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Christologie - Person; Person Christi, Definition: Identität, Bewusstsein, Subjektivität

Kurzinhalt: By identity I understand the third of the three meanings of one; indivisum in se et divisum a quolibet alio; consciousness: intentional and conscious; subject - subjectivity

Textausschnitt: 65/6 ... I shall attempt to offer some explanation of the statement: the person of Christ is an identity that eternally is subject of divine consciousness and in time became subject of a human consciousness. I shall speak (1) of identity, (2) of human consciousness, (3) of human subjectivity, (4) of divine subjectivity, and (5) of the compatibility of one identity with the two subjectivities. (91; Fs)

66/6 By identity I understand the third of the three meanings of one. There is one in the sense of instance: a first instance is one; a second makes two; still another and there are three; and so on to infinity. (91; Fs)
64/6 There next is one in the sense of intelligible unity. There are many phases of the moon, for its appearance changes night by night. But there is only one moon, for the many appearances have a single explanation: the moon is spherical. (91; Fs)
65/6 Thirdly, there is one in the sense of one and the same. It is the one that presupposes the intelligible unity already mentioned but adds to it an application of the principles of identity and contradiction. So it is one in the sense of the old definition: indivisum in se et divisum a quolibet alio. Such is the "one and the same" of the Chalcedonian decree. (91; Fs)

66/6 Next, consciousness. Man's sensitive, intellectual, rational, and moral operations have two distinct but related characteristics. They are both intentional and conscious.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Hypostatische Union; 3 Subjekte des göttlichen Bewusstseins (Trinität); state of being in love

Kurzinhalt: higher synthesis of intellectual, rational, and moral consciousness that is the dynamic state of being in love; The two processions ground four real relations of which three are really distinct from one another

Textausschnitt: 69/6 But we must now turn to the main component in the hypostatic union. Can one speak intelligibly of three distinct and conscious subjects of divine consciousness? I believe that one can, but to do so one must take the psychological analogy of the Trinitarian processions seriously, one must be able to follow the reasoning from processions to relations and from relations to persons, and one has to think analogously of consciousness. (93; Fs) (notabene)
()
70/6 The psychological analogy, then, has its starting point in that higher synthesis of intellectual, rational, and moral consciousness that is the dynamic state of being in love. Such love manifests itself in its judgments of value. And the judgments are carried out in decisions that are acts of loving. Such is the analogy found in the creature. (93; Fs) (notabene)

71/6 Now in God the origin is the Father, in the New Testament named ho Theos, who is identified with agape (1 John 4:8,16). Such love expresses itself in its Word, its Logos, its verbum spirans amorem, which is a judgment of value. The judgment of value is sincere, and so it grounds the Proceeding Love that is identified with the Holy Spirit. (93; Fs)
72/6 There are then two processions that may be conceived in God; they are not unconscious processes but intellectually, rationally, morally conscious, as are judgments of value based on the evidence perceived by a lover, and the acts of loving grounded on judgments of value. The two processions ground four real relations of which three are really distinct from one another; and these three are not just relations as relations, and so modes of being, but also subsistent, (eg: FN!) and so not just paternity and filiation but also Father and Son. Finally, Father and Son and Spirit are eternal; their consciousness is not in time but timeless; their subjectivity is not becoming but ever itself; and each in his own distinct manner is subject of the infinite act that God is, the Father as originating love, the Son as judgment of value expressing that love, and the Spirit as originated loving. (93f; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Erfahrung der Gnade

Kurzinhalt: Experience of grace, then, is ...: experience of man's capacity for self-transcendence, of his unrestricted openness to the intelligible, the true, the good

Textausschnitt: 42/3 Experience of grace, then, is as large as the Christian experience of life. It is experience of man's capacity for self-transcendence, of his unrestricted openness to the intelligible, the true, the good. It is experience of a twofold frustration of that capacity: the objective frustration of life in a world distorted by sin; the subjective frustration of one's incapacity to break with one's own evil ways. It is experience of a transformation one did not bring about but rather underwent, as divine providence let evil take its course and vertical finality be heightened, as it let one's circumstances shift, one's dispositions change, new encounters occur, and-so gently and quietly-one's heart be touched. It is the experience of a new community, in which faith and hope and charity dissolve rationalizations, break determinisms, and reconcile the estranged and the alienated, and there is reaped the harvest of the Spirit that is " [...] love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness, and self-control" {Gal. 5:22). (32f; Fs) (notabene)
Kommentar (10.12.2003): Also, die Erfahrung der Gnade als
1) Erfahrung des Vermögens und Vollzuges der Selbsttranszendenz als Offenheit gegenüber dem Intelligiblen, Wahren und Guten
2) als Erfahrung der Behinderung dieses Vermögens und Vollzuges in einer zweifachen Weise: 2.1 durch die objektive Sünde der Welt, 2.2 durch die eigene Impotenz, dem Streben in der rechten Weise nachzukommen
3) Erfahrung der Heilung eines hartnäckigen krummen Habitus
4) als Erfahrung einer in der rechten Weise strebenden Gemeinschaft

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Religious studies - theology; animal: rationale - symbolisches; Natur - Geschichte

Kurzinhalt: animal rationale, the rational animal - the symbolic animal; man understood as nature - understood as historic; religious studies confined to what is in the world

Textausschnitt: 1/8 Traditionally man was defined with abstract generality as the zoon logikon, the animal rationale, the rational animal. More concretely today he is regarded as the symbolic animal, whose knowledge is mediated by symbols, whose actions are informed by symbols, whose existence in its most characteristic features is constituted by a self-understanding and by commitments specified by symbols. On the abstract view man was understood as nature. On the relatively recent view man is understood as historic: for the symbols that inform his being vary with the cultures into which he is born, and the cultures themselves change with the passage of time. They emerge, they develop, they flourish, they influence one another, they can go astray, vanish with their former carriers, only to reappear with fresh vitality and vigor grafted upon new hosts. (115; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Mehrdeutigkeit der Erfahrung; Carl Rogers, Jung, Karen Horney, Abraham Maslow

Kurzinhalt: THE AMBIGUITY OF EXPERIENCE; infrastructure - suprastructure; in contrast to Jung, Karen Horney writes: "[...] there is no strict alternative between conscious and unconscious; peak experiences

Textausschnitt: 8/8 What I have illustrated from cognitional theory, also may be illustrated from psychiatry. There is Carl Rogers' client-centered therapy. It aims to provide the patient with an ambiance in which he feels at ease, permits his feelings to emerge, comes to distinguish them from other inner events, to compare different feelings with one another, to add recognition to their recurrence, to bestow names upon them, to manage gradually to encapsulate within a suprastructure of language and knowledge, of confidence and assurance, an infrastructure of feelings that by themselves had been an occasion for turmoil, disorientation, dismay, disorganization. (117; Fs)
()
10/8 In contrast to Jung, Karen Horney writes: "[...] there is no strict alternative between conscious and unconscious, but [...] there are [...] several levels of consciousness. Not only is the repressed impulse still effective-one of the basic discoveries of Freud-but also in a deeper level of consciousness the individual knows about its presence." After making this point, Karen Horney proceeded to pin it down with a technical term: she would use the word, register, when she meant that we know what is going on within us without our being aware of it. (117f; Fs) (notabene)
()
... To quote Klages, the thing in question (the matter repressed) is not so much a thing that is not thought as one that is not recognized." (118; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Tradition - Authentizität; The issue is the struggle of authenticity against unauthenticity

Kurzinhalt: THE CULTIVATION OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE; What is fundamental is human authenticity; minor - major authenticity, to pay a double price for their personal attainment of authenticity

Textausschnitt: 14/8 Because man is a symbolic animal, his development is only partly a matter of his genes. All its higher reaches depend upon his historical milieu with its techniques of socialization, ..
()
The sower, we read, went out to sow his seed, and some fell by the wayside, some among thorns, some on stony ground, but some on good soil where it brought forth fruit now thirty-, now sixty-, now a hundred-fold. The seed, we are told, is the word, for the word is the tool of the symbolic animal. The ground is human consciousness in the polyphony of its many levels. But consciousness does not heed when absorbed in outer cares, or distracted by pleasures, or hardened in waywardness. And even when it is fruitful, its fruitfulness will vary with the cultivation it has received. (119; Fs)

16/8 In time there emerge professional cultivators: ascetics and mystics, seers and prophets, priests and ministers. There is sought the transformation of consciousness that makes possible a human life that is a life of prayer. There is found the inspiration that speaks to the heart of a tribe or clan,
()
19/8 But it would be a mistake, I think, to concentrate on such differences to the neglect of what is more fundamental. For in the main such differences represent no more than the ongoing process in which man's symbols become ever more differentiated and specialized. What is fundamental is human authenticity, and it is twofold. There is the minor authenticity of the human subject with respect to the tradition that nourishes him. There is the major authenticity that justifies or condemns the tradition itself. The former leads to a human judgment on subjects. The latter invites the judgment of history upon traditions. Let us dwell briefly on both these forms. (120; Fs)
()
22/8 So it is that commonly men have to pay a double price for their personal attainment of authenticity. Not only have they to undo their own lapses from righteousness but more grievously they have to discover what is wrong in the tradition they have inherited and they have to struggle against the massive undertow it sets up.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: commitment - drifters;

Kurzinhalt: What, then, is commitment? Negatively, one might perhaps say that it is absent in the man or woman that just drifts through life,

Textausschnitt: 26/8 What, then, is commitment? Negatively, one might perhaps say that it is absent in the man or woman that just drifts through life, content to do what everyone else is doing, to say what everyone else is saying, to think what everyone else is thinking, where the "everyone else" in question is just drifting too. Out of that company of drifters one steps when one faces the problem of personal existence, that is, when one finds out for oneself that one has to decide for oneself what one is to do with oneself, with one's life, with one's five talents or two or lonely one. (123; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Erfahrung der Gnade; Verschränkung zw. Kognitivem und religiösem Fortschritt

Kurzinhalt: three stages in the inner life: purgative, illuminative, unitive way; relationships between religious development and cognitive development

Textausschnitt: () ... to ask in what manner God's love flooding our hearts is a human experience and just how it fits into human consciousness. (125; Fs)

33/8 First, then, it is an experience, not in the broad sense that refers to the coming together and compounding of many conscious elements, but rather in the technical sense that refers to a single element and so constitutes not a structure but an infrastructure. (125; Fs)

34/8 Secondly, consciousness is like a polyphony, or like a concerto that blends many themes in endless ways. So too religious experience within consciousness may be a leading voice or a middle one or a low one; it may be dominant and ever recurrent; it may be intermittently audible; it may be weak and low and barely noticeable. Again, religious experience may fit in perfect harmony with the rest of consciousness; it may be a recurrent dissonance that in time increases or fades away; it may vanish altogether, or, at the opposite extreme, it may clash violently with the rest of experience to threaten disruption and breakdown. As the metaphor from music offers an enormous variety of suggestions, so too the lives of men and women present every degree and shade in the intensity of religious experience, in the frequency of its recurrence, in the harmony or dissonance of its conjunction with the rest of consciousness. (125; Fs)

35/8 Thirdly, as religious experience is found to vary when one compares one individual with another, so too it may be found to develop in the lifetime of this or that individual. Hence there was long repeated the traditional distinction of three stages in the inner life. Beginners were said to be in the purgative way, for theirs was the initial task of reducing and, as far as possible, eliminating the conflict between their religious commitment and the other themes recurrent in their consciousness. Next came the illuminative way in which the significance and implications of religious commitment were ever more fully apprehended and understood. Finally, there was listed a unitive way in which potential conflicts were under control, the full significance of religious commitment was understood and accepted, and in mortal beings there could be verified the harvest of the Spirit catalogued by St. Paul: "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness, and self-control" (Gal. 5:22). (125f; Fs)

36/8 Lastly, there are the somewhat intricate relationships between religious development and cognitive development in man. In its spontaneous unfolding cognitive development may be characterized as from below upwards: it proceeds from the data of experience through the unifications and relational networks spun by understanding towards a process of verification that ends with a verdict of acceptance or rejection. Moreover, there is a certain necessity to this order of development:

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Selbst-Transzendenz auf verschiedenen Stufen: Gefühl, Intellekt, Entscheidung; (Binswanger, Hopkins)

Kurzinhalt: transition from consciousness to conscience, from moral feelings to the exercise of responsibility; all bear convincing testimony that self-transcendence is the eagerly sought goal

Textausschnitt: 8/9 In various ways clinical psychologists have revealed in man's preconscious activity a preformation, as it were, and an orientation towards the self-transcendence that becomes increasingly more explicit as we envisage successive levels of consciousness. (131; Fs)

9/9 Perhaps most revealing in this respect is a distinction drawn by the existential analyst, Ludwig Binswanger, between dreams of the night and dreams of the morning. ...
()
13/9 Beyond the data of experience, beyond questions for intelligence and the answers to them, beyond questions for reflection concerned with evidence, truth, certitude, reality, there are the questions for deliberation. By them we ask what is to be done and whether it is up to us to do it. By them is effected the transition from consciousness to conscience, from moral feelings to the exercise of responsibility, from the push of fear and the pull of desire to the decisions of human freedom. So it is that on the level of deliberating there emerges a still further dimension to self-transcendence. On previous levels there stood in the foreground the self-transcendence of coming to know. But deliberation confronts us with the challenge of self-direction, self-actualization, self-mastery, even self-sacrifice. (132; Fs) (notabene) (notabene)

14/9 Already I have spoken of consciousness as a polyphony with different themes at different intensities sung simultaneously. Now I would draw attention to the different qualities, to what Gerard Manley Hopkins might call the different self-taste, on the successive levels: the spontaneous vitality of our sensitivity, the shrewd intelligence of our inquiring, the detached rationality of our demand for evidence, the peace of a good conscience and the disquiet released by memory of words wrongly said or deeds wrongly done. Yet together they form a single stream, and we live its unity long before we have the leisure, the training, the patience to discern in our own lives the several strands. (132; Fs)

15/9 The basic unity of consciousness reaches down into the unconscious. It is true that conflicts do arise, as the psychiatrists have insisted. But this truth must not be allowed to distract us from a far profounder and far more marvelous harmony. In man, the symbolic animal, there is an all but endless plasticity that permits the whole of our bodily reality to be fine-tuned to the beck and call of symbolic constellations. The agility of the acrobat, the endurance of the athlete, the fingers of the concert pianist, the tongue of those that speak and the ears of those that listen and the eyes of those that read, the formation of images that call forth insights, the recall of evidence that qualifies judgments, the empathy that sets our own feelings in resonance with the feelings of others-all bear convincing testimony that self-transcendence is the eagerly sought goal not only of our sensitivity, not only of our intelligent and rational knowing, not only of our freedom and responsibility, but first of all of our flesh and blood that through nerves and brain have come spontaneously to live out symbolic meanings and to carry out symbolic demands. (132f; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Überzeugung und objektive Wahrheit; Unmittelbarkeit - Bedeutung (Empiristen - Rationalisten)

Kurzinhalt: INNER CONVICTION AND OBJECTIVE TRUTH; Man the symbolic animal lives in both of these worlds; philosophers opt for one of the two worlds;

Textausschnitt: 19/9 At first blush inner conviction and objective truth stand at opposite poles. Inner conviction is subjective. Objective truth is the truth about what is already-out-there-now for everyone to see and grasp and handle. It is public truth, and the publicity is spatial. Precisely because it is spatial, because in principle it can be tested by anyone, it is beyond doubt or question. (134; Fs) (notabene)
20/9 Still questions do arise. One can distinguish between the world of immediacy and the world mediated by meaning. The world of immediacy includes all the data of sense and all the data of consciousness. It consists of two parts: the totality of the data of sense is the sphere of objectivity that is spatial, public, in principle open to anyone's inspection; the totality of the data of consciousness is an aggregate of distinct and segregated subjectivities none of which can inspect what is going on in any of the others. (134; Fs) (notabene)
21/9 To be contrasted with this world of immediacy there is the world mediated by meaning. It consists of all that is to be known by asking questions and arriving at correct answers. It is a world unknown to infants but gradually introduced to children as they learn to speak, to boys and girls as they study in school, to students and scholars in centers of learning. (134; Fs)
22/9 Man the symbolic animal lives in both of these worlds. As animal he lives in the world of immediacy and, like Macbeth, is liberated from his fantasies when he adverts to the sure and firm-set earth on which he treads. As symbolic, he both suffers from the fantasies and brings about his liberation, for that consists not merely in the pressure on the soles of his treading feet but also in his certainty that the earth is firm-set and will not give way under his tread. (134; Fs) (notabene)

23/9 Still man the symbolic animal has long been a puzzle to man the philosopher. Insofar as philosophers search for simplicity and coherence, they opt for one of the two worlds and attempt to get along without the other. Empiricists opt for the world of immediacy, and proceed to empty out from the world mediated by meaning everything that is not immediately given. Rationalists take their stand on demonstrative argument and, if they go along with the ancient Eleatics, will argue that there cannot be more than one being and that that one being cannot undergo any change. (134f; Fs) (notabene)
24/9 But both of these are extreme positions. Empiricists usually find it convenient to take an occasional excursion into the world mediated by meaning, at the very least to expound and prove their own position. Rationalists can advert to the fact that questions are raised with respect to the data of experience and that answers are confirmed by pointing to data that show what they say. So they are led to supplement the apodictic power of demonstration with the intuitions of sense and/or consciousness. But both empiricist excursions into meaning and rationalist appeals to intuition are compromises. They renege on their initial premise of simplicity and coherence. They point the way to a new starting point that acknowledges the complexity of man the symbolic animal. (135; Fs)
25/9 The so-called "new" starting point is, of course, very old. It goes back to Plato and Aristotle. It reached crises in the medieval controversy between Augustinians and Aristotelians and in the later victory of modern science over Aristotelian constructions. It heads into a quite different starting point in the twentieth century in which the notion of method aspires to a foundational role. (135; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Brancis Bacon: Novum Organum -> neues Ideal

Kurzinhalt: FROM ARISTOTLE'S Posterior Analytics TO NEWTON'S Principia; cautious rule of the Royal Society that excluded questions that neither observation nor experiment could solve

Textausschnitt: 30/9 With the first stage of that transformation we are now concerned. If its triumph was Newton, still its goal was not Aristotelian theoretical knowledge but the practical utility praised by Francis Bacon in his Novum Organum. Its conceptual framework took its inspiration not from Aristotle's metaphysics but from Galileo's program of mathematicizing nature. Its field of inquiry was defined not by Aristotle's intellect, capable of fashioning and becoming all, but by the cautious rule of the Royal Society that excluded questions that neither observation nor experiment could solve. (136; Fs) (notabene)

32/9 In the second chapter of the first book of that work one is aware that Aristotle's basic concern is with causal necessity. We think we understand, he notes, when we know the cause, know that it is the cause, and know that the effect cannot be other than it is. But straightway this concern with things and their causes is transposed into syllogistic theory. We are told how knowledge of causal necessity is expressed in appropriate subjects and predicates, premises and conclusions, and thereby manifests its nature as science. We are told how one science can find its principles in the conclusions of another more general science. But when at the end of the second book it is asked how the initial premises are obtained on which the whole deductive structure has to rest, we are told about a rout followed by a rally. The line breaks. Sauve quipeut! But as the fleeing line scatters in every direction, somewhere someone will turn and make a stand. Another will join him, and then another. The rally begins. The pursuing enemy now is scattered. Victory may be snatched from the jaws of defeat. I think this military analogy is sound enough. For it represents the chance accumulation of clues that can combine into a discovery. But it is not at all clear that a necessary truth will be discovered and not a mere hypothesis, a mere possibility that has to be verified if it is to merit the name not of truth but of probability. If the only premises the Posterior Analytics can provide are just hypotheses, verifiable possibilities, then we have many words about causal necessity but no knowledge of the reality. (136f; Fs)

33/9 Further, the syllogistic approach distinguished philosophy and science simply as the more and the less general. It followed that together they formed a seamless robe with the basic terms and basic relations of philosophy ramifying through the less general fields and robbing them of their autonomy. But experimental science has to be autonomous. For ...

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Von der Logik zur Methode; Verifikation ist kein Beweise -> Fehlschluss;

Kurzinhalt: FROM LOGIC TO METHOD; Verification is not proof; to affirm the consequent of an hypothesis, settles nothing about the truth of the antecedent

Textausschnitt: 34/9 The Aristotelian hegemony had been broken, but Aristotelian notions not directly challenged by the new science lived on in quiet possession of the field of common assumptions. Among them was the view that science consisted in true and certain knowledge of causal necessity. Indeed, Newton's deduction of the orbits of the moon and of the planets was regarded as a stunning confirmation ()

35/9 But the logic of the matter is simple. Verification is not proof. For verification is an affirmation of what follows from scientific hypothesis, theory, system. But to affirm the consequent of an hypothesis, settles nothing about the truth of the antecedent from which the consequent follows. A logical conclusion is to be had only when the attempt to verify turns up contrary instances; for then one denies the consequent and from that denial there follows the denial of the antecedent. Accordingly, the principles and laws of an empirical science, no matter how frequently they are verified, may be esteemed ever more probable but may not be considered to be definitively established. (138; Fs) (notabene)

36/9 Moreover, the progress of modern science points in the same direction. Newton was acclaimed because he was considered to have done for mechanics what Euclid had done for geometry. But in the nineteenth century it became clear that Euclidean geometry could no longer be considered the one and only possible geometry. In the twentieth the repeated verification of Einstein's special relativity made it probable that a non-Euclidean geometry was the appropriate conceptualization in physics. (138; Fs) (notabene)

37/9 Similarly, Laplace's determinism was found to have shaky foundations. For Heisenberg's relations of indeterminacy (or uncertainty) reveal a knowledge that is not less but greater than the knowledge offered by classical laws. Formerly, indeed, probability was thought to be no more than a cloak for our ignorance. But now the tables are turned. For classical laws hold only under the blanket proviso, other things being equal. So it is that classical predictions can be notably mistaken because they fail to foresee the interference of some alien factor. But, further, the verification of classical laws is never exact: no more is demanded than that actual measurements fall within the limits set by a theory of probable errors of observation. In brief, classical theory consists of two parts: there is the classical law, and it sets an ideal norm from which actual measurements do not diverge systematically; there is the theory of measurement and it sets the limits within which errors of observation may be considered probable. But, as Patrick Heelan has pointed out, the same two aspects are contained within the single formalism proposed by quantum mechanics. For the single formalism admits two interpretations: one interpretation yields an ideal norm from which actual measurements do not diverge systematically; the other interpretation of the same formalism informs us of the distribution of the divergence from the norm. (138f; Fs)

39/9 There has occurred, then, a transition from logic to method. It has occurred in the field of natural science. It does not, by any means, involve an elimination of logic: for it still is logic that cares for the clarity of terms, the coherence of propositions, the rigor of inferences. But it does involve a shift in the significance of logic. For Aristotle in his Posterior Analytics made his demonstrative syllogism the central piece in his construction both of the nature of science and of the relations between sciences. That construction has turned out to be a procrustean bed on which science cannot lie. So far from providing the key to the whole nature of science, logic has to be content with the task of promoting clarity, coherence, and rigor in the formulation and application of hypotheses and theories. Further, while it is essential that this task be properly performed, still the significance of that performance is measured not by logic itself but by method. For an empirical science is not confined to logical operations with respect to terms, propositions, inferences. It includes observation, description, the formulation of problems, discovery, processes of experimentation, verification, revision. Within the larger whole logic ensures the clarity of terms, the coherence of propositions, the rigor of inferences. And the more successfully it performs that task, the more readily will there come to light not the definitive immutability but the defects of current views and the need to seek more probable opinions. (139f; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Ursache für das Versiegen der Einsicht; bias (general), Verschlossenheit

Kurzinhalt: why does the flow of fresh insights dry up? Why, if challenges continue, do responses fail?; insights only if people have open minds; the wheel of progress becomes a wheel of decline when the process is distorted by bias

Textausschnitt: 15/7 But, one may ask, why does the flow of fresh insights dry up? Why, if challenges continue, do responses fail? Why does a minority that was creative cease to be creative and become merely dominant? (104; Fs) (notabene)

There are many intermediate answers that correspond to the many and varied circumstances under which civilizations break down. But there is one ultimate answer that rests on the intrinsic limitations of insight itself. For insights can be implemented only if people have open minds. Problems can be manifest. Insights that solve them may be available. But the insights will not be grasped and implemented by biased minds. There is the bias of the neurotic fertile in evasions of the insight his analyst sees he needs. There is the bias of the individual egoist whose interest is confined to the insights that would enable him to exploit each new situation to his own personal advantage. There is the bias of group egoism blind to the fact that the group no longer fulfills its once useful function and that it is merely clinging to power by all the maneuvers that in one way or another block development and impede progress. There is finally the general bias of all 'good' men of common sense, cherishing the illusion that their single talent, common sense, is omnicompetent, insisting on procedures that no longer work, convinced that the only way to do things is to muddle through, and spurning as idle theorizing and empty verbiage any rational account of what has to be done.1 (104f; Fs) (notabene)

16/7 Not only is there this fourfold exclusion of fresh insights by the neurotic, by the bias of individual and, worse, of group egoism, and by the illusory omnicompetence of common sense. There also is the distorting effect of all such bias on the whole process of growth. Growth, progress, is a matter of situations yielding insights, insights yielding policies and projects, policies and projects transforming the initial situation, and the transformed situation giving rise to further insights that correct and complement the deficiencies of previous insights. So the wheel of progress moves forward through the successive transformations of an initial situation in which are gathered coherently and cumulatively all the insights that occurred along the way. But this wheel of progress becomes a wheel of decline when the process is distorted by bias. Increasingly the situation becomes, not the cumulative product of coherent and complementary insights, but the dump in which are heaped up the amorphous and incompatible products of all the biases of self-centered and shortsighted individuals and groups. Finally, the more the objective situation becomes a mere dump, the less is there any possibility of human intelligence gathering from the situation anything more than a lengthy catalogue of the aberrations and the follies of the past. As a diagnosis of terminal cancer denies any prospect of health restored, so a social dump is the end of fruitful insight and of the cumulative development it can generate. (105f; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Heilung (nur durch: creative process); zwei Bewegungen; Verschränkung: Moral - Ökonomie

Kurzinhalt: love: commands commitment and joyfully carries it out, no matter what the sacrifice involved; romand empire; when physicists can think on the basis of indeterminacy, economists can think on the basis of freedom

Textausschnitt: 17/7 I have spoken of creating in history and of its nemesis. But my topic also calls for a few words on healing. In fact, the genesis and breakdown of civilization occupy only the first six of the ten volumes Toynbee devoted to his A Study of History. In the last four there emerges a new factor, for out of the frustration and disgust of the internal proletariat there come the world religions and a new style of human development. (106; Fs)

18/7 For human development is of two quite different kinds. There is development from below upwards, from experience to growing understanding, from growing understanding to balanced judgment, from balanced judgment to fruitful courses of action, and from fruitful courses of action to the new situations that call forth further understanding, profounder judgment, richer courses of action. (106; Fs)

19/7 But there also is development from above downwards. There is the transformation of falling in love: the domestic love of the family; the human love of one's tribe, one's city, one's country, mankind; the divine love that orientates man in his cosmos and expresses itself in his worship. Where hatred only sees evil, love reveals values. At once it commands commitment and joyfully carries it out, no matter what the sacrifice involved. Where hatred reinforces bias, love dissolves it, whether it be the bias of unconscious motivation, the bias of individual or group egoism, or the bias of omnicompetent, shortsighted common sense. Where hatred plods around in ever narrower vicious circles, love breaks the bonds of psychological and social determinisms with the conviction of faith and the power of hope. (106; Fs)

20/7 What I have attributed to love and denied to hatred, must also be denied to any ambiguous and so deceptive mixture of love and hatred. If in no other way at least from experience we have learnt that professions of zeal for the eternal salvation of souls do not make the persecution of heretics a means for the reconciliation of heretics. On the contrary, persecution leads to ongoing enmity and in the limit to wars of religion. In like manner wars of religion have not vindicated religion; they have given color to a secularism that in the English-speaking world regards revealed religion as a merely private affair and in continental Europe thinks it an evil. (106; Fs)

21/7 Again, while secularism has succeeded in making religion a marginal factor in human affairs, it has not succeeded in inventing a vaccine or providing some other antidote for hatred. For secularism is a philosophy and, no less than religion, it may lay claim to absolutes of its own. In their name hatred can shift from the religious group to the social class. So the professions of tolerance of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment did not save from the guillotine the feudal nobility of France, and the Marxist march of history in Russia has attended to the liquidation not merely of the bourgeoisie but also of the Romanovs, the landowners, and the kulaks.1 (106f; Fs)

22/7 As healing can have no truck with hatred, so too it can have no truck with materialism. For the healer is essentially a reformer: first and foremost he counts on what is best in man. But the materialist is condemned by his own principles to be no more than a manipulator. He will apply to human beings the stick-and-carrot treatment that the Harvard behaviorist, B. F. Skinner, advocates under the name of reinforcement. He will maintain with Marx that cultural attitudes are the by-product of material conditions and so he will bestow upon those subjected to communist power the salutary conditions of a closed frontier, clear and firm indoctrination, controlled media of information, a vigilant secret police, and the terrifying threat of the labor camps. Again, while Christians accord to God's grace the principal role in touching men's hearts and enlightening their minds, it would seem that the true believer in the gospel according to Marx must be immersed in proletarian living conditions, on the ground that only such material conditions can confer upon him the right thinking and righteous feeling proper to proletarian class consciousness.2 (107; Fs)

23/7 Healing then is not to be confused with the dominating and manipulating to which the reforming materialist is confined by his own principles. It has to be kept apart from religious hatred of heretical sects and from philosophic hatred of social classes.3 But besides these requirements, intrinsic to the nature of healing, there is the extrinsic requirement of a concomitant creative process. For just as the creative process, when unaccompanied by healing, is distorted and corrupted by bias, so too the healing process, when unaccompanied by creating, is a soul without a body. Christianity developed and spread within the ancient empire of Rome. It possessed the spiritual power to heal what was unsound in that imperial domain. But it was unaccompanied by its natural complement of creating, for a single development has two vectors, one from below upwards, creating, the other from above downwards, healing. So when the Roman empire decayed and disintegrated, the church indeed lived on. But it lived on, not in a civilized world, but in a dark and barbarous age in which, as a contemporary reported, men devoured one another as fishes in the sea. (107f; Fs) (notabene)

24/7 If we are to escape a similar fate, we must demand that two requirements are met. The first regards economic theorists; the second regards moral theorists. From economic theorists we have to demand, along with as many other types of analysis as they please, a new and specific type that reveals how moral precepts have both a basis in economic process and so an effective application to it. From moral theorists we have to demand, along with their other various forms of wisdom and prudence, specifically economic precepts that arise out of economic process itself and promote its proper functioning. (108; Fs) (notabene)

25/7 To put the same points in negative terms, when physicists can think on the basis of indeterminacy, economists can think on the basis of freedom and acknowledge the relevance of morality. Again, when the system that is needed for our collective survival does not exist, then it is futile to excoriate what does exist while blissfully ignoring the task of constructing a technically viable economic system that can be put in its place.4 (108; Fs) (notabene)
Is my proposal Utopian? It asks merely for creativity, for an interdisciplinary theory that at first will be denounced as absurd, then will be admitted to be true but obvious and insignificant, and perhaps finally be regarded as so important that its adversaries will claim that they themselves discovered it. (108; Fs)

A lecture m the series, Anniversary Lectures, The Thomas More Institute, Montreal, May 13, 1975. Previously published in Bernard Lonergan: 3 Lectures (Montreal: Thomas More Institute Papers/75, 1975), pp. 55-68.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Voegelin (Euripides, Johannes): Symbol. Leben - Tod; Plato (Höhlengleichnis); Zug - Gegenzug; helkein, sophrosyne

Kurzinhalt: Euripides: "Who knows if to live is to be dead and..."; there is a pull or attraction that, if followed, puts an end to questioning; and there are counterpulls that...;

Textausschnitt: 15/12 A basic symbol for that search was phrased by Euripides when he exclaimed, "Who knows if to live is to be dead and to be dead to live?" The symbol was resumed by Plato in the Gorgias (492 E) and elaborated at the end of that dialogue in the Myth of the Judgment of the Dead. But its most effective setting occurs at the end of the Apology when Socrates concludes, "But now the time has come to go. I go to die, and you to live. But who goes to the better lot is unknown to anyone but the God." (189; Fs)
16/12 Obviously what Voegelin is raising is a question not just for philosophers but for everyman. So there is no occasion for surprise when the same symbol comes from the lips of Jesus in Matthew's Gospel, "For whoever would save his life (psychen) will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What then will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world but has to suffer the destruction of his life" (Matt. 16:25-26). Or again one may read in Paul, "If you live according to the flesh, you are bound to die; but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live" (Rom. 8:15). (189; Fs)
()
18/12 I have been speaking of the double meaning of life and death as a symbol, and Voegelin would stress the point. For from the symbol one can either go backward to the engendering experience or forward to the doctrines Plato and Aristotle were later to formulate. The latter course obviously is contrary to Voegelin's intent, and so he directs our attention to the Parable of the Cave. (189; Fs)
()
19/12 In brief there are opposite principles at work, and to them Plato adverts. On the one hand, opinion may lead through reason (logos) to the best (ariston), and its power is called self-restraint (sophrosyne); on the other hand, desire may drag us (helkein) towards pleasures and its rule is called excess (hybris) ...
()
20/12 In brief there is a pull or attraction that, if followed, puts an end to questioning; and there are counterpulls that, when followed, leave questions unanswered and conscience ill at ease. The former alternative is what Voegelin means by a movement luminous with truth, or again by existing in the truth, or again by the truth of existence. The latter alternative is existence in untruth. As he contends, this luminosity of existence with the truth of reason precedes all opinions and decisions about the pull to be followed. Moreover, it remains alive as the judgment of truth in existence whatever opinions about it we may actually form. In other words, there is an inner light that runs before the formulation of doctrines and that survives even despite opposing doctrines. To follow that inner light is life, even though to worldly eyes it is to die. To reject that inner light is to die, even though the world envies one's attainments and achievements. (190; Fs) (notabene)
21/12 For Voegelin, then, the classic experience of reason in fourthcentury Athens was something poles apart from the reason cultivated in late medieval metaphysics and theology, from the reason of Descartes and the rationalists, from the reason of the French Enlightenment and the German absolute idealists. It took its stand not on logic but on inner experience. Its conflicts were not public disputations but inner trials.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Voegelin: inneres Licht; Aristoteles (Ethik), Zug - Gegenzug; Offenbarung - Information; periagoge - metanoia

Kurzinhalt: inner light; classic experience of reason: It took its stand not on logic but on inner experience; revelation - information; gospel (Justin): philosophy brought to the state of perfection

Textausschnitt: 21/12 For Voegelin, then, the classic experience of reason in fourthcentury Athens was something poles apart from the reason cultivated in late medieval metaphysics and theology, from the reason of Descartes and the rationalists, from the reason of the French Enlightenment and the German absolute idealists. It took its stand not on logic but on inner experience. Its conflicts were not public disputations but inner trials. Its victory was the saving of one's life, keeping one's soul undefiled, holding ever to the upward way, pursuing righteousness with wisdom, so that we may be dear to ourselves and to the gods (Rep. 621 BC). This, of course, is Plato. But the sobriety of the Nicomachean Ethics does not imply that Aristotle holds a different view. (190f; Fs) (notabene)
()
22/12 It is not only classic philosophy but also the gospel that symbolizes existence as a field of pulls and counterpulls.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Welte (Dogma) -> Lonergan dreht W.s Position um; Perzeptualismus als Seinsvergessenheit

Kurzinhalt: Nicene decree -> forgetful of being because it speaks of ousia; dogmas interpreted by one who habitually dwells in the world of the perceptualist there would be forgetfulness ...

Textausschnitt: 27/12 Welte suspects the Nicene decree to have been forgetful of being because it speaks of ousia and so must mean das beständig Anwesende, das beständig Vorliegende. In these expressions I would distinguish two elements. There is a perceptual element, the presence (Anwesenheit) of what lies before one (Vorliegende). There is a static logical element (Beständigkeit). Though both tie in with the massive problem Plato expressed symbolically in his Parable of the Cave, they do so in different manners and I shall speak of them separately. (193; Fs)
()
28/12 Is then perceptualism the same as Heidegger's forgetfulness of being? The question supposes Heidegger's meaning to be well known. Let me say very simply that perceptualism is forgetfulness of the inner light, the light that raises questions and, when answers are insufficient, keeps raising further questions. It is the inner light of intelligence that asks what and why and how and what for and, until insight hits the bull's-eye, keeps further questions popping up. It is the inner light of reasonableness that demands sufficient reason before assenting and, until sufficient reason is forthcoming, keeps in your mind the further questions of the doubter. It is the inner light of deliberation that brings you beyond the egoist's question - What's in it for me? - to the moralist's question - Is it really and truly worthwhile? - and if your living does not meet that standard, bathes you in the unrest of an uneasy conscience. (193; Fs) (notabene)
Kommentar eg (02/03/2004): Perceptualismus als Seinsvergessenheit des inneren Lichtes - damit dreht Lonergan Weltes Position, die ja eine Art "geistiger" Perzeptualismus ist, um.
29/12 The ascent from the darkness of the cave to the light of day is a movement from a world of immediacy that is already out there now to a world mediated by the meaningfulness of intelligent, reasonable, responsible answers to questions. (193; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Kritik an: Welte, Voegelin; Wurzel d. statischen Denkens; Logik - verifizierbare Möglichkeit; Metaphysik, Dogma

Kurzinhalt: static thinking has its source, not in Greek or other metaphysics, but in any doctrine that gives one-sided attention to logic;

Textausschnitt: 31/12 Besides presence, the Greek word, ousia, is thought to connote permanence, to forget the dynamic, and point to the static. I have expressed the opinion that static thinking has its source, not in Greek or other metaphysics, but in any thought or doctrine that gives one-sided attention to logic. The logical ideal of clarity, coherence, and rigor can be pursued with excellent results, provided the pursuit is only part of a larger ongoing investigation that has other resources and fuller goals than logic alone can attain. Admittedly there is to the Posterior Analytics a one-sidedness that concentrates on necessity and slights verifiable possibility; and it was by concentrating on verifiable possibility that modern science proved its superiority to Aristotelian logic. But that logic is so much less than the whole of Aristotle. (193f; Fs) (194; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Lonergan über Voegelin; Zug - Gegenzug; Offenbarung - Information, zweifache Offenbarung u. Gnade; "In-Between"

Kurzinhalt: only through one's own experience of that dynamism one can advert to its working in others; a twofold grace: an inner operative grace - an outer grace; "In-Between" and "Beyond"

Textausschnitt: 35/12 I believe, then, that Welte has a real point insofar as he associates doctrine with a grave risk of congealed minds. But Voegelin makes a similar point though in a quite different manner. He is aware of the self-transcending dynamism of truly human living, of its mythical and symbolic expression, of its philosophic expression, and of its expression in the prophets of the Old Testament and in the writers of the New. 35/12 I believe, then, that Welte has a real point insofar as he associates doctrine with a grave risk of congealed minds. But Voegelin makes a similar point though in a quite different manner. He is aware of the self-transcending dynamism of truly human living, of its mythical and symbolic expression, of its philosophic expression, and of its expression in the prophets of the Old Testament and in the writers of the New. He is aware that only through one's own experience of that dynamism can one advert to its working in others. By a brilliant extension he moves on to his distinction between revelation and information. Items of information are all about us: they are the stock in trade of the media. But revelation is not just one more item of information. In its essential moment it is a twofold pull: being drawn by the Father, listening to him, learning from him; and being drawn by the Son, crucified, dead, and risen. Again, it is a twofold grace: an inner operative grace that plucks out hearts of stone and replaces them with hearts of flesh; and the outer grace of the Christian tradition that brings the gospel to our ears. (195; Fs) (notabene). By a brilliant extension he moves on to his distinction between revelation and information. Items of information are all about us: they are the stock in trade of the media. But revelation is not just one more item of information. In its essential moment it is a twofold pull: being drawn by the Father, listening to him, learning from him; and being drawn by the Son, crucified, dead, and risen. Again, it is a twofold grace: an inner operative grace that plucks out hearts of stone and replaces them with hearts of flesh; and the outer grace of the Christian tradition that brings the gospel to our ears. (195; Fs) (notabene)

36/12 Now I think Voegelin's criticism of doctrines and doctrinization to be exaggerated. But everyone will expect this of me, so there is no point in my repeating here what I have already said rather abundantly. What I do believe to be important on the present occasion is to insist how right I consider Voegelin to be in what he does say. For what he does say is foundational. It is the kind of knowledge by which people live their lives. It is the kind of knowledge that scientists and scholars, philosophers and theologians, presuppose when they perform their specialized tasks. It is the knowledge of which Newman wrote in his Grammar of Assent, Polanyi wrote in his Personal Knowledge, Gadamer in his Truth and Method. It is the kind of knowledge thematized by ascetical and mystical writers when they speak of the discernment of spirits and set forth rules for distinguishing between pull and counterpull, between being drawn by the Father to be drawn to the Son and, on the other hand, the myriad other attractions that distract the human spirit. (195; Fs)

37/12 Indeed it is in this long history of spiritual writing that one finds the confirmation of Voegelin's "In-Between" and his "Beyond." For being drawn by the Father is neither merely human nor strictly divine but "In-Between." As movement is from the mover but in what is moved, so the drawing is from the Father but in the suppliant. Again, because the drawing is from the Father, it bears the stamp of unworldliness; it is not just me but from the "Beyond." Finally, because there are not only pulls but also counterpulls, because the first can dignify the second, and the second can distort the first, there is need for discernment and, no less, difficulty in attaining it. (196; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Verallgemeinerte empirische Methode; gemeinsamer Kern aller Wissenschaften: 3-fache Scheme: attentive, intelligent, reasonable, responsible

Kurzinhalt: GENERALIZED EMPIRICAL METHOD; normative pattern of recurrent and related operations that yield ongoing and cumulative results in natural science, in hermeneutics, in history,

Textausschnitt: 43/9 Generalized empirical method envisages all data. The natural sciences confine themselves to the data of sense. Hermeneutic and historical studies turn mainly to data that are expressions of meaning. Clinical psychology finds in meanings the symptoms of conflicts between conscious and preconscious or unconscious activities. Generalized empirical method operates on a combination of both the data of sense and the data of consciousness: it does not treat of objects without taking into account the corresponding operations of the subject; it does not treat of the subject's operations without taking into account the corresponding objects. (140f; Fs)

44/9 As generalized empirical method generalizes the notion of data to include the data of consciousness, so too it generalizes the notion of method. It wants to go behind the diversity that separates the experimental method of the natural sciences and the quite diverse procedures of hermeneutics and of history. It would discover their common core and thereby prepare the way for their harmonious combination in human studies. From various viewpoints man has been named the logical animal, the symbolic animal, the self-completing animal. But in each of these definitions man is regarded as an animal, and so he is an object for the natural sciences. At the same time, he is regarded as logical or symbolic or self-completing; he lives his life in a world mediated by meaning; and so he is a proper object for hermeneutic and historical studies. What then is the common core of related and recurrent operations that may be discerned both in natural science and in human studies? (141; Fs)

45/9 In the natural sciences the key event is discovery. ... Again, in hermeneutics the key event is understanding: ... In history, again, the key operation is understanding, and so it was that Johann Gustav Droysen extended the procedures of hermeneutics to the whole of history by observing that not only individuals but also families, peoples, states, religions express themselves. Nor is understanding alien to common sense.

46/9 However, understanding is only one of the many components that have to be combined to constitute an instance of human knowledge. It presupposes data, whether given to sense or given in consciousness: for our understanding always is an insight, a grasp of intelligible unity or intelligible relationship; and a grasp of unity presupposes the presentation of what needs unification, as a grasp of intelligible relationship presupposes the presentation of what can be related. Again, such insight or grasp presupposes inquiry: that search, hunt, chase for the way to piece together the merely given into an intelligible unity or innerly related whole. Nor is it enough to discover the solution. One also must express it adequately. Otherwise one will have had the mere experience of the occurrence of a bright idea, but one will not have the power to recall it, use it, apply it. There is a further point to such expression whether in word or deed. Insights are a dime a dozen. For the most part they occur, not with respect to data in all their complexity, but with respect to merely schematic images. Dozens of such images are needed to approximate to what actually is given, and so it is that the expression of insight has to be followed by a very cool and detached process of reflection that marshals the relevant evidence and submits it to appropriate tests before laying claim to any discovery or intention. (142; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: authentische Subjektivität -> Objektivität;

Kurzinhalt: that objectivity is the fruit of authentic subjectivity, of being attentive, intelligent, reasonable, responsible; satisfying those norms is the highroad to the objectivity ...

Textausschnitt: 49/9 It is time to conclude. We have been asking whether there is any connection between inner conviction and objective truth. By inner conviction we have meant not passion, not stubbornness, not wilful blindness, but the very opposite; we have meant the fruit of self-transcendence, of being attentive, intelligent, reasonable, responsible; in brief, of being ruled by the inner norms that constitute the exigences for authenticity in the human person. But for objectivity we have distinguished two interpretations. There is the objectivity of the world of immediacy, of the already-out-there-now, of the earth that is firm-set only in the sense that at each moment it has happened to resist my treading feet and bear my weight. But there also is the objectivity of the world mediated by meaning; and that objectivity is the fruit of authentic subjectivity, of being attentive, intelligent, reasonable, responsible. (144; Fs)
50/9 In my opinion, then, inner conviction is the conviction that the norms of attentiveness, intelligence, reasonableness, responsibility have been satisfied. And satisfying those norms is the highroad to the objectivity to be attained in the world mediated by meaning and motivated by values. (144; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Moderne Methode - Aristoteles (Analytica Posteriora)

Kurzinhalt: On all three counts (Praxis, Autonomie, Relation) it ran counter to the ideal set forth in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics; first principles - method

Textausschnitt: 7/10 Now I have already had occasion to point out certain elements in that revolution. It aimed at utility, and so it was concerned with everyday materials, their manipulation, their mastery, through a process of trial and error. It demanded autonomy: its basic terms and relations were to be mathematical in their origins and experimental in their justification. It was concerned not with words but with reality and so it excluded questions that could not be resolved by an appeal to observation or experiment. On all three counts it ran counter to the ideal set forth in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. Despite an initial concern with understanding things, that work devoted its efforts to the construction of a theory of science out of the terms, relations, inferences constitutive of the demonstrative syllogism. Instead of developing science by combining mathematical notions with their experimental verification, the Posterior Analytics conceived philosophy and science as a single, logically interlocking unity, in which philosophy was to provide the sciences with their basic terms and principles. Instead of directing men's minds to practical results, Aristotle held that science was concerned with necessary truth, that what can be changed is not the necessary but the contingent, and so the fruit of science can be no more than the contemplation of the eternal truths it brought to light. (147f; Fs) (notabene)
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11/10 Aristotle, then, was quite right in holding that a science that consisted in the grasp of necessary truth had to be purely theoretical and could not be practical. But from the start modern science intended to be practical. Today there are many steps along the way from basic research to pure science, from pure science to applied, from applied to technology, from technology to engineering. But the multiplicity does not obscure the underlying unity. For us good theory is practical, and good practise is grounded in sound theory. Where the Aristotelian placed his reliance on first principles he considered necessary, the modern scientist places his reliance ultimately not on his basic laws and principles but on his method. It was the method that brought forth the laws and principles in the first place, and it will be the method that revises them if and when the time for revision comes. (149; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Dilthey, Unterschied zw Geisteswissenschaften und Naturwissenschaften; Boeckh: Philologie

Kurzinhalt: ...it is the human spirit that constructs the meanings and responds to the motivating values. But what man has constructed man can reconstruct

Textausschnitt: 31/10 At once it follows that there is a profound difference between natural science and historical study. Both the scientist and the historian would understand: the scientist would understand nature; the historian would understand man. But when the scientist understands nature, he is not grasping nature's understanding of itself; for though nature is intelligible, it is not intelligent. But when the historian understands man, his understanding is a recapturing of man's understanding of himself. This recapturing is interpretation. It differs from the understanding that it recaptures, for it makes thematic, puts in words, an understanding that was not thematized but lived. Yet in another fashion it corresponds to what it recaptures; for it envisages an earlier situation and recounts how an individual or group understood that situation and revealed themselves by their understanding of it. (154; Fs) (notabene)
32/10 In Dilthey we have an echo of Vico's claim that it is human affairs that men best understand, for human affairs are the product of human understanding. Again, in Dilthey we have an anticipation of R. G. Collingwood's view that historical knowledge is a reenactment of the past. Finally, we have only to shift our gaze from the interpreter to the persons under scrutiny, to arrive at a phenomenological ontology. The endless variety exhibited in human living has its root in the endless variety of the ways in which people understand themselves, their situation, and the human condition. Such understanding commonly is of the type that spontaneously is generated and spontaneously communicated, the type that may be named com-monsense. It is constitutive of the basic department of human knowledge, the department expressed in ordinary language. Like ordinary language it varies from place to place and from time to time. It enters into the intelligible form man communicates to the products of his ingenuity and his skill. It is part and parcel of human conduct. It is constitutive of the cognitional and the moral reality that makes man the 'symbolic animal' of the historians and the 'self-completing animal' of the sociologists. (154; Fs)
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33/10 Let us now revert to August Boeckh's definition of philology as the interpretative reconstruction of the constructions of the human spirit. The constructions of the human spirit are man and his world: for his world is a world mediated by meaning and motivated by value; and it is the human spirit that constructs the meanings and responds to the motivating values. But what man has constructed man can reconstruct. What man has responded to in thought and word and deed, he can respond to once more if only in thought and word and feeling. Such reconstructing and such responding-to-once-more are the interpretations of the scholar and the narratives of the historian. (154f; Fs)
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34/10 We may conclude this section by noting that historical studies, so conceived, have all the marks of a distinct specialization. Like natural science history is empirical, but where the sciences seek universal principles, laws, structures, seriations, history would understand particular words, deeds, situations, movements. Where the several sciences each construct their own technical languages, historians as an ongoing group are confronted with the task of deciphering and learning all the languages of mankind whether still living or though long since dead. Where the sciences come to know parts or aspects of the universe that common sense never would discover, historians enlarge their own common sense to the point where it encapsulates something of the common sense of other places and times. Lastly, as other specializations, so the study of history leads to the formation of a professional group that develops its own proper procedures and traditions, enforces an initiation ritual of doctoral studies, meets in its own annual congresses, and stocks special libraries with its reference works, surveys, journals, and monographs. (155; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Dialektik, Ricoeur, Fortschritt, Rückschritt (progess - decline) Rationalisierung; Religion: recover from decline

Kurzinhalt: Ricoeur. a hermeneutic of recovery and suspicion; Rationalizations multiply, accumulate, are linked together ...

Textausschnitt: 40/10 The end of the age of innocence means that authenticity is never to be taken for granted. Mathematicians had to generalize their notion of number to include irrational and imaginary numbers. Physicists had to develop quantum theory because instruments of observation modified the data they were to observe. In similar fashion human studies have to cope with the complexity that recognizes both (1) that the data may be a mixed product of authenticity and of unauthenticity and (2) that the very investigation of the data may be affected by the personal or inherited unauthenticity of the investigators. (157; Fs) (notabene)
41/10 The objective aspect of the problem has come to light in Paul Ricoeur's distinction between a hermeneutic of recovery, that brings to light what is true and good, and a hermeneutic of suspicion, that joins Marx in impugning the rich, or Nietzsche in reviling the humble, or Freud in finding consciousness itself an unreliable witness to our motives. Again, it may be illustrated in my own account of "The Origins of Christian Realism," that distinguished the Christological and Trinitarian doctrines of Tertullian, Origen, and Athanasius on the basis of a philosophic dialectic. Tertullian under Stoic influence was oriented towards a world of immediacy. Origen under Middle Platonist influence was in a world mediated by meaning, where however meaning was the meaning of ideas. Athanasius finally was in the world mediated by meaning, where the meaning was the truth of the Christian kerygma. (157; Fs)
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44/10 Similarly, decline is cyclic and cumulative, but now unauthenticity distorts what authenticity would have improved. The policies, projects, plans, courses of action that come from creative insight into the existing situation have the misfortune of running counter not merely to vested interests but to any and every form of human unauthenticity. Doubts are raised, objections formulated, suspicions insinuated, compromises imposed. Policies, projects, plans, courses of action are modified to make the new situation not a progressive product of human authenticity but a mixed product partly of human authenticity and partly of human obtuseness, unreasonableness, irresponsibility. As this process continues, the objective situation will become to an ever greater extent an intractable problem. The only way to understand it correctly will be to acknowledge its source in human waywardness. The only way to deal with it will be to admonish the wayward. But such sophistication may be lacking, and then one can expect not repentance but rationalization. So decline continues unabashed. The intractable problem keeps growing. Rationalizations multiply, accumulate, are linked together into a stately system of thought that is praised by all who forget the adage: Whom the gods would destroy, they first make blind. (157f; Fs) (notabene)
45/10 Can a people, a civilization, recover from such decline? To my mind the only solution is religious. What will sweep away the rationalizations?

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Praxis (von oben nach unten), spekulative, kontemplative Vernunft: Notwendigkeit: Grund für die Vorherrschaft

Kurzinhalt: praxis (from above downwards); contemplative intellect: the older view grounded its hegemony on necessity; praxis acknowledges the end of the age of innocence

Textausschnitt: 50/10 If I have referred to so many and so different thinkers, it has not been to agree with all of them but rather to discern despite their differences a common concern with what I have named praxis. On an older view contemplative intellect, or speculative reason, or rigorous science was supreme, and practical issues were secondary. But the older view grounded its hegemony on necessity. That claim no longer is made. If we are not simply to flounder, we have to take our stand on authenticity: on the authenticity with which intelligence takes us beyond the experimental infrastructure to enrich it, extend it, organize it, but never to slight it and much less to violate its primordial role; on the authenticity with which rational reflection goes beyond the constructions of intelligence and draws sharply the lines between astrology and astronomy, alchemy and chemistry, legend and history, magic and science, myth and philosophy; on the authenticity with which moral deliberation takes us beyond cognitional process into the realm of freedom and responsibility, evaluation and decision, not in any way to annul or slight experience or understanding or factual judgment, but to add the further and distinct truth of value judgments and the consequent decisions demanded by a situation in which authenticity cannot be taken for granted. (160; Fs) (notabene)
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51/10 It follows that, while empirical method moves, so to speak, from below upwards, praxis moves from above downwards. Empirical method moves from below upwards, from experience to understanding, and from understanding to factual judgment. It can do so because it can presuppose that the data of experience are intelligible and so are objects that straightforward understanding can master. But praxis acknowledges the end of the age of innocence. It starts from the assumption that authenticity cannot be taken for granted. Its understanding, accordingly, will follow a hermeneutic of suspicion as well as a hermeneutic of recovery. Its judgment will discern between products of human authenticity and products of human unauthenticity. But the basic assumption, the twofold hermeneutic, the discernment between the authentic and the unauthentic set up a distinct method. This method is a compound of theoretical and practical judgments of value. The use of this method follows from a decision, a decision that is comparable to the claim of Blaise Pascal that the heart has reasons which reason does not know. (160; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Verhältnis (Schlussfolgerung): Religionswissenschaft (Religious Studies) und Theologie

Kurzinhalt: the more religious studies and theology put to good use the whole battery of methods, the more they will move asymptotically towards an ideal situation

Textausschnitt: 61/10 I have distinguished different methods: experimental, foundational, historical, dialectical, critically practical. (164; Fs)

My first conclusion is that the more religious studies and theology put to good use the whole battery of methods, the more they will move asymptotically towards an ideal situation in which they overlap and become easily interchangeable. (164; Fs)

62/10 As a second conclusion I would say that such overlapping and interchangeability are ideal in the sense that they are desirable. Theology and religious studies need each other. Without theology religious studies may indeed discern when and where different religious symbols are equivalent; but they are borrowing the techniques of theologians if they attempt to say what the equivalent symbols literally mean and what they literally imply. Conversely, without religious studies theologians are unacquainted with the religions of mankind; they may as theologians have a good grasp of the history of their own religion; but they are borrowing the techniques of the historian of religions, when they attempt to compare and relate other religions with their own. (164; Fs)

63/10 Thirdly, if any agree that such an ultimate overlapping and interchangeability are desirable, their praxis will include a recognition of the obstacles that stand in its way and an effort to remove them. Now a discovery of the obstacles is not difficult. For we concluded to this end from the assumption that both theologians and students of religions would put to good use the whole battery of methods that have been devised. It follows that there are as many possible obstacles as there are plausible grounds for rejecting or hesitating about any of these methods. It follows, finally, if the methods really are sound, that the obstacles may be removed, at least for authentic subjects, by applying both the hermeneutic of suspicion and the hermeneutic of recovery: the hermeneutic of suspicion that pierces through mere plausibility to its real ground; the hermeneutic of recovery that discovers what is intelligent, true, and good in the obstruction and goes on to employ this discovery to qualify, complement, correct earlier formulations of the method. (164; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Naturrecht und Geschichte; Geschichte, Philologie

Kurzinhalt: Nature is given man at birth. Historicity is what man makes of man;

Textausschnitt: 4/11 A contemporary ontology would distinguish two components in concrete human reality: on the one hand, a constant, human nature; on the other hand, a variable, human historicity. Nature is given man at birth. Historicity is what man makes of man. (170; Fs)
5/11 This making of man by man is perhaps most conspicuous in the educational process, in the difference between the child beginning kindergarten and the doctoral candidate writing his dissertation. Still this difference produced by the education of individuals is only a recapitulation of the longer process of the education of mankind,

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Naturrecht in der Geschichte; Einsicht der Griechen (Tier, Mensch); Aristoteles' Definition v. Natur

Kurzinhalt: From that premise there followed a conclusion. What had been made by human convention ...; ...in the notion of natural right was found its rebuttal; Aristotel: nature as an immanent principle of movement and of rest

Textausschnitt: 9/11 It was the sheer multiplicity and diversity of the practises and beliefs of the peoples of the earth that led the ancient Greeks to contrast animals and men. The habits of each species of animal were uniform and so they could be attributed to nature. But the practises and beliefs of men differed from tribe to tribe, from city to city, from region to region: they had to be simply a matter of convention. (171; Fs)
10/11 From that premise there followed a conclusion. What had been made by human convention, could be unmade by further convention. Underpinning human manners and customs there was no permanent and binding force. (171f; Fs)

11/11 The conclusion was scandalous, and in the notion of natural right was found its rebuttal. Underneath the manifold of human lifestyles, there existed a component or factor that possessed the claims to universality and permanence of nature itself. (172; Fs)
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12/11 However, this component or factor admits two interpretations. It may be placed in universal propositions, self-evident truths, naturally known certitudes. On the other hand, it may be placed in nature itself, in nature not as abstractly conceived, but as concretely operating. It is, I believe, the second alternative that has to be envisaged if we are to determine norms in historicity. (172; Fs) (notabene)
13/11 Now Aristotle defined a nature as an immanent principle of movement and of rest. In man such a principle is the human spirit as raising and answering questions. As raising questions, it is an immanent principle of movement. As answering questions and doing so satisfactorily, it is an immanent principle of rest. (172; Fs) (notabene)
15/11 Still, intellectual satisfaction, however welcome, is not all that the human spirit seeks. Beyond satisfaction it is concerned with content and so the attainment of insight leads to the formulation of its content. We express a surmise, suggest a possibility, propose a project. But our surmise may awaken surprise, our suggested possibility give rise to doubts, our project meet with criticism. In this fashion intelligence gives way to reflection. The second type of question has emerged. As intelligence thrust us beyond the flow of sensitive spontaneity, so now reflection thrusts us beyond the more elementary concerns of both sense and intelligence. The formulated insight is greeted with such further and different questions as, Is that so? Are you sure? There is a demand for sufficient reason or sufficient evidence; and what is sufficient is nothing less than an unconditioned, though a virtually unconditioned (such as a syllogistic conclusion) will do. (172f; Fs) (notabene)
16/11 It remains that the successful negotiation of questions for intelligence and questions for reflection is not enough. They do justice to sensitive presentations and representations. But they are strangely dissociated from the feelings that constitute the mass and momentum of our lives. Knowing a world mediated by meaning is only a prelude to man's dealing with nature, to his interpersonal living and working with others, to his existential becoming what he is to make of himself by his own choices and deeds. So there emerge questions for deliberation. Gradually they reveal their scope in their practical, interpersonal, and existential dimensions. Slowly they mount the ladder of burgeoning morality. Asking what's in it for me gives way to asking what's in it for us. And both of these queries become tempered with the more searching, the wrenching question, Is it really worthwhile? (173; Fs)
17/11 It is a searching question. The mere fact that we ask it points to a distinction between feelings that are self-regarding and feelings that are disinterested. Self-regarding feelings are pleasures and pains, desires and fears. But disinterested feelings recognize excellence: the vital value of health and strength; the communal value of a successfully functioning social order; the cultural value proclaimed as a life to be sustained not by bread alone but also by the word; the personal appropriation of these values by individuals; their historical extension in progress; deviation from them in decline; and their recovery by self-sacrificing love. (173; Fs)


12/11 However, this component or factor admits two interpretations. It may be placed in universal propositions, self-evident truths, naturally known certitudes. On the other hand, it may be placed in nature itself, in nature not as abstractly conceived, but as concretely operating. It is, I believe, the second alternative that has to be envisaged if we are to determine norms in historicity. (172; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Naturrecht; Fragen ( der Intelligenz, Reflexion, Entscheidung) und der Grund des Wissens einer Antwort; Gewissen

Kurzinhalt: The nagging conscience is the recurrence of the original question that has not been met. The good conscience is the peace of mind that confirms the choice of something truly worthwhile

Textausschnitt: 19/11 Yet all questioning heads into the unknown and all answering contributes to what we are to do. When I ask why or how or what for, I intend intelligibility, but the question would be otiose if already I knew what the intelligibility in question was. When I ask whether this or that is really so, I intend the true and the real, but as yet I do not know what is true or what will be truly meant. When I ask whether this or that project or undertaking really is worthwhile, I intend the good, but as yet I do not know what would be good and in that sense worthwhile. (173f; Fs)

20/11 Questioning heads into the unknown, yet answering has to satisfy the criterion set by the question itself. Otherwise the question returns in the same or in another form. Unless insight hits the bull's-eye, the question for intelligence returns. How about this? How does that fit in? A self-correcting process of learning has begun, and it continues until a complementary and qualifying set of insights have stilled the flow of further relevant questions for intelligence. In like manner questions for reflection require not just evidence but sufficient evidence; until it is forthcoming, we remain in doubt; and once it is had, doubting becomes unreasonable. Finally questions for deliberation have their criterion in what we no longer name consciousness but conscience. The nagging conscience is the recurrence of the original question that has not been met. The good conscience is the peace of mind that confirms the choice of something truly worthwhile. (174; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Naturrecht - Prinzip der Bewegung: Liebe - Selbsttranszendenz

Kurzinhalt: principle of movement and of rest: being-in-love - ongoing process of self-transcendence

Textausschnitt: 21/11 I have been speaking of nature as a principle of movement and of rest, but I have come up with many such principles and so, it would seem, with many natures. There are different questions: for intelligence, for reflection, for deliberation. Each is a principle of movement. Each also is an immanent norm, a criterion, and thereby a principle of rest once the movement is complete. (174; Fs) (notabene)
22/11 It remains that the many form a series, each in turn taking over where its predecessor left off. What is complete under the aspect of intelligibility, is not yet complete under the aspect of factual truth; and what is complete under the aspect of factual truth, has not yet broached the question of the good. Further, if what the several principles attain are only aspects of something richer and fuller, must not the several principles themselves be but aspects of a deeper and more comprehensive principle? And is not that deeper and more comprehensive principle itself a nature, at once a principle of movement and of rest, a tidal movement that begins before consciousness, unfolds through sensitivity, intelligence, rational reflection, responsible deliberation, only to find its rest beyond all of these? I think so. (174f; Fs) (notabene)
23/11 The point beyond is being-in-love, a dynamic state that sublates all that goes before, a principle of movement at once purgative and illuminative, and a principle of rest in which union is fulfilled. (175; Fs)
24/11 The whole movement is an ongoing process of self-transcendence. There is the not yet conscious self of deep sleep. There is the fragmentarily conscious self of the dream state. There is the awakened self aware of its environment, exerting its capacities, meeting its needs. There is the intelligent self, serializing and extrapolating and generalizing until by thought it has moved out of the environment of an animal and towards a universe of being. There is the reasonable self, discerning fact from fiction, history from legend, astronomy from astrology, chemistry from alchemy, science from magic, philosophy from myth. There is the moral self, advancing from individual satisfactions to group interests and, beyond these, to the overarching, unrelenting question, What would be really worthwhile? (175; Fs)
25/11 Yet this great question commonly is more promise than fulfillment, more the fertile ground of an uneasy conscience than the vitality and vigor of achievement. For self-transcendence reaches its term not in righteousness but in love and, when we fall in love, then life begins anew. A new principle takes over and, as long as it lasts, we are lifted above ourselves and carried along as parts within an ever more intimate yet ever more liberating dynamic whole. (175; Fs)
26/11 Such is the love of husband and wife, parents and children. Such again, less conspicuously but no less seriously, is the loyalty

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Naturrecht - Dialektik der Geschichte; Quelle und Rechtfertigung des Naturrechts

Kurzinhalt: DIALECTIC OF HISTORY; The source of natural right lies in the norms immanent in human intelligence ... The vindication of natural right lies in the dialectic of history

Textausschnitt: 27/11 I have said that people are responsible individually for the lives they lead and collectively for the world in which they live them. Now the normative source of meaning, of itself, reveals no more than individual responsibility. Only inasmuch as the immanent source becomes revealed in its effects, in the functioning order of society, in cultural vitality and achievement, in the unfolding of human history, does the manifold of isolated responsibilities coalesce into a single object that can gain collective attention. (176; Fs)
28/11 Further, the normative source of meaning is not the only source, for the norms can be violated. Besides intelligence, there is obtuseness; besides truth there is falsity; besides what is worthwhile, there is what is worthless; besides love there is hatred. So from the total source of meaning we may have to anticipate not only social order but also disorder, not only cultural vitality and achievement but also lassitude and deterioration, not an ongoing and uninterrupted sequence of developments but rather a dialectic of radically opposed tendencies. (176; Fs)
29/11 It remains that in such a dialectic one finds 'writ large' the very issues that individuals have to deal with in their own minds and hearts. But what before could be dismissed as, in each case, merely an infinitesimal in the total fabric of social and cultural history, now has taken on the dimensions of collective triumph or disaster. Indeed, in the dialectic there is to be discerned the experimental verification or refutation of the validity of a people's way of life, even though it is an experiment devised and conducted not by human choice but by history itself. (176; Fs)
30/11 Finally, it is in the dialectic of history that one finds the link between natural right and historical mindedness. The source of natural right lies in the norms immanent in human intelligence, human judgment, human evaluation, human affectivity. The vindication of natural right lies in the dialectic of history and awesomely indeed in the experiment of history. Let us set forth briefly its elements under six headings. (176; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Dialektik der Geschichte; Naturrecht; Entwicklung auf verschiedenen Ebenen; Vorherbestimmung

Kurzinhalt: Again, as always, emancipation has its root in self-transcendence. But in the contemporary context it is such self-transcendence as includes an intellectual, a moral, and an affective conversion. As intellectual, this conversion draws a sharp ...

Textausschnitt: 31/11 First, human meaning develops in human collaboration. There is the expansion of technical meanings as human ingenuity advances from the spears of hunters and the nets of fishers to the industrial complexes of the twentieth century. There is the expansion of social meanings in the evolution of domestic, economic, and political arrangements. There is the expansion of cultural meanings as people reflect on their work, their interpersonal relationships, and the meaning of human life. (176f; Fs)

32/11 Secondly, such expansions occur on a succession of plateaus. The basic forward thrust has to do with doing, and it runs from primitive fruit gatherers to the wealth and power of the ancient high civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and other lands. Development then is mainly of practical intelligence, and its style is the spontaneous accumulation of insights into the ways of nature and the affairs of men. There also is awareness of the cosmos, of reality being more than nature and man, but this awareness has little more than symbolic expression in the compact style of undifferentiated consciousness. (177; Fs)

33/11 An intermediate forward thrust has to do mainly with speech. Poets and orators, prophets and wise men, bring about a development of language and a specialization of attention that prepare the way for sophists and philosophers, mathematicians and scientists. There occurs a differentiation of consciousness, as writing makes language an object for the eye as well as the ear; grammarians organize the inflections of words and analyze the construction of sentences; orators learn and teach the art of persuasion; logicians go behind sentences to propositions and behind persuasion to proofs; and philosophers exploit this second-level use of language to the point where they develop technical terms for speaking compendiously about anything that can be spoken about; while the more modest mathematicians confine their technical utterances to relations of identity or equivalence between individuals and sets; and similarly the scientists have their several specialized languages for each of their various fields. (177; Fs)

34/11 On a third plateau attention shifts beyond developments in doing and in speaking to developments generally. Its central concern is with human understanding where developments originate, with the methods in natural science and in critical history which chart the course of discovery, and more fundamentally with the generalized empirical method that underpins both scientific and historical method to supply philosophy with a basic cognitional theory, an epistemology, and by way of a corollary with a metaphysics of proportionate being. (177; Fs)

35/11 On this plateau logic loses its key position to become but a modest part within method; and logical concern-with truth, with necessity, with demonstration, with universality-enjoys no more than marginal significance. Science and history become ongoing processes, asserting not necessity but verifiable possibility, claiming not certitude but probability. Where science, as conceived on the second plateau, ambitioned permanent validity but remained content with abstract universality, science and history on the third plateau offer no more than the best available opinion of the time, yet by sundry stratagems and devices endeavor to approximate ever more accurately to the manifold details and nuances of the concrete. (178; Fs)

36/11 These differences in plateau are not without significance for the very notion of a dialectic of history. The notion of fate or destiny or again of divine providence pertains to the first plateau. It receives a more detailed formulation on the second plateau when an Augustine contrasts the city of God with the earthly city, or when a Hegel or a Marx set forth their idealistic or materialistic systems on what history has been or is to be. A reversal towards the style of the first plateau may be suspected in Spengler's biological analogy, while a preparation for the style of the third plateau may be discerned in Toynbee's A Study of History. For that study can be viewed, not as an exercise in empirical method, but as the prolegomena to such an exercise, as a formulation of ideal types that would stand to broad historical investigations as mathematics stands to physics.1 (178; Fs)

37/11 In any case the dialectic of history, as we are conceiving it, has its origin in the tensions of adult human consciousness, its unfolding in the actual course of events, its significance in the radical analysis it provides, its practical utility in the invitation it will present to collective consciousness to understand and repudiate the waywardness of its past and to enlighten its future with the intelligence, the reasonableness, the responsibility, the love demanded by natural right. (178; Fs) (notabene)

38/11 Our third topic is the ideal proper to the third plateau. Already in the eighteenth century it was anticipated in terms of enlightenment and emancipation. But then inevitably enough enlightenment was conceived in the well-worn concepts and techniques of the second plateau; and the notion of emancipation was, not a critique of tradition, but rather the project of replacing traditional backwardness by the rule of pure reason. (178; Fs)

38/11 Subsequent centuries have brought forth the antitheses to the eighteenth-century thesis. The unique geometry of Euclid has yielded to the Riemannian manifold. Newtonian science has been pushed around by Maxwell, Einstein, Heisenberg to modify not merely physics but the very notion of modern science. Concomitant with this transformation has been the even more radical transformation in human studies. Man is to be known not only in his nature but also in his historicity, not only philosophically but also historically, not only abstractly but also concretely. (178f; Fs)

39/11 Such is the context within which we have to conceive enlightenment and emancipation, not indeed as if they were novelties for they have been known all along, but in the specific manner appropriate to what I have named the third plateau. As always enlightenment is a matter of the ancient precept, Know thyself. But in the contemporary context it aims to be such self-awareness, such self-understanding, such self-knowledge, as to grasp the similarities and the differences of common sense, science, and history, to grasp the foundations of these three in interiority which also founds natural right and, beyond all knowledge of knowledge, to give also knowledge of affectivity in its threefold manifestation of love in the family, loyalty in the community, and faith in God. (179; Fs)

40/11 Again, as always, emancipation has its root in self-transcendence. But in the contemporary context it is such self-transcendence as includes an intellectual, a moral, and an affective conversion. As intellectual, this conversion draws a sharp distinction between the world of immediacy and the world mediated by meaning, between the criteria appropriate to operations in the former and, on the other hand, the criteria appropriate to operations in the latter.2 Next, as moral, it acknowledges a distinction between satisfactions and values, and it is committed to values even where they conflict with satisfactions. Finally, as affective, it is commitment to love in the home, loyalty in the community, faith in the destiny of man. (179; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: B. Welte: Konzil von Nizäa (Seinsvergessenheit); statisch (als Ideal, Möglichkeit, Tatsächlichkeit), Aristoteles (Analytica Posteriora); homoousios (Athanasius )

Kurzinhalt: ... how static was the approach to reality and the apprehension of it set forth in the Nicene decree; homoousios, the Nicene decree was just as static and just as dynamic as what Athanasius found in the Bible

Textausschnitt: The biblical approach to reality, by and large, is centered on events. Its concern is dynamic. In contrast, at Nicea and in subsequent councils there emerges the static approach of Greek metaphysics, an approach concerned with the present and permanent, and so an approach that Heidegger has criticized as a forgetfulness of being. There arises accordingly the question whether theologians today have on their hands the task of finding a different way of handling the issues that for centuries were thought to have been handled satisfactorily at Nicea. (185f; Fs)
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11/12 Let us now ask how static was the approach to reality and the apprehension of it set forth in the Nicene decree. It will suffice to take the key term, homoousios. According to Athanasius this key term means that statements true of the Father also are true of the Son except that the Son is not the Father. Now is this meaning static or dynamic? Obviously we have to consider the statements that Athanasius had in mind. Nor is any difficulty involved, for Athanasius proceeds to quote a number of statements true both of the Father and of the Son. He finds them not in some text of Greek metaphysics but in the scriptures. As understood by Athanasius, then, the Nicene decree was just as static and just as dynamic as what Athanasius found in the Bible. (188; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Collingwood über Geschichte

Kurzinhalt: philosophy of history (Philosophiegeschichte): the methodological component present in the consciousness that a scientific historian has of his own performance

Textausschnitt: 5/13 So much for familiarity. Besides that, there is authority, and I quote Collingwood's The Idea of History:
Philosophy cannot interfere with history according to the Hegelian formula of superimposing a philosophical history on the top of ordinary history. [...] Ordinary history is already philosophical history [...] within the concrete whole which is historical knowledge, philosophical knowledge is a component part. [...]
[...] (history is necessary) relatively to philosophy as the concrete thought of which philosophy is only the methodological moment. [...]
[...] (history is) the consciousness of one's own activity as one actually performs it. ... For even when the events which the historian studies are events that happened in the distant past, the condition of their being historically known is that [...] the evidence for them should be here and now before him and intelligible to him. For history [...] lives only, as a present interest and pursuit, in the mind of the historian when he criticizes and interprets [...] documents, and by so doing relives for himself the states of mind into which he inquires.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Methode (allgemein); kein Regelwerk; 3 Grundfragen; Notwendigkeit (14. Jhdt. - Thomas, Aristoteles)

Kurzinhalt: method; question for understanding, reflection, responsibility; From the beginning of the 14 century: that necessary knowledge results from the necessary implication of one concept in another (not Aquinas a. Aristotle)

Textausschnitt: 10/13 Method is not to be confused with anything as pedestrian as a recipe, a prescription, a set of directions. For recipes, and the like, lead only to single results. They may be repeated as often as you please, but the repetition yields no more than another instance of the original product. What may be advertised as the New Method Laundry may clean anyone's clothing, but it will never do anything else. (204; Fs)

11/13 The key instance to method, I feel, lies in the relation between questioning and answering. The questioner, while he does not know the answer, at least intends it. Moreover, the question itself sets a standard that leads to the rejection of insufficient answers; and insufficient answers need not be useless: they may help the questioner to pin down more accurately the precise issue he wished to raise. Further, such clarification may bring to light the existence of intermediate questions that have to be resolved before the initially intended question can be met. There is then an ongoing dynamism in questioning and answering. It heads through insufficient answers to the clarification and, as well, to the distinction of questions; and while this prepares the way to the eventual discovery of relevant answers, those very answers in turn can provide the source and stimulus to a fresh wave of questions. (204f; Fs)

12/13 I have been speaking of this ongoing process as though it occurred between a pair of individuals. But, far more importantly, it can be the common concern of associations of scientists. The members of such associations will have passed successfully through the initiatory ritual of attaining a Ph.D. They will be at home in the technical language which they alone understand and speak. That language will provide the repository of the novel conceptual systems introduced by the pioneers and the renovators in their field. It provides the instrument through which are handed on the ideals that should govern their thinking and the procedures to be followed in their investigations. It is kept alive and up-to-date through congresses, through journals and books, through school libraries, and interdisciplinary undertakings. In this fashion questions raised anywhere can be known elsewhere; they can give rise to an array of insufficient answers that successively beg for a clarification of the issue or issues; and the clarifications will hasten, as far as is possible at the time, the new answers which initial questions may have done more to intimate than to formulate. (205; Fs)

13/13 I have been stressing what I have noted elsewhere, that a method is not a set of rules to be followed meticulously by a dolt but a framework for collaborative creativity.1 But now I have to add that (1) questions are of different kinds, (2) each kind has its own immanent objective and criterion, and (3) the objectives stand in an ascending order with each completing what its predecessor had attained. (205; Fs)

14/13 The first of the kinds is the question for understanding. It arises when one is intelligent enough to experience a lack: one lacks an understanding of some aspect or aspects of the data. As long as that lack continues to be experienced, answers that are proposed and considered will have to be rejected simply because the lack remains. So the objective of the first kind of question is the attainment of an understanding of specified data. The criterion of the attainment of a proper understanding is that answers are proving sufficient, that questions no longer need further clarification, that the initial lack of understanding has been replaced by an insight that grasps why things are so. (205f; Fs)

15/13 The second kind of question is for reflection. Aristotle remarked that we think we understand when we know the cause, know that it is the cause, and know that the effect cannot be other than it is.2 Now the open point in this affirmation is the meaning of "necessity." From the beginning of the fourteenth century, by and large, it seems to have been tacitly assumed that necessary knowledge results from the necessary implication of one concept in another. But such a view cannot, I believe, be foisted on Aristotle or Aquinas. For them the primary object of understanding was the representative image, the example, the instance, in which intelligence grasped the intelligibility of what the image represents. Such a grasp is a conscious intellectual event that, at times, is resoundingly satisfactory. Its formulation in concepts is a further process, equally conscious, and intelligently resting on the content of the insight.3 (206; Fs) (notabene)

16/13 It follows that over and above the abstract necessity that may be elicited from the implication of one abstract concept in another, there is the more concrete necessity that may be intelligently grasped in representative images and, under due provisos, in sensible data. For example, one can ask abstractly what an eclipse is. But one may also refer to a concrete situation in which a man, pointing to the darkening of the moon, asks why the moon is darkened in this manner.4 The abstract question demands an abstract answer, and to proceed from the abstract definition to an actual necessity no number of further abstract necessities are enough. There also is needed an understanding of an existing situation into which the abstractions fit. But if the question is put with regard to a concrete situation in which an eclipse actually is taking place, then an understanding of that situation will grasp not only the cause of the darkening of the moon but also the necessity of that effect. (206; Fs)

17/13 The third type of question regards responsibility. There are responsibilities intrinsic to natural science, others intrinsic to human science, others to religious studies. Our observations, for the moment, must be confined to natural science. In such science there is a responsibility to the data: it is violated when the data are fraudulently produced. There is a responsibility to intelligence or reasonableness, and it is neglected when one overlooks the inadequacy of answers and, no less, when one withholds a qualified assent when further relevant questions are not made available. Finally, there is responsibility regarding the possible products of scientific advance. Because knowing is good, advance in knowing is good. Because the products of science can be turned to evil use by evil will, one's own will becomes evil in approving the evil use. (206f; Fs)

18/13 Such are the three questions, and I have said that their objectives stand in an ascending order. For the second question has its origin in an incompleteness of the first question and answer, and the third question has its origin in an incompleteness of the second question and answer. So our hypotheses and theories remedy our previous lack of understanding; but are they just bright ideas, or do they represent the best available opinion of the day? Still, even a consensus in favor of high probability would not preclude a still further question. New knowledge opens up new possibilities, and possibilities may be put to good or evil use; and so the question of responsibility arises out of the question for reflection and the answer to it. (207; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Methode (allgemein); Fragen (3 Typen) als Ausdruck der Selbsttranszenden (Dynamik); Wurzel: das Unbewusste

Kurzinhalt: method; degrees of self-transcendence (6 Stufen); drifters: have not yet found themselves

Textausschnitt: 20/13 But before closing this first part of my first section, I feel I should indicate roughly, not yet the stages, but perhaps the successive degrees of self-transcendence. The first is the emergence of consciousness in the fragmentary form of the dream, where human substance yields place to the human subject. The second is waking when our senses and feelings come to life, where our memories recall pleasures and our imaginations anticipate fears, but our vitality envisages courses of action. The third is inquiry which enables us to move out of the mere habitat of an animal and into our human world of relatives, friends, acquaintances, associates, projects, accomplishments, ambitions, fears. The fourth is the discovery of a truth, which is not the idle repetition of a "good look" but the grasp in a manifold of data of the sufficiency of the evidence for our affirmation or negation. The fifth is the successive negotiation of the stages of morality and/or identity till we reach the point where we discover that it is up to ourselves to decide for ourselves what we are to make of ourselves, where we decisively meet the challenge of that discovery, where we set ourselves apart from the drifters. For drifters have not yet found themselves. They have not yet found their own deed and so are content to do what everyone else is doing. They have not yet found a will of their own, and so they are content to choose what everyone else is choosing. They have not yet developed minds of their own, and so they are content to think and say what everyone else is thinking and saying. And everyone else, it happens, can be doing and choosing and thinking and saying what others are doing and choosing and thinking and saying. (208; Fs) (notabene)
21/13 But this fifth stage in self-transcendence becomes a successful way of life only when we really are pulled out of ourselves as, for example, when we fall in love, whether our love be the domestic love that unites husband and wife and children, or the love of our fellows whose well-being we promote and defend, or the love of God above all in whom we love our neighbor as ourselves. (208; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Elemente des menschlichen Wissens; parallel: Sinnesdaten und Bewusstsein

Kurzinhalt: George Santayana (Skepticism and Animal Faith); that the data of sense and the data of consciousness are parallel; Similarly the data of consciousness are not an instance of self-knowledge but ...

Textausschnitt: 25/13 But a parallel liberation can be bestowed on human studies. One way to this goal is the quantification of statements about human beings. An alternative way is to have philosophy do for human studies what mathematics does for natural science. I may presume that you are familiar with the former procedure, and so I may be content to indicate what the latter entails. In 1923 George Santayana published a book entitled Skepticism and Animal Faith. The pair were considered opposites with skepticism the lot of an elite and animal faith the lot of the masses. But neither animal faith nor skepticism is compatible with the general dynamics of method: animal faith asks no questions, and skepticism answers none. For me the real alternatives are animal faith and critical philosophy. On the one hand, animal faith is the fate of everyone who learns in childhood to speak his mother tongue, may entertain no doubt about all he believes he knows, but never has found out for himself and in himself just what are the events that come together to constitute human knowledge. On the other hand, in the measure that one finds out for oneself and in oneself just what these events are, one not merely is a critical philosopher but also one successful enough to be liberated, especially from animal faith in some unknowable thing-in-itself. (209f; Fs)
26/13 I may be asked just what events do come together to constitute human knowing. Very schematically, there are three: first, the givenness of the data, which is the objective of research; secondly, a cumulative series of insights into the data, which respond to the question for intelligence and yield a hypothesis; thirdly, a probable judgment on the adequacy of the insights. (210; Fs) (notabene)
27/13 At this point there may return the notion that human knowing is not a threefold compound but a single simple act at least in the field of our own consciousness. Certainly many have thought of consciousness as an inward look, an instance of what they may name introspection, and it is by such a look (they might claim) that we are aware of the givenness of the data, the occurrence of insights, the sufficiency of the evidence. But to my mind this is just a fresh avatar of the intuitions attributed to animal faith. For I believe that the data of sense and the data of consciousness are parallel. The data of sense do not constitute human knowledge but only a first step to such knowledge. Similarly the data of consciousness are not an instance of self-knowledge but only a first step towards attaining such knowledge. All our intentional acts also are conscious acts. But to advert to them as conscious, we have to deemphasize the intentional and heighten the conscious side of the act. Only when that is achieved can we proceed to gain insight into the relations that unify our conscious acts and then to pass judgment on the validity of the relations. (210f; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Vier Bedeutungen von Sinn (meaning): kognitiv, effektiv, konstitutiv, kommunikativ

Kurzinhalt: Besides being cognitive, meaning is efficient.

Textausschnitt: 29/13 To this end we propose to speak of the four basic functions of meaning: it is cognitive, efficient, constitutive, communicative. It is cognitive. Human knowledge is discursive, a matter of questions and answers, and so one's knowledge is no better (and no worse) than the questions one can raise and the answers one can give. The world of the infant is no bigger than the nursery, but the world of the adult extends from the present back to its past and forward to its future. It includes not only the factual but also the possible, the ideal, the normative. It expresses not only what one has found out for oneself but also what we have managed to learn from the memories of other men, from the common sense of the community, from the pages of literature, from the labors of scholars, from the investigations of scientists, from the experience of saints, from the meditations of philosophers and theologians. It is within this larger world that we live out our lives. To it we refer when we speak of the real world. But because it is mediated by meaning and motivated by value, because meaning can go astray and evaluation become corrupt, because there is myth as well as science, fiction as well as fact, deceit as well as honesty, error as well as truth, that larger world is insecure. (211; Fs)

30/13 Besides being cognitive, meaning is efficient.
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31/13 A third function of meaning is constitutive.
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32/13 A fourth function of meaning is communicative.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: 4 Grade d gemeinsamen Bedeutung (common meaning); Sinn; Natur - Geschichte, Tradition (kleine, große Authentizität)

Kurzinhalt: Such common meaning has four degrees: existential, authentic or unauthentic; major, minor authenticity or unauthenticity; for a subject to take the tradition uncritically is for him to realize what: progress - decline

Textausschnitt: 34/13 Community is not just a by-product of a geographical frontier but the achievement of common meaning. Such common meaning has four degrees. It is potential when there is a common field of experience, and to withdraw from that common field is to get out of touch. Common meaning is formal when there is common understanding, and one withdraws from that common understanding as misunderstanding and incomprehension supervene. Common meaning is actual inasmuch as there are common judgments, areas in which all affirm and deny in the same manner; but common meaning is diluted as consensus fails. Common meaning is realized by decisions and especially by permanent dedication, in the love that makes families, in the loyalty that makes states, in the faith that makes religions. (212f; Fs)

36/13 It is momentous, for it can be authentic or unauthentic, and this can happen in two distinct ways. There is the minor authenticity or unauthenticity of the subject with respect to the tradition in which he was raised. There is the major authenticity or unauthenticity that justifies or condemns the tradition itself. As Kierkegaard asked whether he was a Christian, so divers men can ask themselves whether they are authentically religious, authentically philosophers, authentically scientists. They may answer that they are, and they may be right. But they may answer affirmatively and still be mistaken. On a series of points they will realize what the ideals of the tradition demand; but on another series their lives diverge from those ideals. Such divergence may be overlooked from a selective inattention, a failure to understand, an undetected rationalization. What I am is one thing; what an authentic Christian or Buddhist is, is another, and I am unaware of the difference. My unawareness is unexpressed. I have no language to express what I am, so I use the language of the tradition that I unauthentically appropriate, and thereby I devaluate, distort, water down, corrupt that language. (213; Fs)
37/13 Such devaluation, distortion, dilution, corruption may occur only in scattered individuals. But it may occur on a more massive scale, and then the words are repeated but the meaning is gone. The chair remains the chair of Moses, but occupied by scribes and Pharisees. The theology is still Scholastic, but the Scholasticism is decadent. The name of science may be invoked but, as Edmund Husserl has argued, all significant scientific ideals can vanish to be replaced by the conventions of a clique. So the unauthenticity of individuals becomes the unauthenticity infecting a tradition. For a subject to take the tradition uncritically is for him to realize what objectively is unauthentic but for him subjectively is thought authentic. (213; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Bedeutung: Streben nach Selbsttranszendenz; Friedrich Heiler -> Lonergan: Zusammenfassung des Gemeinsame in d. Religionen in 7 Punkten

Kurzinhalt: What is that meaningfulness?, the meaningfulness of striving to become self-transcendent and of making progress on the way -> into intelligent, reasonable consciousness; this reality, transcendent and immanent

Textausschnitt: 48/13 In brief, the methods of natural science have contributed much to religious studies, but their contribution is incomplete. What is wanting is an account of the meaningfulness of religious tradition, belief, imperatives, rituals: not indeed of the meaningfulness that would meet the requirements of a logical positivist or linguistic analyst, but of the meaningfulness that can demand the totality of a person's response. Again, it is the meaningfulness that is expressed by a historian of religion, read by those for whom the religion has come to life, and by them recognized as an account of their own commitment. (216; Fs)

49/13 But what is that meaningfulness? How is it reached? How is it
investigated? (217; Fs)
It is, I should say, the meaningfulness of striving to become self-transcendent and of making progress on the way. It is the emergence of the self not only from the consciousness of the dream into waking consciousness but into intelligent consciousness that gradually promotes us from being animals in a habitat to becoming human beings in a universe, into the reasonable consciousness that judges in accord with the evidence, into the responsible consciousness that makes its way from individual and group egoism beyond the bias of omnicompetent common sense to the consciousness of one in love-in love with the family, in love with fellow citizens in this world, in love with God above all. (217; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Gottesfrage: Feuerbach, Projektion; 2 Gegenargumente

Kurzinhalt: materialism, immanentism, critical realism; seeking: not mere quality but potentiality and finality; a projection does not differ from G. Santayana's animal faith

Textausschnitt: 59/13 In other words, there is an inner light that runs before the formulation of doctrines and that survives even despite opposing doctrines. To follow that inner light is life, even though to worldly eyes it is to die. To reject that inner light is to die, even though the world envies one's attainments and achievements. (219; Fs)


55/13 My starting point was our questions and answers, and it probably has not escaped you that such a basis fits in very neatly with Feuerbach's contention that man's notion of God is a projection on the sky of idealized human qualities. We seek understanding, and God is all-intelligent; we seek sufficient evidence for our judgments and God is all-knowing; we seek moral excellence and God is goodness and love. (218; Fs) (notabene)

56/13 I must be content with two observations. First, such seeking is not mere quality but potentiality and finality; and it is potentiality and finality not confined to some category but, on the contrary, scorning any arbitrary burking of questions. (218; Fs)

56/13 I must be content with two observations. First, such seeking is not mere quality but potentiality and finality; and it is potentiality and finality not confined to some category but, on the contrary, scorning any arbitrary burking of questions. (218; Fs)
57/13 Secondly, I note that the word, projection, recalls the cinematic projector and before it the magic lantern. But the slide or film does not experience, does not inquire intelligently, does not judge on the basis of sufficient reason, does not decide freely and responsibly. In brief, a projection does not differ from George Santayana's animal faith. (218; Fs)
58/13 So much for a materialist option. Next, I propose to consider both the immanentist and the critical realist options simultaneously, not because the two do not differ, but because one can say much about religious experience without opting for either side of a philosophic difference. (218; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Lonergan über Voegelin (Vernunft; inneres Licht, metaxy, In-Between); Newman (notional assent)

Kurzinhalt: here is an inner light that runs before the formulation of doctrines and that survives even despite opposing doctrines. To follow ...;

Textausschnitt: 59/13 Dr. Eric Voegelin has explained that he got into problems of religious understanding one winter when, at an adult education institute in Vienna where he grew up, he followed weekly lectures by Deussen, the philosopher who translated the Upanishads. Dr. Voegelin is author of a work in many volumes on Order and History; but his parerga include incisive essays on Greek philosophy and the New Testament. He has set aside the common but strange assumption that reason, for Plato and Aristotle, was much the same as the deductivism of late medieval Scholasticism, seventeenth-century rationalism, nineteenth-century idealism. His contention has been that reason in the Greek classic experience was moral and religious; in Athens the appeal to reason was the appeal of men in an age of social and cultural decay seeking a way to recall their fellows from darkness and lead them towards the light. His account of religious experience centers on the struggle in the soul and it draws freely on both Plato and the New Testament. He acknowledges pulls and counterpulls. To follow the former puts an end to questioning. To opt for the latter leaves questions unanswered and conscience ill at ease. The former alternative is what Voegelin means by a movement luminous with truth, or again by existing in the truth, or again by the truth of existence. The latter alternative is existence in untruth. As he contends, this luminosity of existence with the truth of reason precedes all opinions and decisions about the pull to be followed. Moreover, it remains alive as the judgment of truth in existence whatever opinions about it we may actually form. In other words, there is an inner light that runs before the formulation of doctrines and that survives even despite opposing doctrines. To follow that inner light is life, even though to worldly eyes it is to die. To reject that inner light is to die, even though the world envies one's attainments and achievements. (219; Fs) (notabene)

60/13 Voegelin holds that such experiences, while valid symbols and legitimately made the basis of a "Saving Tale" to guide our lives, are not to be handed over to hypostatizing and dogmatizing. (219; Fs)
There is no In-Between other than the metaxy experienced in a man's existential tension toward the divine ground of being; there is no question of life and death other than the question aroused by pull and counter-pull; there is no Saving Tale other than the tale of the divine pull to be followed by man; and there is no cognitive articulation of existence other than the noetic consciousness in which the movement becomes luminous to itself.
A little later we read: (220; Fs)
Kommentar eg (3/10/2004): cf. Voegelin, Evangelium
Myth is not a primitive symbolic form, peculiar to early societies and progressively to be overcome by positive science, but the language in which the experiences of divine-human participation in the In-Between become articulate. The symbolization of participating existence, it is true, evolves historically from the more compact form of the cosmological myth to the more differentiated forms of Philosophy, Prophecy, and the Gospel, but the differentiating insight, far from abolishing the metaxy of existence, brings it to fully articulate knowledge. When existence becomes noetically luminous as the field of pull and counter-pull, of the question of life and death, and of the tension between human and divine reality, it also becomes luminous for divine reality as the Beyond of the metaxy which reaches into the metaxy in the participatory event of the movement. There is no In-Between of existence as a self-contained object but only existence experienced as part of a reality which extends beyond the In-Between.
61/13 Let me now attempt to say what I make of this. First, I shall quote and comment. I quote: "[...] there is no Saving Tale other than the tale of the divine pull to be followed by man." What is this divine pull? We have explicit references to John 6:44: "No man can come to me unless he is drawn by the Father who sent me," and to John 12:32: "And I shall draw all men to myself, when I am lifted up from the earth." The context then is not only biblical but Joanine. (220; Fs)
62/13 Next, I quote: "[...] there is no cognitive articulation of existence other than the noetic consciousness in which the movement becomes luminous to itself." I ask: What is the movement of noetic consciousness and when does it become luminous to itself? For Voegelin "nous," whence the adjective, noetic, is in the classic experience moral and religious. But in the present context the religious component becomes far more emphatic. For in this movement of consciousness there is "[...] a mutual participation (methexis, metalepsis) of human and divine; and the language symbols expressing the movement are not invented by an observer who does not participate in the movement but are engendered in the event of participation itself. The ontological status of the symbols is both human and divine." So Voegelin appeals both to Plato who claimed that his myth of the puppet player was "an alethes logos, a true story," whether "received from a God, or from a man who knows" (Laws 645B) and, as well, to the prophets promulgating their sayings as the "word" of Yahweh. In brief, we are offered an account of revelation or, perhaps, inspiration. (220f; Fs) (notabene)
63/13 It is, however, an account of revelation or inspiration that can meet the needs of a philosophy of religion. For as Voegelin further remarked, "The symbolization of participating existence [...] evolves historically from the more compact form of the cosmological myth (the reference is to ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia) to the more differentiated forms of Philosophy, Prophecy, and the Gospel, but the differentiating insight, far from abolishing the metaxy of existence, brings it to fully articulate knowledge." (221; Fs)
64/13 One may ask whether one is not to confuse this differentiating insight with its fully articulate knowledge and, on the other hand, the repudiated dogmatizing and doctrinization. There are grounds for such an interpretation for later Voegelin speaks of "[...] the loss of experimental reality through doctrinization." Now the luminous experience of existing in the truth is indeed an instance of experimental reality, and a doctrinization that abolishes the one also is the loss of the other. In that case doctrinization seems associated with what Newman would have named merely notional apprehension and merely notional assent, which do imply an exclusion of real apprehension and assent. (221; Fs)
There remains the repudiation of "hypostatization." It seems to me fully justified if applied to Gnostic constitutions of the ple-roma through the designation of abstract names, or even, if anyone wishes, applied to the Hegelian dialectical deduction of the universe through an interplay of opposed Begriffe. But behind such applications there is a far deeper issue, and on it I can now do no more than invite you to an examination of Giovanni Sala's comparison of my cognitional theory with Kant's, and of William Ryan's comparison of my intentionality analysis with that of Edmund Husserl. The seminal work seems to me to be Le Blond's Logique et methode chez Aristote. (221f; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Bedeutung: pastoral? Augustinus: (innerer u. äußerer Lehrer); Paulus; drifter

Kurzinhalt: Augustine : the teacher outside us whose words we hear; and the teacher within us: God the Father, his Son, and their Spirit: Paul; drifter - commitment (incarnation of a meaning)

Textausschnitt: 12/14 What then does "pastoral" mean? For Fr. Chenu one gets into difficulty when one puts the cart before the horse. The words of the Good Shepherd preceded conciliar decrees. But if first one clarifies the meaning of "doctrine" and then sets about explaining the meaning of "pastoral," one tends to reduce "pastoral" to the application of "doctrine" and to reduce the application of "doctrine" to the devices and dodges, the simplifications and elaborations of classical oratory. But what comes first is the word of God. The task of the church is the kerygma, announcing the good news, preaching the gospel. That preaching is pastoral. It is the concrete reality. From it one may abstract doctrines, and theologians may work the doctrines into conceptual systems. But the doctrines and systems, however valuable and true, are but the skeleton of the original message. A word is the word of a person, but doctrine objectifies and depersonalizes. The word of God comes to us through the God-man. The church has to mediate to the world not just a doctrine but the living Christ. (227f; Fs) (notabene)
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17/14 On this point St. Augustine composed a dialogue with the title, The Teacher, in which his main point was the existence of two teachers: the teacher outside us whose words we hear; and the teacher within us: God the Father, his Son, and their Spirit. The teacher outside utters sounds. If we are familiar with the language, the sounds will be recognized as words; memory will recall their meanings; intelligence combines them into sentences; and sentences coalesce into discourse which we can understand. But if we go further and ask whether the discourse is true or false, wise or foolish, we may have recourse to the common sense or the wisdom we have acquired over the years. Still we must bear in mind that, while common sense and human wisdom may suffice in human affairs, they are unequal to the affairs of God. As St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, "'Things beyond our seeing, things beyond our hearing, things beyond our imagining, all prepared by God for those who love him,' these it is that God has revealed to us through the Spirit" (1 Cor. 2:9-10). And in contrast with that revelation he shortly added, "A man who is unspiritual refuses what belongs to the Spirit of God; it is folly to him; he cannot grasp it, because it needs to be judged in the light of the Spirit" (! Cor. 2:14). (229; Fs)

19/14 Still their condition is not hopeless. To each may come the existential moment when they discover in themselves and for themselves that it is up to themselves to settle what they are to be. Whether their tradition be Jewish or Christian, Muslim or Hindu, Buddhist or Taoist, there are things to be done and things to be left undone, things to be said and things to be passed over, thoughts to be entertained and thoughts to be dismissed. As a life spent in mere drifting lacks meaning, so a lifetime of commitment to a selected style or pattern of thinking, saying, doing is an incarnation of a meaning and makes one's living meaningful. Again, the greater the commitment, the more meaningful the life; and the less the commitment, the obscurer and the more dubious is the meaning. (230; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Wieder: 2-fache Bedeutung von Leben und Tod: Euripides, Sokrates, Johannes, Paulus

Kurzinhalt: the twofold meaning of death: in the Greek + in a far sharper form in the words of our Lord;

Textausschnitt: 20/14 There is a further aspect to the matter. For attention to the meaning of one's life leads to the further question of the meaning of death. Is death the end of living or is it the entry into another world? The question comes easily to man. The Greek tragedian, Euripides, could exclaim, "Who knows if to live is to be dead, and to be dead to live?" Plato at the end of the Apology has Socrates say to his judges, "But now the time has come to go. I go to die, and you to live. But who goes to the better lot is unknown to anyone but the God." Four centuries later in the fourth gospel, in the chapter that precedes the Last Supper, Jesus says to the apostles, Philip and Andrew,
In truth, in very truth I tell you, a grain of wheat remains a solitary grain unless it falls into the ground and dies; but if it dies, it bears a rich harvest. The man who loves himself is lost, but he who hates himself in this world will be kept safe for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me; where I am, my servant will be. Whoever serves me will be honoured by my Father (John 12: 24-26).
21/14 For Christians, then, the meaning of life is momentous. The twofold meaning of life and the twofold meaning of death that occurs in the Greek classics also occurs in a far sharper form in the words of our Lord. He who loves himself is lost. He who hates himself in this world will be kept safe for life eternal. (230f; Fs)
22/14 This is strong doctrine and it is put into practise only through the grace of God. It is the grace of being drawn by the Father. In the sixth chapter (vv. 41-45) of St. John's Gospel we read: (231; Fs)
At this the Jews began to murmur disapprovingly because he said, 'I am the bread which came down from heaven.' They said, 'Surely this is Jesus son of Joseph; we know his father and mother. How can he now say, "I have come down from heaven"?' Jesus answered, 'Stop murmuring among yourselves. No man can come to me unless he is drawn by the Father who sent me [...] Everyone who has listened to the Father and learned from him comes to me.'
23/14 Not only does the Father draw us to Christ, but Christ himself also draws us by his passion and death. For he himself said, "And I shall draw all men to myself, when I am lifted up from the earth." And the evangelist comments immediately, "This he said to indicate the kind of death he was to die" (John 12:32-33). Drawn by the Father and drawn by the Son, the Holy Spirit brings God's own love to us. So St. Paul could write, "[...] God's love has flooded our inmost heart through the Holy Spirit he has given us" (Rom. 5:5). (231; Fs)
24/14 St. Paul's estimate of the magnitude of this gift of the Holy Spirit is known to all with his chapter on love. (231; Fs)
I may speak in tongues of men or of angels, but if I am without love, I am a sounding gong or a clanging cymbal. I may have the gift of prophecy, and know every hidden truth; I may have faith strong enough to move mountains; but if I have no love, I am nothing. I may dole out all I possess, or even give my body to be burnt, but if I have no love, I am none the better.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Authentizität (kleine u. große); sekulare Welt; Sünde (Todsünde, lässliche Sünde, habituelle Sünde); operative Gnade

Kurzinhalt: authenticity is twofold; this-worldly secularists - other-worldly believers; barriers to enlightenment, barriers to loving God above all; sin: mortal, occasional; grace: operative (Aquinas), sanctifying, actual

Textausschnitt: 4. AUTHENTICITY

27/14 The question of authenticity is twofold: there is the minor authenticity of the subject with respect to the tradition that has nourished him; there is the major authenticity that justifies or condemns the tradition itself. The first passes a human judgment on persons; the second is the judgment of history and ultimately the judgment of divine providence upon traditions. (233; Fs)

28/14 As Kierkegaard asked himself whether he was a Christian, so divers men can ask themselves whether or not they are genuine Catholics or Protestants, Muslims or Buddhists, Platonists or Aristotelians, and so on. They may answer that they are, and be correct in their answers. But they also may answer affirmatively and still be mistaken. In this case there will exist a series of points in which what they are coincides with what the ideals of the tradition demand, but there will be another series in which there is a greater or less divergence. These points of difference are overlooked, whether from a selective inattention, or a failure to understand, or an undetected rationalization. What I am is one thing, what a genuine Christian or Buddhist is, is another, and I am unaware of the difference. My unawareness is unexpressed; I have no language to express what I really am, so I use the language of the tradition I unauthentically appropriate, and thereby I devaluate, distort, water down, corrupt that language. (233; Fs)

29/14 Such devaluation, distortion, corruption may occur only in scattered individuals. But it may occur on a more massive scale, and then the words are repeated but the meaning is gone. The chair is still the chair of Moses, but it is occupied by scribes and Pharisees. Traditional doctrine is still taught, but it is no longer convincing. The religious order still reads out the rules, but one may doubt that the home fires are still burning. The sacred name of science is still invoked, but when each field is divided into more and more specialties and these specialties cultivated by ever smaller groups, one may be led to ask with Edmund Husserl to what extent any significant ideal of science actually functions, indeed to what extent the ideals of science are being replaced by the conventions of a clique. If, in such eventualities, anyone were to accept a tradition as it stands, he could hardly do more than authentically realize unauthenticity. (233; Fs)

30/14 Truly enough, the modern world is in advance of its predecessors in its mathematics, its natural science, its human science, and the wealth and variety of its literary potentialities. But it was on the basis of his trust in God that modern man had erected his states and cultures, yet more and more he has opted to sustain them by an appeal to man's complete autonomy. He would acknowledge man's intelligence, his rationality, his responsibility, but he would not acknowledge more. For the consistent secularist to speak of God is, at best, irrelevant; to turn to God-except by way of a political gesture or an emotional outlet-is to sacrifice the good that man both knows and, by his own resources, can attain. (234; Fs) (notabene)

31/14 Such has been the mounting challenge to religion and, since it provides a paradigm for its many parallels, it seems worthwhile to analyze its elements. I shall first indicate ambiguities that arise when a people, sharing a common language, divides into this-worldly secularists and other-worldly believers. For the two groups will differ both in the realities and in the values they acknowledge. The otherworldly believers hold that God exists and is operative in religious living; the this-worldly secularists do not. Again, the other-worldly believers acknowledge other-worldly values, and this acknowledgment influences in varying degrees their this-worldly valuations; but the this-worldly secularists avoid such a complication for they acknowledge no other-worldly values and so are free to concentrate on the values of this world. (234; Fs) (notabene)

32/14 Next, a person's horizon is the boundary of what he knows and values. There follows a notable difference in the horizons of this-worldly secularists and other-worldly believers. For what we know and how we arrange our scale of values determines our horizons, and our horizons determine the range of our attention, our consideration, our valuations, our conduct. (234; Fs)

33/14 Further, there are two main components in a person's horizon. There is the main stem: what we know and what we value. There are extensions through the persons we know and care for, since knowing them and caring for them involve us in what they know and care for. (234; Fs)

34/14 Moreover, such extensions may be mutual, and then the horizon of each is an extension of the horizon of the other. They may interrelate all the members of a group, and as such a cohesive group increases in size, there is a need for organizing-for distinguishing, within the whole, smaller groups comparable to the organs of a living body. (234f; Fs)

35/14 Horizons develop both in their main stem of knowing and caring and in their extensions through involvement in the knowing and caring of others. Development in the main stem increases the depth and range of the consequent horizon; and this increase leads to a development in the extensions, since our knowing others and our concern for them involve some sharing in the objects they know and care for. Moreover, inasmuch as among such objects there will be persons that know and care for their own circle, there will result a mediation of involvement at a second remove. Finally, developing horizons open the way to reciprocity on the part of those with whom one has become involved. (235; Fs)

36/14 There are many ways, familiar and perhaps unfamiliar, in which people come to know and care for others. But I think it best to omit the familiar and to avoid the obscurity of the unfamiliar. What seems more pressing is to turn to three things: barriers, breakthroughs, and breakdowns. Barriers block development. Breakthroughs overcome barriers. Breakdowns undo past achievement.1

37/14 We have already illustrated the notion of a barrier in contrasting this-worldly secularists and other-worldly believers. The realities they acknowledge and the values they esteem diverge, and for St. Paul that divergence is extremely grave: (235; Fs)
[...] only the Spirit of God knows what God is. This is the Spirit that we have received from God, and not the spirit of the world, so that we may know all that God of his own grace gives us. [...] A man who is unspiritual refuses what belongs to the Spirit of God; it is folly to him; he cannot grasp it, because it needs to be judged in the light of the Spirit (1 Cor. 2:11-14).

38/14 Such was the message of St. Paul to the Corinthians almost two millennia ago. While I think it relevant to an account of the barrier between secularists and believers, I must recall what I have already said tonight, that people may accept in good faith mistaken views that have become traditional, and that even the original mistake would hardly have occurred without the scandal given by otherworldly believers. (235; Fs)

39/14 In this campaign one does well to turn to John Henry Cardinal Newman's Grammar of Assent and, specifically, to the passages in which he distinguishes notional apprehension from real apprehension, and notional assent from real assent. For the barriers to enlightenment are merely notional apprehension and merely notional assent, when we are content with understanding the general idea and give no more than an esthetic response that it is indeed a fine idea. On the other hand, the attainment of enlightenment is the attainment of real apprehension, real assent, and the motivation to live out what we have learnt. It is brought about through regular and sustained meditation on what it really means to be a Christian, a real meaning to be grasped not through definitions and systems but through the living words and deeds of our Lord, our Lady, and the saints, a meaning to be brought home to me in the measure that I come to realize how much of such meaning I have overlooked, how much I have greeted with selective inattention, how much I have been unwilling to recognize as a genuine element in Christian living. So gradually we replace shallowness and superficiality, weakness and self-indulgence, with the imagination and the feelings, with the solid knowledge and heartfelt willingness of a true follower of Christ. (236; Fs)

40/14 Both in the process of purification and in the process of enlightenment there are times when we resemble the two disciples on the Pope John's road to Emmaus before the stranger joined them on their journey, when they recalled with dismay how high had been their hopes before Jesus was scourged, condemned, and crucified; and there are other times when we resemble the disciples as they listened to the stranger's account of all that the scriptures had foretold and, as they later remarked, "Did we not feel our hearts on fire as he talked with us on the road [...]?" (Luke 24:32). Such times of spiritual dismay and spiritual elation have been interpreted as the language used by the inner teacher in his converse with our hearts. And if the elation is accompanied by a willingness to do good that hitherto we were unwilling to do, then it is the sign of a grace that Aquinas named operative, a grace foretold by Ezekiel with the words: "I will.[...] put a new spirit into them; I will take the heart of stone out of their bodies and give them a heart of flesh. Then they will conform to my statutes and keep my laws. They will become my people, and I will become their God" (Ezek. 11:19-20). (236f; Fs)

41/14 Both in the Old Testament and in the New there are given the two commandments. (237; Fs)

Then one of the lawyers [...] asked him, 'Which commandment is first of all?' Jesus answered, 'The first is, "Hear, O Israel: The Lord your God is the only Lord; love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength." The second is this: "Love your neighbour as yourself.'' There is no other commandment greater than these' (Mark 12:28-31; cf. Deut.6:4-5, Lev. 19:18).

42/14 A real apprehension of these commandments and a real assent to their binding force for each of us are given us by sanctifying grace, for then "God's love has flooded our inmost heart through the Holy Spirit he has given us" (Rom.5:5). But even then we must watch and pray that we enter not into temptation, for beyond sanctifying grace we also need actual graces, even operative actual graces, that take us through the processes of purification and enlightenment towards the state of union with God. (237; Fs)

43/14 I began by recalling how Pope John XXIII desired the church to leap forward in its apostolic mission by preaching to mankind the living Christ. I spoke in turn of the meaning, the function, and the relevance of a pastoral council. I ended by speaking of authenticity, of the genuine fruit of religious education and of pastoral ministry. Since that fruit fundamentally comes through God's grace, since that grace is given in answer to prayer, I would conclude by begging you one and all to pray that this Institute of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry, and all similar undertakings, prove to be instruments that bountifully promote the realization of Pope John's intentions. It is a prayer that the members of Christ's body on earth bring forth fruit thirtyfold, sixtyfold, a hundredfold. (237f; Fs)

A lecture given twice at Boston College, 1981, first in June, during the eighth annual Lonergan Workshop, then in July, during the tenth-anniversary celebration of The Institute of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry. To be published in the proceedings of that celebration and in a future volume of Lonergan Workshop.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Bewusstsein: Differentierung: Unmittelbarkeit (naiver Realismus, Empirismus), Commonsense, religiöse

Kurzinhalt: scientific, religious, scholarly, modern philosophic differentiation of consciousness; not from objects mediated by 'ordinary' meaning, but from the immediate data of consciousness

Textausschnitt: I. DIFFERENTIATIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

2/15 For centuries theologians were divided into diverse schools. The schools differed from one another on most points in systematic theology. But all shared a common origin in medieval Scholasticism and so they were able to understand one another and could attempt, if not dialogue, at least refutation. But with the breakdown of Scholasticism, that common ancestry is no longer a bond. Wide divergences in doctrine are being expressed by Catholic theologians. If each abounds in his wisdom, he also tends to be mystified by the existence of views other than his own. (239; Fs)

3/15 If one is to understand such diversity, one must, I believe, advert to the sundry differentiations of human consciousness. A first differentiation arises in the process of growing up. The infant lives in a world of immediacy. The child moves towards a world mediated by meaning. For the adult the real world is the world mediated by meaning, and his philosophic doubts about the reality of that world arise from the fact that he has failed to advert to the difference between the criteria for a world of immediacy and, on the other hand, the criteria for a world mediated by meaning. (239; Fs)

4/15 Such inadvertence seems to be the root of the confusion concerning objects and objectivity that has obtained in Western thought since Kant published his Critique of Pure Reason.1 In the world of immediacy the only objects are objects of immediate experience, where "experience" is understood in the narrow sense and denotes either the outer experience of our senses or the inner experience of our consciousness. But in the world mediated by meaning - i.e., mediated by experiencing, understanding, and judging - objects are what are intended by questions and known by intelligent, correct, conscientious answers. It is by his questions for intelligence (quid sit, cur ita sit), for reflection (an sit), for moral deliberation (an honestum sit), that man intends without yet knowing the intelligible, the true, the real, and the good. By that intending man is immediately related to the objects that he will come to know when he elicits correct acts of meaning. Accordingly, naive realism arises from the assumption that the world mediated by meaning is known by taking a look. Empiricism arises when the world mediated by meaning is emptied of everything except what can be sensed. Idealism retains the empiricist notion of reality, insists that human knowledge is constituted by raising and answering questions, and concludes that human knowledge is not of the real but of the ideal. A critical realism finally claims that human knowledge consists not in experiencing alone but in the threefold compound that embraces experiencing and understanding and judging. (240; Fs)

5/15 Besides the differentiation of consciousness involved in growing up, further differentiations occur with respect to the world mediated by meaning. Here the best known is the eventual separation of scientific from commonsense meaning. (240; Fs)

6/15 Its origins are celebrated in Plato's early dialogues in which Socrates explains what he means by a definition that applies omni et soli, seeks such definitions of courage, sobriety, justice, and the like, shows the inadequacy of every proposed solution, and admits that he himself is unable to answer his own questions. But a generation or so later in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics we find not only general definitions of virtue and vice but also definitions of an array of specific virtues each one flanked by a pair of vices that sin by excess or by defect. But Aristotle was not content merely to answer Socrates' question. By his example he showed how it can be done; he scrutinized linguistic usage; selected the precise meanings that suited his purpose; constructed sets of interrelated terms; and employed such sets to systematize whole regions of inquiry. (240f; Fs)

7/15 In this fashion was effected the differentiation of commonsense meaning and scientific meaning. Socrates and his friends knew perfectly well what they meant by courage, sobriety, justice. But such knowledge does not consist in universal definitions. It consists simply in understanding when a term may be used appropriately; and such understanding is developed by adverting to the response others give to our statements. As common sense does not define, so it does not enounce universal principles; it offers proverbs, i.e., bits of advice it may be well to bear in mind when the occasion arises; hence "Strike the iron while it is hot" and "He who hesitates is lost" are not so much contradicted as complemented by "Look before you leap." Finally, common sense does not syllogize; it argues from analogy; but its analogies resemble, not those constructed by logicians in which the analogue is partly similar and partly dissimilar, but rather Piaget's adaptations which consist of two parts: an assimilation that calls on the insights relevant to somewhat similar situations; and an adjustment that adds insights relevant to the peculiarities of the present situation. (241; Fs)

8/15 But besides the world mediated by commonsense meanings, there is another world mediated by scientific meanings, where terms are defined, systematic relationships are sought, and procedures are governed by logic and methods. This second world was approximated by Plato's distinction between the flux of phenomena and the immutable forms. It was affirmed more soberly in Aristotle's distinction between what is first for us and what is first in itself. It has reappeared in Eddington's two tables: one brown, solid, heavy; the other colorless, mostly empty space, with here and there an unimaginable wavicle. So it is that scientists live in two worlds: at one moment they are with the rest of us in the world of common sense; at another they are apart from us and by themselves with a technical and controlled language of their own with reflectively constructed and controlled procedures. (241; Fs)

9/15 Besides the scientific there is a religious differentiation of consciousness. It begins with asceticism and culminates in mysticism. Both asceticism and mysticism, when genuine, have a common ground that was described by St. Paul when he exclaimed: "[...] God's love has flooded our inmost heart through the Holy Spirit he has given us" (Rom. 5:5). That ground can bear fruit in a consciousness that lives in a world mediated by meaning. But it can also set up a different type of consciousness by withdrawing one from the world mediated by meaning into a cloud of unknowing.2 Then one is for God, belongs to him, gives oneself to him, not by using words, images, concepts, but in a silent, joyous, peaceful surrender to his initiative. (241f; Fs)

10/15 Ordinarily the scientific and the religious differentiations of consciousness occur in different individuals. But they can be found in the same individual as was the case with Thomas of Aquin. At the end of his life his prayer became so intense that it interfered with his theological activity. But earlier there could have been an alternation between religious and theological differentiation, while later still further differentiation might have enabled him to combine prayer and theology as Teresa of Avila combined prayer and business. (242; Fs)

11/15 Besides the scientific and the religious there is the scholarly differentiation of consciousness. It combines the common sense of one's own place and time with a detailed understanding of the common sense of another place and time. It is a specifically modern achievement and it results from nothing less than a lifetime of study. (242; Fs)

12/15 Besides the scientific, the religious, and the scholarly, there is the modern philosophic differentiation. Ancient and medieval philosophers were concerned principally with objects. What differentiation they attained, did not differ from the scientific. But in modern philosophy there has been a sustained tendency to begin, not from objects mediated by 'ordinary' meaning, but from the immediate data of consciousness. In a first phase from Descartes to Kant, the primary focus of attention was cognitional activity. But after the transition, operated by absolute idealism, there was a notable shift in emphasis. Schopenhauer wrote on Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung; Kierkegaard took his stand on faith; Newman took his on conscience; Nietzsche extolled the will to power; Dilthey aimed at a Lebensphilosophie; Blondel at a philosophy of action; Scheler was abundant on feeling; and similar tendencies, reminiscent of Kant's emphasis on practical reason, have been maintained by pragmatists, existentialists, personalists. (242; Fs) (notabene)

13/15 We have distinguished four differentiations of consciousness: the scientific, the religious, the scholarly, and the modern philosophic. We have noted the possibility of one compound differentiation in which the scientific and the religious were combined in a single individual. But there are five other possibilities of a twofold differentiation,3 and there are four possibilities of a threefold differentiation.4 In addition there is one case in which a fourfold differentiation may occur by combining scientific, religious, scholarly, and the modern philosophic differentiation. Similarly, there is a single case of simply undifferentiated consciousness which is at home only in the realm of common sense. (242f; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Scholastik: Versäumnis (Geschichtlichkeit); 1. Prinzipien: Invarianten der menschl. Intentionalität

Kurzinhalt: Scholastic aim > one grave defect: it was content with a logically and metaphysically satisfying reconciliation (Posterior Analytics); de facto invariants of human conscious intentionality

Textausschnitt: 21/15 As already indicated, there was a slight tincture of theoretically differentiated consciousness in the Greek councils. But principally it was in the medieval period that there was undertaken the systematic and collaborative task of reconciling all that had been handed down by the church from the past. A first step was Abelard's Sic et Non, in which one hundred and fifty-eight propositions were both proved and disproved by arguments drawn from scripture, the fathers, the councils, and reason. In a second step Gilbert of Porreta used Abelard to define the existence of a question; in this fashion Abelard's Non became Videtur quod non and his Sic became Sed contra est. To these were added a general response, in which principles of solution were set forth, and then particular responses to the arguments advanced on either side. A third step was the composition of books of sentences that collected and classified relevant passages from scripture and tradition. A fourth step was the commentaries on books of sentences, in which the technique of the question was employed to reconcile or eliminate contrary views. A fifth step was to obtain a conceptual system that would enable theologians to give coherent solutions to all the questions they raised; and this coherence was sought partly by adopting and partly by adapting the Aristotelian corpus. (245; Fs)
22/15 Scholastic theology was a monumental achievement. Its influence on the church has been profound and enduring. Up to Vatican II, which preferred a more biblical turn of speech, it has provided much of the background whence proceeded pontifical documents and conciliar decrees. Yet today by and large it is abandoned, and that abandonment leaves the documents and decrees that relied on it almost mute and ineffectual. Such is the contemporary crisis in Catholicism. It is important to indicate why it exists and how it can be overcome. (245; Fs)

23/15 The Scholastic aim of reconciling differences in statements of Catholic tradition had one grave defect: it was content with a logically and metaphysically satisfying reconciliation; it did not realize how much of the multiplicity in its inheritance constituted not a logical or a metaphysical but basically a historical problem. (245f; Fs)

25/15 In contrast, modern mathematics is fully aware that its axioms are not necessary truths but freely chosen and no more than probably consistent postulates. The modern sciences ascertain, not what must be so, but only what is in itself hypothetical and so in need of verification. First principles in philosophy are not just verbal propositions but the de facto invariants of human conscious intentionality. What was named speculative intellect now turns out to be merely the operations of experiencing, understanding, and judging, performed under the guidance of the moral deliberation, evaluation, decision, that selects an appropriate method and sees to it that the method is observed. The primacy now belongs to praxis and the task of philosophy is to foster the emergence of authentic human beings. Finally, it is only on the basis of intentionality analysis that it is possible to understand human historicity or to set forth the foundations and criticize the practise of contemporary hermeneutics and critical history. (246; Fs)
26/15 The defects of Scholasticism, then, were the defects of its time. It could not inspect the methods of modern history and thereby learn the importance of history in theology. It could not inspect modern science and thereby correct the mistakes in Aristotle's conceptual system. But if we cannot blame the Scholastics for their shortcomings, we must undertake the task of remedying them. A theology is the product not only of faith but also of a culture. It is cultural change that has made Scholasticism no longer relevant and demands the development of a new theological method and style, continuous indeed with the old, yet meeting all the genuine exigences both of Christian religion and of up-to-date philosophy, science, and scholarship. (246f; Fs)


24/15 Secondly, the Aristotelian corpus, on which Scholasticism drew for the framework of its solutions, suffers from a number of defects. The Posterior Analytics set forth an ideal of science in which the key element is the notion of necessity. On this basis science is said to be of the necessary, while opinion regards the contingent; similarly, wisdom is said to be of the necessary, while prudence regards contingent human affairs. There follows the supremacy of speculative intellect, and this can be buttressed with a verbalism that attributes to common terms the properties of scientific terms. Finally, while man is acknowledged to be a political animal, the historicity of the meanings that inform human living is not grasped, and much less is there understood the possibility of history being scientific. (246; Fs)

27/15 Until that need is met, pluralism will not be exorcized. Undifferentiated consciousness will always want a commonsense theology. Scientifically differentiated consciousness will drift towards secularism. Religiously differentiated consciousness will continue to wobble between empiricism and idealism. But the worthy successor to thirteenth-century achievement will be the fruit of a fivefold differentiated consciousness, in which the workings of common sense, science, scholarship, intentionality analysis, and the life of prayer have been integrated. (247; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Konversion - Pluralismus; der authentische Christ -> 3-fache Konversion

Kurzinhalt: The authentic Christian strives for the fulness of intellectual, moral, and religious conversion

Textausschnitt: 28/15 Conversion involves a new understanding of oneself because, more fundamentally, it brings about a new self to be understood. It is putting off the old man and putting on the new. It is not just a development but the beginning of a new mode of developing. Hence besides the beginning there is to be considered the consequent development. This may be great or average or small. It may be marred by few or by many relapses. The relapses may have been fully corrected, or they may still leave their traces in a bias that may be venial or grave. (247; Fs) (notabene)

29/15 Conversion is three-dimensional. It is intellectual inasmuch as it regards our orientation to the intelligible and the true. It is moral inasmuch as it regards our orientation to the good. It is religious inasmuch as it regards our orientation to God. The three dimensions are distinct, so that conversion can occur in one dimension without occurring in the other two, or in two dimensions without occurring in the other one. At the same time the three dimensions are solidary. Conversion in one leads to conversion in the others, and relapse from one prepares for relapse in the others. (247; Fs)
30/15 By intellectual conversion a person frees himself from confusing the criteria for knowledge of the world of immediacy with the criteria for knowledge of the world mediated by meaning. By moral conversion he becomes motivated primarily not by satisfactions but by values. By religious conversion he comes to love God with his whole heart and his whole soul and all his mind and all his strength; and in consequence he will love his neighbor as himself. (247f; Fs)
31/15 The authentic Christian strives for the fulness of intellectual, moral, and religious conversion. Without intellectual conversion he tends to misapprehend not only the world mediated by meaning but also the word God has spoken within that world. Without moral conversion he tends to pursue not what truly is good but what only apparently is good. Without religious conversion he is radically desolate: in the world without hope and without God (Eph. 2:12). (248; Fs)
32/15 While the importance of moral and religious conversion may readily be granted, hesitation will be felt by many when it comes to intellectual conversion. They will feel it is a philosophic issue and that it is not up to theologians to solve it. But while these contentions are true, they are not decisive. The issue is also existential and methodical. Theologians have minds. They have always used them. They may use them properly and they may use them improperly. Unless they find out the difference for themselves or learn about it from someone else, they will be countenancing a greater pluralism than can be tolerated. (248; Fs)
33/15 Indeed in my opinion intellectual conversion is essentially simple. It occurs spontaneously when one reaches the age of reason, implicitly drops earlier criteria of reality (Are you awake? Do you see it? Is it heavy? etc.), and proceeds to operate on the criteria of sufficient evidence or sufficient reason. But this spontaneous conversion is insecure. The use of the earlier criteria can recur. It is particularly likely to recur when one gets involved in philosophic issues. For then the objectification of what is meant by sufficient evidence or sufficient reason may become exceedingly complex, while the objectification of taking a good look is simplicity itself. So one becomes a naive realist; if one takes that seriously, one becomes an empiricist; if that proves uncomfortable, one can move on to idealism; then to pragmatism; then to phenomenology. But far less laborious than traveling round that circuit is the task of finding out just what sufficient evidence is. I grant that facing that issue calls for some concentration. But enormously more concentration is needed to explore the philosophies that either neglect sufficient evidence or, on the other hand, propose excessive criteria. (248; Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Sprache, Schlussfolgerung; wenn A, dann B als Grundfrom des Schließens; Kausalsatz, Konzessivsatz, Bedingungssatz

Kurzinhalt: Thus a study of language has given us a working hypothesis: the form of inference is the simple hypothetical argument.

Textausschnitt: 4a Any language has a number of syntactical forms that are peculiarly inferential. Most obvious is the causal sentence, because A, therefore B, where A and B each stand for one or more propositions. Next comes the concessive sentence, although A, still not B, which is the natural instrument of anyone ready to admit the propositions, A, but wishing to deny that A implies B. To meet such denial, to give separate expression to the implication of B in A, there is the host of conditional sentences, if A, then B, which may be past or present, proximate or remote future, particular or general, actually verified or the pure interconnection grammarians call contrary-to-fact. It is not hard to see that these three syntactical forms are peculiarly inferential. Just as 'so that' and 'in order that' express the relations of efficient and final causality, so also 'because,' 'although,' and 'if are the special tools of reasoning man. (Fs) (notabene)

4b Closely related to these linguistic tools is the transition from informal to formal inference. It appears a fact that spontaneous thinking sees at once the conclusion, B, in apprehending the antecedents, A. Most frequently the expression of this inference will be simply the assertion of B. Only when questioned do men add that the 'reason for B' is A; and only when a debate ensues does there emerge a distinction between the two elements in the 'reason for B,' namely, the antecedent fact or facts, A, and the implication of B in A (if A, then B). Thus the transition from informal to formal inference is a process of analysis: it makes explicit, at once in consciousness and in language, the different elements of thought that were present from the first moment. For when B simply is asserted, it is asserted not as an experience but as a conclusion; else a question would not elicit the answer, B because of A. Again, when this answer is given, there would be no meaning to the 'because' if all that was meant was a further assertion, A. On the contrary, the causal sentence (because A, therefore B) compresses into one the three sentences of the formal analysis (if A, then B; A; ? B). (Fs) (notabene)

5a No doubt these considerations throw some light both on the prevalence of enthymeme and on the awkwardness of a logical theory that overlooks the normal syntax of inference to design a Procrustean bed with predication. But at any rate it is from the syntactical forms that the logician derives his simple hypothetical argument. This is of the type (Fs)
If A, then B
But A
() B. (Fs)

5b Its indefinite flexibility is apparent: A and B each stand for one or two or any number of propositions; the propositions may be categorical, disjunctive, or hypothetical; and there is no reason why any of them should be forced into the mold of subject, copula, and predicate. No less apparent is the radical simplicity of this type. Every inference is the implication of a conclusion in a premise or in premises: the conclusion is B; the premise or premises are A; the implication is, if A, then B. Thus a study of language has given us a working hypothesis: the form of inference is the simple hypothetical argument. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Wirkursache als "Influx"; Durandus, Molina, and Banez (3 verschiedene Interpretationen von Wirkursache als "Influx"

Kurzinhalt: First, one may say that in such a causal series there are two and only two instances of influx and so two and only two real instances of efficient causality: from A to B, and from B to C; but there is no third influx from A to C; accordingly ...

Textausschnitt: 1 Efficient Causality and the Causal Series

52b To grasp the author's position, it is necessary, even at the cost of considerable space, to find a more general viewpoint than he presents. The fundamental issue is the nature of the reality of efficient causality; that is, What is the reality which, if existent, makes the proposition, A is the efficient cause of B, true, but which, if nonexistent, makes it false? There are two answers. One may affirm that the desired necessary and sufficient condition is a causally efficient influence proceeding from A to subject of) B. On the other hand, one may consider the foregoing either a mere modus significandi or else sheer imagination, to affirm that the required necessary and sufficient condition is a real relation of dependence in B with respect to its ground and source, its id a quo, A. In this view, the reality of efficient causality is the relativity of the effect qua effect; one also may say that it is the relative element in the Aristotelian actio, actus huius ut ab hoc; that is, B is an act pertaining to A inasmuch as it is from A. (Fs) (notabene)


1.1 Efficient Causality as Influx

54a When one thinks of efficient causality as influx and attempts to analyse the causal series (A is efficient cause of B, and B is efficient cause of C), one may arrive at any of three opinions. First, one may say that in such a causal series there are two and only two instances of influx and so two and only two real instances of efficient causality: from A to B, and from B to C; but there is no third influx from A to C; accordingly, mediate causality is not a true species of causality but merely a name for the combination of two other instances. However, one may dislike this conclusion and desire to make the mediate causec really and truly a cause. Hence, secondly, one may say that in the causal series there are, at least at times, three instances of influx and so three instances of efficient causality: not only from A to B, and from B to C, but also a third from A to C; simultaneously both A and B exert an influx to produce C. Now while this makes A the efficient cause of C not only in name but also in reality, it does so by making A the immediate cause of C; mediate causality is not saved. Hence, thirdly, one may say that there is a real difference between B as effect of A and B as cause of C, and this real difference is what explains the reality of mediate efficient causality; first, an influx from A gives B'; secondly, an influx from A gives B"; thirdly, an influx from B" gives C. Thus efficient causality thought of as influx yields three views of the causal series, and one may note that there is some resemblance between these three views and the views respectively of Durandus, Molina, and Banez. I shall not say that Durandus, Molina, Banez, or any of their followers arrived at their positions in the foregoing manner' I am not engaged in history but in listing theoretical possibilities, and merely draw attention to a resemblance among three possibilities ano three historical opinions. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Wirkursache: Influx - Bedingung (göttlicher Plan); Begriff der Unmittelbarkeit

Kurzinhalt: Efficient Causality; the created cause, not as cause, but as conditioned; the only solution is to postulate a master plan that ...;

Textausschnitt: 1.2 Efficient Causality and Relation of Dependence

55a As there is an alternative view of efficient causality, so also there is an alternative analysis of the causal series. Distinguish between the series properly so called and the merely accidental series: the latter is illustrated by Abraham begetting Isaac, and Isaac, Jacob, where evidently Abraham does not beget Jacob; the former is illustrated by my moving the keys of my typewriter, and my typewriter typing out these paragraphs, where evidently I am more a cause of the typed paragraphs than the typewriter is. Now in the accidental series there are only two real relations of dependence on an id a quo: B depends on A, C depends on B; but the relation of C to A is not of causal dependence but of conditioned to condition. On the other hand, in the proper causal series, there are three real relations of dependence with respect to an id a quo: B depends on A, C depends on B, and C depends on A even more than on B. Since there are three real relations of dependence, there are three real instances of efficient causality, and, as it appears, the instance of merely mediate causality (which causes such trouble when thinking is in terms of influx) turns out to involve more dependence, and so more causality, than the apparently immediate instance. This leads to an examination of the notion of immediacy. What is it? A first answer is in terms of space and time; but this necessarily is irrelevant, for there are causes and effects outside space and time. A second answer is in terms of proximity in the enumeration of terms in the causal series; but terms have their place in the series inasmuch as they are causes of what follows and instruments or means with respect to what precedes; and so we are brought to the etymology; the 'immediate' involves a negation of a medium, a middle, a means; and such a negation may be either 'not being a means' or 'not using a means'; what is not a means may be termed immediate immediatione virtutis; what does not use a means may be termed immediate immediatione suppositi; the former is what has first place in the proper causal senes; the latter pertains in turn to each preceding term in the proper causal series. (Fs) (notabene)

55b Now with this analysis of the causal series, different views may arise when one asks the grounds of affirming that God, any created cause, and the created cause's effect form a proper causal series. Three sets of grounds have been offered; the first regards only immanent acts and so from its lack of universality has fallen into desuetude; the second regards all created causes and, indeed, as causes; the third is equally universal, for it regards all created causes, but it regards them, not as causes, but as conditioned. An argument for the first view may be put as follows: When I see, I act and so am an efficient cause; but when I see, I add to my own ontological perfection; to enable me to make such an addition I must receive a physical premotion; and only God can be the cause of such premotions in the general case. The second view proceeds more generally: Only absolute being is the sufficient ground for the production of being; hence, insofar as it produces being, every created cause must be an instrument; further, this instrumentality affects the created cause as cause, for there is a real difference between potentia agendi and ipsum agere, and that real difference is in the created cause as such; but it cannot be produced by the created cause, for nothing can add to its own perfection; and it must be attributed to God, for it involves the production of being, and only God is proportionate to that. (Fs) (notabene)

Kommentar (10/02/2005): potentia agendi -> gemäß der Natur der kontingenten Ursache; ipsum agere -> mit dem "göttlichen" Zusatz als Vermögen, etwas ins Sein zu setzen.

56a The third view regards the created cause, not as cause, but as conditioned.e As in the second view, only infinite being is the proportionate cause of being, of the event as event, of the actual emergence of the effect, of the exercise of efficiency; hence, all finite causes are instruments, naturally proportionate to producing effects as of a given kind, but not naturally proportionate to producing effects as actual occurrences. However, this limitation is operative, not through some entitative and remediable defect in the created cause (for the only remedy would be to make it infinite), but through the manifest fact that finite causes are all conditioned. Since no finite cause can create, it must presuppose the patient on which it acts, suitable relations between itself and its patient, and the noninterference of other causes. Over these conditions the finite cause has no control, for the conditions must be fulfilled before the finite cause can do anything. Next, though the conditions are finite entities and negations of interference, though the conditions of the efficiency of one finite cause may be fulfilled by suitable operations and abstentions on the part of other finite causes, still it remains that all the other finite causes equally are conditioned. Hence, appeal to other finite causes can do no more than move the problem one stage further back; it can do that as often as one pleases; but never can it solve the problem. The only solution is to postulate a master plan that envisages all finite causes at all instants throughout all time, that so orders all that each in due course has the conditions of its operation fulfilled and so fulfils conditions of the operation of others. But since the only subject of such a master plan is the divine mind, the principal agent of its execution has to be God. Demonstrably, then, God not only gives being to, and conserves in being, every created cause, but also he uses the universe of causes as his instruments in applying each cause to its operation, and so is the principal cause of each and every event as event. Man proposes, but God disposes. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Wirkursache: Widerlegung -> Frage nach der Realität des Influx; potentia agendi and ipsum agere; motus est in mobili, actio est in passo

Kurzinhalt: Either the influx is or it is not really distinct from what it produces. If it is, there is an infinite series. If it is not, ...

Textausschnitt: 1.3 Critique of Views on Efficient Causality

57a Such are six views on the issue. I believe that the first three are easily refuted, that the fourth and fifth involve fallacies, that the sixth is demonstrated validly. The troublesome question for anyone who would defend any of the first three views is whether the influx is a reality. If it is not a reality, then efficient causality is not a reality but only a thought or, perhaps more accurately, a bit of imagination. But if the influx is a reality, it would seem that there must be an infinity of influences for each case of efficient causality. For if the influx is a reality, it must be produced itself; that production would involve a further influx, and that influx a further production. One might wish to say, Sistitur in primo.f But why? Either the influx is or it is not really distinct from what it produces. If it is, there is an infinite series. If it is not, then influx is just another name for the effect. At this point, the defender will urge that the influx is indeed a reality, that there are not an infinity of influences for each effect, and the reason is that the influx is a different type of reality from the effect - the type that eliminates the infinite series. But what type is that? I know only one, the real relation. There is no real efficient causality of efficient causality, and so on to infinity, because the reality of efficient causality is the reality of a real relation, and 'relatio relationis est ens rationis.'g It should seem that the first three views, while they differ profoundly on the reality of mediate efficient causality, have in common the source of their differences, namely, a failure to think out what is the reality of efficient causality as such. (Fs) (notabene)

57b The fourth view (the first on the second concept of efficient causality) involves a fallacy. When I see, it is true that I act in the sense that grammatically 'I' is subject of a verb in the active voice. But that does not prove that ontologically I am the efficient cause of my own seeing. Nor is it likely that anyone will find a proof that I am. For both Aristotle and Aquinas, external sensation has its efficient cause in the sensible object. Again, for both, 'intelligere est pati.' Again, for both, 'appetibile apprehensum movet appetitum,' and in later Thomist doctrine of the will, the act of willing an end is effected quoad exercitium actus by God. (Fs)

58a The fallacy of the fifth position lies in affirming that the real difference between potentia agendi and ipsum agere is a reality added to the agent as agent; in fact, that reality is the effect, added to the patient as patient (motus est in mobili, actio est in passo), and predicated of the agent as agent only by extrinsic denomination; it has to be so, for otherwise either metaphysical laws have exceptions or else a motor immobilis would be a contradiction in terms; nor is it possible to demonstrate that, while action as action is predicated of the agent by extrinsic denomination, still created action as created is predicated of the agent by intrinsic denomination; what alone is demonstrable about created action as such is that it is conditioned, and that happens to be the premise of the sixth view. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Finalität (qui, quo), cuius gratia; vertikale, horizontale Finalität: instrumental, dispositive, material, obödiential

Kurzinhalt: the ... distinction between finis qui and finis quo has given two distinct types of finality: the absolute finality of all things to God in his intrinsic goodness; the horizontal finality: instrumental, dispositive, material, obediential

Textausschnitt: 1 Vertical Finality

19a The common instances of finality fall into two classes: the response of appetites to motives, and the orientation of processes to terms. But if we are to formulate the notion of vertical finality, b it is extremely important to break away from instances and to conceive things generally. First, then, the mere fact of response or of orientation does not constitute finality. Any positivist will admit that appetites do respond to motives, that processes are orientated to terms. Quite coherently, any positivist will deny final causality since, beyond such concomitance and correlation, causality requires that appetite respond because of motive, that process be orientated because of term. Moreover, causality is not yet final causality. If appetite responds because motive moves, if process is orientated because an intelligent agent envisages and intends a term, there is causality indeed; but it is efficient and not final. No doubt, in the concrete, such efficiency is connected intimately with finality. But rigorously one must maintain that there is final causality if, and only if, appetite responds because the motive is good; if, and only if, process is orientated because the term is good. (Fs) (notabene)

19b For the final cause is the cuius gratia, and its specific or formal constituent is the good as cause. Under this formal constituent may be had either of two material differences: the good may be cause as motive for the response of appetite or as term for the orientation of process. But with regard to the formal constituent itself, it is necessary to distinguish between qui and quo, between the good thing which is motive or term and the mode of motivation or termination. Now in our hierarchic universe God is at once absolute motive and absolute term: 'omnia appetunt Deum'; 'omnia intendunt assimilari Deo.' On the other hand, the mode in which the different grades of being respond to God as motive or attain him as term is always limited; this remains true even in the beatific vision, in which the infinite as motive is apprehended finitely and as term is attained finitely. Further, the ground of such limitation is essence: remotely it is substantial essence; proximately it is the essence of an ontological accident, the essence, say, of sensitive appetite, of rational appetite, of infused charity; for it is essence that limits, that ties things down to a given grade of being, that makes them respond to motives of a given type, that assigns them their proper and proportionate ends. Finally, there are many grades of being, each with its defining essence and its consequent and commensurate mode of appetition and process; accordingly, one has to think of the universe as a series of horizontal strata; on each level reality responds to God as absolute motive and tends to him as absolute term; but on each level it does so differently, for the limitation of essence reappears in the limitation of the mode of appetition and response, of process and orientation. (Fs) (notabene)

20a Thus the application to the hierarchic universe of the notional distinction between finis qui and finis quo d has given two distinct types of finality: the absolute finality of all things to God in his intrinsic goodness; the horizontal finality of limiting essence to limited mode of appetition and of process. But now attention must be drawn to a third type of finality, that of any lower level of appetition and process to any higher level. This we term vertical finality. It has four manifestations: instrumental, dispositive, material, obediential. First, a concrete plurality of lower activities may be instrumental to a higher end in another subject: the many movements of the chisel give the beauty of the statue. Second, a concrete plurality of lower activities may be dispositive to a higher end in the same subject: the many sensitive experiences of research lead to the act of understanding that is scientific discovery. Third, a concrete plurality of lower entities may be the material cause from which a higher form is educed or into which a subsistent form is infused: examples are familiar. Fourth, a concrete plurality of rational beings have the obediential potency to receive the communication of God himself: such is the mystical body of Christ with its head in the hypostatic union, its principal unfolding in the inhabitation of the Holy Spirit by sanctifying grace, and its ultimate consummation in the beatific vision which Aquinas explained on the analogy of the union of soul and body. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Vertikale Finalität; Unterschied zw. den Finalitäten; Definition - finis operis: hoc ad quod opus ordinatum est ab agente

Kurzinhalt: The difference of vertical from absolute and from horizontal finality is quite clear

Textausschnitt: 21a If the existence of such vertical finality has always been recognized its ground and nature have hardly been studied. Partly this neglect may be explained by an unduly apologetic conception of finis operis; for if one defines finis operis as resulting from the abstract nature of the thing, then necessarily one restricts finality to horizontal finality, absolute finality becomes a difficulty, and vertical finality subjectively inconceivable. But not only is such a restriction arbitrary; it cannot claim even the sanction of tradition, which defines finis operis not in terms of abstract nature but as hoc ad quod opus ordinatum est ab agente. However, a perhaps stronger reason for the neglect of vertical finality lies in the fact that modern science throws a great deal of light on its nature. Straightforward metaphysics suffices for a knowledge of absolute and of horizontal finality: the former results from the idea of an absolute good; the latter results from the theorem of essence as principle of limitation. But vertical finality seems to operate through the fertility of concrete plurality. Just as the real object tends to God as real motive and real term, just as the essence of the real object limits the mode of appetition and of process, so a concrete plurality of essences has an upthrust from lower to higher levels. But just as this fact is shrouded in the mists of Aristotelian science
- and here we generalize Dr Doms' complaint against Aristotelian biology
- so it is most conspicuous to one who looks at the universe with the eyes of modern science, who sees subatoms uniting into atoms, atoms into compounds, compounds into organisms, who finds the pattern of genes in reproductive cells shifting, ut in minori parte to give organic evolution within limited ranges f who attributes the rise of cultures and civilizations to the interplay of human plurality, who observes that only when and where the higher rational culture emerged did God acknowledge the fulness of time permitting the Word to become flesh and the mystical body to begin its intussusception of human personalities and its leavening of human history. (Fs)

22a The difference of vertical from absolute and from horizontal finality is quite clear. Absolute finality is to God in his intrinsic goodness: it is universal; it is unique; it is hypothetically necessary, for if there is anything to respond to motive or to proceed to term, then its response or tendency can be accounted for ultimately only by the one self-sufficient good. Horizontal finality results from abstract essence; it holds even when the object is in isolation; it is to a motive or term that is proportionate to essence. But vertical finality is in the concrete; in point of fact it is not from the isolated instance but from the conjoined plurality; and it is in the field not of natural but of statistical law, not of the abstract per se but of the concrete per accidens. Still, though accidental to the isolated object or the abstract essence, vertical finality is of the very idea of our hierarchic universe, of the ordination of things devised and exploited by the divine Artisan. For the cosmos is not an aggregate of isolated objects hierarchically arranged on isolated levels, but a dynamic whole in which instrumentally, dispositively, materially, obedientially,g one level of being or activity subserves another. The interconnections are endless and manifest. Vertical finality would seem beyond dispute. (Fs)

22b But if one acknowledges that the same thing, besides its absolute reference to God, may have one finality horizontally and another vertically, there arises the question of systematic comparison between the latter two types of end. First, then, a horizontal end is more essential than a vertical end: for the horizontal end is the end determined by the essence of the thing, while the vertical end is had only by escaping the limitation of isolated essence through the fertility of concrete plurality. On the other hand, a vertical end is more excellent than a horizontal end: for the horizontal end is on the lower level of being but the vertical on some higher level; and from the very concept of hierarchy the higher is the more excellent. Inversely, one cannot say that the vertical end is non-essential or that the horizontal end is not excellent. For the vertical end, though it escapes the limitation of isolated essence and its abstract per se, nonetheless results from the same essence when in concrete combination with other essence. Again, though the vertical end is more excellent, still it is so only relatively; all finality is ultimately to the absolute good, and all is limited in mode of appetition or of process, so that the difference in excellence between higher and lower is never more than a difference in mode with respect to the absolute good. (Fs)

23a With perfect generality this establishes hierarchic criteria of more essential and more excellent ends. Universally, the horizontal end is more essential, the vertical end is more excellent. Thus the essential end of oxygen is to perform the offices of oxygen as oxygen; but its more excellent end is its contribution to the maintenance of human life, and this end oxygen attains not in isolation nor per se but in combination with other elements and within the human biological process. Similarly, we have to establish the contention of Aquinas that the most essential good of marriage is the child but its most excellent end lies on the supernatural level. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Liebe: 4 Aspekte, je 2 als Akt eines Vermögens (principium quo) und Akt eines Subjekts (principium quod)

Kurzinhalt: As act of a faculty (principium quo) love is, in the first instance, the basic form of appetition: ...; Further, love is the act of a subject (principium quod), and as such it is ...

Textausschnitt: The Concept of Love

2.1 Four Aspects

23b The difficulty of conceiving love h adequately arises from its essential concreteness and from the complexity of the concrete.i Even on a preliminary analysis there are at least four simultaneous aspects. For any activity is at once the act of a faculty j and the act of a subject. As act of a faculty (principium quo) love is, in the first instance, the basic form of appetition: it is the pure response of appetite to the good, nihil aliud [...] quam complacentia boni, while desire, hope, joy, hatred, aversion, fear, sadness are consequents of the basic response and reflect objective modifications in the circumstances of the motive good. But again, as act of a faculty, love, besides being the basic form of appetition, is also the first principle of process to the end loved, and the whole of the process is thus but the self-expression of the love that is its first principle. Further, love is the act of a subject (principium quod), and as such it is the principle of union between different subjects. Such union is of two kinds, according as it emerges in love as process to an end or in love in the consummation of the end attained. The former may be illustrated by the love of friends pursuing in common a common goal. The latter has its simplest illustration in the ultimate end of the beatific vision, which at once is the term of process, of amor concupiscentiae, and the fulfilment of union with God, of amor amicitiae. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Sexualität, Bipolarität: Mittel der Fruchtbarkeit; Einigung als sekundäres Ziel; Ehe: rationale Form der Finalität der Sexualität zu Nachkommen

Kurzinhalt: marriage is the rational form .. of sex and of the finality of sex to the child; so marriage will be an incorporation of the horizontal finality of sex much more than of sex itself

Textausschnitt: 45b Here three points are to be observed. First, marriage is the rational form, the incorporation on the level of reason, not of the child nor of the fecundity of parents, but of sex and of the finality of sex to the child. Not the child, for it advances to the level of reason by divine action, by the infusion of the soul. Not the fecundity of parents, for the marriage is valid even though the parents are sterile. It incorporates sex, for the sexual deficiency of impotence is a diriment impediment; and it incorporates the finality of sex to the child, for the object of marital right is actus per se apti ad prolis generationem. In the second place, marriage is more an incorporation of the finality of sex than of sex itself. Of course, it is just the opposite that seems true to phenomenologist scrutiny, for that ignores the metaphysical principle that what is prior quoad se is posterior quoad nos, r and that the more ultimate final cause enters more intimately into the nature of a thing than the more proximate.

Einfügung Fußnote 73: See Thomas Aquinas, Super Librum De causis, lect. 1. This, I think, touches upon a fundamental methodological error in the analysis presented by Dr Doms. I agree that sex is to be distinguished from fecundity, as impotence from sterility. I agree with the validity of the question, What is the ontological significance of bisexuality? It is only a terminological difference when he asserts that the meaning of marriage is union and I say that the act and end of bisexuality is union, or when in different ways we both place two ends beyond this union. But when he speaks of this meaning of union as immanent, intrinsic, immediate, I distinguish: in the chronological order of human knowledge or of the development of human appreciation, the union is first; but in the ontological order the ordinations to the ends are more immanent, more intrinsic, more immediate to the union than the union itself. For what is first in the ontological constitution of a thing is not the experiential datum but, on the contrary, what is known in the last and most general act of understanding with regard to it; what is next, is the next most general understanding; etc. Thus the proximate end of bisexuality is union; but of its nature, bisexuality is an instrument of fecundity, so that the end of fecundity is more an end of bisexuality than is union; similarly, bisexual union has a vertical finality to higher unions of friendship and charity; and these enter more intimately into the significance of bisexuality than does the union on the level of nature. See my note on immediatio virtutis, in 'St. Thomas' Theory of Operations,' Theological Studies 3 (1942) 376, for references to this line of Thomist thought [Grace and Freedom 64-65]. As to the difficulty that frequently procreation is objectively impossible and may be known to be so, distinguish motives and ends; as to motives, the difficulty is solved only by multiple motives and ends; as to ends, there is no difficulty, for the ordination of intercourse to conception is not a natural law, like 'fire burns,' but a statistical law,s which suffices for an objective ordination.

But, as we argued above, on the essential or horizontal level of natural spontaneity, sex is but a differentiation of fecundity and a means to the adult offspring that is the end of fecundity. If, then, reason incorporates sex as sex is in itself, it will incorporate it as subordinate to its horizontal end, and so marriage will be an incorporation of the horizontal finality of sex much more than of sex itself; nor is this to forget vertical finality, for vertical and horizontal finalities are not alternatives, but the vertical emerges all the more strongly as the horizontal is realized the more fully. Third and last, the incorporation of natural finality to adult offspring involves a redirection of that finality to higher ends. The life of reason and rational appetite has its end, here below, in the historical unfolding of the human good life ((Q"); the life of grace has its end in the triumphant mystical body in heaven (P"). Hence, when the finality to adult offspring (Z") is incorporated on the level of reason, it becomes a finality to educated adult offspring (Y"); and when it is incorporated on the level of grace, it becomes a finality to Christianly educated offspring (X"). The latter subsumption and redirection of lower under higher finality is clearer than the former. Christian parents are the representatives and the instruments of Christ and his bride, the church, and so they generate children to have them regenerated in Christ, and they educate them for their eternal role in the triumphant mystical body in heaven. But just as the life of grace wills offspring for the full expansion of the mystical body, so also the life of reason wills offspring for the continuity of reason's own historical unfolding of the human good life. It is this elevation of lower finality that makes the end of marriage not only the procreation but also the education of children, with the former the material and the latter the formal condition of historical continuity; further, the relativity of history accounts for the relativity in the obligation of parents to educate. But as theologians, let alone parents, rarely think of the historical process, it must be noted that we speak not of a finis operantis but of a finis operis and that we do so in its most general terms. No one will find a motive in the historical process as such. What moves men and women is some concrete aspect of history, a national destiny, the maintenance of a cultural tradition, the continuity of a family; and even this will be apprehended by parents, not in its abstract generality, but concretely as the good of bringing into the world and leaving in it behind them others like themselves. (Fs) (notabene)
47a This brings us to our main analytic conclusion. The process of bisexual fecundity (Z, Z', Z") is in man integrated with the processes of reason and of grace. Such integration takes place by projection, by the incorporation of the lower level of activity within the higher. The incorporation on the level of reason is generically a friendship (Y) and specifically a contractual bond (Y')l the latter has a horizontal finality to the procreation and education of children (Y"), but the former has a vertical dynamism tending to advance in human perfection (Q'). Similarly, the incorporation on the level of grace is generically a special order of charity (X) but specifically a sacramental bond (X'); the latter has a horizontal finality to the procreation and Christian education of children (X"), but the former a vertical dynamism tending to advance in Christian perfection (P'). (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Sexualität, Ehe, Polygamie: Antrieb der Sexualität -> Augustinus; unendliches Verlangen -> Objekt d. Sexualität

Kurzinhalt: The sexual extravagance of man ... has its ultimate ground in St Augustine's Fecisti nos ad te, Domine, et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te; ... tend to center an infinite craving on a finite object or release

Textausschnitt: 4.3 Conformity with Traditional Doctrine

48a Now if this analysis satisfies the exigencies of modern data and insights, it is no less true that it leads immediately to the traditional position on the ends of marriage. For the criteria of more essential and more excellent ends may be applied in three ways, to the organistic union (Z'), to the marriage contract (Y'), and to the sacrament (X'). The first application gives the traditional position on polygamy: the horizontal finality of organistic union to offspring is more essential than the vertical finality to monogamous marriage; hence, under special circumstances, divine providence might permit polygamy for the sake of the more essential end and find other means to secure the more excellent personalist end. The second and third applications to monogamous marriage itself, whether contract or sacrament, are parallel: in both cases the horizontal finality to procreation and education of children is more essential than the vertical finality to personal advance in perfection; and if we take the terms 'primary' and 'secondary' in the sense of more and less essential, we have at once the traditional position that the primary end of marriage is the procreation and education of children. Further, our less essential vertical finality corresponds at least roughly with the traditional secondary ends of mutuum auxilium and honestum remedium concupiscentiae. For mutual aid is the spontaneous division of labor in the organistic union; it is the companionship and the good deeds of friendship; it is mutual support in spiritual advance to Christian perfection; it is all three, not isolated on the levels of nature, reason, and grace, but integrated and inseparable in the expansion of love into a common consciousness and conscience in the pursuit of life, the good life, and eternal life. The virtuous remedy for concupiscence would seem but the reverse aspect of the same thing. For if the virtuous remedy is sometimes understood narrowly as a legitimate outlet for sexual impulse, still such a view hardly squares with the fact that there is much more than sex in sexual impulse. The sexual extravagance of man, unparalleled in the animals, has its ultimate ground in St Augustine's Fecisti nos ad te, Domine, et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te. t The ignorance and frailty of fallen man tend to center an infinite craving on a finite object or release: that may be wealth, or fame, or power, but most commonly it is sex. Thus marriage, not merely by the outlet of intercourse but in all its aspects, is a virtuous remedy: the manifold activities of the home drain off energies that otherwise would ferment; the educative process of the life in common and the responsibility of children develop character and mature wisdom; the pursuit of Christian perfection establishes a peace of soul that attacks concupiscence at its deepest root. In this fashion it would seem that the traditional secondary ends may be identified with the vertical upthrust to friendship and charity, to human and Christian perfection. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Augustinus; Ehe, Jungfräulichkeit, Witwenschaft, temporäre Abstinenz

Kurzinhalt: Fundamental would be the position that in the state of integral nature virginity would have been neither praiseworthy nor virtuous. Hence, ...

Textausschnitt: 4.4 A Qualification

49a It remains that the strength of this upthrust is not to be exaggerated. An integral part of Catholic thought on marriage is the doctrine that virginity is preferable to marriage, widowhood to second marriage, temporary abstinence to use within marriage (1 Corinthians 7.25-40). The precise implications of this doctrine are not too clear. Because of his position on original sin, the Pelagians charged St Augustine with a rejection of Christian defense and praise of marriage. St Augustine answered that marriage was good but concupiscence evil, indeed a disease to be tolerated only for the sake of children. Now it is quite certain that by concupiscence St Augustine does not mean simply the spontaneous tendencies by which two beings are invited to function as parts of the larger unit of the family; along with that natural phenomenon he also means an effect of original sin, a constituent in original sin, an instrument in its transmission, and in fallen nature a fecund cause of actual sin. Such global and concrete thinking was alone possible in the fifth century. It does not admit direct transference to the more elaborate conceptual field of later theology - though, as was lamentably conspicuous in the case of Baius and Jansenius, a realization of the illegitimacy of such direct transference has not always been had. Account, then, must be taken of later development, and in this the main factor would seem to have been the theorem of the supernatural u and its concomitant position that Adam's immunity from concupiscence was not natural but preternatural. Now, since in the lifetime of Aquinas this theoretical advance was still in process of development, it would be easy to attach too much significance to his maintenance in the Sentences of the essentially Augustinian position of an excusatio matrimonii et copulae. In any case that rigorous view seems to have been dropped by moral theologians, while the dynamic Thomist position would take its basis not in the explicit argument of the Sentences for the excusatio, namely, the eclipse of rational control in orgasm, but rather in broader considerations of different states of human nature. Fundamental would be the position that in the state of integral nature virginity would have been neither praiseworthy nor virtuous. Hence, absolutely, what is best for man is the full actuation of all his capacities. But in the disequilibrium of fallen nature, with lower spontaneity taking care of itself, with reason apt to be misled by the historical aberrations of the civitas terrena, with the wisdom of God appearing folly to man, man's best is not full actuation of all potentiality but rather concentration on the higher levels of activity. Such concentration is commended to all, though in the triple form of virginity, w widowhood, and temporary abstinence in marriage. So understood, the counsel does not imply any negation of an objective upward tendency from organistic union to a common pursuit of Christian perfection, though indeed it does emphasize the limitations of such an upthrust under actual circumstances and the need of supplementing it by an opposite procedure. Excellent is the instrumentality of husband and wife to Christ and his bride, the church - an instrumentality that participates the love of the principal causes and brings forth to them the children that extend to full stature the mystical body. Excellent is the Christian home, a focal point that turns aside the influences of the world to rear children in an atmosphere of wholesome fear and love. But the bulwark of that excellence, the palpable proof of its ever doubted possibility, is the greater excellence that rises, not through organistic tendency but immediately, to concern with the one thing necessary, our eternal embrace with God in the beatific vision.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Intellekt als Potenz; Intellekt als Erfassen von Washeiten; ens per essentiam

Kurzinhalt: What differentiates intellect from sense is precisely its grasp of essence; recognition of the essentially dynamic character of our intellects and, in particular, of our notion of being

Textausschnitt: 2 The Finalistic Notion of Being

145b My second topic has to do with the notion of being, and I shall begin with a problem. You will agree, I believe, that there is one and only one ens per essentiam, that it is not an immediate object of our knowledge in this life, that the only immediate objects of our present knowledge are entia per participationem. It follows that our intellectual knowledge of being cannot result from abstraction of essence. For if from a horse I abstract essence, what I abstract is the essence, not of being, but of horse; if from a man I abstract essence, what I abstract is the essence, not of being, but of man; and the same holds for every other immediate object of our present knowledge. No being by participation can yield us knowledge of the essence of being, because no being by participation has the essence of being; and what is true of essence, equally is true of quiddity, nature, species, and form. A being by participation no more has the quiddity of being, the nature of being, the species of being, the form of being, than it has the essence of being. (Fs) (notabene)

146a Now this fact gives rise to a problem. What differentiates intellect from sense is precisely its grasp of essence or, if you prefer, its grasp of quiddity or nature or species or form. But in this life we do not grasp the essence or quiddity or nature or species or form of being. How then can we have any intellectual notion, any intellectual concept, any intellectual knowledge of being? Indeed, to put the problem with the sharpness that is essential, how is it that we have precisely such an intellectual notion of being that (1) we can conceive the ens per essentiam and (2) we can pronounce the only beings that we do know directly to be merely entia per participationem? (Fs) (notabene)

146b Further, this problem of the notion of being is not unique, isolated, unparalleled. If in this life we cannot know God by his essence, it also is true that we know the essences of material things only rarely, imperfectly, doubtfully. If our knowledge of essence is so rare and imperfect, should we not conclude either that Aristotle and Aquinas were mistaken in characterizing human intellect by knowledge of essence or, perhaps, that we have not intellects in the full sense of that term? (Fs) (notabene)

146c Many of you, I feel, will incline to the latter alternative. Human intellect is in genere rerum intelligibilium ut ens in potentia tantum, it belongs to the realm of spirit merely as potency. Its knowing is process. It is not some simple matter of grasping essence and affirming existence. It is the prolonged business of raising questions, working out tentative answers, and then finding that these answers raise further questions. Dynamism, process, finality are fundamental features of our intellects in this life. Hence, knowledge of things by their essences is for us, not an accomplished fact, but only the goal, the end, the objective of a natural desire. (Fs) (notabene)

147a Moreover, according to Aquinas, the object of the natural desire of our intellects includes the ens per essentiam. When we learn of God's existence, spontaneously we ask what God is; but to ask what something is, releases a process that does not come to rest until knowledge of essence is attained; therefore we have a natural desire to know God by his essence. (Fs)

147b By such reasoning I was led in Insight to affirm that our natural intellectual desire to know was a natural intellectual desire to know being. The desire, precisely because it is intelligent, is a notion.d But the notion is not any innate idea or concept or knowledge. It is a desire for ideas, for concepts, for knowledge but, of itself, it is merely discontented ignorance without ideas, without concepts, without knowledge. Again, it is not a postulate. Postulates are parts of hypothetical answers, but the desire to know grounds questions. Nor is there any need to postulate questions. They are facts. (Fs) (notabene)

147c What is the issue here? I think it both very simple and very fundamental. If intellect is not characterized by its capacity to grasp essence, then I believe that one parts company from Aristotle and Aquinas and, as well, from any adequate account of the nature of human intelligence. If, on the other hand, intellect is characterized by its capacity to grasp essence, then the fact that our knowledge of essences is so slight can be met only by a full recognition of the essentially dynamic character of our intellects and, in particular, of our notion of being. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Urteil als Maßstab der Objektivität

Kurzinhalt: First, then, is this universe of being the real world? There is one standard, one criterion, one absolute, and that is true judgment

Textausschnitt: Knowledge of Concrete, Actual Existence

147d My third topic had to do with the objective universe of being. According to Insight this universe is to be known by the totality of true judgments and it is not to be known humanly without true judgments. Four main questions arise. First, is this universe of being the real world? Secondly, is it concrete? Thirdly, is it the actually existing universe, or merely an essentialist universe? Fourthly, how can concrete, actual existence be known on the account of knowledge offered by Insight? First, then, is this universe of being the real world? e Clearly, if by the real world one means what is to be known by the totality of true judgments and not without true judgments, then by definition the universe of being and the real world are identical in all respects. However, it frequently happens that the expression, the real world, is employed in quite a different sense. In this sense each of us lives in a real world of his own.f Its contents are determined by his Sorge, by his interests and concerns, by the orientation of his living, by the unconscious horizong g that blocks from his view the rest of reality. To each of us his own private real world is very real indeed. Spontaneously it lays claim to being the one real world, the standard, the criterion, the absolute, by which everything is judged, measured, evaluated. That claim, I should insist, is not to be admitted. There is one standard, one criterion, one absolute, and that is true judgment. Insofar as one's private real world does not meet that standard, it is some dubious product of animal faith h and human error. On the other hand, insofar as one's private real world is submitted constantly and sedulously to the corrections made by true judgment, necessarily it is brought into conformity with the universe of being. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Coreth; Horizont (verschiedene Horizonte: reine Vernunft, Idealismus)

Kurzinhalt: ... in the horizon of the wise man ... the objective pole is an unrestricted domain, and the subjective pole is the philosopher practicing transcendental method ...

Textausschnitt: 198b Now it is technically simpler to express the foregoing in terms of 'horizon.'i Literally, a horizon is a maximum field of vision from a determinate standpoint. In a generalized sense, a horizon is specified by two poles, one objective and the other subjective, with each pole conditioning the other. Hence, the objective pole is taken, not materially, but like the formal object sub ratione sub qua attingitur; similarly, the subjective pole is considered, not materially, but in its relation to the objective pole. Thus the horizon of pure reason is specified when one states that its objective pole is possible being as determined by relations of possibility and necessity obtaining between concepts, and that its subjective pole is logical thinking as determining what can be and what must be. Similarly, in the horizon of critical idealism, the objective pole is the world of experience as appearance, and the subjective pole is the set of a priori conditions of the possibility of such a world. Again, in the horizon of the expert, the objective pole is his restricted domain as attained by accepted scientific methods, and the subjective pole is the expert practicing those methods; but in the horizon of the wise man, the philosopher of the Aristotelian tradition, the objective pole is an unrestricted domain, and the subjective pole is the philosopher practicing transcendental method, namely, the method that determines the ultimate and so basic whole. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Vergleich: Coreth - Gilson

Kurzinhalt: ... while Prof. Gilson's immediate realism cannot be mediated and so is dogmatic, Fr Coreth's immediate realism ... is mediated;

Textausschnitt: 2.3 Gilson and Coreth

197a Thirdly, to complete our circle of comparisons, we must now turn to Prof. Gilson and Fr Coreth. Here we are met with massive similarities, and it is the difference that requires clarification. For both are realists: they acknowledge the real existence of minerals, plants, animals, men, and God. Both are immediate realists: though Fr Coreth mediates this immediacy, still for him no less than for Prof. Gilson realism is immediate truth. In both immediate realisms an a posteriori component is recognized: neither attempts to restore the pure reason that Kant undertook to refute. Not only are both Thomists, but also both are quite convinced of the priority of metaphysics over everything in general and over cognitional theory most particularly. Finally, as realism for Prof. Gilson is a whole, as his thinking deals with philosophies as wholes, so too for Fr Coreth the priority of the whole over the parts is cardinal. (Fs)

197b The basic difference is that, while Prof. Gilson's immediate realism cannot be mediated and so is dogmatic, Fr Coreth's immediate realism not only can be but also is mediated. For Prof. Gilson realism is a whole that one must accept or reject, and with this Fr Coreth agrees. For Prof. Gilson realism is a whole that cannot be assembled step by step with every step guaranteed as alone rational, and with this Fr Coreth flatly disagrees. His transcendental method is essentially the method for explicitating the whole: for transcendental method ascertains conditions of possibility, and the first and foremost of all conditions of possibility is the whole itself. (Fs)
198a Let us attempt to get clear this point about a philosophy as essentially a whole. Aristotle and Aquinas distinguish the expert and the wise man: the expert orders everything within a restricted domain; the wise man orders everything. Further, to call a congress of all experts representing all restricted domains does not secure the presence of a wise man, for none of the experts knows the relations between the restricted domains. Knowledge of the whole, then, is distinct from knowledge of the parts, and it is not attained by a mere summation of the parts. The very fact that the expert restricts his domain implies that he also restricts the number of aspects under which he considers the objects within his domain; as the restrictions are removed, further aspects come to light; only when all restrictions are removed do all aspects come to light; and once all restrictions are removed, there can be no ulterior and higher viewpoint from which new aspects come to light with a consequent revision and reordering of previous acquisition. So the unrestricted viewpoint is ultimate and basic: it is wisdom and its domain is being. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Lonergan über Coreth (Gilson): Vollzug (performance); Magen - Schachtel (stomache - box)

Kurzinhalt: ... he begins, not from statement, but from a performance, a Vollzug, asking questions; Nihil in intellectu nisi prius fuerit in sensu

Textausschnitt: 199b However, if Fr Coreth grants that statements have a meaning only within a horizon, how can he escape the dogmatism that Prof. Gilson believes inevitable? The answer is that he begins, not from statement, but from a performance, a Vollzug, asking questions. It is a performance that begins early in childhood and is continued even by an Aquinas until a higher form of knowledge supervenes. No doubt, that performance will be interpreted or overlooked in different manners when assumed within different horizons; but it is given to be interpreted or overlooked whether or not it is assumed. Nor can any doubt be entertained about the fact of the performance. To doubt questioning is to ask whether questions occur. The condition of the possibility of doubting is the occurrence of questioning. Fr Coreth, then, begins from a clearly known, universally accessible, indubitable occurrence. (Fs) (notabene)

200b Now the determination of the two poles is the determination of a horizon, and it is easy to see that Fr Coreth's horizon is total and basic. It is total, for beyond being there is nothing. It is basic, for a total horizon is basic; it cannot be transcended, gone beyond, and so it cannot be revised. (Fs)

200c But further, for Fr Coreth being is precisely what St Thomas meant by being. For as intended in questioning, being is unrestricted. In that premise there is already included the conclusion that esse de se est illimitatum, whence it will follow that finite being is a compound of essence and existence and that every ens is an ens by its relations to esse. (Fs)

200d From this it would seem to follow that being for Fr Coreth and being for Prof. Gilson must be exactly the same. For Prof. Gilson also means by being what St Thomas meant. It remains that this identification is not without its difficulties, for if the objective pole in Fr Coreth's horizon is the same as the objective pole in Prof. Gilson's, the subjective poles are manifestly different. (Fs)

200e Thus Fr Coreth would accept the principle, Nihil in intellectu nisi prius fuerit in sensu. But he would have to distinguish, say, between the way there is nothing in a box and the way there is nothing in a stomach. When there is nothing in a box, a box does not feel empty; when there is nothing in a stomach, the stomach does feel empty. Human intelligence is more like a stomach than like a box. Though it has no answers, and so is empty, still it can ask questions. (Fs)

200g Again, for Prof. Gilson, our knowledge of being is a posteriori: abstract concepts of being and existence are had by abstracting from sense; and to reach the concrete there is added to the abstractions his intellectual vision. But for Fr Coreth, being is an a priori, i.e., the intention of being in questioning bears no resemblance to sensitive or empirical knowledge. What is perceived is not unknown, not to be known, but already known. But being as intended in questioning is the exact opposite of the object of perception: it is not already known; it is unknown; it is to be known. In other words, the analysis of questioning forces one to conceive human intelligence, not on the analogy of sense, but properly in terms of intelligence itself. (Fs)
201a Moreover, we have seen that Fr Coreth rejects the idealist's acceptance of idealism as contradictory, that Prof. Gilson regards idealism as non-contradictory, that consequently he is left with a problem of a bridge from a concept of l'etre en general to an existence concrete, actuelle, extra-mentale, and that, inevitably enough, this bridge has to be an intellectual perception of existence. This narrative, it would seem, enables us to pick the exact point at which Prof. Gilson and Fr Coreth part company. Both agree that idealism is noncontradictory. But where Fr Coreth maintains that the idealist's acceptance of idealism is contradictory, and so eliminates the problem of the bridge, Prof. Gilson acknowledges a problem of a bridge and so arrives at his need for an intellectual perception of being. Hence, being can be a priori for Fr Coreth, because for him the idealist is involved in self-contradiction; but being must be a posteriori for Prof. Gilson, because for him idealism is not self-contradictory. (Fs)

201b Finally, there remains the question how Fr Coreth and Prof. Gilson both arrive at the same objective pole, being in the Thomist sense, when their subjective poles are mutually exclusive. The explanation would seem to be that, if Prof. Gilson does not thematize questioning, nonetheless he asks questions and so intends what is intended in questioning; further, while Prof. Gilson asserts an intellectual perception of existence, still he is careful to integrate this perception within the structure of Thomist cognitional theory, and so is able to shift from a theory of being as something seen in data to a theory of being as something affirmed in perceptual judgments of existence. Hence, inasmuch as Prof. Gilson asks questions and gives rational answers, his position coincides with that of Fr Coreth, and as the subjective poles are the same so the objective poles are the same. On the other hand, if Prof. Gilson were to operate simply and solely with a concept of being that can be 'seen' in any sensible datum, not only would his subjective pole differ from Fr Coreth's but also it would be impossible for him to reach being in the Thomist sense as his objective pole; for being as object of perception is being in which essence and existence are only notionally distinct. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Offenheit als Tatsache, Haltung und Geschenk (Lonergan, Aristoteles, Thomas), Staunen; unbegrenztes Streben; gratia sanans, elevans

Kurzinhalt: unrestricted desire to know; Openness as a fact is the pure desire to know; Openness as achievement is the self in its self-appropriation and self-realization;

Textausschnitt: 186a The basic orientation,d finally, is the pure, detached, disinterested, and unrestricted desire to know. I should note that this desire, when it is functioning, is no less immediate than the levels of consciousness when they are functioning. (Fs) (notabene)

3 Opennesse as (1) fact, (2) achievement, (3) gift.

186b Openness as a fact is the pure desire to know. It is, when functioning, immediately given. It is referred to by Aristotle when he speaks of the wonder that is the beginning of all science and philosophy. f It is referred to by Aquinas when he speaks of the natural desire to know God by his essence. (Fs) (notabene)

186c Openness as an achievement has two aspects. In its more fundamental aspect it regards the subject, the noEsis, the pense pensante. Here stages towards its acquisition are communicated or objectified in precepts, methods, criticism. Achievement itself arises when the actual orientation of consciousness coincides with the exigences of the pure, detached, disinterested, unrestricted desire to know. (Fs) (notabene)
186d But openness as achievement also has a consequent aspect that regards the object, the noEma, the pense pense. For the pure desire to function fully, to dominate consciousness, there are needed not only precepts, methods, criticism, but also a formulated view of our knowledge and of the reality our knowledge can attain. Thus I should maintain that the crop of philosophies produced since the Enlightenment are not open to revealed truths because they possess no adequate account of truth. (Fs) (notabene)
I have spoken of openness as (1) fact and (2) achievement. (Fs)

186e As fact, it is an intrinsic component in man's makeup. But as fact it does not consistently and completely dominate human consciousness. (Fs)

186f It is a fact to which man has to advert, which he has to acknowledge and accept, whose implications for all his thinking and acting have to be worked out and successfully applied to actual thinking and actual acting. (Fs) (notabene)

186g Hence, besides openness as primordial fact, there also is openness as achievement. The history of religion, of science, of philosophy in all their vicissitudes is the history of such achievement. (Fs) (notabene)

But there is also openness as a gift, as an effect of divine grace. (Fs)

186h Man's natural openness is complete. The pure desire is unrestricted. It inquires into everything, and asks everything about everything. (Fs)

The correlative to the pure desire is 'being,' omnia, at once completely universal and completely concrete. (Fs) (notabene)

186k Nonetheless, there is a contrast, almost an antinomy, between the primordial fact and achievement, for the primordial fact is no more than a principle of possible achievement, a definition of the ultimate horizon that is to be reached only through successive enlargements of the actual horizon. (Fs) (notabene)

187a But such successive enlargements only too clearly lie under some law of decreasing returns. No one ever believed that the world would be converted by philosophy. In the language at once of scripture and of a current philosophy, man is fallen. There is then a need of openness as a gift, as an effect of grace, where grace is taken as gratia sanans. (Fs) (notabene)

187b Further, the successive enlargements of the actual horizon fall into two classes. There are the enlargements implicit in the very structure of human consciousness, the enlargements that are naturally possible to man. But there is also an ultimate enlargement, beyond the resources of every finite consciousness, where there enters into clear view God as unknown, when the subject knows God face to face, knows as he is known. This ultimate enlargement alone approximates to the possibility of openness defined by the pure desire; as well, it is an openness as a gift, as an effect of grace and, indeed, of grace not as merely sanans but as elevans, as lumen gloriae. (Fs) (notabene)

4 Openness and religious experience.g

187c The three aspects of openness are to be related. Openness as fact is for openness as gift; and openness as achievement rises from the fact, and conditions and, at the same time, is conditioned by the gift. (Fs)

187d But openness as fact is the inner self, the self as ground of all higher aspiration. (Fs)
Openness as achievement is the self in its self-appropriation and self-realization. (Fs)
Openness as gift is the self entering into personal relationship with God. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Definition: dynamische Struktur; materiell, formal, dynamisch

Kurzinhalt: Each part is what it is in virtue of its functional relations to other parts; The whole itself may be self-assembling, d self-constituting; then it is formally dynamic. It is a dynamic structure

Textausschnitt: 205d A whole, then, has parts. The whole is related to each of the parts, and each of the parts is related to the other parts and to the whole. (Fs)

206a Not every whole is a structure. When one thinks of a whole, there may come to mind some conventional quantity or arbitrary collection whose parts are determined by an equally conventional or arbitrary division. In such a case, e.g., a gallon of milk, the closed set of relations between whole and parts will be a no less arbitrary jumble of arithmetic ratios. But it may also happen that the whole one thinks of is some highly organized product of nature or art. Then the set of internal relations c is of the greatest significance. Each part is what it is in virtue of its functional relations to other parts; there is no part that is not determined by the exigences of other parts; and the whole possesses a certain inevitability in its unity, so that the removal of any part would destroy the whole, and the addition of any further part would be ludicrous. Such a whole is a structure. (Fs)

207a The parts of a whole may be things, bricks, timbers, glass, rubber, chrome. But the parts may also be activities, as in a song, a dance, a chorus, a symphony, a drama. Such a whole is dynamic materially. But dynamism may not be restricted to the parts. The whole itself may be self-assembling, d self-constituting; then it is formally dynamic. It is a dynamic structure. (Fs)-

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Unterschied: Bewusstsein und Selbst-Erkenntnis (Consciousness and Self-knowledge)

Kurzinhalt: ... distinction between consciousness and self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is the reduplicated structure

Textausschnitt: 208a Where knowing is a structure, knowing knowing must be a reduplication of the structure. Thus if knowing is just looking, then knowing knowing will be looking at looking. But if knowing is a conjunction of experience, understanding, and judging, then knowing knowing has to be a conjunction of (1) experiencing experience, understanding and judging, (2) understanding one's experience of experience, understanding, and judging, and (3) judging one's understanding of experience, understanding, and judging to be correct. (Fs) (notabene)

208b On the latter view there follows at once a distinction between consciousness and self-knowledge.f Self-knowledge is the reduplicated structure: it is experience, understanding, and judging with respect to experience, understanding, and judging. Consciousness, on the other hand, is not knowing knowing but merely experience of knowing, experience, that is, of experiencing, of understanding, and of judging. (Fs) (notabene)

208c Secondly, it follows that all cognitional activities may be conscious yet none or only some may be known. So it is, in fact, that both acts of seeing and acts of understanding occur consciously, yet most people know what seeing is and most are mystified when asked what understanding is. (Fs) (notabene)

208d Thirdly, it follows that different cognitional activities are not equally accessible.g Experience is of the given. Experience of seeing is to be had only when one actually is seeing. Experience of insight is to be had only when one actually is having an insight. But one has only to open one's eyes and one will see; one has only to open and close one's eyes a number of times to alternate the experience of seeing and of not seeing. Insights, on the other hand, cannot be turned on and off in that fashion. To have an insight, one has to be in the process of learning or, at least, one has to reenact in oneself previous processes of learning. While that is not peculiarly difficult, it does require (1) the authenticity that is ready to get down to the elements of a subject, (2) close attention to instances of one's own understanding and, equally, one's failing to understand, and (3) the repeated use of personal experiments in which, at first, one is genuinely puzzled and then catches on. (Fs)
Kommentar (05/31/05): Interessant unten: Unterschied in der Erfahrung von Intelligenz und Rationalitt.

209a Fourthly, because human knowing is a structure of different activities, experience of human knowing is qualitatively differentiated. When one is reflecting, weighing the evidence, judging, one is experiencing one's own rationality. When one is inquiring, understanding, conceiving, thinking, one is experiencing one's own intelligence. When one is seeing or hearing, touching or tasting, one is experiencing one's own sensitivity. Just as rationality is quite different from intelligence, so the experience of one's rationality is quite different from the experience of one's intelligence; and just as intelligence is quite different from sensitivity, so the experience of one's intelligence is quite different from the experience of one's sensitivity. Indeed, since consciousness is of the acting subject qua acting, the experience of one's rationality is identical with one's rationality bringing itself to act; the experience of one's intelligence is identical with one's bringing one's intelligence to act; and the experiencing of one's sensitivity is identical with one's sensitivity coming to act. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Erfahrung: innere, äußere

Kurzinhalt: external experience may be of spatial objects, it itself is not a spatial object and, still less, is internal experience

Textausschnitt: 209b Fifthly, then, experience commonly is divided into external and internal. External experience is of sights and sounds, of odors and tastes, of the hot and cold, hard and soft, rough and smooth, wet and dry. Internal experience is of oneself and one's apprehensive and appetitive activities. Still, if the meaning of the distinction is clear, the usage of the adjectives, internal and external, calls for explanation. Strictly, only spatial objects are internal or external and, while external experience may be of spatial objects, it itself is not a spatial object and, still less, is internal experience. Accordingly, we must ask what is the original datum that has been expressed by a spatial metaphor;h and to that end we draw attention to different modes of presence. (Fs)

209c There is material presence, in which no knowing is involved, and such is the presence of the statue in the courtyard. There is intentional presence, in which knowing is involved, and it is of two quite distinct kinds. There is the presence of the object to the subject, of the spectacle to the spectator; there is also the presence of the subject to himself, and this is not the presence of another object dividing his attention, of another spectacle distracting the spectator; it is presence in, as it were, another dimension, presence concomitant and correlative and opposite to the presence of the object. Objects are present by being attended to; but subjects are present as subjects, not by being attended to, but by attending. As the parade of objects marches by, spectators do not have to slip into the parade to become present to themselves; they have to be present to themselves for anything to be present to them; and they are present to themselves by the same watching that, as it were, at its other pole makes the parade present to them. (Fs)

210a I have been attempting to describe the subject's presence to himself. But the reader, if he tries to find himself as subject, to reach back and, as it were, uncover his subjectivity, cannot succeed. Any such effort is introspecting, attending to the subject; and what is found is, not the subject as subject, but only the subject as object; it is the subject as subject that does the finding. To heighten one's presence to oneself, one does not introspect; one raises the level of one's activity.1 If one sleeps and dreams, one is present to oneself as the frightened dreamer. If one wakes, one becomes present to oneself, not as moved but as moving, not as felt but as feeling, not as seen but as seeing. If one is puzzled and wonders and inquires, the empirical subject becomes an intellectual subject as well. If one reflects and considers the evidence, the empirical and intellectual subject becomes a rational subject, an incarnate reasonableness. If one deliberates and chooses, one has moved to the level of the rationally conscious, free, responsible subject that by his choices makes himself what he is to be and his world what it is to be. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Objektivität als innere Relation von Wissen zu Sein; Identität von Sein und Realität; intentio intendens, intenta; noesis, noema

Kurzinhalt: that knowledge is intrinsically objective, that objectivity is the intrinsic relation of knowing to being, and that being and reality are identical.

Textausschnitt: The Epistemological Theorem

211a At this point one may ask why knowing should result from the performance of such immanent activities as experiencing, understanding, and judging. This brings us to the epistemological theorem,j namely, that knowledge in the proper sense is knowledge of reality or, more fully, that knowledge is intrinsically objective, that objectivity is the intrinsic relation of knowing to being, and that being and reality are identical. (Fs)

211b The intrinsic objectivity of human cognitional activity is its intentionality. Nor need this intentionality be inferred, for it is the dominant content of the dynamic structure that assembles and unites several activities into a single knowing of a single object. Human intelligence actively greets every content of experience with the perplexity, the wonder, the drive, the intention, that may be thematized by (but does not consist in) such questions as, What is it? Why is it so? Inquiry through insight issues forth in thought that, when scrutinized, becomes formulated in definitions, postulates, suppositions, hypotheses, theories. Thought in turn is actively greeted by human rationality with a reflective exigence that, when thematized, is expressed in such questions as, Is that so? Are you certain? All marshaling and weighing of evidence, all judging and doubting, are efforts to say of what is that it is and of what is not that it is not. Accordingly, the dynamic structure of human knowing intends being. That intention is unrestricted, for there is nothing that we cannot at least question. The same intention is comprehensive, for questioning probes every aspect of everything; its ultimate goal is the universe in its full concreteness. Being in that sense is identical with reality: as apart from being there is nothing, so apart from reality there is nothing; as being embraces the concrete totality of everything, so too does reality. (Fs) (notabene)

211c This intrinsic relation of the dynamic structure of human knowing to being and so to reality primarily is not pense pense but pense pensante, not intentio intenta but intentio intendens, not noEma but noEsis. It is the originating drive of human knowing. Consciously, intelligently, rationally it goes beyond: beyond data to intelligibility; beyond intelligibility to truth and through truth to being; and beyond known truth and being to the truth and being still to be known. But though it goes beyond, it does not leave behind. It goes beyond to add, and when it has added, it unites. It is the active principle that calls forth in turn our several cognitional activities and, as it assembles them into single instances of knowing, so it assembles their many partial objects into single total objects. By inquiry it moves us from sensing to understanding only to combine the sensed and understood into an object of thought. By reflection it moves us from objects of thought through rationally compelling evidence to judgments about reality. From the partial knowledge we have reached it sends us back to fuller experiencing, fuller understanding, broader and deeper judgments, for what it intends includes far more than we succeed in knowing. It is all-inclusive, but the knowing we achieve is always limited. (Fs) (notabene)

212a As answers stand to questions, so cognitional activities stand to the intention of being. But an answer is to a question, because it and the question have the same object. So it is that the intrinsic relation of the dynamic structure of human knowing passes from the side of the subject to the side of the object, that the intentio intendens of being becomes the intentio intenta of this or that being. So the question, What's this? promotes the datum of sense to a 'this' that has a 'what-ness' and 'is.' The promotion settles no issues, but it does raise issues. It is neither knowledge nor ignorance of essence and existence, but it is the intention of both. What the essence is and whether that essence exists are, not answers, but questions. Still, the questions have been raised, and the very fact of raising them settles what the answers will have to be about. The intentio intendens of the subject summons forth and unites cognitional activities to objectify itself in an intentio intenta that unites and is determined by the partial objects of the partial activities. As the intentio intendens of the dynamic structure, so the corresponding intentio intenta of the structured cognitional activities is intrinsically related to being and reality. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: intentio intendens: Objektivität in Potenz; intentio intenta: Objektivität in actu; Frage u. Antwort transzendieren das Subjekt

Kurzinhalt: Empiricists, Rationalists; objectivity of human knowing is a triple cord; the conditions of the conditioned may be fulfilled, and then the conditioned is virtually an unconditioned

Textausschnitt: 212b It remains that the two relations are not identical. The intentio intendens is not knowing but merely intending: it is objectivity in potency. But the intentio intenta resides not in mere intending but in structured activities of knowing: it is objectivity in act. Moreover, objectivity in act, because it resides not in a single operation but in a structured manifold of operations, is not some single property of human knowing but a compound of quite different properties. Empiricists have tried to find the ground of objectivity in experience, rationalists have tried to place it in necessity, idealists have had recourse to coherence. All are partly right and partly wrong, right in their affirmation, but mistaken in their exclusion. For the objectivity of human knowing is a triple cord; there is an experiential component that resides in the givenness of relevant data; there is a normative component that resides in the exigences of intelligence and rationality guiding the process of knowing from data to judging; there finally is an absolute component that is reached when reflective understanding combines the normative and the experiential elements into a virtually unconditioned, i.e., a conditioned whose conditions are fulfilled. (Fs) (notabene)

213a The objectivity of human knowing, then, rests upon an unrestricted intention and an unconditioned result. Because the intention is unrestricted, it is not restricted to the immanent content of knowing, to Bewusstseinsinhalte; at least, we can ask whether there is anything beyond that, and the mere fact that the question can be asked reveals that the intention which the question manifests is not limited by any principle of immanence. But answers are to questions, so that if questions are transcendent, so also must be the meaning of corresponding answers. If I am asked whether mice and men really exist, I am not answering the question when I talk about images of mice and men, concepts of mice and men, or the words, mice and men; I answer the question only if I affirm or deny the real existence of mice and men. Further, true answers express an unconditioned. Mice and men are contingent, and so their existence has its conditions. My knowing mice and men is contingent, and so my knowing of their existence has its conditions. But the conditions of the conditioned may be fulfilled, and then the conditioned is virtually an unconditioned; it has the properties of an unconditioned, not absolutely, but de facto. Because human knowing reaches such an unconditioned, it transcends itself. For the unconditioned qua unconditioned cannot be restricted, qualified, limited; and so we all distinguish sharply between what is and, on the other hand, what appears, what seems to be, what is imagined or thought or might possibly or probably be affirmed; in the latter cases the object is still tied down by relativity to the subject; in the former the self-transcendence of human knowing has come to its term; when we say that something is, we mean that its reality does not depend upon our cognitional activity. (Fs)

213b The possibility of human knowing, then, is an unrestricted intention that intends the transcendent, and a process of self-transcendence that reaches it. The unrestricted intention directs the process to being; the attainment of the unconditioned reveals that at some point being has been reached. So, quite manifestly, a grasp of dynamic structure is essential to a grasp of the objectivity of our knowing. Without the dynamism one may speak of concepts of being, affirmations of being, even the idea of being; but unfailingly one overlooks the overarching intention of being which is neither concept nor affirmation nor idea.1 Again, without the structure there is no place for three quite different elements of objectivity and no thought of a third resulting from a reflective understanding of the other two; yet the empiricists are right in their insistence on data, for in the givenness of data resides the experiential component of objectivity; there is something to the idealist insistence on coherence, for in the directive exigences of intelligence and rationality there resides the normative component of objectivity; and there is something to the rationalist insistence on necessity, for a conditioned whose conditions are fulfilled is virtually an unconditioned, and reflective understanding grasps such a virtually unconditioned whenever it finds the fulfilment of conditions in the data of sense or consciousness and, at the same time, derives from normative objectivity the link that binds conditions with conditioned. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Gegenpositionen (counterpositions); treffende Charakteristik: der naive Realist; Idealist

Kurzinhalt: The generalization contains two elements, one positive, and the other negative; The idealist is not impressed ...; Denken to Anschauen

Textausschnitt: Counterpositions Criticized

214a The alternative to distinguishing is confusion.k We have been engaged in distinguishing between human knowing and its component elements and between the objectivity of human knowing and the objectivity proper to different components in human knowing. When, however, the distinctions are not drawn, confusion easily if not inevitably occurs. (Fs)

214b From the viewpoint of the validity of human knowing, such confusions may be divided into two classes that are dialectically related. The naive realist correctly asserts the validity of human knowing, but mistakenly attributes the objectivity of human knowing, not to human knowing, but to some component in human knowing. The idealist, on the other hand, correctly refutes the naive-realist claim that the whole objectivity of human knowing is found in some component of human knowing, but mistakenly concludes that human knowing does not yield valid knowledge of reality. The strength of the naive-realist position is its confidence in the validity of human knowing; its weakness is its inability to learn. On the other hand, the strength of the idealist position is the sharpness with which it refutes the mistaken claims of naive realists; its weakness is its inability to break completely with the confusions introduced by naive realism. (Fs) (notabene)

215a If theoretically this dialectical process could begin from any confusion, commonly its starting point is the myth that knowing is looking. Jack or Jill is invited to raise a hand and to look at it. The hand is really out there; it is the object. The eye, strangely, is not in the hand; it is some distance away in the head; it is the subject. The eye really sees the hand; it sees what is there to be seen; it does not see what is not there to be seen. That is objectivity. (Fs) (notabene)

215b Once the essence of objectivity has been grasped in this dramatic instance, there follow generalization and deduction. The generalization contains two elements, one positive, and the other negative. The positive element in the generalization is that any cognitional activity that sufficiently resembles ocular vision must be objective; for if it sufficiently resembles ocular vision, one can grasp the essence of objectivity in it no less than in ocular vision; and an activity that possesses the essence of objectivity must be objective. The negative element is that any cognitional activity that does not sufficiently resemble ocular vision cannot be objective; for it lacks what is essential to objectivity; of itself, therefore, any such activity is merely immanent; it may have some subordinate or derivative role to play in human knowing, particularly when knowing is not immediate but mediate; but from the nature of the case it can make no proper contribution to the objectivity of human knowing, for of itself it has nothing to contribute. (Fs) (notabene)

215c The positive and negative elements of the generalization provide a basis whence one can deduce what human knowing must be and what it cannot be. With such premises to hand, one does not have to bother too much about cognitional fact. The analogy of ocular vision reveals what intellectual activity must be like if it is objective; it must be like seeing. Even if introspection discovers no intellectual activity that resembles seeing, still some such activity really must exist; for if it did not, then our intellectual activity would be merely immanent, and idealism would be correct; but the conclusion is false, and therefore the premise must be false. Again, no serious difficulty arises from the fact that introspection brings to light intellectual activities that do not resemble seeing; it is true that such activities make no contribution of their own to the objectivity of human knowing; they are not constitutive of our immediate knowledge or our knowledge by acquaintance; but they can perform some useful function in the subordinate and derivative parts of our knowing, in our mediate knowledge or our knowledge by description. Just what these functions are, of course, is somewhat obscure; but we may with confidence look forward to the time when sound and sane study and research will have cleared up these extraordinarily difficult and complicated problems. In the meantime, however, we have complete certitude with regard to the essentials of the matter. Knowing, if objective, is like seeing. We know that we know, and so, in some analogous sense of the word, see, we see our knowing. We know the truth of our knowing; but truth is the correspondence of the knowing to the known; therefore, in some analogous sense of the word, see, we see the correspondence of our knowing to the known. Finally, science is of the universal; but scientific knowledge is at least possible; therefore, in some analogous sense of the word, see, we see universals. (Fs) (notabene)

216a The idealist is not impressed. He feels that the distinction between appearance and reality has been overlooked. By appearance he does not mean any illusion or hallucination. He means precisely what Jack or Jill really does see: the shape of an outstretched hand, its color, the lines that mark it, its position out there in front of the head. He is willing to add what Jack and Jill do not see: the feelings inside the hand and the conjunction in ordinary experience of the feelings with the visible object. All of that is not reality but appearance. And by reality he means what is meant by Jack, Jill, and the naive realist. Such is his thesis, and he argues as follows. (Fs) (notabene)
216b When I lift a lump of lead, I may report either that the lead is heavy or that the lead feels heavy. When I gaze out my window at a green field, I may report either that the field is green or that the field looks green. Such alternative reports are not equivalent. When I say 'is heavy' or 'is green,' I am using language that purports to report the real properties of real things. When I say 'feels heavy' or 'looks green,' I am not committing myself to any statement about the objective properties of things but, on the contrary, am limiting my statement to impressions made on me. Hence it is quite possible for one to say that, while he does not know whether or not the field really is green, at least it appears green to him. Knowledge of appearance, then, is one thing; and knowledge of reality is another. (Fs) (notabene)

216c Now what does Jack know when he looks at his hand? What does Jill know when she looks at hers? Two answers are possible, so Jack may say that his hand is out there in front of his face, and Jill may say that her hand at least seems to be out there in front of her face. Nor is the difference between the two answers difficult to detect. When Jack says 'is,' he is not reporting what he knows by sight alone; he also has made a judgment; he has added Denken to Anschauen. When Jill says 'seems,' she is limiting her report to what is known by sight alone; the act of reporting involves thought and judgment; but what is reported is simply and solely what is known by her seeing, the appearance of a hand in front of her face. (Fs) (notabene)

217a No less than the naive realist, the idealist is capable of generalization and deduction. As sight, so also hearing, smelling, tasting, touching are constitutive, not of knowledge of reality, but only of knowledge of appearances. What is true of outer sense also is true of inner sense: by our consciousness we know, not our reality, but only its appearance. Hence, when we inquire, understand, think, we have only appearances to investigate, to understand, to think about. When we judge, our judgments must be based, not on things themselves, but only on their appearance. There is no way in which knowledge of reality could creep into our cognitional operations. Hence all our statements must be modified with the qualification, 'as far as appearances go.' To say that men commonly do not add that qualification or that they are not ready to admit it even when its necessity is demonstrated, is just another way of saying that they suffer from a transcendental illusion. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Der kritische Realist; Denken in Bildern; Bilderwelt - Ausstreckung auf das Sein (intention of being)

Kurzinhalt: ... objective knowledge of reality in looking, perceiving, Anschauung? It is because their world is a picture world. If their world were the universe of being ...; ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem

Textausschnitt: 218a Against the idealist of the type in question the critical realist maintains that sense does not know appearances. It is just as much a matter of judgment to know that an object is not real but apparent, as it is to know that an object is not apparent but real. Sense does not know appearances, because sense alone is not human knowing, and because sense alone does not possess the full objectivity of human knowing. By our senses we are given, not appearance, not reality, but data. By our consciousness, which is not an inner sense, we are given, not appearance, not reality, but data. Further, while it is true enough that data of sense result in us from the action of external objects, it is not true that we know this by sense alone; we know it as we know anything else, by experiencing, understanding, and judging. Again, it is not true that it is from sense that our cognitional activities derive their immediate relationship to real objects; that relationship is immediate in the intention of being; it is mediate in the data of sense and in the data of consciousness inasmuch as the intention of being makes use of data in promoting cognitional process to knowledge of being; similarly, that relationship is mediate in understanding and thought and judgment, because these activities stand to the originating intention of being as answers stand to questions. (Fs)

218b Finally, against both the naive realist and the idealist of the types in question, the critical realist urges the charge of picture thinking. Why does the naive realist ground objective knowledge of reality in looking, perceiving, Anschauung? Why does the idealist assert that it is by Anschauung that our cognitional activities have their immediate relationship to objects?1 It is because their world is a picture world. If their world were the universe of being, they would agree that the original relationship of cognitional activity to the universe of being must lie in the intention of being. But their world is a picture world; the original relationship of cognitional activity to the picture is the look; and so it is in looking that the naive realist finds revealed the essence of objectivity, and it is in Anschauung that the critical idealist places the immediate relation of cognitional activity to objects. There exists, then, something like a forgetfulness of being. There exists in man a need for an intellectual conversion ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Seinsvergessenheit -> Umdeutung der Subjektivität u. Objektivität (abwertend); Gemeinschaft

Kurzinhalt: The forgetfulness of being ... has brought about a semantic reversal. Subjectivity once was a pejorative term; praise of subjectivity seems to imply a condemnation of objectivity

Textausschnitt: Knowing and Living

219a The forgetfulness of being, manifested by naive realists and idealists,l has brought about a semantic reversal. Subjectivity once was a pejorative term;111 it denoted a violation of the normative exigences of intelligence and rationality. But it has come to denote a rejection of misconceived objectivity and a reaffirmation of man's right to be himself even though he cannot untie the hard and intricate knots of philosophy. (Fs)

219b This new usage is not without its own myth, in which Jack and Jill are concerned, not with their hands, but with one another. They look, of course, but much more they talk. They are not merely objects, but also subjects: an 'I' and 'thou' that add up to the single personal total of 'us' talking about 'ourselves' and what 'we' have done and shall do. (Fs) (notabene)

219c Objectivity, as misconceived, is transcended. The problem of the bridge from 'in here' to 'out there' tends to vanish when the whole stress falls on the interpersonal situation,n the psychic interchange of mutual presence, the beginnings of what may prove to be a lifelong union. (Fs) (notabene)

219d Objectivity, as correctly conceived, is by no means rejected. For Jack and Jill are not characters out of a social worker's casebook. They are neither unperceptive, nor stupid, nor silly. If they were, acquaintance would not blossom into friendship, nor friendship into intimacy. (Fs)

219e Still, this recognition of objectivity is only implicit, and, above all, it is not objective knowing but human living o that is the main point. To understand the myth, one has to move beyond strictly cognitional levels of empirical, intellectual, and rational consciousness to the more inclusive level of rational self-consciousness.p Though being and the good are coextensive, the subject moves to a further dimension of consciousness as his concern shifts from knowing being to realizing the good. Now there emerge freedom and responsibility, encounter and trust, communication and belief, choice and promise and fidelity. On this level subjects both constitute themselves and make their world. On this level men are responsible, individually, for the lives they lead and, collectively, for the world in which they lead them. It is in this collective responsibility for common or complementary action that resides the principal constituent of the collective subject referred to by 'we,' 'us,' 'ourselves,' 'ours.' (Fs) (notabene)
Kommentar (06/11/05): Wichtige Stelle oben -> Gemeinschaft
219f The condition of possibility of the collective subject is communication, and the principal communication is not saying what we know but showing what we are. To say what one knows presupposes the labor of coming to know. But to show what one is, it is enough to be it; showing will follow; every movement, every word, every deed, reveal what the subject is. They reveal it to others, and the others, in the self-revelation that is their response, obliquely reveal to the intelligent subject what he is. In the main it is not by introspection but by reflecting on our living in common with others that we come to know ourselves. (Fs)

220a What is revealed? It is an original creation. Freely the subject makes himself what he is; never in this life is the making finished; always it is still in process, always it is a precarious achievement that can slip and fall and shatter. Concern with subjectivity, then, is concern with the intimate reality of man. It is concern, not with the universal truths that hold whether a man is asleep or awake, not with the interplay of natural factors and determinants, but with the perpetual novelty of self-constitution, of free choices making the chooser what he is. (Fs)

220b Further aspects of the significance of subjectivity are endless, for the intimate reality of man grounds and penetrates all that is human. But the point to be made here is, not to go on insisting on this significance which, commonly enough, is recognized, but to draw attention to a real danger inherent in the semantic reversal that we have noted. For the danger is that the values of subjectivity in its more recent sense will be squandered by subjectivity in its prior and pejorative sense. Unless the two meanings are sharply distinguished, praise of subjectivity seems to imply a condemnation of objectivity. But condemnation of objectivity induces, not a merely incidental blind spot in one's vision, but a radical undermining of authentic human existence. (Fs) (notabene)

220c It is quite true that objective knowing is not yet authentic human living; but without objective knowing there is no authentic living; for one knows objectively just insofar as one is neither unperceptive, nor stupid, nor silly; and one does not live authentically inasmuch as one is either unperceptive or stupid or silly. (Fs)

220d It is quite true that the subject communicates not by saying what he knows but by showing what he is, and it is no less true that subjects are confronted with themselves more effectively by being confronted with others than by solitary introspection. But such facts by themselves only ground a technique for managing people; and managing people is not treating them as persons. To treat them as persons one must know and one must invite them to know. A real exclusion of objective knowing, so far from promoting, only destroys personalist values. (Fs)

221a It is quite true that concern for subjectivity promotes as much objective knowing as men commonly feel ready to absorb. Authentic living includes objective knowing, and far more eagerly do human beings strive for the whole than for the part. Nonetheless it remains that the authentic living of anyone reading this paper, though it must start at home, cannot remain confined within the horizons of the home, the workshop, the village. We are citizens of our countries, men of the twentieth century, members of a universal church. If any authenticity we achieve is to radiate out into our troubled world, we need much more objective knowing than men commonly feel ready to absorb. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Unterschied: Subjekt - Substanz; Drifter

Kurzinhalt: The first distinction is between substance and subject; drifter

Textausschnitt: The Subject

222c
1 The first distinction is between substance and subject.g When one is sound asleep, one is actually a substance and only potentially a subject. To be a subject, one at least must dream. But the dreamer is only the minimal subject: one is more a subject when one is awake, still more when one is actively intelligent, still more when one actively is reasonable, still more in one's deliberations and decisions when one actively is responsible and free. (Fs)

223a Of the human substance it is true that human nature is always the same; a man is a man whether he is awake or asleep, young or old, sane or crazy, sober or drunk, a genius or a moron, a saint or a sinner. From the viewpoint of substance, those differences are merely accidental. But they are not accidental to the subject, for the subject is not an abstraction; he is a concrete reality, all of him, a being in the luminousness of being. (Fs)

223b Substance prescinds from the difference between the opaque being that is merely substance and the luminous beingh that is conscious. Subject denotes the luminous being. (Fs)

223c
2 The being of the subject is becoming. One becomes oneself. When I was a child, I was a subject; but I had not yet reached the use of reason; I was not expected to be able to draw reasonably the elementary distinctions between right and wrong, true and false. When I was a boy, I was a subject; but I was a minor; I had not reached the degree of freedom and responsibility that would make me accountable before the law. The self I am today is not numerically different from the self I was as a child or boy; yet it is qualitatively different. Were it not, you would not be listening to me. Were you yourselves not, I would not be talking to you in this way. (Fs)

223d
3 The subject has more and more to do with his own becoming. When an adult underestimates a child's development and tries to do for the child what the child can do for itself, the child will resent the interference and exclaim, 'Let me do it.' Development is a matter of increasing the number of things that one does for oneself, that one decides for oneself, that one finds out for oneself. Parents and teachers and professors and superiors let people do more and more for themselves, decide more and more for themselves, find out more and more for themselves. (Fs)

223e
4 There is a critical point in the increasing autonomy of the subject. It is reached when the subject finds out for himself that it is up to himself to decide what he is to make of himself.i At first sight doing for oneself, deciding for oneself, finding out for oneself, are busy with objects. But on reflection it appears that deeds, decisions, discoveries affect the subject more deeply than they affect the objects with which they are concerned. They accumulate as dispositions and habits of the subject; they determine him; they make him what he is and what he is to be. (Fs)

223f The self in the first period makes itself; but in a second period this making oneself is open-eyed, deliberate. Autonomy decides what autonomy is to be. (Fs)

224a The opposite to this open-eyed, deliberate self-control is drifting. The drifter has not yet found himself; he has not yet discovered his own deed, and so is content to do what everyone else is doing; he has not yet discovered his own will, and so he is content to choose what everyone else is choosing; he has not yet discovered a mind of his own, and so he is content to think and say what everyone else is thinking and saying; and the others too are apt to be drifters, each of them doing and choosing and thinking and saying what others happen to be doing, choosing, thinking, saying. (Fs)
224b I have spoken of an opposite to drifting, of autonomy disposing of itself, of open-eyed, deliberate self-control. But I must not misrepresent. We do not know ourselves very well; we cannot chart the future; we cannot control our environment completely or the influences that work on us; we cannot explore our unconscious and preconscious mechanisms. Our course is in the night; our control is only rough and approximate; we have to believe and trust, to risk and dare. (Fs)

224c
5 In this life the critical point is never transcended. It is one thing to decide what one is to make of oneself: a Catholic, a religious, a Jesuit, a priest. It is another to execute the decision. Today's resolutions do not predetermine the free choice of tomorrow, of next week or next year, of ten years from now. What has been achieved is always precarious: it can slip, fall, shatter. What is to be achieved can be ever expanding, deepening. To meet one challenge is to effect a development that reveals a further and graver challenge. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Sünde der Moderne: Selbstbestimmung als Fundament; Jaspers

Kurzinhalt: The sin of modernity ... It is the fully deliberate and permanently intended determination to be oneself

Textausschnitt: 228a ... From that enormous development the church has held off: it could praise the ends; it could not accept the means; and so it could not authentically participate in the process that eliminated the standardized man of classicist thought and ushered in the historical consciousness t of today. (Fs)

228b Modern man has created his states and his sciences, his philosophies and his histories, his cultures and his literatures, on the basis of absolute autonomy. There is human intelligence, human reasonableness, human responsibility, and that is all there is. To speak of God is at best irrelevant; to turn to God - except by way of political gesture or emotional outlet - is to sacrifice the good we know and by our own resources can attain. (Fs) (notabene)

228c Karl Jaspers repeats from Kierkegaard, or perhaps from Nietzsche, that unless I sinned, I could not be myself. The sin of modernity u is not any sin of frailty, any transient lapse, any lack of advertence or consent. It is the fully deliberate and permanently intended determination to be oneself, to attain the perfection proper to man, and to liberate humanity from the heavy hand of ecclesiastical tradition, ecclesiastical interference, ecclesiastical refusal to allow human beings to grow and be themselves. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Titel: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Stichwort: Erlösung - Sünde; komplexe Intelligibilität (imaginäre Zahlen)

Kurzinhalt: Sin is not something that is understood.... It is the irrationality of a rational creature. ... transcendent intelligibility of God meeting the unintelligibility of sin

Textausschnitt: 3.4 A Complex Intelligibility

12a Again, the redemption is not a simple but a complex intelligibility; and I use the word 'complex' in the sense that the mathematician speaks of 'complex numbers.' The mathematician uses not only rational but also irrational numbers, not only real numbers but also imaginary numbers. And everything goes well, provided he does not mix them up, provided he does not consider that they are all numbers in exactly the same sense and manner. Similarly with regard to the redemption, we must not think of it as something that will fall into a single intelligible pattern. There is in this world the unintelligibility of sin. Sin is not something that is understood. It is not something for which you can give a reason. Why did the angels sin? Why did our first parents sin? Strictly, if there were a reason why, not simply a pretense or an excuse, it would not have been a sin. Sin represents a surd. It is the irrationality of a rational creature. It is not something that arises because God wants it to arise. To think of it that way is to think of it as though it were something intelligible, something that admitted an explanation. Everything that is, everything that is intelligible, has an explanation. But sin is not something that is; it is a failure. It is not something that is intelligible; it is an irrational. And so St Thomas can say that God in no manner whatever wills the evil of guilt, that is, the pure element that is simply sin and nothing more. God in no manner whatever wills sin, and only indirectly does God will the evil of natural defects or of penalties, punishments. The divine will regards the good. The divine will permits sin. The divine will, as a consequence of willing an orderly universe, indirectly wills the accidents of natural defect and the natural consequences of sin. Consequently, in thinking about the redemption one must make an effort - and it requires an effort - to avoid the tendency to think that an explanation casts everything one can think of into a single intelligible pattern. It does that insofar as what one is considering is intelligible, has a reason. But the redemption regards sin, it presupposes sin, and it is the transformation of the situation created by sin. Consequently, in a consideration of the redemption one has to have in mind the existence not of a simple intelligibility but of the transcendent intelligibility of God meeting the
unintelligibility of sin. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Titel: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Stichwort: Erlösung; vielfältige Intelligibilität

Kurzinhalt: William of Auvergne; It is like an empirical law, not like a mathematical theory. In the second place, it is not a static but a dynamic intelligibility.And finally, it is not an intelligibility that can be put in a single formula ...

Textausschnitt: 13b Such, then, are the general characteristics, the precautions that one must take, I think, in seeking a total view of the redemption. There is an intelligibility to be grasped, but that intelligibility is not a necessity. It is an expression of what God thought wise, what God thought good, and that is intelligible, but it is not an expression of what simply had to be. It is like an empirical law, not like a mathematical theory. In the second place, it is not a static but a dynamic intelligibility. It has to do with the reversal of roles: the death that is the consequence of sin becomes the means of salvation. In the third place, it is not an abstract but an incarnate intelligibility. It resides in the love Christ manifested to us and the effects of that love on us. In the fourth place, it is not a simple but a complex intelligibility; it includes the surd. There are elements to it, namely sin, that are simply nonintelligible, and there are consequences to sin that have, as it were, a devaluated intelligibility. And finally, it is not an intelligibility that can be put in a single formula but one that exhibits many aspects. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Titel: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Stichwort: Erlösung; Opfer - Wortgebrauch: Septuaginta, klassisches Griechisch

Kurzinhalt: One meaning was used uniformly in the Septuagint, and the other in classical Greek. In classical Greek the word hilaskesthai means to placate the gods,

Textausschnitt: 15a First of all, the death of Christ is conceived as a sacrifice. That conception is recurrent in St Paul. 'Christ our Pasch has been sacrificed' (1 Corinthians 5.7). Again, 'Christ offered himself up as a sacrifice of sweet odor' (Ephesians 5.2). It occurs, implicitly at least, in the statements in the synoptic Gospels and in 1 Corinthians, chapter 11, on the institution of the Eucharist: 'This is my body which is given for you; this is my blood which is to be shed for you for the remission of sin.' But above all it is in the Epistle to the Hebrews that the death of Christ is presented as a sacrifice. Chapters 1 to 3 are devoted to presenting the new mediator between God and man. And a contrast is set up with Moses, who gave the old law. Chapters 5 and 7 are concerned with the new priesthood, chapter 8 with the new covenant, the new testament, chapters 9 and 10 with the sacrifice of the new law, which is the sacrifice of the death of Christ and the perpetual intercession of Christ for us before God. To go into details of the conception of the death of Christ as a sacrifice would be an enormous task. I could not even begin to enumerate the texts of the scripture relevant to it. But it is a conception of which no doubt whatever can be entertained by a Catholic. (Fs)

15b However, the precise sense in which there is a sacrifice raises a question that has to do with the meaning of the Greek word hilaskesthai. On the meaning of that word, C.H. Dodd, a professor at Cambridge University, in The Journal of Theological Studies, about 1931, drew attention to the fact that the usage of the word in classical Greek was quite different from that in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint. The root of the word permitted two different meanings. One meaning was used uniformly in the Septuagint, and the other in classical Greek. In classical Greek the word hilaskesthai means to placate the gods, to avert their anger or vengeance. In the Septuagint, hilaskesthai conveys the meaning of something that removes sin, that puts aside a barrier that prevents man's access to God. As you can see, the nuance in the different meanings of hilaskesthai has considerable difference of implications for religious thought and religious feeling. The implications for the interpretation of the New Testament in some aspects are quite certain, in others less so. A clear example of hilaskesthai used in the sense of the removal of sins occurs in Hebrews 2.17, where it is stated that Christ became priest in order to hilaskesthai the sins of the people - in the Vulgate propitiaret delicta populi. Hilaskesthai is an action exercised upon sin, and that is the Septuagint meaning of the word. It is not an action exercised upon the feelings of a god, as in the rites of pagan Greece. (Fs) (notabene)
16a Another point to be noted about the interpretation or understanding of the redemption, the death and resurrection of Christ, in terms of sacrifice is that, on the one hand, the connection of sacrifice with liturgy, with prayer, with the piety of the people of God makes it an extremely helpful mode of thought, an aspect of the intelligibility of the death and resurrection of Christ, while on the other hand, because sacrifice is not traditionally, not in any but the most barbarous religions, human sacrifice - but the sacrifice of Christ is in his own blood - clearly the notion of sacrifice is not an intelligibility that exhausts the meaning of the redemption. A ritual meaning such as is connoted, a liturgical meaning such as is suggested, by the name 'sacrifice,' while it conveys enormously the aspect of personal relations between the sinner and God, still does not exhaust the meaning of the reality, insofar as Christ's sacrifice was not simply a ritual act, but his own suffering and death and glorious resurrection.

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Insight

Titel: Insight

Stichwort: Das Problem der Befreiung

Kurzinhalt: The Problem of Liberation; Essentially the problem lies in an incapacity for sustained development. The tension divides and disorientates cognitional activity by ...

Textausschnitt: 653a The elements in the problem are basically simple. Man's intelligence, reasonableness, and willingness
(1) proceed from a detached, disinterested, unrestricted desire to know,
(2) are potentialities in process of development towards a full effective freedom,
(3) supply the higher integration for otherwise coincidental manifolds on successively underlying psychic, organic, chemical, and physical levels,
(4) stand in opposition and tension with sensitive and intersubjective attachment, interest, and exclusiveness, and
(5) suffer from that tension a cumulative bias that increasingly distorts immanent development, its outward products, and the outer conditions under which the immanent development occurs. (Fs) (notabene)

653b Essentially the problem lies in an incapacity for sustained development. The tension divides and disorientates cognitional activity by the conflict of positions and counterpositions. This conflict issues into contrary views of the good, which in turn make good will appear misdirected, and misdirected will appear good. There follows the confounding of the social situation with the social surd to provide misleading inspiration for further insights, deceptive evidence for further judgments, and illusory causes to fascinate unwary wills. (Fs) (notabene)

653c The problem is radical, for it is a problem in the very dynamic structure of cognitional, volitional, and social activity. It is not a question of error on this or that general or particular issue. It is a question of orientation, approach, procedure, method. It affects concretely every issue, both general and particular, for it recurs with every use of the dynamic structure. (Fs)

654a The problem is permanent. It vanishes if one supposes man's intelligence, reasonableness, and willingness not to be potentialities in process of development but already in possession of the insights that make learning superfluous, of the reasonableness that makes judgments correct, of the willingness that makes persuasion unnecessary. Again, it vanishes if one supposes the elimination of the tension and opposition between the detached, disinterested, unrestricted desire to know and, on the other hand, attached, interested, and narrow sensitivity and intersubjectivity. But in fact both development and tension pertain to the very nature of man, and as long as they exist the problem remains in full force. (Fs) (notabene)
654b The problem is independent of the underlying manifolds. No doubt, if the underlying manifolds were different, the higher cognitional and volitional integration would differ in its content. But such a change of content would leave the dynamic structure of the higher integration unmodified; and it is in the structure that the problem resides. It follows that neither physics nor chemistry nor biology nor sensitive psychology can bring forth devices that go to the root of the trouble. (Fs) (notabene)

654c The problem is not primarily social. It results in the social surd. It receives from the social surd its continuity, its aggravation, its cumulative character. But its root is elsewhere. Hence it is that a revolution can sweep away old evils and initiate a fresh effort; but the fresh effort will occur through the same dynamic structure as the old effort and lead to essentially the same results. (Fs) (notabene)
654d The problem is not to discover a correct philosophy, ethics, or human science. For such discoveries are quite compatible with the continued existence of the problem. The correct philosophy can be but one of many philosophies, the correct ethics one of many ethical systems, the correct human science an old or new view among many views. But precisely because they are correct, they will not appear correct to minds disorientated by the conflict between positions and counterpositions. Precisely because they are correct, they will not appear workable to wills with restricted ranges of effective freedom. Precisely because they are correct, they will be weak competitors for serious attention in the realm of practical affairs. (Fs) (notabene)

654e The problem is not met by setting up a benevolent despotism to enforce a correct philosophy, ethics, or human science. No doubt, if there is to be the appeal to force, then it is better that the force be directed by wisdom than by folly, by benevolence than by malevolence. But the appeal to force is a counsel of despair. So far from solving the problem, it regards the problem as insoluble. For if men are intelligent, reasonable, and willing, they do not have to be forced. Only in the measure that men are unintelligent, unreasonable, unwilling, does force enter into human affairs. Finally, if force can be used by the group against the wayward individual and by the larger group against the smaller, it does not follow that it can be used to correct the general bias of common sense. For the general bias of common sense is the bias of all men, and to a notable extent it consists in the notion that ideas are negligible unless they are reinforced by sensitive desires and fears. Is everyone to use force against everyone to convince everyone that force is beside the point? (Fs) (notabene)

655a The problem is real. In the present work it has been reached in the compendious fashion that operates through the integral heuristic structure of proportionate being and the consequent ethics. But the expeditiousness of the procedure must not be allowed to engender the mistake that the problem resides in some theoretical realm. On the contrary, its dimensions are the dimensions of human history, and the fourth, fifth, and sixth volumes of Arnold Toynbee's Study of History illustrate abundantly and rather relevantly the failure of self-determination, the schism in the body social, and the schism in the soul that follow from an incapacity for sustained development. (Fs)

655b The solution has to be a still higher integration of human living. For the problem is radical and permanent; it is independent of the underlying physical, chemical, organic, and psychic manifolds; it is not met by revolutionary change, nor by human discovery, nor by the enforced implementation of discovery; it is as large as human living and human history. Further, the solution has to take people just as they are. If it is to be a solution and not a mere suppression of the problem, it has to acknowledge and respect and work through man's intelligence and reasonableness and freedom. It may eliminate neither development nor tension yet it must be able to replace incapacity by capacity for sustained development. Only a still higher integration can meet such requirements. For only a higher integration leaves underlying manifolds with their autonomy yet succeeds in introducing a higher systematization into their nonsystematic coincidences. And only a still higher integration than any that so far has been considered can deal with the dialectical

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Insight

Titel: Insight

Stichwort: Ethik: dynamische Struktur des Wissens als Grundlage von Metaphysik und Ethik

Kurzinhalt: For just as the dynamic structure of our knowing grounds a metaphysics, so the prolongation of that structure into human doing grounds an ethics

Textausschnitt: 626a There follows a conclusion of fundamental importance, namely, the parallel and interpenetration of metaphysics and ethics. For just as the dynamic structure of our knowing grounds a metaphysics, so the prolongation of that structure into human doing grounds an ethics. Just as the universe of proportionate being is a compound of potency, form, and act, because it is to be known through experience, understanding, and judgment, so the universe of man's proportionate good is a compound of objects of desire, intelligible orders, and values, because the good that man does intelligently and rationally is a manifold in the field of experience, ordered by intelligence, and rationally chosen. Just as metaphysics is a set of positions opposed by sets of counterpositions that arise from the incomplete domination in knowing of the detached and disinterested desire to know, so also values are true and false, orders are troubled by disorders, and desires are unnecessarily frustrated, because the detachment and disinterestedness of the pure desire easily fails to develop into fully rational self-consciousness. Just as the counterpositions of metaphysics invite their own reversal by their inconsistency with intelligent and reasonable affirmation, so the basically similar counterpositions of the ethical order, through the shorter and longer cycles of the dialectic of progress and decline, either enforce their own reversal or destroy their carriers. Just as the heuristic structure of our knowing couples with the generalized emergent probability of the proportionate universe, to reveal an upwardly directed dynamism of finality towards ever fuller being, so the obligatory structure of our rational self-consciousness
(1) finds its materials and its basis in the products of universal finality,
(2) is itself finality on the level of intelligent and rational consciousness, and
(3) is finality confronted with the alternative of choosing either development and progress or decline and extinction. (Fs)

626b The theme of the parallel and interpenetration of metaphysics and ethics cannot be expanded further in the present context, but at least something must be said on its methodological ground. We refused to conceive metaphysical method either as an abstract or as a concrete or as a transcendental deduction, not because we denied the exposition of a metaphysics to make use of the deductive form, but because we placed the principles of metaphysics neither in sentences nor in propositions nor in judgments but in the very structure of our knowing. Because that structure is latent and operative in everyone's knowing, it is universal on the side of the subject; and because that structure can be distorted by the interference of alien desires, it grounds a dialectical criticism of subjects. Again, because that structure is employed in every instance of knowing, it is universal on the side of the proportionate object; and because the structure remains dynamic until all questions are answered, it regards every proportionate object concretely. Accordingly, metaphysical method can take subjects as they are, invoke dialectical criticism to bring their fundamental orientations into agreement, and apply this agreement to the whole domain of proportionate being in its concreteness. But essentially the same method is available for ethics. Deductivism is brushed aside, not because there are no universally valid precepts, nor because conclusions do not follow from them,b but because the most basic precepts with all their conclusions fail to go to the root of the matter. For the root of ethics, as the root of metaphysics, lies neither in sentences nor in propositions nor in judgments but in the dynamic structure of rational self-consciousness. Because that structure is latent and operative in everyone's choosing, it is universal on the side of the subject; because that structure can be dodged, it grounds a dialectical criticism of subjects. Again, because that structure is recurrent in every act of choice, it is universal on the side of the object;c and because its universality consists not in abstraction but in inevitable recurrence, it also is concrete. Accordingly, ethical method, as metaphysical, can take subjects as they are; it can correct any aberration in their views by a dialectical criticism; and it can apply these corrected views to the totality of concrete objects of choice. Such a method not only sets forth precepts but also bases them on their real principles, which are not propositions or judgments but existing persons; it not only sets forth correct precepts but also provides a radical criticism for mistaken precepts; it is not content to appeal to logic for the application of precepts, for it can criticize situations as well as subjects, and it can invoke dialectical analysis to reveal how situations are to be corrected; finally, because such a method clearly grasps an unchanging dynamic structure immanent in developing subjects that deal with changing situations in correspondingly changing manners, it can steer a sane course between the relativism of mere con-creteness and the legalism of remote and static generalities; and it can do so, not by good luck nor by vaguely postulating prudence, but methodically, because it takes its stand on the ever recurrent dynamic generality that is the structure of rational self-consciousness. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Insight

Titel: Insight

Stichwort: Ethik; Hedonist: Position - Gegenposition

Kurzinhalt: ... a quite coherent position, as long as no claim is made that it is either intelligent or reasonable.

Textausschnitt: 629c Feelings and sentiments are bypassed for, though one begins from objects of desire, one finds the potential good not in them alone but in the total manifold of the universe. This step does not suppose the discovery of some calculus to measure pleasure and pain, nor does it introduce any claim that the pleasure outweighs the pain. Quite simply it notes that objects of desire are manifold, that this manifold, so far from being isolated, is part and parcel of the total manifold, and that it is in the total manifold that concretely and effectively the potential good resides. Now it is to this first step that the hedonist or sentimentalist must object. He must claim that the meaning of the term 'good' is settled on the unquestioning and unquestionable level of experience, that the good has to be the good as experienced, and that opposite to the good there is the no less real category of evil as experienced. Moreover, the foregoing is a quite coherent position, as long as no claim is made that it is either intelligent or reasonable. The trouble is that the claim cannot be avoided, and once it is made the contradiction becomes obvious; for it is only by excluding the relevance of questions for intelligence and reflection that the good can be identified with objects of desire; and if such questions are excluded, then intelligence and reasonableness are excluded. On the other hand, if the determination of the notion of the good is a matter of intelligent inquiry and critical reflection, then critical reflection's affirmation will be knowledge of the actual component of the good, intelligent inquiry's explanation will be knowledge d of the formal component of the good, the manifold of objects of desire can be no more than a potential good, and the way is open to the discovery that the manifold of indifferent objects and even the manifold of objects of aversion also are a potential good. Finally, to throw in the obvious methodological note, the positions and counterpositions of metaphysics not only have their prolongations into ethics but also these prolongations respectively invite development or invite reversal by the same dialectical procedures as the metaphysical originals. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Insight

Titel: Insight

Stichwort: Freiheit; Unterschied: Gesetz d. Materie - d. Geistes

Kurzinhalt: ... they differ radically from the laws of matter, not only in their higher point of application, but also in their nature and content

Textausschnitt: 641a At this point, however, there crops up the ambiguity of the notion of law. There are, then, the laws of matter and the laws of spirit.e The laws of matter are investigated by empirical scientists, and when spirit is said to be legislative, one means that spirit originates intelligible orders that are parallel to the intelligibilities investigated by empirical scientists. On the other hand, the laws of spirit are the principles and norms that govern spirit in the exercise of its legislative function; and they differ radically from the laws of matter, not only in their higher point of application, but also in their nature and content. As has been seen, the laws of matter are abstract, and they can be applied concretely only by the addition of further determinations from a nonsystematic manifold. But the laws of spirit reside in the dynamic structure of its cognitional and volitional operations, and their concrete application is effected through spirit's own operations within that dynamic structure. Thus, in working out the notion of the good, we discovered in the rationally self-conscious subject an exigence for consistency between his knowing and his doing, and we saw how a body of ethical precepts could be derived simply by asking what concretely was implicit in that exigence. As metaphysics is a corollary to the structure of knowing, so ethics is a corollary to the structure of knowing and doing; and as ethics resides in the structure, so the concrete applications of ethics are worked out by spirit inasmuch as it operates within the structure to reflect and decide upon the possible courses of action that it grasps. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Insight

Titel: Insight

Stichwort: Freiheit als besondere Form der Kontingenz; Verantwortung

Kurzinhalt: Freedom, then, is a special kind of contingence. It is contingence that arises, not from the empirical residue that grounds materiality and the nonsystematic, but in the order of spirit, ...

Textausschnitt: 641b It follows that there is a radical difference between the contingence of the act of willing and the general contingence of existence and occurrence in the rest of the domain of proportionate being. The latter contingence falls short of strict intelligible necessity, not because it is free, but because it is involved in the nonsystematic character of material multiplicity, continuity, and frequency. But the contingence of the act of will,f so far from resulting from the nonsystematic, arises in the imposition of further intelligible order upon otherwise merely coincidental manifolds. Moreover, that imposition of further intelligible order is the work of intelligence, of rational reflection, and of ethically guided will. Nonetheless, that imposition of intelligible order is contingent. For, on the one hand, even when possibility is unique, so that rational consciousness has no alternative, still the unique possibility is not realized necessarily. To claim that the sole reasonable course of action is realized necessarily is to claim that willing is necessarily consistent with knowing. But that claim is preposterous, for it contradicts the common experience of a divergence between what one does and what one knows one ought to do. Nor is it preposterous merely in fact but also in principle, for actual consistency between knowing and deciding is the result of deciding reasonably, and what results from deciding reasonably cannot be erected into a universal principle that proves all decisions to be necessarily reasonable. (Fs) (notabene)

642a Freedom, then, is a special kind of contingence. It is contingence that arises, not from the empirical residue that grounds materiality and the nonsystematic, but in the order of spirit, of intelligent grasp, rational reflection, and morally guided will. It has the twofold basis that its object is merely a possibility and that its agent is contingent not only in his existence but also in the extension of his rational consciousness into rational self-consciousness. For it is one and the same act of willing that both decides in favor of the object or against it and that constitutes the subject as deciding reasonably or unreasonably, as succeeding or failing in the extension of rational consciousness into an effectively rational self-consciousness. (Fs) (notabene)

642b Accordingly, freedom possesses not only the negative aspect of excluding necessity but also the positive aspect of responsibility. Intelligent grasp of a possible course of action need not result automatically in its execution, for critical reflection can intervene to scrutinize the object and evaluate the motives. Critical reflection cannot execute the proposed action, for it is simply a knowing. Knowing cannot necessitate the decision, for consistency between knowing and willing becomes an actuality only through the willing. The decision, then, is not a consequent but a new emergence that both realizes the course of action or rejects it, and realizes an effectively rational self-consciousness or fails to do so. Nonetheless, though the act of will is a contingent emergence, it also is an act of the subject; the measure of the freedom with which the act occurs also is the measure of his responsibility for it. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Insight

Titel: Insight

Stichwort: Moralische Impotenz; positiver, negativer Aspekt

Kurzinhalt: To assert moral impotence is to assert that man's effective freedom is restricted ... in the profound fashion that follows from incomplete intellectual and volitional development.

Textausschnitt: 650a To assert moral impotence is to assert that man's effective freedom is restricted, not in the superficial fashion that results from external circumstance or psychic abnormality, but in the profound fashion that follows from incomplete intellectual and volitional development. For when that development is incomplete, there are practical insights that could be had if a man took time out to acquire the necessary preparatory insights, and there are courses of action that would be chosen if a man took time out to persuade himself to willingness. There follows a gap between the proximate effective freedom he actually possesses and, on the other hand, the remote and hypothetical effective freedom that he would possess if certain conditions happened to be fulfilled. Now this gap measures one's moral impotence. For complete self-development is a long and difficult process. During that process one has to live and make decisions in the light of one's undeveloped intelligence and under the guidance of one's incomplete willingness. And the less developed one is, the less one appreciates the need of development and the less one is willing to take time out for one's intellectual and moral education. (Fs)

650b Moreover, as the scotosis of the dramatic subject, so the moral impotence of the essentially free subject is neither grasped with perfect clarity nor totally unconscious.i For if one were to represent a man's field of freedom as a circular area, then one would distinguish a luminous central region in which he was effectively free, a surrounding penumbra in which his uneasy conscience keeps suggesting that he could do better if only he would make up his mind, and finally an outer shadow to which he barely if ever adverts. Further, these areas are not fixed; as he develops, the penumbra penetrates into the shadow and the luminous area into the penumbra while, inversely, moral decline is a contraction of the luminous area and of the penumbra. Finally, this consciousness of moral impotence not only heightens the tension between limitation and transcendence but also can provide ambivalent materials for reflection; correctly interpreted, it brings home to man the fact that his living is a developing, that he is not to be discouraged by his failures, that rather he is to profit by them both as lessons on his personal weaknesses and as a stimulus to greater efforts; but the same data can also be regarded as evidence that there is no use trying, that moral codes ask the impossible, that one has to be content with oneself as one is. (Fs) (notabene)

650c This inner tension and its ambivalence are reflected and heightened in the social sphere. For rational self-consciousness demands consistency between knowing and doing not only in the individual but also in the common concerns of the group. To the ethics of the individual conscience there is added an ethical transformation of the home, of the technological expansion, of the economy, and of the polity. But just as individual intelligence and individual reasonableness lead to the individual decisions that may be right or wrong, so too common intelligence and common reasonableness lead to common decisions that may be right or wrong. Moreover, in both cases, decisions are right not because they are the pronouncements of the individual conscience, nor because they proceed from this or that type of social mechanism for reaching common decisions, but because they are in the concrete situation intelligent and reasonable. Again, in both cases, decisions are wrong, not because of their private or public origin, but because they diverge from the dictates of intelligence and reasonableness. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Insight

Titel: Insight

Stichwort: Moralische Impotenz; dreifache Befangenheit

Kurzinhalt: Now, as has been seen, common sense is subject to a threefold bias. Accordingly, we can expect that individual decisions will be likely to suffer from individual bias, ...

Textausschnitt: 651a Now, as has been seen, common sense is subject to a threefold bias. Accordingly, we can expect that individual decisions will be likely to suffer from individual bias, that common decisions will be likely to suffer from the various types of group bias, and that all decisions will be likely to suffer from general bias. There will result conflicts between the individual and the group, between economic and national groups within the state, and between states. But far more significant than these relatively superficial and overt conflicts will be the underlying opposition that general bias sets up between the decisions that intelligence and reasonableness would demand and the actual decisions, individual and common, that are made. For this opposition is both profound and unnoticed. As individuals, so societies fail to distinguish sharply and accurately between positions and counterpositions. As individuals, so societies fail to reach the universal willingness that reflects and sustains the detachment and disinterestedness of the unrestricted desire to know. More or less automatically and unconsciously, each successive batch of possible and practical courses of action is screened to eliminate as unpractical whatever does not seem practical to an intelligence and a willingness that not only are developed imperfectly but also suffer from bias. But the social situation is the cumulative product of individual and group decisions, and as these decisions depart from the demands of intelligence and reasonableness, so the social situation becomes, like the complex number, a compound of the rational and irrational. Then if it is to be understood, it must be met by a parallel compound of direct and inverse insights, of direct insights that grasp its intelligibility and of inverse insights that grasp its lack of intelligibility. Nor is it enough to understand the situation; it must also be managed. Its intelligible components have to be encouraged towards fuller development; and its unintelligible components have to be hurried to their reversal. (Fs)

652a Still, this is only the outer aspect of the problem. Just as the social situation with its objective surd proceeds from minds and wills that oscillate between the positions and the counterpositions, so too it constitutes the materials for their practical insights, the conditions to be taken into account in their reflection, the reality to be maintained and developed by their decisions. Just as there are philosophies that take their stand upon the positions and urge the development of the intelligible components in the situation and the reversal of the unintelligible components, so too there are counterphilosophies that take their stand upon the counterpositions, that welcome the unintelligible components in the situation as objective facts that provide the empirical proof of their views, that demand the further expansion of the objective surd, and that clamor for the complete elimination of the intelligible components that they regard as wicked survivals of antiquated attitudes. But philosophies and counterphilosophies are for the few. Like Mercutio, the average man imprecates a plague on both their houses. What he wants is peace and prosperity. By his own light he selects what he believes is the intelligent and reasonable but practical course of action; and as that practicality is the root of the trouble, the civilization drifts through successive less comprehensive syntheses to the sterility of the objectively unintelligible situation and to the coercion of economic pressures, political forces, and psychological conditioning. (Fs)

652b Clearly, both the outward conditions and the inner mentality prevalent in social decline intensify to the point of desperation the tension, inherent in all development but conscious in man, between limitation and transcendence. One can agree with Christian praise of charity, with Kant's affirmation that the unqualified good is the good will, with existentialist exhortations to genuineness. But good will is never better than the intelligence and reasonableness that it implements. Indeed, when proposals and programs only putatively are intelligent and reasonable, then the good will that executes them so faithfully and energetically is engaged really in the systematic imposition of ever further evils on the already weary shoulders of mankind. And who will tell which proposals and programs truly are intelligent and reasonable, and which are not? For the only transition from the analytic proposition to the analytic principle is through concrete judgments of fact, and alas, the facts are ambivalent. The objective situation is all fact, but partly it is the product of intelligence and reasonableness, and partly it is the product of aberration from them. The whole of man is all fact, but it also is malleable, polymorphic fact. No doubt, a subtle and protracted analysis can bring to light the components in that polymorphic fact and proceed to a dialectical criticism of any proposal or program. But to whom does it bring the light? To how many? How clearly and how effectively? Are philosophers to be kings or kings to learn philosophy? Are they to rule in the name of wisdom subjects judged incapable of wisdom? Are all the members of our democracies to be philosophers? Is there to be a provisional dictatorship while they are learning philosophy? (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Titel: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Stichwort: Fünf Regeln: Verstehe, verstehe systematisch -> Urteil; rationales Bewusstsein (Augustin, Thomas: geschaffene Teilname am ungeschaffenen Licht)

Kurzinhalt: My first two rules - Understand, Understand systematically ... My third and fourth rules - Reverse counterpositions, Develop positions

Textausschnitt: 40a I have been indicating the dimensions of the issue, and now I must attempt to clarify my position. My first two rules - Understand, Understand systematically - yield no more than bright ideas, hypotheses, theories; and none of these is knowledge. Of themselves, they are merely sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. Only when one can go beyond them to affirm their truth, to assert that things are so, does one reach knowledge; and taking that step is a matter of good judgment. My third and fourth rules - Reverse counterpositions, Develop positions - introduce the problem of judgment, inasmuch as they are concerned not merely with the inner coherence of systematic understanding but also with a conversion of the subject that judges. It remains that the four rules together fall short of the present issue. (Fs) (notabene)

40b However, if we ask what good judgment is, I think it will appear that the four rules have a preparatory value. Whenever we understand, we feel called upon to judge; but it is only when we understand not merely the matter in hand but also its relevant context that we can judge well. Children understand many things, but we say that they reach the age of reason when they are about seven years old. A youth understands ever so much more than a child, yet he is accounted a minor in the eyes of the law until he reaches the age of twenty-one. Every cobbler is thought a fair judge, provided he sticks to his last. Finally, the universal principle of good judgment has been named wisdom; because it orders all things, it can judge all; but we must note that philosophy holds itself to be, not wisdom attained, but a love of wisdom and a movement towards it. (Fs)

40c In each of these instances the same feature recurs. Good judgment in a given area is not attained until, within the limits of that area, a certain fulness of understanding is reached. It seems to follow that my rules urging understanding, systematic understanding, and the coherence of systematic understanding head one to the limit where good judgment becomes possible. (Fs)

40d Still, possibility is one thing and actuality another. For judgment demands more than adequately developed understanding. It supposes a transformation of consciousness, an ascent from the eros of intellectual curiosity to the reflective and critical rationality that is the distinguishing mark of man. On that higher level, there becomes operative what Augustine named a contemplation of the eternal reasons, what Aquinas attributed to our created participation of uncreated light, what a modern thinker might designate as rational consciousness. On that level there emerges the proper content of what we mean by truth, reality, knowledge, objectivity; and by the same movement we ourselves in our own reasonableness are involved, for every judgment is at once a personal commitment, an endeavor to determine what is true, and a component in one's apprehension of reality.1 (Fs)
41a However, if I believe that there is no substitute for good judgment, if I believe that method, instead of seeking a substitute, has to make use of good judgment, it is not my intention to entrust the advance of science to the vagaries of individual opinion. No less than those that evade or deny the significance of good judgment, I too believe that a method has to include some technique for overcoming individual, group, and general aberration. Where I would differ is in the technique. I acknowledge the full significance of judgment and its personal element, but my third and fourth rules imply a further judgment on individual judgments. Developing positions and reversing counterpositions are equivalent to judging judgments; and the definitions of positions and counterpositions are based on ultimate philosophic alternatives, that is, on the diverse manners in which individual judgment can go wrong not merely incidentally but in the grand manner of a superficial or a mistaken philosophy. (Fs)
41b It is true, of course, that others may and will disagree with my account of the matter. But from the nature of the case, I think that disagreement in the main will be limited to naming positions what I name counterpositions, and to naming counterpositions what I name positions. There would result a number of distinct schools, but their number could not be very large, their epistemological assumptions and implications would be in the open, and the individuals that chose between them could do so with an adequate awareness of the issues and of their own personal responsibility in judging. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Titel: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Stichwort: Peter Abaelard: Sic et Non -> Methode d. Questio; Petrus Lombardus

Kurzinhalt: That definition became the basis of a technique that endured for centuries. A proposition was prefaced with the question mark Utrum ...

Textausschnitt: 43a In his Sic et non Peter Abelard listed 158 propositions, and to each of them he appended patristic passages that seemed to show that the proposition was to be both affirmed and denied. This work automatically established two points: negatively, it showed that to settle an issue it was not enough to quote the Fathers of the church; positively, it implied the existence of a department of inquiry in which medieval man was on his own. A slightly later writer, Gilbert de la Porre, gave a particularly clearheaded definition of the existence of a quaestio: a quaestio exists if, and only if, there are good reasons both for affirming and for denying one and the same proposition. That definition became the basis of a technique that endured for centuries. A proposition was prefaced with the question mark Utrum; passages from scripture and from the Fathers were cited in favor of the affirmative and then in favor of the negative answer; to these were added any of the arguments that might be current; then the author gave his solution and closed by applying its principles to each of the quotations or arguments he had begun by citing. (Fs)

43b What was the material basis of these questions? About the year 1150 there appeared Peter Lombard's Quattuor libri sententiarum. It was an ordered compilation of scriptural and patristic passages bearing on Christian doctrine; if it did not emphasize oppositions as did Abelard's less thorough and less learned work, neither did it conceal them. Peter Lombard was something of a positivist, setting forth the data, and repeatedly leaving to the prudens lector the task of reconciliation. For over three centuries commentaries were written by almost every ranking theologian on Peter's Sentences, and the commentaries consisted in an ever growing and changing series of quaestiones. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Titel: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Stichwort: "Philosophie von []" (philosophy of []); Philosophie als Liebe zur Weisheit; kein statisches System (geistiges Auge, Universalien); Thomas von Aquin; kein Ausgang von Axiomen, sondern von Grundoperationen

Kurzinhalt: If anyone reads St Thomas, one notices no similarity to Euclidean procedure. He does not start from a set of definitions and axioms,

Textausschnitt: 66b I began with history as a subject, and spoke of occasional history, technical history, explanatory history; now we will move to the topic 'philosophy of [...]' (Fs)

67a One is asked traditionally to think of philosophy absolutely; philosophy is something, it is not of something else; philosophy is logic or epistemology or ontology or psychology or cosmology or ethics or natural theology or preferably all put together; but it is that and nothing more nor less. What is this 'philosophy of ...'? Philosophy of history is one member of a species or genus. There is philosophy of nature, philosophy of science, philosophy of spirit, philosophy of man, philosophy of law, philosophy of religion, philosophy of education, philosophy of art, philosophy of history. What is this 'philosophy of [...]'? (Fs)

67b It is a question that can be given a general answer very easily in traditional terms. Philosophy, as one case of a very explicit and deliberate etymology, means love of wisdom. It is a modest reply to the assertiveness of the Sophists, who proposed to hand out wisdom, while the philosophers had a lot more but did not think that they had got there yet. Wisdom is the ordering of all. And because it is an apprehension of universal order, it is also a potentiality of ultimate judgment. A judgment on anything has to take into account everything that is relevant to that point; and consequently ultimate judgments have to take into account everything. Hence wisdom is a principle not only of universal order but also of ultimate judgment. But while wisdom as such is concerned with universal order and ultimate judgment, still it will, of its very nature, have application to particular fields. Precisely because it is universal and ultimate, it will have its participation in such fields as science, nature, spirit, art, law, education, religion, history; and so you have this 'philosophy of [...]' (Fs)

67c The general answer is one thing, and the technique of setting up a 'philosophy of [...],' a philosophy that is so conceived that it automatically becomes a 'philosophy of [...],' is quite another. Philosophy can be misconceived, I would say, as a dam across the river of life and thought, rather than the bed in which the river flows. What seems to me to have provoked that view of philosophy arises from taking the easy way of conceiving one's own intellect, one's own intelligence,1 pretty much in the same way as one comes to know God. You know the methodological procedure in natural theology of coming to the concept of God. It begins from the effects and proceeds by a method of analogy, of affirmation, negation, and eminence, to a concept of God. Man can proceed in exactly the same way to knowledge of his intelligence. There are the effects of intelligence in the sciences (sciences in the sense of written books of science), in the use of common names, in intelligent products. And from that one goes on, proceeding on the analogy that just as with our eyes we see, so there is a spiritual eye. If we use common names, this spiritual eye looks at universals. And since we have general principles, well, the spiritual eye sees the connections between these universals. When it sees those connections, you have a universal and necessary truth of which you are absolutely certain. While particular people might not be certain about it, still per se it is certain. And while these truths, since they are universal and necessary, hold for all possible worlds, still there may be very many qualifications to be added on. Yet per se they are true, and their being true is not the being true which is formaliter in iudicio, something that is in the mind; rather the truths are out there too. Finally, there is the notion of system as a deduction from a set of principles. What system? Well, something like Euclid's Elements. You lay down axioms as definitions, and then you proceed to deduce. If philosophy is conceived in that manner, it is going to be extremely difficult to get the type of wisdom that finds its applications in particular fields. (Fs)

68a Let me handle very briefly the notion of a system.2 If anyone reads St Thomas, one notices no similarity to Euclidean procedure. He does not start from a set of definitions and axioms, and he never treats any question by giving one proof and writing the matter off with Quod erat demonstrandum. Rather, he sets up an ordered series of questions, and in the Summa theologiae he subdivides the questions into articles. In a work like the Summa contra Gentiles, in his ordered set of topics, he brings to bear on each, not just one argument but several, and sometimes approximately twenty, and the arguments are all different; but when you move to the next question, well, it is pretty much the same arguments coming up again in a somewhat different application, and so on. Now St Thomas is systematic. Of what does his system consist? It consists of a basic set of operations that can be combined and recombined in various ways, and the various combinations are able to handle all the questions that arise. We have here, then, a concept, a notion, of system that is something far less static and abstract than Euclidean deduction. Moreover, it is a notion of system that can be applied to very concrete, very human developments. It is the fundamental notion of Piaget's some twenty volumes on child psychology.3 Now, if you conceive system this way - a man has a system, he is thinking systematically, he is reaching systematic knowledge, insofar as he possesses a basic set of related operations - then, because the operations are related, the terms, the products, of the operations will be related. Because the operations are related to one another, the operations can be combined in various ways. You can have all sorts of terms, all sorts of problems, and you will know exactly what the meaning is in each term because you know exactly what the operations are and what are the relations between them. Moreover, one has, as it were, the mastery of a field in which this group of operations is more or less the principle and the intelligibility. (Fs)

69a Now philosophy can be conceived as a basic group of operations; and as an insight into what that basic group of operations might be, you can take experiencing, understanding, and judging. The understanding can be differentiated, and you can get different kinds of combining of experiencing, understanding, and judging. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Titel: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Stichwort: Geschichte: Substanz -> Subjekt; Hegel, Londergan; Subjekt - Geschichtlichkeit (historicity)

Kurzinhalt: The subject is this substance inasmuch as he is known by consciousness;

Textausschnitt: 71b The first of these is the notion of historicity, of Geschichtlichkeit. It is said of Hegel, or he said it himself, that he transferred philosophy from the substance to the subject, Spinoza wrote about the substance, Hegel wrote about the subject.1 The notion of the subject is a difficult notion to get hold of. One is not a subject, though one is a substance, when one is asleep and not dreaming. If one starts to dream, one becomes a subject, though a subject of an inferior type. But when one wakes up, one is much more of a subject, one is an empirical subject, a subject of acts of sense, seeing, hearing, and so on. If one inquires, understands, a new dimension emerges in consciousness; one is not only an empirical but also an intelligent subject. If one questions one's understanding, proceeds to judge, one becomes, one takes on the further dimension of, the rational subject. When one comes to making a decision or choice, the choice involves not only die chosen but also the chooser, and one is in die final level of the human subject, the self-conscious subject. (Fs) (notabene)

72a What is the subject? Well, the subject is what is known in consciousness. It is a term that, as it were, involves a leap from such metaphysical terms as substance and subsistence, which are defined and are verified independently of whether the subject is conscious or not. The subject is this substance inasmuch as he is known by consciousness; and not only is the subject known by consciousness, but he is also constituted qua subject by consciousness. It is when one moves from the metaphysical level of thinking to another level that there is a discontinuity, and I was talking about the notion of the subject to illustrate that discontinuity. We are always substances, but we are subjects only when we are awake, and we are subjects in different degrees according to what type of activity is going on in us. (Fs) (notabene)

72b Now just as man is a subject known and constituted by consciousness, so also man is known and constituted in his humanity by historicity, by this historical dimension of his reality. That notion of historicity is one that happens to be receiving all sorts of attention this century. From the thought of Martin Heidegger, there has radiated - often with decreasing degrees of dependence - a whole series of illuminations and transformations in previous ways of dunking of tilings. The notion goes back much further than Heidegger, but an illustration of it is the application of Heidegger's existentialism to depth psychology, and I will try to use a paper by Ludwig Binswanger on the dream and existence to elaborate.2 (Fs)

73a He distinguishes two types of dreams: the dream of the night, which is more largely determined by somatic influences, and the dream of the morning, in which the existent is shaping himself and his world. Consciousness is such that there is always a subject conscious of something, and the range of things the subject is conscious of is the horizon. Now the dream of the morning is a symbolic, incipient positing of the subject and his world. That world is not just a world of objects; it is a world in which the subject is acting, and because this human acting is determined, conditioned, by the historical developments of the past and a contribution to what the history of the immediate future is to be, you also have its historicity in the very constitution of the subject. (Fs)

73b To try to get hold of this notion from a slightly different angle, or perhaps to carry the point a step further, note that a person suffering from amnesia does not know who he is. If I were to forget that I was a Jesuit, a priest, a professor of theology, and so on, my possible activities would be entirely out of conformity with what I am. My memory of myself is constitutive, a fundamental determinant, of what I do. And to generalize, if a people were to forget themselves as a people, if all Canadians were to have amnesia insofar as they are Canadians, then Canada would no longer exist, and the same is true of any other people. There is an existential memory that is constitutive of the people qua people just as there is an
existential memory constitutive of a personality qua personality. (Fs)

73c Again, the history of a people is an account, an interpretation, of what the people were; but what the people were was their own self-interpretation. A man is not just a thing; he is what he does. What he says, what he works for, is all a function of his experience, his accumulated experience, understanding, judgment, his mentality, his way of thinking, what he approves of and disapproves of, what he wants and does not want. His mental activities are the main determinants of all his actions, and his mental activities include an interpretation, an idea, of what he himself is and what he is for - his nature and destiny. As this is true of the individual, so also it is true of the group. The historian, in writing the history of the people, in interpreting what the people were, is not the first to step into the field of interpretation. There is an understanding that was constitutive of the history that is written about, not only the understanding of the historian. (Fs) (notabene)

73d So history becomes an objectification of the existential memory of the people, of their self-interpretation. Just as drama is an objectification, a symbolization, of human life in some aspect or some situations, so, on a more fundamental level, you could say that all living is in a sense drama - people dealing with people and things. That more fundamental drama is the more fundamental objectification in civilization of what, more originally, the person is. In that way, one has a comparison between drama and history - as though drama is, as it were, a prehistorical, more simple type of history, of objectification and criticism of the way that people live, while history is a fuller, more ample, more reflective drama. (Fs)

Kommentar (04/28/06): "Just as drama is an objectification, a symbolization, of human life in some aspect or some situations, ..." Von daher verständlich der Begriff "dramatisches Subjekt". (Fs)

74a Now what I have been trying to do is to suggest this notion of historicity, but it is a very difficult notion to get hold of. On the other hand, it is a field of very fruitful reflections on the nature and significance of history. I cannot carry this notion any further here.1 (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Titel: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Stichwort: Dialektik - Subjekt, Geschichte; Plato - Eristik; Dialektik - Bewegung - Gegenposition - Umkehr

Kurzinhalt: The contradiction is not between statements that he makes; the contradiction is between the statements that he makes and the subject that he is

Textausschnitt: 74b I will now go on to another notion that emerges on the level of philosophic reflection on history. The notion is dialectic. About the beginning of the last decade, Joseph Moreau wrote a very small book on idealism and realism in Plato,1 and its final paragraph ended up with a statement from Blondel, L 'Action (1893), in which Blondel said that a fully coherent idealism ends by eliminating all the differences that separate it from realism.2 It is the statement that one type of philosophy, if fully coherent, if worked out to the end, becomes another; and there you have a fundamental opposition between what I call positions and counterpositions. Positions express the dynamic structure of the subject qua intelligent and qua reasonable. Counterpositions contradict that structure. Whenever a person is explicitly affirming - presenting or affirming - a counterposition, he is involved in a queer type of contradiction. The contradiction is not between statements that he makes; the contradiction is between the statements that he makes and the subject that he is. He is intelligent and reasonable, and purports to be intelligent and reasonable, and he would not admit any fall from intelligence or reasonableness. Yet the implications of the one, the real consequences, so to speak, of the one, and the implications of the other, which are in a field of conceptions or a field of judgments, are in conflict. (Fs) (notabene)

75a Such a conflict tends to work itself out in one way or another. It sets up a tension, and it is a principle of movement; and that, to my mind, is a fundamental instance of what is meant by dialectic. It is in the concrete, it involves tension and opposition, and it is a principle of change; and the change is not so much, not merely, in the statements; it will also be in the subject who comes to a fuller realization, a fuller appropriation, of what he himself really is. The effect of the dialectic is not simply a matter of straightening out the sentences, and affirming the ones that are true and denying the ones that are false. A person can be affirming propositions that are true, but misinterpreting them; and you cannot correct what is wrong with him by telling him the right ones, because he is always going to bring in the misinterpretation. There is a more fundamental step: the development in the subject himself through dialectic. (Fs) (notabene)

75b Now that dialectic goes on not merely within the individual. Platonic dialectic was dialogue. There was ruled out eristic dialectic, that is, argument for argument's sake: the man in Goldsmith's deserted village, though vanquished, could argue still.3 But let the argument have its run, let it have its free course, and things will come to light that we had not thought of before. The Platonic dialogue is a concrete, group use of dialectic in that individual sense. The individual will make his statements, and another individual will state what this subject really is, in an implicit manner no doubt, but there is another example of dialectic. A third example, what Aristotle called dialectic, was reviewing the opinions of all the people that discussed the question before him; and there you have the dialogue put out into time. But what goes on in the subject, what goes on in the dialogue, what goes on in the development of opinions on a single question, that also has relevance to the total field of human development; and that is history. (Fs)

75c Now that notion of development has come to notice today. It is a little hard to describe it; there has been both Hegelian and Marxist dialectic. Think of Hegel's account, in the Phenomenology of Spirit, of the master-slave relations.4 It is a beautiful piece of work. It describes the initial situation, where you have a master who is really master and the slave who is really slave. But time goes on, and the master becomes more and more dependent upon the slave, and the roles become reversed. That is an illustration of the notion of development of situations working themselves out to their consequences. But that notion of dialectic has been plunged into the problem of the interpretation, the grand-scale interpretation, of history on the philosophic level, and that is very much a problem of our time. The liberals - the Enlightenment and then the liberals - had a doctrine, an interpretation, of history in terms of progress. Things were getting better and better. The Marxists had an interpretation in terms of what they call the materialistic dialectic of history, which has become the interpretation of human reality in Russia and in China; and it seems to be accepted there in all seriousness as the correct view of this world and what its meaning is, what it is about. (We had a sample today with Mr Khrushchev's speech at the United Nations.5)

76a We have had others of these grand-scale interpretations of history. Another example is Rosenberg's myth of the twentieth century,6 which is the interpretation of history behind the Nazi movement. There is very definitely a problem here. Christopher Dawson, in a recent book, The Historic Reality of Christian Culture,7 speaks of these movements going on and of Christians having very little influence because of largely passive attitudes. Eric Voegelin, in his New Science of Politics8 suggests - perhaps does more than suggest - that the Christian view of this world, as waiting for the second coming of Christ, left a vacuum of meaning in that merely day-to-day aspect of human living which these modern philosophies of history are attempting to fill. When they fill it, they obtain stupendous results, stupendous influence over human life in all its aspects, as is illustrated by nineteenth-century progressivism - it goes on well into this century - and the influence of Marx at the present time. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Titel: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Stichwort: Symbol: Definition

Kurzinhalt: A symbol is an image that either induces an affect, causes the affect to arise, or on the other hand expresses an affect - one has the affect first and the image emerges

Textausschnitt: 98d Now briefly consider symbolic meaning. It is the meaning of affect in the most elementary form. By affects and our affections - affections are something more elaborate than affects - we have our orientation in life, in the world. They reveal the direction of our living, our attitudes to the world, to other persons, to things. A symbol is an image that either induces an affect, causes the affect to arise, or on the other hand expresses an affect - one has the affect first and the image emerges. Further, images that are symbols, that is, expressions or causes of affects, also reveal the attitude and the orientation of a person in the world and towards other persons. (Fs) (notabene)
Kommentar (05/15/06): Definition Symbol ... (Fs)

99a Now such affects, such symbols, have been studied very thoroughly in this century. The Freudian study of symbols, particularly of dream symbols, is based largely on interpersonal relations, and interpersonal relations gone wrong. The Greek cycle of Seven against Thebes,1 in which the family centering around Oedipus was involved in all sorts of crimes and hatreds, provides the fundamental nucleus of the description. There is an entirely different analysis worked out by Jung. But I would like to mention a recent study by Gilbert Durand, Les Structures anthropologiques de I'imaginaire.2 There are some thirty-five pages of bibliography, so he has been over a fair amount of material. (Fs)

99b Durand sets aside all the Freudian analysis of symbols as pertaining to a certain type of civilization, a certain type of family problem, and he does not go on to the higher dynamics of Jungian psychology, but he connects symbols, images that express affects, with three fundamental dominant reflexes. There is the reflex by which we maintain our balance: if one is going to fall, one's reflex interrupts everything else until one recovers one's equilibrium. It is a dominant reflex: it operates spontaneously, masterfully; it cuts out everything else (as do the other dominant reflexes: swallowing and mating).3 (Fs)

100a Connected with maintaining one's equilibrium, there are what Durand calls the ascensional symbols: rising, standing, being upright, exercising control, manipulation, power, the sceptre, the sword, going up the ladder, the bird that flies, the tree that rises from the earth, all the symbols that express uprightness in the moral connotation of the word - something a child develops very strong feelings about in learning to walk, in learning to maintain its balance. (Fs)
100b Opposed to these ascensional symbols there are all the symbols of fear, and you get the whole combined in, for example, the image of St George and the dragon. The dragon combines in one monster all the symbols of fear or a vast number of them. On the other hand, St George destroying the dark dragon is mastering the object of fear; he is upright, he is riding, he holds the spear. A whole affective orientation is expressed in that symbol. (Fs)

100c The second dominant reflex is swallowing. You get an entirely different attitude from St George and the dragon when you take Jonah and the whale. The whale is just as much a monster as the dragon, but it is not terrifying. The object of terror is euphemized; it is not so bad after all. Jonah went down into the whale but he came out three days later and was just as well off as ever. Instead of mastering the object of fear, controlling it, dominating it, there is resignation, quietness, peace, and not the fall from the upright position but the descent, improving the descent when one is falling.4 (Fs)

100d You can see how Durand's analysis of symbols is connected with very fundamental physiological, psychic facts, and how it enables him to put together vast arrays of symbols. In the symbol there is a meaning, not on the conceptual level but still on a very real level; it has a meaning for people, all the meaning, for example, in the word 'upright'; it has connected with it all sorts of meanings, all sorts of feelings and suggestions, that are fundamentally affective and symbolic; the affective is directed toward something, and the meaning of the symbol is the meaning of the affect; or there can be a combination of affects, an interplay between affects as, for example, with courage overcoming fear, and so on. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Titel: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Stichwort: Meinung, Intention, Realität; in Gott Identität von Intention und Realität; intentional - real - natürlich

Kurzinhalt: in God the natural and intentional reality are identical; 'intentional' is not opposed to 'real'; it is opposed to 'natural.'

Textausschnitt: 105a Further, perhaps we had best say a few words on the ontology, the reality, of meaning. One is apt to say that on the one hand there are things that are real and on the other there is 'mere meaning' - as though meaning were not a reality. The proper division is that esse reale, the real, divides into the 'natural' and the 'intentional'; the intentional order is the order of meaning. Now in God the natural and intentional reality are identical. For that reason, the procession of the Word is not simply the procession of the meaning of God, but also the procession of God himself, because in God the esse intentionale and the esse naturale are one and the same; and so when God utters himself, conceives himself, not only is there a concept of God but the reality of God too. There is the identity of the intentional and the natural. In us there is not that identity. We are ourselves even when we are asleep and having no dreams. Our unconscious is as much a part of us as our conscious living, and the two interpenetrate in a very complex fashion (into which we need not go). But it would be a mistake to think that a meaning is not a reality. Our conscious living and the meaning that it carries are just as real as the realities of the spirit, and they do not belong to some shadowy world that really does not count. One mistakes the whole significance of meaning if one does not get that point correct: 'intentional' is not opposed to 'real'; it is opposed to 'natural.'1 (Fs) (notabene)

Kommentar (05/16/06): Die Identität von esse intentionale und reale in Gott ist die ontolgische Voraussetzung für das Realsymbol

105b Besides speaking of the ontology of meaning one might say a few words about the ethics of meaning. What exists by being willed is something that is meant. And of course what exists by being willed is something whose existence can be completely rational because the will is a rational appetite. And in us there is a spiraling upwards: we develop mentally and morally, we reach fuller and fuller meaning, and we realize those meanings in ourselves and in our environment by our willing. It is through this world, this intentional order, that human will has its creative opportunity, and it is within the intentional order that will is effective. Similarly, when I speak about what exists because it is willed, I mean what exists because it is loved, and love is just one instance of this creativity of the will. (Fs)
106a Opposed to what I was saying about meaning is what is called nihilism, the negation of any meaning to human life. Take the often repeated statement of Nietzsche that God is dead. What he meant was that the atheism, the agnosticism, the religious indifference, of the nineteenth century destroyed the meaning of all the cultural tradition on which the century was actually living. What he concluded was the necessity of recreating the whole of culture. The point there is that when you remove the fundamental element in the meaning of life, you have to find a new meaning or people are desperate. A recent book has been published with the title The Struggle for Meaning.11 Human living really is a struggle for meaning, an effort, because meaning is constituent of human living. The effort to live is fundamentally the struggle for meaning. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Titel: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Stichwort: Trinität, Introspektion, Thomas; falsches Verständnis von Realität (Tertullian)

Kurzinhalt: crisis involved in overcoming the spontaneous estimate of the real, and the fear of idealism involved in this crisis

Textausschnitt: 4 Block to Integration: Notion of Reality

128c On the other hand, there did arise blocks which prevented attention to the results of psychological introspection and acknowledgment of their relevance. The root of those blocks is, in my opinion, twofold: a notion of reality and a notion of knowledge. We all spend approximately seven years before reaching the age of reason, but before reaching it we have some notion, some developed sense, of reality. We all possess a prerational feeling, sense, conviction, about what is real and what is not. That prerational conviction about what is real and what is not is not exactly the same as the distinction between id quod est and id quod non est. Indeed, it is so totally different that, when we first hear about ens, we wonder what on earth people are talking about. (Fs) (notabene)

129a There are two ways of conceiving reality, of judging what is real and what is not. One is an appeal to a sense of reality that is prerational. It is never eliminated; if it were, we would not function properly, we would become a psychological case. The other is in terms of ens cui suo modo competit esse. The two notions do not sound the same and are not the same. (Fs) (notabene)

129b The difference may be illustrated by contrasting Tertullian and the Council of Nicea on the divinity of the Son. Tertullian never denied the divinity of the Son, but he did not attribute the same properties to the Son that he attributed to the Father. The Father is eternal; the Son is temporal. The Father gives orders; the Son carries them out. Perhaps - for the exegetes are uncertain of the meaning of the passage1 - the Father is the whole and the Son is the derivative part. Now the fact that the same predicates are not attributed to the Son as to the Father caused Tertullian no difficulty for, in his opinion, the Son was divine because he was made of the same stuff as the Father. Divinity depends on what sort of stuff you are made of. This is a notion of divinity that fits in perfectly with the first sense of reality. According to the homoousios formula of Nicea, however, the Son is divine because the same predicates are to be attributed to him as to the Father, with one exception, the name 'Father.'2 This notion of divinity fits in with the notion of reality in terms of id quod est and id quod non est. Homoousios is conceived in terms of ens, of id quod est, of identity of predicates. By that standard, Tertullian did not properly acknowledge the divinity of the Son. And the difference between Tertullian and Nicea on this point is the difference between the two notions of reality we outlined. (Fs) (notabene)

130a Unfortunately, some people have the impression that, while Tertullian and others of his time may have made such a mistake, no one repeats it today. Nothing could be further from the truth. For until a person has made the personal discovery that he is making Tertullian's mistake all along the line, until he has gone through the crisis involved in overcoming the spontaneous estimate of the real, and the fear of idealism involved in this crisis, he is still thinking just as Tertullian did. It is not a sign that one is dumb or backward. St Augustine was one of the most intelligent men in the whole Western tradition, and one of the best proofs of his intelligence is the fact that he himself discovered that for years he was unable to distinguish between what is a body and what is real. (Fs) (notabene)

However, the notion of reality is only one part of the problem. The other is the notion of knowledge. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Titel: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Stichwort: Trinität, Introspektion; falsches Verständnis: Wissen als Sehen

Kurzinhalt: A further consequence of conceiving knowing on the analogy of the popular notion of vision is the exclusion of the conscious subject. Objects are paraded before spectators ...

Textausschnitt: 5 Block to Integration: Notion of Knowledge

130b Now in this new block to integration ocular vision is a perfect symbol for knowing. When do you know? When you perform an act that is like an act of seeing. If you perform such an act, it is self-evident, unquestionable, beyond any possible rational doubt, that the object of that act is really and truly known, that it is valid, that it is objective. On the other hand, if a cog-nitional act is not like seeing, it is equally self-evident, unquestionable, and beyond possible doubt that its object is not really and truly known, that it really is not valid knowledge. That symbol, because it is symbolic, is absolutely convincing. Myths are not mere funny stories; a myth is something you are absolutely certain of. People who hold the earth is flat do not hold that view as a theory or hypothesis or possibility; they hold it as something which simply must be so. Similarly, one can be absolutely convinced that a cognitional act can be cognitional only if it resembles ocular vision. Of course, if it is like ocular vision, it does not need explanation but is self-evident. (Fs) (notabene)

130c Ocular vision here is ocular vision as popularly imagined. As scientifically studied, ocular vision demands distinction between 'real' color and visible color, between 'real' shapes and visible shapes. The 'real' color of the cassocks worn by the seminarians at the German College1 is always the same no matter what the age of the cassock, the lighting of the room, and so forth. The visible color varies with the age of the cassock, the number of times it has been washed, the light in which you see it. This is the visible color, unseen by most people. Again, artists see things in their perspective, but the rest of us see things the way in which they are built, the way in which they are not visible. We see everything in straight lines, in rectangles, and so forth; but that is not the way they are in fact visible.2 (Fs)
131a Now, if human knowing is to be conceived exclusively, by an epistemological necessity, as similar to ocular vision, it follows as a first consequence that human understanding must be excluded from human knowledge. For understanding is not like seeing. Understanding grows with time: you understand one point, then another, and a third, a fourth, a fifth, a sixth, and your understanding changes several times until you have things right. Seeing is not like that, so to say that knowing is like seeing is to disregard understanding as a constitutive element in human knowledge. (Fs) (notabene)

131b A further consequence of conceiving knowing on the analogy of the popular notion of vision is the exclusion of the conscious subject. Objects are paraded before spectators, and if the spectator wants to know himself, he must get out in the parade to be looked at. There are no subjects anywhere, for being a subject is not being something that is being looked at; it is being the one who is looking; it is not what is understood, but the one who is understanding; it is not what is being questioned, but the one asking the questions; and by the very fact that he is asking them, he is aware of himself asking the questions. And if the conscious subject has been excluded, it is not surprising that three conscious subjects are also excluded or at least omitted in the Trinity. (Fs) (notabene)

Kommentar (05/21/06): "Objects are paraded before spectators, and if the spectator wants to know himself, he must get out ..." Diese einfache Feststellung erklrt von einer Tiefe her das Verhalten jener Zeitgenossen, die aus einem elementaren Antrieb her unter Menschen stets damit beschftigt sind, sich mglichst sichtbar in die Parade der Objekte einzureihen.

131c When understanding is excluded from knowledge, not on the grounds that we do not have intellects (for we are not materialists), but on the grounds that we do not have intelligence,3 then we may have spiritual eyes that look at universals, compare universals, see the possible nexus, and see the necessary nexus, and we may bow our heads in assent; but we are not understanding in the ordinary meaning of the word. And if understanding is excluded from conscious knowledge, there is no possibility of one's defining or clarifying because one understands. To speak of judging because one has understood, grasped, the unconditioned, will have no meaning. Without a notion of the conscious subject or of the intelligible emanation, the process from the judgment of value to the act of choice will also be overlooked. (Fs) (notabene)

132a For some twenty-three years now, I have been examining in theology. Jesuit students must take an examination which, besides the hundred theses on theology, includes all of philosophy. When a student is asked for a philosophical proof of human liberty, he is likely to appeal to consciousness. If it is objected that, in consciousness of a free act, we are conscious only of the fact that we chose one part or the other, but not of the possibility of choosing the opposite, most students are stumped. For the appeal to consciousness must be an appeal to the conscious subject who is principle of this act or that act and is aware of the fact that he is principle of either. The appeal must be to the conscious subject and to intelligible emanations. (Fs; ???)

132b The notions of knowledge and of reality which we have outlined, although distinct, still reinforce one another. Reality is what is known by an act much like an act of seeing, and not at all what is known by understanding and judging. A neat, closed-in world is built up in which there is no room for three conscious subjects in the Trinity. (Fs)

132c There is, then, a problem for Catholic thinkers in the field of trinitarian theory. We must use the word 'person' in speaking of God, and in its traditional sense; we are bound to the formula 'three persons in God.' But we can say 'three persons' and mean three conscious subjects, that is, use the word in the sense of three who are somebody although there is one consciousness for the three subjects. There is no major difficulty in integrating the notion of person as 'conscious subject' with the whole tradition of systematic theology on the Trinity; it simply is a matter of understanding what St Thomas said. One may understand what he said or merely repeat his formula, and that is the difference between having three conscious subjects and not having them in the Trinity. The real difficulty lies elsewhere. It lies in philosophic problems and their carry-over into theology. Theology is reason illuminated by faith. And should reason limp, well, limping reason illuminated by faith will not give perfect results. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Titel: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Stichwort: Sein (esse) -> Unterschied zw. Seinsbegriff und Idee vom Sein usw.; Grundlage der Objektivität (Gilson)

Kurzinhalt: The notion of being is distinct from the concept of being; the notion and concept of being are different from knowledge of being; and the notion, concept, and knowledge of being are distinct from the idea of being

Textausschnitt: 134b [...]
What is the basis of the objectivity of our knowledge, what is its first contact with the objective? It occurs after you have a sense experience - when you ask, 'What is it?' and when you know what the answer to that is; and when you ask, 'Is it so?' An sit"? (Fs) (notabene)

134c What is this sit? It is the objective of the pure desire to know being. Questions are unlimited; you can't draw a line and say, 'So far and no further, no further questions.' The potency for asking questions is unlimited. And the object of that potency is unlimited. In that way our knowledge ties up with an unlimited objective that is being; such is our notion of being. (Fs)

134d The notion of being is distinct from the concept of being; the notion and concept of being are different from knowledge of being; and the notion, concept, and knowledge of being are distinct from the idea of being. The idea of being is God's essence. To understand God's essence is to understand God and everything else, which is what God's knowledge of himself and everything else is. The idea of being is the species intelligibilis that is the essence of God. Knowledge of being is had through judgment. The concept of being is had when you conceive anything; any concept is always a concept of being. For any concept is ordered to a judgment: Is it so? By the mere fact that it is ordered to a judgment, it is a concept of something ordered to esse. And what is being? Ens est id cui suo modo competit esse. So any concept is a concept of being. The notion of being is the desire to understand, which is prior to understanding anything. It is the wonder that is the beginning of all science and philosophy, but also the wonder that makes two-year-old children plague their parents with the number of questions they ask.1 (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Titel: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Stichwort: Trinität - Bewusstsein; der Vater ist analog zur Erfassung ...

Kurzinhalt: the Father is God in a manner analogous to the grasp of sufficient evidence that necessitates one to judge; the Son is God in the same consciousness but

Textausschnitt: 135a Question: The next question concerned the fact that the judgment of identity in the person is made because of, and in, a multiplicity of acts. (Fs)

Response: We think of our identity in relation with a multiplicity of acts because it is the multiplicity of acts that causes the problem. So the problem of identity in the Trinity will not be the same. There is only one act, but there is a distinction because the three persons have the same consciousness differently: the Father is God in a manner analogous to the grasp of sufficient evidence that necessitates one to judge; the Son is God in the same consciousness but now a consciousness analogous to that of the dependence of the judgment on the grasp of sufficient evidence; the Holy Spirit is the same consciousness in a third manner, namely, as the dependence of the act of love on the grasp of sufficient evidence and the rational affirmation. The same consciousness is had differently by three persons. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Titel: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Stichwort: Klärung: intelligibel (intelligibile); in genere intelligibilium ut actus

Kurzinhalt: St Thomas, where he says that sensible things are not in genere intelligibilium, that our intellects are in genere intelligibilium ut potentia tantum, that ...

Textausschnitt: 135b Question: What is the meaning of the term intelligibile as applied to acts of understanding, as distinct from the way it is applied to natural causes?

Response: The difference is clear enough in St Thomas, where he says that sensible things are not in genere intelligibilium, that our intellects are in genere intelligibilium ut potentia tantum, that to be in genere intelligibilium ut actus is to be infinite - that is a use of intelligibile that does not apply to natural objects: human intelligence is at the bottom of the ladder.1 The intelligibile is the sort of thing that for it to be in full act is to be infinite. It is in a category that moves off to infinity. It makes no sense to talk about the infinitely hot, but it does make sense to talk of the infinitely intelligible. That's with regard to usage. (Fs)

136a With regard to meaning, a learned book in Akkadian2 may inspire your admiration for its beautiful printing but you won't know what it means. It's intelligible but I don't understand anything. That is not the sense in which 'intelligible' is used when we speak of an intelligible emanation. When we speak of an intelligible emanation, we refer to the intelligible that can be only in an intelligent subject as intelligence in act. A city plan, a parish church or hall, may be very intelligently worked out but the plan itself is not intelligent at all; it is an effect of intelligence. But what goes on in a man's mind when he thinks of the plan? It is not merely an object that can be studied and admired as neatly contrived; it is not the contrived but the contriver - namely, the intelligent. People judge because of sufficient reason. And you may say that I am here tonight because of a sufficient reason; or that something happens and there is a sufficient reason for it. But the sufficient reason is not rational in itself; it is the grounded: what results from following reason. But what occurs in virtue of reason itself is the sort of thing that is moved because it is rational, by the reason itself. As in the expressions, 'It stands to reason,' 'If you had an ounce of gumption, you'd say yes,' and so on. We become impatient when addressed in that way. But what is being appealed to? The speaker is appealing to our rationality, to our ability to be moved by reason as distinct from any other type of pressure or threat. In that ability to be moved by reason, at its center - in the intellect itself, in the rational appetite that is the will - the place where theory counts and where, if we are rational, it should 'cut some ice' (even if it doesn't in practical affairs) there is to be located the field of intellectual emanations. (A book on logic is logical, but when the Greeks called man a zoon logikon - a logical animal - they were talking about him as rational. The Latins did not make a mistake in translating it animal rationale - a rational animal. The question is, What is rationale?) (Fs)

136b Question: Is it true to say then that intelligible and intelligent mean the same thing? (Fs)

Response: No. In general you can say that everything is intelligible: even prime matter, though not in itself but in its form; and the social surd but only within the dialectic. Everything is intelligible but only intelligent beings are intelligent. They are the only beings that understand. What is understanding? It is like seeing in this sense: that just as, if you are blind, you don't know what seeing is (you may figure out a theory about what it must mean but it is not something immediately evident to you, and can be evident only to someone who can open and close his eyes and see), so too unless you understand, you can't know what understanding means. The function of the earlier chapters of Insight is to stimulate the occurrence and experience of understanding. People object, 'The examples aren't familiar.' That is the point. If they were familiar, the act of understanding would occur so easily that it wouldn't be noticed. You have to work for it, and at long last it comes: 'I've got it!' (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Titel: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Stichwort: Intelligibile in actu est intellectus in actu - mobile, motivum, motum, movens
Intelligibile in actu est intellectus in actu

Kurzinhalt: Because of this analysis Aristotle can conclude to what you could never arrive at in a Platonic philosophy: a prime mover that is intelligent

Textausschnitt: 137b Question: The next questioner asked the meaning of the dictum, Intelligibile in actu est intellectus in actu. (Fs)

Response: That's St Thomas and Aristotle. The intelligent in act and the intelligible in act are identical. The intelligible in potency and the intelligent in potency are distinct. The intelligible in potency can be understood, the intelligent in potency can understand. It depends on Aristotle's analysis of action and passion. Aristotle, and St Thomas commenting on the Physics, distinguish the mobile, the motivum, the motum, and the movens; these are the elements distinguished in motus, motion.1 Now is the motion in the mover or in the moved? Are there two motions or only one? Aristotle shows that there is only one and that it is in the moved. Then, in the third book of the De anima (lectio secunda of St Thomas's Commentary), he applies this analysis to sensation. Hearing - your ear - and the bell are distinct; what sounds in potency and what hears in potency are distinct. But the hearing in act and the sounding in act are one and the same. The bell rings in the desert - does it sound? Not in Aristotle's view. There is no sounding act unless there is an ear hearing in act. He applied the same thing to the intellectual order. Intellectus in actu and intelligibile in actu are identical, but in potency they are distinct. Because of this analysis Aristotle can conclude to what you could never arrive at in a Platonic philosophy: a prime mover that is intelligent. Aristotle's prime mover is not an object but an identity of subject and object. In his quae sunt sine materia idem est intelligens et intellectum.2 Now that is a basic analysis of knowledge, but it doesn't deal with die problem of objectivity. Analysis of the judgment has to be added. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Titel: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Stichwort: Symbol; Wechselbeziehung: Affekt - Bild, Imagination

Kurzinhalt: By a symbol is meant an affect-laden image. There is the image, and either it evokes the affect or the affect evokes it.

Textausschnitt: 189a A fourth type of meaning, one that again escapes the level of words, of clear concepts, of flat affirmations and negations, is the meaning of the symbol. By a symbol is meant an affect-laden image. There is the image, and either it evokes the affect or the affect evokes it. They correspond to one another. The affect finds expression in the image, resonates in the image, finds form and concreteness in the image; on the other hand, the image is dynamic, alive, moving, insofar as it is connected with the affect. Images or symbols have been studied in many different ways. In the Freudian account, symbols are expressions of family relationships, especially family relationships gone sour, and very sour, as illustrated by the Greek tragedies built about the story of the Seven against Thebes.1 Carl Jung is concerned with symbols of transformation, of conversion, of death and resurrection, with the preformation, on the level of the unconscious and of the sensitive soul, of man's higher spiritual activities.2 (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Bibel; Bewusstsein: differenziert- undifferenziert

Kurzinhalt: ... what corresponds to the gospels is undifferentiated consciousness, whereas what corresponds to dogma is differentiated consciousness

Textausschnitt: 2a To this objective aspect of dogmatic development there corresponds of necessity a subjective aspect. For if there is a change in literary genre and a change in the manner of apprehending and considering the truth, then there is a change in man himself. But what exactly is this change in man himself?1 (Fs)

2b To begin with what is most obvious, there is no doubt that the interior state of a person who is asleep and dreaming is quite different from that of one who is wide awake: the kind of law that governs the succession and interrelation of dream-images, and the kind of pattern in which they emerge, are totally different from the patterns and laws that govern and order our daytime experiences. Not so obvious, perhaps, is the fact that waking consciousness is anything but a uniform, homogeneous state-that there are many different patterns in which our conscious acts emerge, some preceding and calling forth others, others following and complementing those that preceded them and called them forth. Quite different from each other are the interior states that accompany involvement with practical problems, the enjoyment of aesthetic experience, the arousal of mythic consciousness, the ardour of mystical illumination, the joyful sharing of friends in human intersubjectivity, and the specifically intellectual pursuits of the scientific mind. (Fs)

2c Conscious human acts emerge, therefore, within different patterns of experience, patterns that can be identified and described, distinguished from and related to each other. But the basic distinction to be made is between undifferentiated and differentiated consciousness. Consciousness is undifferentiated where the whole person is involved, operating simultaneously and equally with all of his powers. Differentiated consciousness, on the other hand, is capable of operating exclusively, or at least principally, on a single level, while the other levels are either entirely subordinated to the attainment of the goal of that level, or at least are held in check, so that they do not hinder its attainment. In the man of action, for example, imagination, affectivity, will, senses and practical intelligence all operate together: imagination represents the goal to be achieved, affectivity is drawn towards it, will embraces it, practical intelligence, with the aid of the senses, figures out how the goal is to be achieved and how the obstacles are to be removed that stand in the way of its attainment. Thus the whole person, with all his powers, tends towards a goal that is proportionate to man. In contrast, the scientist, or the speculative thinker, tends towards a goal that is not that of the whole man, but only of his intellect. The will is therefore restricted to willing the good of intellect, which is the truth; imagination throws up only those images that induce understanding or suggest a judgment; feelings and emotions, finally, are as if anaesthetised, so firmly are they kept in control. (Fs)

3a Bearing this basic distinction in mind, it is not hard to see that what corresponds to the gospels is undifferentiated consciousness, whereas what corresponds to dogma is differentiated consciousness. For the gospels are addressed to the whole person, on all levels of operation. The dogmas, on the contrary, demand a subject who can focus attention on the aspect of truth alone, so that other powers are under the sway of intellect, or else are somehow stilled. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Dogma, Dogmen: unklar, obskur; Mensch des Alltagslebens

Kurzinhalt: ... when intellect operates as just one among many diverse powers ... then less attention is focussed on the proper end of intellect

Textausschnitt: 4b It is argued that the dogmas are obscure, whereas the gospels are perfectly clear. In one sense this is true, but in another it is not. It can hardly be said that exegetes find the gospels perfectly clear: today, after almost twenty centuries, the learned articles, the monographs, the commentaries and the dictionaries, the various opinions and hypotheses, the methods and the schools of interpretation would seem to be increasing, not diminishing, in number. And if the gospels are not without obscurity, neither are the dogmas entirely lacking in clarity. Just as Euclid's Elements seem very obscure to those who have never learnt geometry, so dogmas, to the uneducated, seem very strange indeed. Yet to mathematicians the meaning of Euclid's Elements is so clear and precise that they present almost no problems of interpretation and therefore little ground for disputes among commentators or the never-ending labour of exegetes. And as the mathematician views Euclid, so the theologian views the dogmas of the Church. (Fs) (notabene)

5a The explanation is not hard to find. For when one's other powers are subordinated to one's intellect, one is apt to achieve that clarity and precision that is proper to intellect; those who have made some progress in the intellectual life, therefore, and can move with ease into the intellectual pattern of experience, find nothing more clear and precise than the meaning of a geometrical theorem or of a dogmatic definition. On the other hand, when intellect operates as just one among many diverse powers-and this applies to most people most of the time-then less attention is focussed on the proper end of intellect. In ordinary every-day living there is much that is taken for granted as being sufficiently clear; what is thus taken for granted may be described and stated in detail, from many different angles, but it is normally so tied to particular circumstances, so embedded in the intentions of individual people, that it can never be reduced to the clarity of a definition or a theorem. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Einwand: Dogma, Dogmen -> unklar - Bibel -> einfach und klar; Bewusstsein - Differenzierung

Kurzinhalt: It is plain, therefore, that dogmas pertain to religion most of all because they render differentiated consciousness religious

Textausschnitt: 5b So much for the clarity or obscurity of dogmas. We may move on to consider the second contention, that dogmas have little religious significance. This contention is normally coupled with such a glorification of the Hebrew mind, in its ancient simplicity, as to suggest that it was some special gift of God to the Hebrews, sealed with the approval of the scriptures and offered to all future ages as a model to be imitated. (Fs)

5c However, the fact is that the farther back we go towards ancient times, the less differentiated we find the consciousness of all men; the esteemed simplicity of the Hebrews, then, is characteristic not of them alone, but of all the more ancient races. Further, the less differentiated one's consciousness and the fewer the patterns of experience in which one lives out one's life, the less clearly, proportionately, does one grasp the diversity of human actions and the less capable, consequently, is one of drawing distinctions between one sphere of action and another. That is why among primitives the spheres of the sacred and the profane interpenetrate, without benefit of distinction or separation,1 and so those who in secular matters are most religious, in the sphere of religion are most prone to idolatry. The Hebrews themselves were no less inclined to idolatry than were other races; the difference was that their tendency to idolatry was held in check by the inspired teaching of the prophets, proclaimed with vehemence and constantly reiterated. There is little basis, then, for the romantic notion that undifferentiated consciousness is the religious consciousness par excellence. (Fs) (notabene)

6a There is no firmer footing for the correlative assertion that dogmas have little religious significance. For it is the function of religion to orientate and direct the whole of man's living towards God, and therefore, as consciousness develops, so too must religion. The simpler one's life-style, the simpler one's religion will be; but when human living becomes highly diversified and highly specialised, then to its many various aspects there correspond many and various functions of religion. (Fs)

6b It is plain, therefore, that dogmas pertain to religion most of all because they render differentiated consciousness religious- whether we think of such consciousness as already developed intellectually, or as standing in need of intellectual development. For differentiated consciousness reflects on, and passes judgment on religious matters, as it does on everything else, and such judgments affect the whole tenor and direction of life. And so if one argues that there is nothing religious about intellect, one is not serving the cause of true religion, but rather that of secularism. (Fs)

7a But one may say, surely primitives and children can be genuinely religious, and just as surely, religious living does not consist in intellectual exercises. Quite true, but the argument simply misses the point. For religion is not some eternal and immutable Platonic form, with but a single mode of participation for children and adults, for primitives and highly-developed peoples alike. As consciousness develops so too does religion, and so it is fallacious to infer that what is appropriate for children and for primitives constitutes the very essence of religion, always and everywhere the same. Secondly, as we have already said, with the development of consciousness religion takes on many aspects and fulfils many functions; if one particular aspect and function does not constitute the whole of religion, it does not follow that that particular aspect and function is therefore to be denied. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Regel: achte auf das Wort

Kurzinhalt: one simple rule for dealing with the arguments adduced by those who say that there is a radical discontinuity between the gospels and the dogmas: pay attention to the word as true

Textausschnitt: 10a There is, then, one simple rule for dealing with the arguments adduced by those who say that there is a radical discontinuity between the gospels and the dogmas: pay attention to the word as true. This is what the perceptionists overlook, who think that they know before they have made a judgment. It also escapes the idealists, who insist that what the perceptionists perceive is only the appearance of things, not things in themselves. The essentialists also miss the point, for they can no more distinguish between essence and being, in an adequate manner, than they can between thinking and knowing. There is the same basic flaw in those elaborate descriptions of forms or structures of thought that betray a lack of clear distinction between thinking and knowing. Finally, it is this same failure to attend to the word as true that mars the thinking of those who reduce the dogmas to hellenism; for hellenistic speculation was concerned with essences, whereas dogmas are affirmations of what is.1 (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Vorwurf, Verwirrung: Subordinationismus (subordinationism) vor Nicaea; subtile Fehlschlüsse; Wille: Sohn, Vater

Kurzinhalt: If, however, one were to infer from this that the Father is invisible and the Son visible ... if one were to infer from such passages that the Son was born of the Father only when the Father willed to create ...

Textausschnitt: 40a
1. There are many conclusions, drawn from more recent theology, which, to those who are not very well versed in the matter, can seem rather subtle. (Fs)

40b For example, the scriptures represent the Father as the one who is hidden, whom no one has ever seen, and the Son as the one who reveals him. If, however, one were to infer from this that the Father is invisible and the Son visible, one would be going against the doctrine of the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son. For if there is only the one divine substance, then either it is invisible or it is visible. And therefore, if the Father is invisible, it follows of necessity that the Son is also invisible. (Fs) (notabene)

40c Again, in the scriptures the Father is the one from whom all things come, whereas the Son is the one through whom all things come (1 Cor 8,6; Col 1,17; Heb 1,3; Jn 1,3). Besides, the Son is the Word (Jn 1,1.18), the wisdom of God (1 Cor 1,24), the image of God (2 Cor 4, 4; Col 1,15); and one may add from the Old Testament whatever is said of wisdom (Prov 8, 22 ff) and of the creative word of God (Ps 32,6; Gen 1). But if one were to infer from such passages that the Son was born of the Father only when the Father willed to create, in order to assist the Father in creating and governing the universe, one would be involved in many errors. (Fs) (notabene)

40d For the substance of the Father and that of the Son is one and the same substance; therefore, if the Father is eternal, so also is the Son. Again, if the Father exists for his own sake, not for the sake of his creatures, no less does the Son exist for his own sake. (Fs)

41a And if the Father exists necessarily, then the Son exists necessarily. Further, just as the Father and the Son share the one substance, so in reality they also share a single will; and so the Son cannot be some object, really distinct from the Father's will, and arising out of a decision of the Father's will.1 (Fs)

41b Now these conclusions follow, beyond a shadow of doubt, from more recent theology, but the ante-Nicene authors, to judge from the language they used, had little grasp of them, and so they have been charged with subordinationism.2 (Fs)

41c If the term, subordinationism, is used to describe a certain fact, namely, that the ante-Nicene authors were not well up in the theology of a later age, then of course its use is both legitimate and useful. For before anything can be understood and explained, one must know precisely what it is that is to be understood and explained. (Fs)

41d On the other hand, if we consider the proper goal of scientific inquiry, which is understanding, then the term, subordinationism, becomes a source of the greatest obscurity and confusion. For it is anachronistic to conceive the doctrine of the ante-Nicene authors according to the criteria of a later theology, and anachronism precludes correct historical understanding. (Fs)

It is for this reason that, when we come later on to deal with the structure of the ante-Nicene movement,1 we shall speak, not of subordinationism, but rather of a kind of dialectic, whereby firm belief in the revealed word of God gradually eliminated less exact conceptions, and thus prepared the way for the later theology. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Tertullian: Denken in Bildern (Beispiel); Wurzel, Schössling, Frucht

Kurzinhalt: This passage shows how much Tertullian's mind is tied to images

Textausschnitt: 45a Therefore, although the Son is a substance emitted, or extruded, from the substance of the Father, their intimate union of knowledge and love, and the non-separation of the Son from the Father, constitute them as one. To explain this non-separation Tertullian draws on familiar images, used also by the Montanists:

"For God brought forth the Word, as the Paraclete also teaches, as the root brings forth the shoot, as the spring brings forth the stream, as the sun brings forth the beam. And these manifestations are emissions [probolas] of those substances from, which they proceed. And I would not hesitate to say that the shoot is the son of the root, the stream the son of the spring, the beam the son of the sun; because every source is a parent and everything that is brought forth from a source is its offspring. Much more is this true of the Word of God, who received the name of Son in the proper sense. But the shoot is not separated and removed from the root, nor the stream from the spring, nor the beam from the sun; neither is the Word removed and separated from God. Therefore, using these comparisons, I declare that it is my view that God and his Word, the Father and the Son, are two: for the root and the shoot are two things, but conjoined; the spring and the river are two manifestations, but undivided; the sun and the beam are two aspects, but they cohere. If one thing comes out of another, it is necessarily a second thing, different from that out of which it came, but it is not on that account separate from it. But where there is a second [person], there are two [persons], and where there is a third, there are three. For the Spirit is third, with God and the Son, as the fruit is third, coming from the root and the shoot, and the stream is third, coming from the spring and the river, and the point of light is third, coming from the sun and the beam. Nothing, however, is exiled from its source, from which it draws its properties. This conception of the trinity, as moving out from the Father in closely connected sequence, is in no way opposed to the monarchy, and it preserves the order of the divine economy".1 (Fs)

46a This passage shows how much Tertullian's mind is tied to images: the Son is other than the Father because a substance is emitted, or extruded, from a substance, and he proceeded, or came out; God is one, however, because two things are conjoined, two manifestations are undivided, two aspects cohere, because nothing is exiled from its source, and because the phases are tightly-woven. Elsewhere he says:

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Tertullian, Monarchie

Kurzinhalt: But if he who is the monarch has a son, and if the son is given a share in the monarchy, this does not mean that the monarchy is automatically divided ...

Textausschnitt: 46b Thus Tertullian conceived the unity of God. Of the divine monarchy he has this to say:

"... But I say that there is no power and dominion that is so much that of a single person, so much his alone, so much a monarchy, that it is not also administered by other persons, close to him, whom he has appointed as his officials. But if he who is the monarch has a son, and if the son is given a share in the monarchy, this does not mean that the monarchy is automatically divided, ceasing to be a monarchy. For the monarchy belongs principally to him by whom it was communicated to the son and, being exercised by two who are so closely united with each other, it remains a monarchy ... But pay attention, I beg you, to the meaning rather than the sound of the words I use. A monarchy is overthrown only when another power, of equal condition and degree, and thus a rival, comes forward, as when Marcion introduces a second god, in opposition to the Creator, or when Valentinus and his followers, and Prodicus and his, bring in their many gods. Then indeed is the monarchy overthrown and the Creator destroyed".8 (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Unterschied: Tertullian, "von einer Substanz", Geist als "Körper sui generis - Athanasius, homoousion; dem Sohn kommt alles zu ...

Kurzinhalt: ... difference between the meaning of the phrase, "of one substance", as used by Tertullian, and that of "homoousion", as used by Athanasius ... "All that is said of the Father is also to be said of the Son ...

Textausschnitt: 3. The next point is to grasp the difference between the meaning of the phrase, "of one substance", as used by Tertullian, and that of "homoousion", as used by Athanasius. For both Tertullian and Athanasius set out to establish the same thesis, namely that the Father is God, that the Son is also God, and that there is only one God. Equally, each of them makes use of images as a means of eliciting some understanding of this thesis. Athanasius, however, inquires so diligently, piously and soberly-to use the phrase of the first Vatican council-that his reason, illumined by faith, discovers the following rule: "All that is said of the Father is also to be said of the Son, except that the Son is Son, and not Father". On the other hand, Tertullian's mind is so immersed in the sensible that for him a spirit is a body sui generis; so confined is he to the sphere of the imagination that he explains the unity of the divine substance in terms of the concord of a monarchy, and a kind of organic undividedness and continuity. (Fs)

47b However, it is not our purpose to blame the ante-Nicene Christian authors for lacking the philosophical development that would have enabled them to shift from a naive to a critical realism, but rather to draw attention to the consequences of this lack. For it is not just that Tertullian had an inadequate conception of the unity of the divine substance; he even said some things that contradicted his own fundamental thesis. For he held that the Son was temporal: "There was a time when there was neither sin to make God a judge, nor a son to make God a Father".1 He may also have held that the Father and the Son were not, each in the same way, the divine substance: "... for the Father is the whole substance, whereas the Son is something derived from it, and a part of it, as he himself professes when he says, For the Father is greater than I".2 He also taught that the Son is subordinate to the Father: "... the one commanding what is to be done, the other doing what has been commanded".3 These positions stand in clear opposition to the principal thesis. For if the Son is God, and God is eternal, then the Son also is eternal; if the Son is God, and God is the whole divine substance, then the Son also is the whole divine substance; if the Son is God, and God commands, then the Son also commands. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Dialektik (dialectic), dialektischer Prozess; Unterscheidung: formales, materiales Prinzip, Ziel, der Prozess selbst; Tertullian

Kurzinhalt: The dialectic process is the actual elimination of the contradiction; in Tertullian we have found the material principle of a dialectic. For he held ...

Textausschnitt: 48a
4. We have been discussing the difference between the position of Tertullian and that of Athanasius. It is not enough, however, to grasp this difference; the significant thing is to understand the movement, or dialectic, that brought about the development from the one position to the other. This dialectic is, indeed, the heart of the whole matter. (Fs)

48b Within this dialectic we distinguish a material and a formal principal, the dialectic process itself, and the term, or goal, of the process. (Fs)

The material principle is an objective contradiction, which may be either explicit or implicit. (Fs)

The formal principle is the rational subject, under the aspect of his rationality, illumined either by the light of natural reason alone, or by the light of reason strengthened by the greater light of Faith. (Fs)

49a The dialectic process is the actual elimination of the contradiction. For it is a natural tendency of reason to get rid of contradictions. If the contradiction in question is only implicit, it is first made explicit; then one side of the contradiction can be clearly affirmed and the other denied. Where reason is somewhat tardy, or the matter itself rather difficult, the process is gradual: one by one, different elements of the contradiction are made explicit, until eventually the whole contradiction is eliminated. (Fs) (notabene)

49b The term of the dialectic is either heresy or an advance in theology. It is heresy, where only the light of natural reason is operative; it is an advance in theology, where reason is illumined and strengthened by faith. (Fs) (notabene)
49c Applying these general categories to our present topic, we can say that in Tertullian we have found the material principle of a dialectic. For he held that the Father is not the Son, nor the Son the Father, and that both are God: but he also held that the Son was temporal; he made a distinction between the whole divine substance, on the one hand, and a derived portion of it, on the other; and he had the Father commanding what was to be done, and the Son doing what was commanded. A few simple syllogisms suffice to show that the latter assertions contradict the basic thesis. Secondly, the formal principle, as far as rationality itself is concerned, is common to all thinking men; as far as reason illumined by faith is concerned, it is present in all believers, considered precisely as believers. Thirdly, the dialectic process itself is grasped, not in any single author, considered apart, but in a whole series of authors, coming one after the other, each in his own way trying to resolve the basic contradiction, until at last it is in fact totally eliminated. Finally, the term of this dialectic, inasmuch as it is an advance in theology, we shall find in Athanasius; inasmuch as it is heresy, we shall find it in the Arians. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Origenes, Dialektik; ho theos - theos; Logos: Gott durch Partizipation

Kurzinhalt: We are now in a position to locate Origen within the general dialectic that brought about a development in the manner of conceiving the Trinity; Origen understood the phrase, "The Father is greater than I" as having universal application: ...

Textausschnitt: 59c
4. We are now in a position to locate Origen within the general dialectic that brought about a development in the manner of conceiving the Trinity. (Fs)

60a In the first place, through his insistence on the strict immateriality of both the Father and the Son, he undermined every conception or theory which, unable to transcend the level of the senses, could think of the generation of the Son, and the unity of the Father and the Son, only in terms of "within" and "without", "separated" and "united", or other such spatial images. (Fs)

60b Further, not only did Origen exclude every appeal to a material analogy; he also introduced a spiritual analogy. For he focussed attention on a procession which belongs to rational consciousness itself, within which, in his own words, "an act of willing proceeds from the mind". In some such way, he thought, we should conceive the Son's proceeding from the Father. (Fs)

60c Origen's conception of this spiritual analogy is, however, different from that of later theologians, who had a precise grasp of the meaning of consubstantiality, and so admitted only one divine intellect, common to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and similarly, only one divine will. Origen, on the other hand, held that the Father knows himself much more perfectly than the Son knows him,1 and that the will of the Son is only the image of the Father's will.2 (Fs)

60d The Father and the Son, then, are two hypostases, one of which, coming from the other, is related to its source as image to exemplar; these two hypostases, each in its own manner, create and maintain their mutual relationship, by understanding and willing. "This image", says Origen, "also contains the unity in nature and substance of the Father and the Son".1 To come close to his meaning here, one may think of the highest form of Platonic participation, and think of it both as intellectual and as free. (Fs)

61a
5. It will be well to say something about this notion of participation, which somehow pertains to the very notion of image itself. For Origen ho theos and theos had different meanings, as had ho logos and logos. And so he thought that he had found a middle way between Sabellianism and Adoptionism, inasmuch as he held that the Father was the God, while the Son was God by participation, and was also the mediator through whom others were deified. (Fs)

[...]

"Herein1 lies the solution to the problem that disturbs many people who, professing their love for God, and fearful of saying that there are two gods, fall prey to false and impious doctrines, either denying that the Son is really distinct from the Father, because he whom they call the Son is only God with another name, or else denying the Son's divinity, saying that his nature and essence are quite different from the Father's.2 To them we say that autotheos is indeed the God [God himself], which is why our Saviour, praying to the Father, says, 'that they may know you, the one true God'. Whatever else, other than him who is called autotheos, is also God, is deified by participation, by sharing [metochE] in his divinity, and is more properly to be called not the God [ho theos] but simply God [theos]. This name, of course, is his in a special way, who is the first-born of all creation, being the first to be with God, drawing the divinity to himself; he is more to be honoured in this name than the other gods there are besides him (they whose God is the God [ho theos], according to the saying, 'The God of gods has spoken, and has summoned the earth') to them he gives being, drawing in abundance from God that whereby he might make them gods and give them help and support according to his own goodness".3


61b This style of thought, grounded in Plato's notion of participation, is applied by Origen not only to the divinity itself, as in the passage just cited, but also to other things. [...] Indeed, Origen understood the phrase, "The Father is greater than I" as having universal application: the Son and the Holy Spirit are incomparably more excellent than all other things, but between them and the Father, in turn, there is at least as great a gap, if not a greater one

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Origenes (Origon): Schwierigkeit der Beurteilung; Konsubstantialität oder Kreatur; Patron der Arianer

Kurzinhalt: Secondly, to move from words to meaning, it is clear (1) that Origen always held that the Son was eternal, in the strict sense of the word; (2) that ...

Textausschnitt: 64a
6. Mainly because of its relevance for the later Arian controversy, we must touch briefly on the question, whether or not Origen considered the Son a creature. (Fs)

64b First of all, if we accept the version of Rufinus, the following passage is from Origen:

"For we do not say, as the heretics think, that some part of the Father's substance became the Son; neither do we say that the Son came from outside of the Father's substance, being created by the Father, so that there was a time when he was not. But, excluding every corporeal interpretation, we do say that the Word and wisdom were born, without any bodily process, of the invisible and incorporeal God, in the manner in which an act of willing proceeds from the mind. And thus it will not seem absurd, since he is called 'the Son of his love' (cf. Col 1,13), if in the same way he is considered the Son of his will".1 (Fs)

64c To which one may add: "For he does not become Son, from having not been Son, through the adoption of the Spirit, but is by nature Son".2 (Fs)

65a On the other hand, if we take Jerome's word, we are led to a different conclusion. (Fs)

"Candidus says that the Son is of the Father's substance, erring in this, that he asserts a propolE, that is, an extrusion from the Father's substance. Origen, on the other hand, according to Arius and Eunomius, rejects the notion of his being extruded, or born, because this would suggest that the Father is divided into parts; what he says, rather, is that the Son is the highest and most excellent of creatures, and that he came into being through the Father's will, as did all other creatures".3

65b Now it is certain that verbally Origen called the Son ktisma and that he said that he was a creature; but so did many others, because they applied to the Son the passage in the book of Proverbs 8,22.4 (Fs) (notabene)

65c Secondly, to move from words to meaning, it is clear (1) that Origen always held that the Son was eternal, in the strict sense of the word; (2) that he affirmed that the Son was not made, and that he was the first-born of everything that was made (ton agenEton kai pasEs genEtEs physeOs prOtotokon);5 (3) that he said they were not to be listened to who inferred from John 1,4 that the Word was made (genEton einai ton logon);6 (4) that he denied that the Son had a beginning, before which he was not (archEn ... einai uiou proteron ouk ontos)7 (Fs)

66a Thirdly, there are no grounds for supposing that while the notion of consubstantiality developed only gradually, everybody always had a clear conception of creation. In fact, neither Plato, nor Aristotle, nor the Stoics, nor the Gnostics, had a doctrine of creation, in the strict sense of the word. Even the early Christians, who acknowledged the fact of creation, used the words agennEtos (unbegotten) and agEnetos (not made) without discrimination;8 and although Methodius and Origen, in the third century, introduced some clarity into the use of these two terms, the Arians, in the fourth century, re-introduced a kind of primitive obscurity and confusion.9 (Fs)

66b Fourthly, as Athanasius proposed a clear conception of con-substantiality, so he also had a clear and lucid notion of creation. For his distinction between creating and making is a profound one;10and he also established with precision the difference between being unbegotten and being created.11 So he could argue effectively: If he is Son, he is not a creature; and if he is a creature, then he is not Son.12 These clear ideas and sharp distinctions show plainly enough how closely connected are the two questions: Is the Son consubstantial with the Father? and, Is the Son a creature?13 (Fs)

66c Fifthly, if we accept this distinction, namely, that the Son is either consubstantial with the Father, or else he is a creature, then we must say that Origen's subordinationism, since it excludes consubstantiality in the strict sense, also implies that the Son is a creature. However, this kind of implication, which in fact is only an element of an objective dialectic, is not to be confused with a conclusion that somebody has actually drawn. The Arians drew such a conclusion, seeking to establish Origen as patron of their own position. So also did those who condemned Origen. But it is not at all clear that Origen either drew or could have drawn such a conclusion himself.14 (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Arius, Arianismus: 3 Phasen (Konstantin)

Kurzinhalt: Arianism arose in Alexandria but spread rapidly ... In the earlier period there were three main phases ...

Textausschnitt: 68a Arianism arose in Alexandria but spread rapidly. Before long it had the whole Eastern part of the Roman Empire in a state of turmoil that was to last nearly fifty years; then, having spread to the external proletariat it was transported by the conquering barbarians into the Western part of the Empire. In the earlier period there were three main phases. During the first phase, under the Emperor Constantine the First, who died in 337, stubborn defenders of the Council of Nicea were deposed from their episcopal sees, because of many and various accusations brought against them by the Arians. The second phase, under the Emperor Constantius, who died in 361, was marked by a plethora of minor councils and a multiplicity of creeds. In the third and final phase the faith of Nicea began to find general acceptance and within a short time was in fact universally accepted. (Fs)

68b Although they share the same name, the Arians did not all share the same basic position. Arius himself held that the Son was a creature. But the followers of Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, did not so much embrace the teaching of Arius as take a stand against the council of Nicea: they criticised the council for using non-scriptural language; they urged that the opinion of Marcellus, bishop of Ancyra, be accepted as the authentic exposition of the Nicene formula; and they themselves were content with the ambiguous doctrine of Origen, to which they appealed, namely, that the Son is, without difference, most like the Father. Then came those whom we may call the second-generation Arians: the Anomoeans, Aetius and Eunomius, who attempted a philosophically rigorous proof that the Son was a creature; the Homoeousians, such as Basil, bishop of Ancyra, who rejected the homoousion of Nicea, but held that the Son was truly Son, similar to the Father in substance (ousia) and in all things; and finally, the Homoeans, who said that the Son should be called the image of God, according to the usage of scripture, and that the very words ousia, homoousion, homoiusion, should be proscribed. (Fs) (notabene)

69a
1. The roots of Arianism are traced back to Lucian of Antioch, founder of the exegetical school at Antioch, who favoured subordinationism, spent a long time outside of the Church but then apparently underwent a conversion, and died a martyr's death in 312. Arius and his first followers studied under Lucian, but what his own teaching was-or indeed, whether there were two Lucian's or only one-can be established only by laborious historical reconstruction. For the literature on the subject, see Altaner, p. 242. (Fs)

2. Arius, an Alexandrian priest, having studied under Lucian, later became head of the exegetical school at Alexandria.1 He publicly attacked the teaching of Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, for which, in 318, he was excommunicated by the synod of Alexandria. In spite of this, he continued to spread his own doctrine, and even managed to find favour with other bishops. So again he was condemned, first by the synod of Antioch,2 in 325, and then, in the same year, by the ecumenical council of Nicea. He died in the year 336. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Arius; Brief an Alexander; der Sohn (logos ) geschaffen; Sohn: unvollkommene Erkenntnis des Vaters

Kurzinhalt: Arius and his companions wished to improve on the New Testament and the Apostles' Creed by excluding every metaphor and every anthropomorphism ...

Textausschnitt: 70a Arius' letter to Alexander was signed by two bishops, six priests and six deacons. The profession of faith that it contains is as follows:

"This, blessed father, is the faith that we received from our elders, and also learned from you. We acknowledge one God, who alone is unbegotten, who alone is eternal, who alone is without beginning, who alone is true, who alone is immortal, who alone is wise, who alone is good, who alone is full of power; it is he who judges all, who controls all things, who provides all things; and he is subject to no change or alteration; he is just and good; he is the God of the Law and of the Prophets and of the New Covenant:

"This one God, before all time, begot his only-begotten Son, through whom he made the ages and the universe. He begot him not just in appearance, but in fact; by his own will he made his son to subsist and he made him unchangeable and unalterable. God's perfect creature, he is unlike any other creature; begotten, yes, but unique in the manner of his begetting:

"This offspring of God is not, as Valentinus taught, an emission of the Father; neither is he, as Mani taught, a part of the Father, consubstantial with him; neither is he the same person as the Father, as Sabellius said, dividing the unity; nor is it, as Hieracas held, as if there were one torch from another or one lamp with two parts. Neither is it true to say that he who previously existed was then begotten, or constituted as son: you yourself, blessed Father, many times, in council and in the midst of the Church, refuted those who held these views:

"But we say that he was created, by God's will, before all ages; from the Father he received being and life, and in creating him the Father conferred his own glory on him. Yet the Father, in giving all things into his possession, did not despoil himself of them: he contains all things in himself in an unbegotten way, for he is the source of all things. Therefore there are three substances (hypostases). (Fs)

"But God, who is the cause of all things, is absolutely the only one who is without beginning. The son, born of the Father before all time, created and constituted in being before all ages, did not exist before he was begotten: born outside of time, generated before all else, he alone received being from the Father. He is not eternal, co-eternal with the Father, nor is he, as the Father is, unbegotten; neither, as some say of things that are related to each other, does he have being simultaneously with the Father. For thus there would be two unbegotten principles. But God, as he is a unity (monas) and source of all things, so he exists before all things. Therefore he also exists before the Son, as we have heard you preach to the whole people. Inasmuch, then, as the Son has being, glory and life from the Father, in so much is God his source. He is his Lord, as being his God and existing before him. (Fs)

"If some people understand the phrases from him, from the womb and I came forth from the Father and I come as implying that he is a consubstantial part of the Father, or a sort of emission, they make the Father composite, divisible and changeable; indeed God would be a body, if they had their way, and the incorporeal God would be affected in ways in which only bodies can be affected".1

71a We can gather from this that Arius and his companions wished to improve on the New Testament and the Apostles' Creed by excluding every metaphor and every anthropomorphism. The Father alone would be unbegotten, without any source, and eternal; the Son, because he has a source, would be neither unbegotten nor eternal, but would be a kind of supreme creature, made out of nothing through the will of the Father. Admittedly the phrase "out of nothing" does not occur in the long passage just cited, but Arius himself had earlier written to Eusebius of Nicomedia, a fellow-student of his at the school of Lucian, in the following vein:

"But what we say, and what we believe, is what we have taught, and still teach: namely, that the Son is neither unbegotten nor in any way a part of the unbegotten, and neither was he made from any pre-existing matter; by the decision and counsel (of the Father) he subsisted before all ages. He is fully God, God's only-begotten Son, and he is immutable; but before he was begotten, before he was created, before he was constituted in being by the Father, he did not exist. For he was not unbegotten. They persecute us because we say that the Son has a source and a beginning, but God has not. This is why they abuse us, and also because we use the phrase 'out of nothing' (ex non exstantibus); but we used this phrase because the Son is not a part of the Father, nor, on the other hand, was he made out of any preexisting matter".1 (notabene)

72a Here Arius says that the Son is immutable, but on earlier occasions he had taught that he was mutable, according to the letter of Alexander of Alexandria, written to all the Bishops of the Church, about the year 319:

"The language they have invented, which runs counter to the meaning of scripture, is as follows:


"God was not always Father, but there was a time when he was not Father. The Word of God did not always exist, but was made out of nothing. For God, who is, brought into existence, out of what was nonexistent, one who was non-existent, and so there was a time when he was not. For the Son is something created, something made. He is not similar to the Father in respect of substance (ousia); neither is he the true and natural Word of the Father, nor is he the Father's true wisdom, but belongs to the things that have been made and created. He is improperly called the Word and wisdom, since he himself was made through the word of God in the proper sense, and through the wisdom that is in God, in which wisdom God made not only all other things, but him as well. Therefore, he is mutable by nature, as all rational creatures are. The Word is outside of God's substance, other than God's substance, apart from God's substance. The Son cannot tell all about the Father; for he cannot see the Father perfectly, and his knowledge of the Father is imperfect and imprecise. Indeed, the Son does not even know his own substance, as it is in itself. For it was for our sakes that he was made, so that through his instrumentality, as it were, God might create us; and he would not have existed, if God had not wished to bring us into being. To the question, whether it is possible that the Word of God is such that he could be changed in the way that the devil was changed, they did not draw back from answering that it is indeed possible, because, being made and created, he is by nature changeable".1 (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: homoousion; Eusebius (Anhänger des Arius): Brief an Paulinus; eg: Dialektik: Geist körperhaft - Geist rationalistisch

Kurzinhalt: nor do we believe, that the one infinite (unbegotten) being was divided in two, or that anything at all happened to him, that can happen only to bodies. There is one who is unbegotten,

Textausschnitt: 3. Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia, who had enjoyed great influence at the court of the Emperor Licinius, was more a politician than a theologian. He was a friend and supporter of Arius, having been a fellow-student of his at the school of Lucian of Antioch. He died in 341 or 342. For editions and studies of his writings see Altaner, p. 240. (Fs)

73b Among the extant writings of Eusebius there is a letter (written about 321-22) to Paulinus, bishop of Tyre, in which he said:

"We heard nothing, my Lord, about two infinite (unbegotten) beings; neither did we learn, nor do we believe, that the one infinite (unbegotten) being was divided in two, or that anything at all happened to him, that can happen only to bodies. There is one who is unbegotten, and one who is truly begotten of him, but not begotten of his substance, and in no way unbegotten. He was made, totally different in nature and in power, though constituted in a perfect likeness to the nature and the power of him who made him. We believe that the manner of his coming to be is not only beyond the power of words to express, but also beyond the capacity of any mind, whether human or superhuman, to grasp in thought. We are not affirming here what we have thought out for ourselves, but what we have learned from scripture. For we learned that he was created, constituted and born in his substance, in nature immutable and ineffable, and in the likeness of his maker, as the Lord himself says: 'God created me, the beginning of all his ways; before all ages he constituted me, and before all the hills he begot me' (Prov 8, 22). But if he had come out of the Father, in the sense that he was of the Father, namely, as a part of him or an outflow of his substance, then it would not be right to say that he had been established or constituted in being. ...".1

Kommentar (11/12/07): "... that can happen only to bodies." Dialektik zwischen Geist, irgendwie körperlich gedacht (Tertullian), und Geist, rationalistisch gedacht. das Homoousion ist für den Rationalisten undenkbar, weil er letztlich über das "Körperliche" nicht hinauszugehen vermag.

73c Holding such a view, Eusebius-and with him four other bishops, Theognis of Nicea, Maris of Chalcedon, Theonas of Marmarica and Secundus of Ptolemais-was unwilling to subscribe to the formula of Nicea, because it contained the word homoousion. Socrates explains their reasoning thus:

"They said that 'consubstantial' applies to what comes out of something else, either as a part of it, or as an outflow, or as an eruption from it. By eruption, as shoots sprout from roots; by outflow, as children come from parents; by division, as two or three philae are taken from a lump of gold. In none of these ways, they asserted, did the Son of God come from the Father, and therefore they could not assent to that teaching. ...".1 (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Doppeldeutigkeit; philosophisch, theologisch: homoousion, ousia, Substanz, konsubstantiell (consubstantial)

Kurzinhalt: Philosophically, the ambiguity arises from different views of human knowing ... The theological ambiguity ... lies in this, that creatures are said to be consubstantial when they belong to the same species

Textausschnitt: 88a
1. The term, homoousion,1 or consubstantial, is both philosophically and theologically ambiguous. Philosophically, the ambiguity arises from different views of human knowing: for what one means by ousia, or substance (and thus by homoousion, or consubstantial), will depend on whether one thinks that it is known by sense, or only through true judgment. The theological ambiguity, which presupposes the doctrine of the Trinity, lies in this, that creatures are said to be consubstantial when they belong to the same species, whereas the consubstantiality of the divine persons implies numerical identity of substance. (Fs) (notabene)

88b Thus, according to Athanasius, one man is of the same nature (homophyEs) and of the same substance (homoousios) as another, but a man and a dog are different from each other both in nature and in substance (heterophyEs, heteroousios).2 (Fs)

88c Now, one whose philosophical position is that of naive realism would say that one man is consubstantial with another because the matter of one is derived from the matter of the other. But if one has advanced beyond naive realism, at least to a dogmatic realism, one will attend not to what is sensible, but to what is truly affirmed; therefore one will say that one man is consubstantial with another because of each of them the same substantial attributes are truly affirmed. (Fs) (notabene)

88d The theological ambiguity will clearly appear if we compare Peter and Paul, on the one hand, and on the other, the Father and the Son. Peter and Paul are consubstantial; the Father and the Son are consubstantial. But Peter and Paul are consubstantial, not because they have numerically the same individual substance-for indeed they have not-but because the individual substance of Peter and the really distinct individual substance of Paul both belong to the same species: Peter and Paul are two particular instances of the species, man. The Father and the Son are also consubstantial, but the analogy with Peter and Paul breaks down because unlike the consubstantial Peter and Paul, who are two men, the consubstantial Father and Son are one and the same God: there is numerically only the one God, who is, nonetheless, truly Father and truly Son. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: homoousion; Folgen aus einem falschen Verständnis: Sabellianismus (Sabellianism) - Tritheismus (tritheism);

Kurzinhalt: we do not grasp by the power of our intellects, but believe by faith, that ... Others, however, go off in different directions, to end up in diametrically opposed positions:

Textausschnitt: 92a
5. If the philosophical ambiguity of the term, homoousion, arises from the fact that some take ousia to mean body, or matter,1 whereas others take it to mean that which is, that which is truly affirmed to be, the theological ambiguity, as we have remarked, is rooted in the real difference between the consubstantiality of the divine persons, on the one hand, and that of creatures, on the other. For the consubstantiality of the divine persons means that they have numerically the same substance, whereas consubstantiality in the realm of creation implies numerically distinct individual substances that are specifically the same. (Fs) (notabene)

92b One very familiar illustration of this theological ambiguity is the doctrine of Apollinaris, who denied that Christ had a human soul; therefore, according to him, the incarnate Word, as incarnate, is not consubstantial with us.1 The orthodox position, on the other hand, as expressed both in the Formula of Union (DS 272) and in the decree of Chalcedon (DS 301 f), is that the Son is consubstantial with the Father in respect of his deity, and consubstantial with us in respect of his humanity. Indeed, even the Severian Monophysites, who would allow no distinction whatever between hypostasis and nature, professed, of their own accord, this dual consubstantiality of the Son: with the Father in respect of his deity, and with us in respect of his humanity.2 In this whole discussion, however, the term homoousion is taken in a twofold sense, since the human substance of Christ, and that of Peter, and that of Paul, are numerically distinct from each other, whereas the divine substance of the Father and the Son is numerically one and the same. (Fs)

92c Underlying this ambiguity is the divine mystery itself: for we do not grasp by the power of our intellects, but believe by faith, that the substance of the Father and that of the Son is one and the same substance. For this reason, it is only those who believe in the Trinity, and then only by dint of clear and consistent reasoning, who can overcome every difficulty. Others, however, go off in different directions, to end up in diametrically opposed positions: homoousion, as applied to the divine Persons, is taken to mean (1) that there is no real distinction between the Father and the Son, and (2) that the Father and the Son are not only two distinct persons, but also two gods. For if one starts out with a materialistic understanding of consubstantiality and then, ruling out every materialistic connotation of the term, applies it to the divine persons, since it is matter that grounds the distinction between corporeal beings, the denial of matter in God can be taken to imply the negation of all distinction; and so, quite naturally, one will conclude that the term, homoousion, as applied to God, smacks of Sabellianism. If, on the other hand, one begins with an understanding of homoousion that is derived from attending to true judgment, so that in calling things consubstantial one means that they have the same essential or substantial definition, then, since in the world of our experience, there are as many human substances as there are human persons, one may be led to infer, by parity of reasoning, that since there are three divine persons, or hypostases, so there are also three gods; and so, again quite naturally, and again quite falsely, the term homoousion will be considered suspect, but now because it seems to imply a tritheism. (Fs)

93a
6. It seems, in fact, that in the earlier phase of Arianism, the opponents of the council of Nicea were unwilling even to utter the word, homoousion. For example, if we may go by the index appended by E. Klostermann to his edition of Eusebius of Caesarea's Against Marcellus and On Ecclesiastical Theology, in neither of these works does the word homoousion occur at all-neither as used by Eusebius himself, nor within the passages that he cites from Marcellus.3 Again, if we look at the multiplicity of creeds that emerged from the various minor councils between the years 340 and 360, we might almost say that the only difference between them is this, that whereas the earlier ones make no mention at all of the term homoousion, a number of the later ones explicitly exclude it.18 (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Interpretation 1: Glaubensbekenntnis Nicäa (Nicea)

Kurzinhalt: In interpreting the decree of the council of Nicca one must distinguish between its explicit and its implicit content ...

Textausschnitt: 95a
7. In interpreting the decree of the council of Nicca one must distinguish between its explicit and its implicit content; with regard to its implicit content one must make a further distinction, between a merely logical implication, on the one hand, and on the other, a conclusion that was actually drawn. (Fs)

95b Now, the council of Nicea set itself in direct opposition to those who asserted that the Son was not God, but a creature. Explicitly, therefore, it affirmed its faith in one God, adding at once, the Father almighty; then it named the Son, calling him Lord, God of God, begotten, not made, of the Father's substance, and consubstantial with the Father (DS 125). However, the decree of the council does not teach, in so many words, that the substance of the Father and that of the Son is one and the same substance. (Fs) (notabene)

95c Still, the affirmation of a single substance is logically contained in the Nicene decree. For in the first place, the council Fathers were monotheists. But if there is only one God, and the Father is truly God, and the Son is also truly God, then it follows necessarily that the divinity of the Father, and that of the Son, is one and the same divinity. Secondly, according to Athanasius, the council Fathers at first thought of writing that the Son is the true image of the Father, in every way most like the Father, but then, having seen how the Arians could get around such phrases

"they were forced, first, to go back again to the scriptures, to establish their position, and then to state more unambiguously what they had stated before, and finally, to write that the Son is consubstantial with the Father, in order to signify that the Son is not just similar to the Father, but is the same thing in similitude out of the Father. ..."1

95d Athanasius thus testifies to the fact that the Nicene decree is intended to go beyond the affirmation of a mere similarity between the Father and the Son, to an affirmation of identity. (Fs)

95e However, where and when the identity in substance of the Father and the Son, which is logically implied by the Nicene decree, was actually deduced as a logical conclusion, can besettled only by historical investigation. [...]

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Athanasius (Textstellen über Konsubstantialität); Intelligibilität in den "Bildern" der Schrift; Metapher: Licht - Sonne, Helligkeit

Kurzinhalt: Athanasius: ... we must transcend the senses utterly ...; Therefore, because they are one, and because the divinity itself is also one, what is said of the Father is also said of the Son, except the name, Father ...

Textausschnitt: 99c It is clear enough, then, how Athanasius' own mind worked, and, at least by his account, also the minds of the ante-Nicene authors and of the council Fathers at Nicea. They began with the images, taken mostly from scripture, with which we are now so familiar; in these images they grasped a certain intelligibility, which they expressed in the concept of consubstantiality; then, taking this concept of consubstantiality, derived from what is sensible, they adapted it, mainly in accordance with sayings of scripture itself, to the best of their ability, in order to conceive the divine generation of the Son. (Fs)

100a Athanasius certainly insisted on the need for the final step of adaptation: as the meaning of the word, Son, had to be adapted, so too had the meaning of the word, consubstantial:

"When we speak of him as offspring, we do not understand this in a human way, and when we acknowledge God as Father, we do not attribute bodily characteristics to him: these words and images we apply to God in a fitting manner, for God is not like man. In the same way, when we hear him described as consubstantial, we must transcend the senses utterly and, following the Proverb (23, 1), understand spiritually what is laid before us, to know that as life comes from the source and brightness from the light, so he is truly Son, out of the Father, and like the Father".1

100b As an indication of the extent to which Athanasius himself achieved this adaptation and purification we may cite the following:

[...]
If, on the other hand, he is the Father's own illuminating and creative power, without which the Father neither creates nor is known (for through him, and in him, all things are held together), why do we refuse to use the word that expresses this understanding of him? What else does it mean, to be of the same nature as the Father, if not, to be con-substantial with him? For it is not as if God, needing somebody to help him, assumed a son from outside of himself; neither are the things that God made equal to him in dignity, so that they ought to be honoured as he is honoured, or that we should say that they and the Father are one. Besides, who will say that the sun and its brightness are two different lights, or different substances? Or who will say that the brightness of the sun is an accident of the sun, and not purely and simply the sun's offspring, in such manner that, while the sun and its brightness are two things, they are nonetheless the one light, because the brightness comes from the sun? Since the nature of the Son is even more inseparable from the Father than the brightness of the sun is from the sun itself, and since the divinity of the Son is not something added to him-but the divinity of the Father is in the Son, so that whoever sees the Son sees the Father in him-why should the Son, who is like this, not be called consubstantial with the Father"?1
"Thus, the Son is not another god, because he is not something from outside of God. If one were to think of any divinity outside of God, then one would be introducing several gods. For although the Son, as begotten, is other than the Father, still, as God he is the same as the Father; and so he and the Father are one, both as having the same nature and as sharing the same divinity, as we have said. For the brightness itself is also light; it does not come after the sun, nor is it another light, nor does it become light by participating in the sun's light, but it is, in the fullest sense, the sun's offspring. Where light, in this way, gives birth to light, there is, of necessity, only one light, and it cannot be said that the sun and its brightness are two different lights; the sun and its brightness are two things, but there is one light, born of the sun, which with its brightness illuminates the whole universe. Similarly, the Son's divinity is also that of the Father, and so there is but the one divinity; so also there is but one God, and no other God apart from him. Therefore, because they are one, and because the divinity itself is also one, what is said of the Father is also said of the Son, except the name, Father. Thus, therefore, the Son is called God: And the Word was God; he is also called the Omnipotent: Thus says the Omnipotent, who was, and who is, and who is to come; similarly, he is the Lord: The one Lord, Jesus Christ; and he is also called the Light: I am the Light; and further, he is said to take away sins: But that you may know, he says, that the Son of Man on earth has power to forgive sins; and there are many other similar sayings in scripture. For the Son himself says: All things that the Father has are mine; and again: What I have is yours".1

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Kultur, kulturelle Entwicklung: klassisch - empirisch; partikulares Gut, Ordnungsgut, Wert;

Kurzinhalt: patterns of culture and cultural development in general; particular goods, the good of order, and value

Textausschnitt: 106b There are two quite different views of culture. There is an older, classicist, normative view, according to which one draws a distinction between the cultured and the uncultured. But there is also a modern view, which is empirical and anthropological: it acknowledges a multiplicity of cultures, so that the lowliest and the most primitive of tribes have a culture, no less than the most advanced and highly-developed peoples. It is the latter, empirical view of culture that we adopt here. (Fs) (notabene)

106c What we might call the material element of culture is made up of human capacities, human dispositions and habits, and human operations and their products. Capacities, dispositions and habits, operations and products are all interrelated: dispositions and habits are perfections and determinations of capacities; operations proceed promptly, spontaneously and with ease from dispositions and habits; and products, finally, are the results of operations. (Fs)

106d Next, we must note a certain principle or law of combination and composition. For operations are such that they can be joined one to another, to yield a composite product; indeed, a certain few basic operations, taken in a great variety of permutations and combinations, can yield an enormous diversity of results. So, for example, once one has learnt how to write the comparatively few letters contained in the alphabet of any language, one has the necessary equipment for writing everything that is said in that language. The same principle applies to the other arts, whether liberal or practical: in all of these some basic operations are discovered, which can then be modified, in various measures and to varying degrees, and adapted to new circumstances, and so there arises the possibility of an immense range of permutations and combinations. And the same applies to the sciences. If, for example, one examines the geometry of Euclid, or the Contra Gentiles of St. Thomas, one will find that the separate theorems or conclusions proceed from a relatively small number of operations, differently modified and adapted to suit different circumstances. Finally, it is not, of course, only the operations of separate individuals that can combine in this way; every instance of whatever kind of human collaboration involves the combination of operations of different individuals, to yield a composite product. (Fs)

107a But the reason why we act, or operate, is in order to attain some good. Since our ultimate end is essential goodness, our proximate ends are good by participation, and they are of three kinds: particular goods, the good of order, and value. Particular goods are all those things that meet the needs of particular individuals in particular places at particular times. The good of order is a formal principle that ensures a continual flow of particular goods; for example, matrimonial systems, technological, economical and political systems, literary and scientific systems, educational and religious systems are all goods of order. The good of value, finally, is what inspires a rational choice between one good of order and another, for example, Christian marriage, capitalism, democracy, etc. (Fs)

107b One might infer from all of this that what happens is that different races, having different scales of value, choose different goods of order, so that they may enjoy a steady flow of such and such particular goods, arising from such and such particular operations. That, however, would be a somewhat abstract, atemporal way of viewing human affairs. Concretely, values are perceived only in the good of order itself, the good of order is perceived only in the particular goods that it ensures, and the only actual particular goods are those that men, by the operations that they have in fact carried out, have learnt how to produce or to acquire. And so, if one wants to understand how cultures emerge and develop, it is rather on the operations that one ought to focus, to discover how they are carried out, how they are combined with each other, how they gradually coalesce into larger complexes, until eventually a kind of dynamic structure emerges-a structure, however, which is, as it were, only implicitly informed by the good of order and actuated by value, its proximate manifestation being men and women, united in friendship or divided by discord, carrying out operations that are aimed at the attainment of particular goods. (Fs)

108a Let us move on rapidly now to the point that we want to make, which is that some cultures remain for centuries almost unchanged, while others, whether from some kind of internal tension or from the pressure of external circumstances, keep finding new modes of operation, introducing new modifications of operations, trying out new permutations and combinations and enjoying new particular goods, and so even come to experiment with the good of order itself and to perceive new human values. To this fundamental kind of cultural evolution another kind is added when, by the process of communication or by the intermingling of peoples, two different cultures flow into and unite with each other, each adapting to the other, so that a third culture emerges, which is a kind of composite of the other two. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Unterschied: griechische - hebräische Kultur

Kurzinhalt: ... that the Greeks achieved the differentiation of consciousness that created the world of theory ... The Hebrews, however, took quite a different route. They did not undermine myth by theory but, schooled by divine revelation,

Textausschnitt: 108b Going back, first, beyond all the differences between the Hebrews and the Greeks, and back beyond every difference between any one culture and any other, to what is at the root of all cultures, we recall B. Malinowski's1 contention, that primitives display no less intelligence and reasonableness than anybody else, as long as they are involved in the practical tasks of daily living; that it is only when they move outside the familiar sphere of immediate experience that myth and magic invade, envelop and dominate everything. (Fs)

109a But if we leave the primitive aside, and move on to the ancient high civilisations of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Crete, of the valleys of the Indus and the Hoang Ho, or, on the American continent, of the Incas, the Mayas and the Toltecs, we find that while the external circumstances are vastly different from those of the primitives, the basic pattern is more or less the same. The area over which man exercises his practical intelligence has increased enormously: all the arts of construction, of writing, of calculating, and of organisation, are being impressively cultivated; yet political and religious life is still dominated by myth and magic. According to K. Jaspers there came a turning-point, a kind of axial period, between the years 800 and 200 B.C., when, with the destruction of the great, stable empires, men were more or less forced to develop their individual use of reason, and, accepting their responsibility as persons, undermined the power of myth.2 (Fs)

109b There were, however, notable differences in the manner in which this development took place. It was through literature, philosophy and science that the Greeks achieved the differentiation of consciousness that created the world of theory, which then directed and controlled the everyday world of practical common sense. One might say, then, that the Greeks drew out and developed from natural human capacities the instrument that of its very nature is opposed to myth and magic. The Hebrews, however, took quite a different route. They did not undermine myth by theory but, schooled by divine revelation, they broke its power, while remaining within the common sense world of practical living and retaining its categories. For they conceived God as a person, whom they identified with and recognised in certain concrete events: it was God who, in the Patriarchs and in Moses, and through the prophets, performed such and such deeds, said such and such, gave such and such commands, made such and such promises and issued such and such threats to the people. In conceiving God in this way, the Hebrews did not manage to avoid all anthropomorphism, nor did they succeed in explaining that what was symbolic was only symbolic; yet they had a truer knowledge of God than did the Greeks, they were more fully liberated from myth, and they had available more efficacious means for living a good life.3 (FS)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Problem: naiver Realismus (Irenäus, Klemens von Alexandrien)

Kurzinhalt: ... it is characteristic of all men ... to suppose, at least implicitly, that the ultimate and basic categories are not those of being, or of substance, but of place and time ...

Textausschnitt: 5. The problem of naive realism

113a If the remedy for the improper use of symbols was true knowledge of actually existing things, then obviously one had to fix on some determinate notion of reality. We have already referred to the naive realism of Tertullian, who pictured to himself the unity of the divine substance as a kind of organic unity. The difficulty, however, is not Tertullian's alone; it is characteristic of all men, unless and until they become wiser, to suppose, at least implicitly, that the ultimate and basic categories are not those of being, or of substance, but of place and time. (Fs)

113b This point can be illustrated from the writings both of Clement of Alexandria and of Ireneus. First we shall take Ireneus, who, wanting to demonstrate that there was only one supreme God, appealed above all to the notions of containing and of being contained:

"For either there must be one who contains all things, who in his own domain made each and every thing that has been made, according to his own will; or else there must be many gods who created, each one of them starting where another ends, each one bordering on another. In the latter case, all the gods must be included in something greater than them all, containing them all; and each one will be confined to his own area; and so none of them can be God. For each one, compared with all the others taken together, will have only a tiny part, and none of them can be called the Omnipotent; and so this view leads necessarily to impiety".1

113c Then, as if to cut off an escape-route of the Gnostics, Ireneus continues:

"But if they say-as some of them do indeed say-that being inside and being outside of the Pleroma are to be understood in terms of knowing and of not-knowing respectively, since whoever knows something is within that which he knows, then they will have to admit that the Saviour himself (whom they call the All) was in a state of ignorance... If therefore, the Saviour went outside of the Pleroma, in order to search for the lost sheep, then he went outside of knowledge, and so he was in ignorance. For either they must admit that he was spatially outside of the Pleroma, and then we bring all our earlier arguments against them; or else, understanding inside and outside in terms of knowledge and ignorance respectively, they will have to admit that he whom they acknowledge as Saviour, and much earlier, Christ, were in ignorance, having gone outside of the Pleroma (that is, outside of knowledge), in order to form their mother".2

114a To reinforce the point, let us add the following passages from the Excerpta ex Theodoto, which recent editors ascribe not to Theodotus the Gnostic, but rather to Clement of Alexandria:3

"... 'for I say to you that their (the children's) angels look always on the face of God'... 'Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God'. But how can he, who has no shape, have a face? The apostle spoke of heavenly bodies, beautiful and intelligent; how could he have given them their different names, unless they had shape and form, unless, indeed, they were clothed in some body? 'The splendor of the heavenly bodies is different from that of terrestrial bodies, the splendor of the angels' bodies is different from both, and the splendor of the archangels' is different again': compared with the terrestral bodies, or with the stars, the angels and archangels are without shape, and incorporeal, but compared with the Son they can be said to be determinate bodies, accessible to sense. And the same can be said of the Son, compared with the Father ...".4
[...]

115a Clearly enough, these passages from the Excerpta not only give expression to a naive realism, grounded in a confusion to which men are naturally prone;1 but they also appeal to the scriptures in support of this naive realism. And the same is to be said of Ireneus.2 But there is a further element to be mentioned, and that is the influence of the Stoics. For on the basis of their own naive realism the Stoics had elaborated a whole system of materialistic philosophy; and many of the ante-Nicene authors, having quite an affinity with the Stoics, were moved to borrow their technical terms, and to adapt their distinctions and their theorems to their own ends.3 (Fs)

116a Now if error seeks supporting arguments in scripture and, at the same time, decks itself out in the terms and the distinctions of a philosophy, it can hardly be overcome except by a doctrine of hermeneutics, combined with an opposing philosophy. And this, in fact, is what happened at Alexandria. Clement himself, having discoursed at length, and with an abundance of illustrations, on the use of symbols,4 boldly concluded: [...]

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Entwicklung im Verstehen Gottes: Weltseele, Idee, Demirug, omnipotent (Stoa, Platoniker, Irenäus)

Kurzinhalt: In the early Christian centuries belief in one, supreme God was quite common among the educated classes. The Stoics, however, ...

Textausschnitt: 118b The movement away from a literal to an allegorical interpretation of scripture and the introduction of a kind of philosophic mode of inquiry could hardly fail to have some effect on the manner of conceiving God. To this topic we now turn, which brings us closer to the topic of trinitarian doctrine. (Fs)

119a In the early Christian centuries belief in one, supreme God was quite common among the educated classes. The Stoics, however, held that this one God was the soul of the world, an intelligent fire that burned without consuming, a part of the material universe, although its active and its principal part. The Platonists, on the other hand, identified God with the supreme, subsistent Idea of the Good; some of them identified this supreme Idea with the Demiurge, who made everything else, but others said that Plato, in the Timaeus, introduced the Demiurge only as a kind of mythical character.1 The Gnostics, for their part, were so insistent on the transcendence and unknowability of God that for them the Demiurge was an inferior being, outside of the Pleroma, belonging not to the class of the "pneumatics", who are saved necessarily, but to that of the "psychics", whose fate is uncertain. For the Marcionites, finally, the Demiurge was that severe God of the Old Testament, from whom the good God of the New Testament purchased us. (Fs)

119b Against all such conceptions of God Ireneus writes:

"... there is only this one God, who made all things, who alone is omnipotent, who alone is Father, making and establishing all things, visible and invisible 'in the word of his power', This is the one, only God, maker of the world, who is above every principality, and above all other supernatural powers. He is the Father, he is God, he is the creator who made all things through himself, that is, through his own Word and his own Wisdom-heaven and earth, and the seas, and all that is in them. He it is who is just and good; he it is who formed man and planted paradise, who made the world, who sent the flood, and saved Noah; he is the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of the living, whom the Law proclaims, whose praises the Prophets sing, whom Christ reveals, about whom the Apostles teach, and in whom the Church believes. He is the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ; through his Word, which is his Son, he is revealed and made manifest to those to whom he is revealed: for they know him, to whom the Son has revealed him ...".2

120a In the conception of God presented here by Ireneus there are three elements to be distinguished. In the first place, there was the traditional Hebrew notion that God became known as a person identified with certain historical events: he was the God of the Patriarchs, the God of the Law and the God of the Prophets. Secondly, there was the extension and amplification of this notion, contained in the New Testament: the same God is also the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, the God of the gospel, the God of the apostolic preaching, the God of the Church, and the God of each individual Christian's religious experience. Thirdly, there was the doctrine, common to the Old and the New Testaments, that this God is supreme, that he is the Lord, the maker and shaper and sustainer of absolutely all things, and of all persons without exception, to whom no one else can even be compared, much less be considered his equal. (Fs)

120ba Now all three of these elements can equally be conceived as objects of faith; the third, however, is not beyond the grasp of natural human reason, and this is a point that did not escape either Justin or Ireneus, both of whom had some inkling of the distinction between faith itself and the preambles of faith. For as Ireneus wrote:

"Justin says well, in his book against Marcion: 'For I would not have believed the Lord himself if he had announced some other God than him who created and sustains us. But because there came to us, from the one God who made this world and fashioned us, who holds and controls all things, because from this one God there came his only-begotten Son, drawing all things together in himself, therefore my faith in him is firm, and my love of the Father unshakeable, God himself bestowing both on us'".1

120c One must not, of course, transpose this into a much later theological context, to infer that these ancient Christian writers had drawn a sharp distinction between reason and faith, and between fundamental and dogmatic theology. On the other hand, neither can what they said be reduced to a mere fideism. What exactly was the content of this preliminary notion of God, that was somehow to be presupposed in every discussion, and in every later development? There are many indications that the basic notion was of God as omnipotent; this omnipotence, however, was considered rather in its actual exercise than in the range of its possible application, and (more or less in the biblical manner) with little or no distinction made between substance, active potency, and activity itself.2 For in the scriptures the Father is most commonly called the Lord [kypios], as is the Son, and the earliest Christians retained this usage. Next, according to Eusebius3 Justin composed a work (not extant) entitled On the Monarchy.4 Theophilus of Antioch also, and more than once, spoke of the monarchy of God. And the doctrine of the Patripassians, that the Father and the Son are the same person, is said to have been based not on the affirmation of the unity of the divine essence, but rather on their determination to safeguard the monarchy.5 Tertullian, however, saw a grave danger that the mass of simple Christians would be deceived by such an argument;6 he himself considered that it was a sufficient refutation of the Patripassians to say that monarchy consisted not in the oneness of a ruler, but in the oneness of rule.7 Dionysius of Rome, finally, called the doctrine of the monarchy the most august doctrine of the Church.8 And one might add that Ireneus, writing against the Gnostics about the one God, who is the creator of all, seems to come to his most fundamental point when he concludes that the opinion of his adversaries leads to "the voiding of the name, Omnipotent, and such an opinion necessarily ends up in impiety".9 Further, we have already seen the argument of Hippolytus, that the trinity does not destroy the divine unity, because the power of the three Persons is one. And Clement of Alexandria considered that other names of God (for example, One, Good, Mind, That-itself-which-is, Father, God, Creator, Lord) taken not singly, but all together, indicate the power of the Omnipotent.10 Finally, as we remarked before, the contribution of Origen to this whole discussion lies in the area of exegesis, rather than of metaphysics.11 (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Entwicklung im Verstehen Gottes: Origines (Origen)

Kurzinhalt: It is clear from this passage that Origen was not enough of a speculative thinker to conceive that there could be anything incorporeal in God's creation. It is also clear that ...

Textausschnitt: 123b Origen, following in Clement's footsteps, and as if suspecting that there could still be some lingering doubt about the matter in some people's minds, undertook a systematic refutation of the notion that God was a body.1 He called the Son wisdom itself, in order to make it understood that he was neither something unsubstantial nor, on the other hand, a body;2 and although in general he doubted that any rational creature could live entirely without a body-at least some finer, less crass kind of body-he totally excluded the Blessed Trinity from this general rule. The following passage is rather long, but it is worth transcribing here, so well does it reveal both the mind and the method of Origen:

"At this point some ask whether, as the Father generates the Son and brings forth the Spirit, but not in the sense that they did not previously exist-since in the Trinity there is no before and after-but in the sense that the Father is the origin and source of the Son and the Spirit, whether there might not be a similar sort of communion or closeness between rational creatures and corporeal matter. To investigate the matter more fully and carefully, they begin by asking whether this corporeal nature itself, which supports the life and contains the motions of spiritual and rational minds, will also share in their eternity, or whether, separated from them, it will perish and go to earth. To get a more precise grasp of the matter, it seems that we must first ask, whether it is at all possible for rational natures, when they have come to the peak of holiness and blessedness, to remain without bodies-which to me seems very difficult, if not impossible, to maintain-or whether they must always remain joined to bodies. If someone were to explain how they could in fact be entirely without bodies, then it would follow that corporeal nature was created from nothing, for periods of time, so that, just as from not-being it came into being, in the same way, when its service was no longer required, it ceased to be. (Fs)

"However, if it cannot at all be affirmed that any nature, excepting the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, can live apart from the body, then, led by reason, we are forced to the conclusion that while it is, first and foremost, rational creatures that were created, still it is only in thought that material substance can be separated from them; to our way of thinking, it was made for them and after them, but they never did and never do live without it, for only the life of the Trinity can be rightly thought to be incorporeal. Therefore, as we have said above, that material substance, being by nature such that it is transformed from one thing into another, when it is drawn to beings of a lower order, becomes a more crass and solid kind of body and serves to distinguish the visible species of this world in all their variety; but when it is at the service of more perfect and more blessed beings, it shines in the splendor of the 'heavenly bodies', and, in the vesture of 'the spiritual body', it adorns 'the angels of God' or 'the children of the resurrection', all of whom together will fill out the variety and the diversity of the one world. (Fs)
[...]

125a It is clear from this passage that Origen was not enough of a speculative thinker to conceive that there could be anything incorporeal in God's creation. It is also clear that he was so much an exegete that he considered that a fuller understanding of the matter was to be sought, with all due fear of God and with all due reverence, in the scriptures themselves. Let us look, at least, at a single sample of the method he used, and the great care he took, in examining the scriptures himself. Commenting on the first verse of the prologue to St. John's Gospel, he asserted that it is not enough to ask in what sense Christ is the Word, while leaving out of account all of his other titles, such as, the light of the world, the way, the truth and the life, the good shepherd, I am he, who speaks with you, the master, the Lord, the Son of God, the door, the true vine, the bread of life, the living bread, the first and the last, Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the light of the gentiles, the servant of Jahwe, and, as he said, thousands more.1 Origen himself looked for a synthesis of all of these; he recognised that there was a distinction of reason between them;2 he affirmed that "Wisdom" was older than all of the other titles;3 and he went, more or less systematically, through the whole list of titles.4 (Fs)

126a However, no one who reflects at all can assemble and order titles in this way, without at least giving some hint as to what that reality is, to which the titles are to be attributed. Origen's solution to this fundamental problem was predominantly Platonist: the Father was divinity itself and goodness itself; the Son, on the other hand, was the Word itself, wisdom itself, truth itself, the resurrection-and-the-life itself, but the Father was something better than all of these, something unknown to us.5 If one asks how these Platonic ideas could then be brought together and united with each other, while being associated with the two distinct hypostases of the Father and the Son, the answer would seem to lie in the eclecticism of that time:6 as well as taking over the categories of the Platonists, Origen also borrowed from Stoic materialism the notions of ousia and hypostasis.7 If one urges that this is hardly consistent, then one has come to the basic difficulty, which can be explained in two ways. For, in the first place, as we remarked above, Hal Koch believes that one cannot insist too strongly that Origen was not a metaphysician, in the proper sense of the term. Secondly, however, the point must be made differently, more from a theological point of view. For, while Origen accepted with his whole heart both the truth of the scriptures and the preaching of the Church,8 what he sought above all was a spiritual meaning, going beyond the totality of literal meaning.9 Unfortunately, however, neither in the philosophers nor by his own efforts did he find any sure criterion by which to judge the truth of this spiritual meaning. This failure of his should cause us no surprise, since the doctrine expounded in Plato's dialogues is aimed essentially at raising the mind above the things of sense, generating enthusiasm for spiritual things and replacing myth with better myths; but it contains so little understanding of the Yes, Yes, and No, No of the gospel, that both being and non-being are also reduced to ideas.10 (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Entwicklung im Verstehen 1: Trinität; Herr: Bezug zu uns - konsubstantiell: Bezug zu Gott; dogmatischer Realismus (keine philosophische Spekulation)

Kurzinhalt: ... to speak of the Son as consubstantial with the Father is to consider the divinity in itself, going beyond religious experience ... this kind of realism is dogmatic ... in the sense that it is not the product of any philosophic reflection ...

Textausschnitt: 7. The Development of Trinitarian Doctrine

127a If we examine the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity in the developed form represented by the determinations of the council of Nicea we can distinguish in it three main elements. In the first place there was the revealed name, Son; many other titles were applied to Christ but from the beginning he was called "Son" in a very special sense. The second element, derived from both the Old and the New Testaments, is the insistence, against the Gnostics and the Marcionites, that there is no distinction between God the Creator and the true God, and the insistence that the one, true God is radically distinct from all creatures.1 From both of these elements taken together it follows that the Son, who was also acknowledged as maker and Lord and judge of all, is truly Son, born of the Father, and cannot be considered a part of creation.2 (Fs)

127b However, the decree of Nicea would appear to contain a third element quite distinct from the first two, namely, the ontological mentality that finds expression in the affirmation that the Son is consubstantial with the Father. For to speak of God as creator, to speak of him as "Lord of all' is to speak in terms of his relative attributes, using categories that resonate with religious experience: when we speak of God in this way we also affirm our total dependence on him. On the other hand, to speak of the Son as consubstantial with the Father is to consider the divinity in itself, going beyond religious experience to employ or to suppose the scientific categories of an ontology. And since this mode of speech has long been a major stumbling block, giving many people the impression that the Church at Nicea had abandoned the genuine Christian doctrine, which was religious through and through, in order to embrace some sort of hellenistic ontology, we must examine the matter with some care.1 (Fs)

128a In the first place, there is nothing in the Old or in the New Testament that is clearer than this, that the word of God, the word announced by the prophets when they said, "Thus says the Lord ..." is to be preserved intact by the Apostles in accordance with the precept, "Let your word be 'Yes, Yes' and 'No, No'" (Mt 5,37), and that this same word not only was preached by the apostles but was also to be preserved in all its purity, even to the extent that any other word, even if preached by an angel, was to be anathema (Gal 1,8).1 (Fs)
128b Now this word of God not only grounds the dogmatism of the Church, which cuts off heretics with the celebrated formula, "If anyone says ... let him be anathema"; it also contains implicitly a certain dogmatic realism. In order to explain what this means we shall have to consider in turn the words "realism", "dogmatic" and "implicitly". (Fs)

128c In the first place, then, the word of God contains a realism, both because it is to be believed and not contradicted, and also because it is a true word, telling of things as in fact they are. For realism consists in this, that the truth that is acknowledged in the mind corresponds to reality. But whoever believes the true word of God certainly acknowledges truth in his mind-indeed his adherence to this truth is so complete that he banishes from his thoughts even the slightest suspicion that things might be other than as God has revealed them to be. (Fs)

129a Secondly, this kind of realism is dogmatic, not only in the sense that it belongs to the very essence of dogma, but also in the sense that it is not the product of any philosophic reflection. To the extent that one is a philosopher one will make no affirmation for which one cannot assign sufficient and cogent reasons. But the realism that is found in the word of God as revealed, preached and accepted does not consist in any further philosophic reflection; it is simply a matter of sincere acceptance of the word of God that has been revealed and preached. (Fs) (notabene)

129b Thirdly, while this dogmatic realism is contained in the word of God, it is present only implicitly, not acknowledged explicitly. We are not saying that Isaiah, Paul and Athanasius knew that they were dogmatic realists. We are not saying that they made clear distinctions between the good and the true, and the will and the mind, and so between the mind itself and the reality to which the mind's truth corresponds. Much less are we saying that they drew all the consequences that would follow from these distinctions. What in fact we are saying is that these men had minds, that they knew the word of God and that they lived according to the reality that they came to know through God's true word. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Entwicklung im Verstehen 2: Trinität; religiöse Erfahrung - Wort Gottes

Kurzinhalt: ... the categories of religious experience are not the same as those contained implicitly in the word of God ... the Nicene concept of consubstantiality does not go beyond the dogmatic realism that is contained implicitly in the word of God

Textausschnitt: 129c After these preliminary remarks we may return to the question whether the Church, in the decree of the council of Nicea, went beyond the categories of religious experience to embrace a hellenistic ontology. The question, of course, has its own presuppositions: leaving out of account the word of God, it makes a disjunction between religious experience on the one hand and hellenistic ontology on the other. However, if such presuppositions are appropriate to rationalists and liberal theologians, for whom the word of God is but an archaic, not to say mythical, mode of speech, they cannot be admitted by those who accept the word of God in faith; neither can they be admitted by those historians who conceive history not as a disguised polemic but as a science that seeks to understand the mentality of another age. For what Isaiah felt compelled to announce, and Paul to preach, and Athanasius to defend, was not just a personal religious experience, but the word of God, and the categories of religious experience are not the same as those contained implicitly in the word of God. For there is no doubt that the categories derived from religious experience will contain a reference to the subject who has the experience, but "the word of God is not tied", restricted to speaking of things as related to us and unable to speak of things as they are in themselves. For one cannot exclude, a priori, from the range of God's word anything that can be affirmed or denied through human words, on the ground that a particular kind of affirmation or denial does not fit into the categories of what we call religious experience. (Fs) (notabene)

130a Moreover, the Nicene concept of consubstantiality does not go beyond the dogmatic realism that is contained implicitly in the word of God. For it means no more than this, that what is said of the Father is to be said also of the Son, except that the Son is Son and not Father. But what is said of the Father is certainly said: there are propositions that are to be believed and that, being true, correspond to reality. Equally, what is said of the Son are certain propositions that are to be believed and that correspond to reality. And if, excluding from the former set the propositions that apply to the Father, one affirms that the remainder coincide with those that apply to the Son, this further affirmation also remains entirely within the field of dogmatic realism. But in making this further affirmation one has affirmed that the Son is consubstantial with the Father. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Entwicklung im Verstehen 3: Trinität; hellenistische Ontologie; Realismus: naiver, dogmatischer, kritischer; Mischung: dogmatischer, kritischer Realismus

Kurzinhalt: There is no need, then, to speak of the importation of a hellenistic ontology ... we must compare three different kinds of realism: naive realism, dogmatic realism and critical realism ...

Textausschnitt: 130b There is no need, then, to speak of the importation of a hellenistic ontology.1 Indeed, the more carefully one examines the brands of hellenistic ontology that were actually available at the time, the more obviously superfluous does any such hypothesis appear. In Tertullian one can detect a hellenistic ontology of Stoic inspiration, but the measure of its presence is precisely the measure of Tertullian's removal from the Nicene notion of consubstantiality. In Origen too one can find a hellenistic ontology, derived rather from Platonism, but its tendency is to place Origen at an even greater remove than Tertullian from the doctrine of Nicea. And Arius, no less than Athanasius, rejected both the Valentinian notion of emission and the Manichean notion of consubstantial part. (Fs)

131a We do not mean to suggest that the dogmatic realism, contained implicitly in the word of God, became an explicit realism, without any contributory influence of hellenistic culture. It is one thing to seek the source of dogmatic realism and quite another to assign the causes whereby an implicit philosophic position became to some extent explicit. If there had been no Gnostics, no Marcionites, no Sabellians and no Arians and, on the other hand, no bishops who thought that heretics were to be answered not only by excommunication but also by a precisely formulated profession of Faith, then the formula for the consubstantiality of the Son would scarcely have been discovered. And one cannot explain the Gnostics, the Marcionites, the Sabellians, the Arians, or the bishops who reasoned as they did, without acknowledging the influence on all of them of hellenistic culture. This influence, however, has been recognised and affirmed since the Patristic age; far from supplying proof that the Church substituted for the Christian religion some other kind of religion, it merely assigns the cause, prepared by divine providence, whereby the Christian religion itself was enabled to make explicit what from the beginning was contained implicitly in the word of God itself. (Fs)

131b To make this process of increasing explicitness a little clearer we must compare three different kinds of realism: naive realism, dogmatic realism and critical realism. All men claim to know the real, but when it comes to assigning the grounds for this common conviction it appears very clearly that different people have different criteria of reality. For example, naive realists say they know that this very obvious mountain is real because with their eyes they can see it, with their feet they can tread on it, with their hands they can handle it, and since to them the matter is so patently clear, they will attribute either to silliness or to perversity every effort to find, or urge to offer, any further ground for their conviction. Critical realists, on the other hand, while conceding that this same mountain is indeed visible to the eye, firm under foot and palpable to the hand, nonetheless add that as visible, firm and palpable it is only sensed-that it is not known as real until by a true judgment it is affirmed to exist. Since this-at least to naive realists-is anything but obvious, critical realists go on to investigate the matter thoroughly, piling up convincing reasons for each of their assertions and cutting off all avenues of escape from their position. Dogmatic realists, finally, whether in virtue of a strong natural endowment of reasonableness (this would appear, however, to be the exception) or else being schooled implicitly by the revealed word of God, agree with the critical realists, but without being able to explain just why they do, whence it can quite easily come about that, mixing naive realism in with their dogmatic realism, they land themselves in inconsistency. (Fs)

132a This kind of mixture of dogmatic and naive realism is easily detectable in the ante-Nicene Christian authors. For they who were so committed to the word of God that they spread the Christian Faith throughout the Roman empire, at the cost, for so many of them, of dying martyrs' deaths, were assuredly, if implicitly, dogmatic realists: far from taking as the sole reality the world revealed to the senses, they clung above all else to that reality made known to them by God's true word. The dogmatic realist, however, is unable, as we have have said, to explain his own position adequately; likewise, he has little or no grasp of the implications of that position. He is sure that the real is known through true judgment but at the same time he adds that by its bulk it occupies a determinate part of space. He has no doubt that those things are distinct of which one is not the other, but he also adds that those things are distinct that are in different places and as well, perhaps, at different times. It is quite clear to him that effects depend on causes, but he also has a need to see the dependence of effect on cause: branches growing out of a tree, or offspring born of parent, or brightness emitted by the sun, or a torch lit from another torch. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Entwicklung im Verstehen 3: Trinität; Dialektik: Materialprinzip, Formalprinzip; Dialektik: Gesetz - Botschaft; Lösung ohne Durchbruch

Kurzinhalt: The formal principle ... consists in the light of natural reason, either illumined or unillumined by Faith

Textausschnitt: 133a This internally inconsistent mixture of dogmatic and naive realism provides what we called above1 the material foundation for the process of dialectic. (Fs) (notabene)

133b The formal principle of that same dialectic cannot fail to be at hand-it consists in the light of natural reason, either illumined or unillumined by Faith. Therefore, given the appropriate occasions, which heretics are apt to provide, the objective dialectic process itself is calculated to drive out naive realism and in so doing to bring dogmatic realism to a greater self-consciousness. (Fs) (notabene)

133c However, since the dogmatic realism that we speak of was only implicit, the dialectic process also was only implicit; it was not grounded philosophically, but worked itself out in the handling of religious and theological questions. Or, to express the matter differently: from the beginning the word of God contained within it an implicit epistemology and ontology, but what was there implicitly became known explicitly only through dialectic process that was spread over time; and this dialectic process was all the more complex, as the real roots of the problem were touched only indirectly. (Fs)


133d There was a first movement, begun in the New Testament itself, that was an exploration of the mutual relationships of the Law and the Gospel, according to the familiar principle that the New Testament lies concealed in the Old and the Old is made plain in the New; and to this were added the various apologies, some addressed to the Jews and some to the Gentiles. But among the new converts to Christianity there were, on the one hand, Jews who were as yet unable to transcend the Old Testament categories and kept insisting that Jesus was no more than a teacher, a prophet, or an angel. At the opposite pole there were the Gentile converts, to whom the Old Testament seemed sheer nonsense and who, therefore, basing themselves on the symbolic speculations of the Gnostics or the biblical criticism of the Marcionites, made a distinction between the much inferior Creator God and the supreme, good God. Thus arose two related problems about the manner of conceiving God, one a problem of hermeneutics and the other a problem of theology. Soon there was added a trinitarian problem; for when the Creator God of the Old Testament and God the Father of the New Testament and the supreme God, known by natural reason, had all three been identified with each other, along came those who were variously called Patripassians, Monarchians, Sabellians, to say that God the Father was the same person as God the Son. (Fs)

134a To the challenge thus posed the Western Church responded in one way and the Alexandrians in quite another. The Western Fathers, hardly broaching at all the hermeneutical problem, insisted on the distinction between God the Creator and his Son; in the process of defending this distinction they manifested objectively their naive realism and they discovered the trinitarian formula, "of one substance". The Alexandrians, on the other hand, attacked the hermeneutical problem methodically and scientifically, they sought a way of getting beyond the scriptural symbols to the reality that they symbolised, and they overcame naive realism by adopting a form of Platonism, and so Origen would say that the Father was truly God, while the Son was God by participation. (Fs)

134b Now if it is clear enough that the theology that arose in Alexandria and was brought by Origen to Caesarea was less than perfect, it is no less clear that the theology of Tertullian, Hippo-lytus, Novatian and Dionysius of Alexandria was not entirely without defect. What was needed was a kind of breakthrough, and this was finally brought about through the protracted Arian controversies. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Entwicklung im Verstehen 4: Arius

Kurzinhalt: Arius did three main things: 1) by ruling out all anthropomorphic or metaphorical language ...

Textausschnitt: 134c Arius did three main things: 1) by ruling out all anthropomorphic or metaphorical language he took the ground from under naive realism; 2) setting aside the Platonic categories introduced by Origen, he posed the question at issue in the Christian categories of Creator and creature; 3) having thus set up the problem, he resolved it by arguing, in a more or less rationalistic manner, to the conclusion that the Son was a creature. (Fs) (notabene)

135a The Council of Nicea employed dogmatic realism. While it did not explicitly repudiate naive realism, it did so implicitly.1 The council Fathers considered those phrases that might suggest Platonic participation, as for example that the Son is without difference most similar to the Father, but when they saw how the Arians could get around all such phrases, they rejected them.2 Then, in direct opposition to the Arians, they laid down that the Son is not a creature, that he is not temporal, and that he is not mutable. Finally, in order to issue a positive statement of Catholic doctrine, they declared that the Son is both born of the Father and consubstantial with him. (Fs)

135b The subsequent controversies show how inevitable all of this was. Within the council itself there were those who held that it was impossible for anything that was not a material, corporeal thing to be consubstantial with anything else; by parity of reasoning they would have said that it is impossible for anything that is not a material, corporeal thing to be a son; and the very use of the category of impossibility reveals a rationalistic turn of mind, with too little appreciation of the fact that there are mysteries in God. (Fs)

135c Equally rationalistic were the Eusebians and Homoeousians, who could understand the Son's consubstantiality with the Father only in a Sabellian sense; more seriously so were the Anomoeans who, by fallacious syllogisms, attempted to demonstrate the impossibility of the Blessed Trinity. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Konzil von Nicäa: Resumee

Kurzinhalt: the Nicene dogma ... marks a transition from multiplicity to unity... a transition from things as related to us to things as they are in themselves ... a transition from the word of God as accommodated to particular people ...

Textausschnitt: 136d Now if, when it emerged, the Nicene dogma was inevitable, it was nonetheless new. For it marks a transition from multiplicity to unity: from a multiplicity of symbols, titles and predicates to the ultimate ground of all of these, namely, the Son's consubstantiality with the Father. Equally, it marks a transition from things as related to us to things as they are in themselves, from the relational concepts of God as supreme agent, Creator, Omnipotent Lord of all, to an ontological conception of the divine substance itself. It marks, no less, a transition from the word of God as accommodated to particular people, at particular times, under particular circumstances, to the word of God as it is to be proclaimed to all people, of all times, under whatever circumstances-the transition from the prophetic oracle of Yahweh, the gospel as announced in Galilee, the apostolic preaching and the simple tradition of the Church, from all of these to Catholic dogma. It also marks a transition from the mystery of God as hidden in symbols, hinted at by a multiplicity of titles, apprehended only in a vague and confused manner in the dramatico-practical pattern of experience, to the mystery of God as circumscribed and manifested in clear, distinct and apparently contradictory affirmations. Finally it marks a transition from a whole range of problems to a basic solution of those problems. For a definitive step was taken from naive realism, beyond Platonism, to dogmatic realism and in the direction of critical realism. To the hermeneutical question, what it is that symbols symbolise, it was answered that what they symbolise is that which is, that which is truly affirmed. To the theological question, how God was to be conceived, an answer was given that set aside the sublime Platonic Ideas, reaffirmed the omnipotent Creator and went beyond the notion of God as agent to think of him in terms of the substance that causes all substances, the being that is for all beings the source of their being. To the trinitarian question, finally, an answer was given that laid the foundation on which, of its own accord, as it were, the whole systematisation of Catholic theology would arise. Given that later systematisation, however, it is only with the greatest difficulty that we who have inherited it can come to understand how the ante-Nicene authors could in fact have said what in fact they did say. (E07; 15.01.2008)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Grundfrage: Änderungen in der Kirche; Positionen: konservativ - liberal

Kurzinhalt: Between these extremes there are two positions. One may be named classicist, conservative, traditional; the other may be named modern, liberal ...

Textausschnitt: 2a I do not think any Catholic would exclude all change on a priori grounds. Even the most embattled conservative would grant that circumstances alter cases, that positive Church law has not the same immutability as divine law or natural law, that besides the substance of things there are the accidents; that, salva substantia, the accidents may at times be modified, provided, of course, that the change is made prudently and, above all, that one keeps ever in mind that human nature is always the same. (Fs)

2b At the other extreme I am not certain it should be maintained that change in the Church’s forms, structures, methods, etc., should be a continuous, irreversible, ongoing process. There are static periods in most cultures and civilizations and, while the rest of society is quiescent, it is not clear that the Church must keep on initiating change. (Fs)

2c Between these extremes there are two positions. One may be named classicist, conservative, traditional; the other may be named modern, liberal, perhaps historicist (though that word unfortunately is very ambiguous). The differences between the two are enormous, for they differ in their apprehension of man, in their account of the good, and in the role they ascribe to the Church in the world. But these differences are not immediately theological. They are differences in horizon, in total mentality. For either side really to understand the other is a major achieve­ment and, when such understanding is lacking, the interpretation of Scripture or of other theological sources is most likely to be at cross-purposes. (Fs)

3a Accordingly, though I have been asked for a theological opinion, I must proceed in roundabout fashion. Only after the differences between classicist and historicist viewpoints have been indicated, can their respective merits in the eyes of the Christian be estimated. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Natur - Geschichtlichkeit, Intentionalität; abstrakt - konkret; Ausschluss des Konkreten: nicht theologisch

Kurzinhalt: If one abstracts from all respects in which one man can differ from another, there is left a residue named human nature ... One can begin from people as they are

Textausschnitt: 3b If one abstracts from all respects in which one man can differ from another, there is left a residue named human nature and the truism that human nature is always the same. One may fit out the eternal identity, human nature, with a natural law. One may complete it with the principles for the erection of positive law. One may hearken to divine revelation to acknowledge a super­natural order, a divine law, and a positive ecclesiastical law. So one may work methodically from the abstract and universal towards the more concrete and particular, and the more one does so, the more one is involved in the casuistry of applying a variety of universals to concrete singularity. (Fs)

3c It seems most unlikely that in this fashion one will arrive at a law demanding the change of laws, forms, structures, methods. For universals do not change; they are just what they are defined to be; and to introduce a new definition is, not to change the old universal, but to place another new universal beside the old one. On the other hand, casuistry deals with the casus, with the way things chance to fall. But every good Aristotelian knows that there is no science of the accidental (Aristotle, Metaphysics VI [E], 2, 1027a 19f.), and so from casuistry’s cases one can hardly conclude to some law about changing laws. (Fs) (notabene)

3c Still, the foregoing is not the only possible approach. One can begin from people as they are. One can note that, apart from times of dreamless sleep, they are performing intentional acts. They are experiencing, imagining, desiring, fearing; they wonder, come to understand, conceive; they reflect, weigh the evidence, judge; they deliberate, decide, act. If dreamless sleep may be compared to death, human living is being awake; it is a matter of performing intentional acts; in short, such acts informed by meaning are precisely what gives significance to human living and, conversely, to deny all meaning to human life is nihilism. (Fs)

[...]
5a I have been contrasting two different apprehensions of man. One can apprehend man abstractly through a definition that applies omni et soli and through properties verifiable in every man. In this fashion one knows man as such; and man as such, precisely because he is an abstraction, also is unchanging. It follows in the first place, that on this view one is never going to arrive at any exigence for changing forms, structures, methods, for all change occurs in the concrete, and on this view the concrete is always omitted. But it also follows in the second place, that this exclusion of changing forms, structures, methods, is not theological; it is grounded simply upon a certain conception of scientific or philosophic method; that conception is no longer the only conception or the commonly received conception; and I think our Scripture scholars would agree that its abstractness, and the omissions due to abstraction, have no foundation in the revealed word of God. (Fs) (notabene)

5b On the other hand, one can apprehend mankind as a concrete aggregate developing over time, where the locus of development and, so to speak, the synthetic bond is the emergence, expansion, differentiation, dialectic of meaning and of meaningful per­formance. On this view intentionality, meaning, is a constitutive component of human living; moreover, this component is not fixed, static, immutable, but shifting, developing, going astray, capable of redemption; on this view there is in the historicity, which results from human nature, an exigence for changing forms, structures, methods; and it is on this level and through this medium of changing meaning that divine revelation has entered the world and that the Church’s witness is given to it. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: K. Rahner; Naturgesetz - transzendentale Methode; (verum et falsum sunt in mente, bonum et malum sunt in rebus

Kurzinhalt: Karl Rahner observed that natural law should be approached through a transcendental method

Textausschnitt: 6a In the article on Naturrecht in the Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche (7: 827) Father Karl Rahner observed that natural law should be approached through a transcendental method. (Fs)

6b Any serious elaboration of this remark would take us too far afield, but three assertions may perhaps be permitted. (Fs)

First, just as the abstract apprehension of man provides itself with abstract ontological and ethical foundations in primitive propositions from which its doctrines, criteria, norms, etc., are deduced or somehow proved, so the more concrete and historical apprehension of man provides itself with its appropriately concrete foundations in structural features of the conscious, operating subject, by a method that has come to be named transcendental. (Fs)

Secondly, the stock objections that historical-mindedness involves one in relativism and situation ethics are to be met by adverting to the distinction just drawn. One cannot ground a concrete historical apprehension of man on abstract foundations: but this does not establish the inadequacy of the quite different foundations provided by a transcendental method. (Fs)

Thirdly, what moves men is the good, and good in the concrete (verum et falsum sunt in mente, bonum et malum sunt in rebus; bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quocumque defectu). If at one time law was in the forefront of human development, as one might infer from the language of the Deuteronomist, from the fervent praise of law in the Psalms, from the role of law in the history of the clarification of such concepts as justice, responsibility, guilt; still, at the present time it would seem that the immediate carrier of human aspiration is the more concrete apprehension of the human good effected through such theories of history as the liberal doctrine of progress, the Marxist doctrine of dialectical materialism and, most recently, Teilhard de Chardin’s identi­fication of cosmogenesis, anthropogenesis, and christogenesis. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Geschichte: theologische Perspektive; Fortschritt, Niedergang, Erlösung; Blindheit der Faktizität; Sünde: Leid, Tod (Textstellen)

Kurzinhalt: Progress results from the natural development of human intelligence ... a flight from understanding results in a similarly cumulative process of decline

Textausschnitt: The People of God in the World of Today

7a I have been asked for "a theological perspective on how a community of love adapts and directs itself for effective mission and witness." Presumably the reason for the request lies in points I have made elsewhere. There is in my book Insight1 a general analysis of the dynamic structure of human history, and in my mimeographed text De Verbo Incarnato2 a thesis on the lex crucis that provides its strictly theological complement. (Fs)

The analysis distinguishes three components: progress, decline, and redemption. (Fs)

7b Progress results from the natural development of human intelligence: "... concrete situations give rise to insights which issue into policies and courses of action. Action transforms the existing situation to give rise to further insights, better policies, more effective courses of action. It follows that if insight occurs, it keeps recurring; and at each recurrence knowledge develops, action increases its scope, and situations improve" (Insight, p. xiv). (Fs)

7c Next, a flight from understanding results in a similarly cumulative process of decline. (Fs)

For the flight from understanding blocks the insights that concrete situations demand. There follow unintelligent policies and inept courses of action. The situation deteriorates to demand still further insights and, as they are blocked, policies become more unintelligent and action more inept. What is worse, the deteriorating situation seems to provide the uncritical, biased mind with factual evidence in which the bias is claimed to be verified. So in ever increasing measure intelligence comes to be regarded as irrelevant to practical living. Human activity settles down to a decadent routine, and initiative becomes the privilege of violence (Insight, p. xiv). (Fs)

8a If human historical process is such a compound of progress and decline, then its redemption would be effected by faith, hope, and charity. For the evils of the situation and the enmities they engender would only be perpetuated by an even-handed justice: charity alone can wipe the slate clean. The determinism and pressures of every kind, resulting from the cumulative surd of unintelligent policies and actions, can be withstood only through a hope that is transcendent and so does not depend on any human prop. Finally, only within the context of higher truths accepted on faith can human intelligence and reasonableness be liberated from the charge of irrelevance to the realities produced by human waywardness (Insight, chap. XX). (Fs)

8b This analysis fits in with scriptural doctrine, which understands suffering and death as the result of sin yet inculcates the transforming power of Christ, who in himself and in us changes suffering and death into the means for attaining resurrection and glory. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Leslie Dewart: Kritik an adaequatio rei et intellectus; Lonergan: Antwort darauf; Widerlegung der Kohärenztheorie; Korrespondentzeorie - Dogma

Kurzinhalt: "... truth is no longer the adaequatio rei et intellectus.... But truth remains, and this truth that remains is living and active ..." To deny correspondence is to deny a relation between meaning and meant ...

Textausschnitt: 14a To conclude with a citation from Maurice Blondel's Carnets intimes: "... truth is no longer the adaequatio rei et intellectus.... But truth remains, and this truth that remains is living and active. It is the adaequatio mentis et vitae" (p. 118). (Fs)

14b Prof. Dewart's grounds for his view on truth seem to be partly the flood of light he has derived from phenomenological and existential thought and partly the inadequacy of his interpretation of Scholasticism. (Fs)

14c To the light I have no objection. I would not deny that the authenticity of one's living, the probity of one's intellectual endeavors, the strategy of one's priorities are highly relevant for the truth by which one is truly a man. I have no doubt that concepts and judgments (on judgments I find Dewart strangely silent) are the expression of one's accumulated experience, developed understanding, acquired wisdom; and I quite agree that such expression is an objectification of one's self and of one's world. (Fs)

14d I would urge, however, that this objectification is intentional. It consists in acts of meaning. We objectify the self by meaning the self, and we objectify the world by meaning the world. Such meaning of its nature is related to a meant, and what is meant may or may not correspond to what in fact is so. If it corresponds, the meaning is true. If it does not correspond, the meaning is false. Such is the correspondence view of truth, and Dewart has managed to reject it without apparently adverting to it. So eager has he been to impugn what he considered the Thomist theory of knowledge that he overlooked the fact that he needed a correspondence view of truth to mean what he said. (Fs) (notabene)

15a Let me stress the point. Dewart has written a book on the future of belief. Does he mean the future of belief, or something else, or nothing at all? At least, when he asserts that God is not a being, he assures us that what his statement "means is literally what it says, that God is not a being at all" (p. 175). Again, he wants his proposals tried by the touchstone of public examination (p. 50). But what is that examination to be? What can the public do but consider what he means and try to ascertain how much of what he says is certainly or probably true or false? (Fs) (notabene)

1.Kommentar (17.01.08): Gute Widerlegung der Kohärenztheorie.

15b Dewart urges that the correspondence view of truth supposes what is contrary to both logic and observation, "as if we could witness from a third, 'higher' viewpoint, the union of two lower things, object and subject" (p. 95). But such a statement is involved in a grave confusion. The witnessing from a higher viewpoint is the nonsense of naive realism, of the super-look that looks at both the looking and the looked-at. On the other hand, the union of object and subject is a metaphysical deduction from the fact of knowledge, and its premise is the possibility of consciousness objectifying not only itself but also its world. (Fs)

15c Again, Dewart urges that a correspondence view of truth implies an immobility that precludes development (p. 95) and, in particular, the development of dogma (p. 109). Now I would not dispute that a wooden-headed interpretation of the correspondence view of truth can exclude and has excluded the possibility of development. But that is no reason for rejecting the correspondence view along with its misinterpretation. Least of all is that so at present, when "hermeneutics" has become a watchword and the existence of literary forms is generally acknowledged. For the root of hermeneutics and the significance of literary forms lie precisely in the fact that the correspondence between meaning and meant is itself part of the meaning and so will vary with variations in the meaning. (Fs)

16a Just as he discusses truth without adverting to hermeneutics, so Dewart discusses the development of dogma without adverting to the history of dogma. But the development of dogma is a historical entity. Its existence and its nature are determined by research and interpretation. Moreover, on this approach there are found to be almost as many modes of development, almost as many varieties of implicit revelation, as there are different dogmas, so that a general discussion of the possibility of cultural development, such as Dewart offers, can provide no more than philosophic prolegomena. (Fs)

16a Unfortunately, it seems of the essence of Dewart's prolegomena to exclude the correspondence view of truth. Such an exclusion is as destructive of the dogmas as it is of Dewart's own statements. To deny correspondence is to deny a relation between meaning and meant. To deny the correspondence view of truth is to deny that, when the meaning is true, the meant is what is so. Either denial is destructive of the dogmas. (Fs)

16b If there is no correspondence between meaning and meant, then, in Prof. McLuhan's phrase, it would be a great mistake to read the dogmas as if they were saying something. If that is a great mistake, it would be another to investigate their historical origins, and a third to talk about their development. (Fs)

16c If one denies that, when the meaning is true, then the meant is what is so, one rejects propositional truth. If the rejection is universal, then it is the self-destructive proposition that there are no true propositions. If the rejection is limited to the dogmas, then it is just a roundabout way of saying that all the dogmas are false. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Leslie Dewart; christologische Dogmen -> Ausdruck hellenistischen Denkens; Lonergan: Antwort, 5 Bemerkungen zur griechischen Methode; "second-level propositions"

Kurzinhalt: The second is that, when reality and being are contrasted, the technique decides for being; My fourth observation is that the Hellenic technique of second-level propositions is not outworn

Textausschnitt: 22a Prof. Dewart conceives the development of the Trinitarian and Christological dogmas to have been a matter of taking over Hellenic concepts for the expression of Christian doctrine; for he feels "it would be unhistorical to suppose that at the first moment of the development of Christian consciousness this consciousness could have created the concepts whereby to elaborate itself-it is not until our own day that such a possibility has begun to emerge" (p. 136). Further, he laments that the Church still retains such outworn tools, for today this results in a crypto-tritheism (p. 147) and in a crypto-docetism (p. 152). (Fs)

22b It is, I should say, quite unhistorical to suppose that the development of Catholic dogma was an effort of Christian consciousness to elaborate, not the Christian message, but Christian consciousness. Further, it is unhistorical to suppose that Greek philosophy supplied all the principal elements in which we have for centuries conceptualized the basic Christian beliefs of the Trinity and the Incarnation (cf. America, Dec. 17, 1966, p. 801). My first contention needs no elaboration, and so I turn to the second. (Fs)

[...]

23b Let me add five observations on this typically Hellenic technique. The first is that it offers an open structure: it does not determine what attributes are to be assigned to the Father and so must be assigned to the Son as well; it leaves the believer free to conceive the Father in scriptural, patristic, medieval, or modern terms; and of course contemporary consciousness, which is historically minded, will be at home in all four. (Fs) (notabene)

23c The second is that, when reality and being are contrasted, the technique decides for being; for being is that which is; it is that which is to be known through the true proposition; and the technique operates on true propositions. On the other hand, reality, when contrasted with being, denotes the evident or present that provides the remote grounds for rationally affirming being, but, unlike being, is in constant flux. (Fs)

24a The third is that specifically Christian thought on being came into prominent existence in Athanasius' struggle against Arianism and, in particular, in his elucidation of natum non factum, of the difference between the Son born of the Father and the creature created by Father and Son. No doubt, such an explanation presupposes a Hellenic background for its possibility. But the problem and the content are specifically Christian. A divine Son was simply a scandal to the Hellenist Celsus; and the Christian notion of creation is not to be found in Plato or Aristotle, the Stoics or the Gnostics. When Dewart talks about the God of Greek metaphysics (p. 170), one wonders what Greek metaphysician he is talking about. (Fs)

24b My fourth observation is that the Hellenic technique of second-level propositions is not outworn. The modern mathematician reflects on his axioms and pronounces them to be the implicit definitions of his basic terms. This technique, then, pertains not to the limitations of Hellenism antiquated by modern culture but to the achievements of Hellenism that still survive in modern culture and, indeed, form part of it. (Fs)

24c My fifth and last observation is that the technique is not within everyone's competence. The matter seems to have been settled with some accuracy; for, in his celebrated studies of educational psychology, Jean Piaget has concluded that only about the age of twelve (if my memory is correct) do boys become able to operate on propositions. It follows that other means have to be found to communicate the doctrine of Nicea to less-developed minds. So much for my five observations. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Leslie Dewart; Person: Begriff aus der hellenistischen Welt; Augustinus: Person - heuristischer Rahmen; Lonergan

Kurzinhalt: For Dewart, "person" is a concept taken over from Hellenic thought ... For Augustine, persona or substantia was an undefined, heuristic concept; Lonergan: three subjects of a single, dynamic, existential consciousness

Textausschnitt: 24d For Dewart, "person" is a concept taken over from Hellenic thought and, though we have not managed to improve on it, we must do so (pp. 143 f.). I find this a rather inadequate account of the matter. (Fs)


25a For Augustine, persona or substantia was an undefined, heuristic concept. He pointed out that Father, Son, and Spirit are three. He asked, Three what? He remarked that there are not three Gods, three Fathers, three Sons, three Spirits. He answered that there are three persons or substances, where "person" or "substance" just means what there are three of in the Trinity (De trin. 7, 4, 7 [PL 42, 939]). Obviously, such an account of the notion of "person" does no more than indicate, so to speak, the area to be investigated. It directs future development but it cannot be said to impede it. The only manner in which it could become outworn would be the rejection of the Trinity; for as long as the Trinity is acknowledged, there are acknowledged three of something. (Fs)

25b Moreover, the original heuristic structure, while it has remained, has not remained indeterminate. It has been developed in different ways at different times. There was the stage of definitions, indeed, of the three main definitions contributed by Boethius, Richard of St. Victor, and Thomas Aquinas. There was the Trinitarian systematization that conceived the three Persons as subsistent relations and based the relations upon psychologically conceived processions. If I may cite my own views, I have maintained not only in my classes but also in a textbook that the three Persons are the perfect community, not two in one flesh, but three subjects of a single, dynamic, existential consciousness. On the other hand, I am of the opinion that the Christological systematization, from Scotus to de la Taille, had bogged down in a precritical morass. For the past thirty years, however, attention has increasingly turned to the consciousness of Christ, and my own position has been that the doctrine of one person with two natures transposes quite neatly into a recognition of a single subject of both a divine and a human consciousness. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Leslie Dewart; Kritik: Hypostase, 2 Naturen

Kurzinhalt: Dewart roundly asserts that no Christian believer today ... can intelligently believe that in the one hypostasis of Jesus two real natures are united

Textausschnitt: 26a So much for the process of Hellenizing Christian doctrine. Let us add a few words on the meaning of the technical terms; for Dewart roundly asserts that no Christian believer today (unless he can abstract himself from contemporary experience) can intelligently believe that in the one hypostasis of Jesus two real natures are united (p. 150). Let me put the prior question. Does Dewart's Christian believer today accept the positive part of the Nicene decree, in which neither the term "hypostasis" nor the term "nature" occurs? If so, in the part about Jesus Christ, does he observe two sections, a first containing divine predicates, and a second containing human predicates? Next, to put the question put by Cyril to Nestorius, does he accept the two series of predicates as attributes of one and the same Jesus Christ? If he does, he acknowledges what is meant by one hypostasis. If he does not, he does not accept the Nicene Creed. Again, does he acknowledge in the one and the same Jesus Christ both divine attributes and human attributes? If he acknowledges both, he accepts what is meant by two natures. If he does not, he does not accept the Nicene Creed. (Fs)

26b What is true is that Catholic theology today has a tremendous task before it, for there are very real limitations to Hellenism that have been transcended by modern culture and have yet to be successfully surmounted by Catholic theology. But that task is not helped, rather it is gravely impeded, by wild statements based on misconceptions or suggesting unbelief. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Person, Reife; vom naiven Realismus zur Reife der Vernunft

Kurzinhalt: ... criteria for distinguishing between the "really real" and the merely imagined, desired, feared, dreamt, the sibling's trick, joke, fib

Textausschnitt: 29a Thirdly, maturity is comprehensive. It does not refuse to acknowledge any part of man but embraces all from the entities of Freud's psychic embryology to the immanent norms of man's intellectual, rational, existential consciousness. As it does not deny prepositional truth, so it does not disregard or belittle religious experience. On the contrary, it is quite ready to claim with Karl Rahner that a mystagogy will play a far more conspicuous role in the spirituality of the future (Geist und Leben, 39 [1966], 335), and it is fully aware that spiritual advance brings about in prayer the diminution and at times the disappearance of symbols and concepts of God, Still, this differentiation and specialization of consciousness does not abolish other, complementary differentiations and specializations, whether social, sexual, practical, aesthetic, scientific, philosophic, historical, or theological. Nor is this multiplicity in any way opposed to integration. For in each of such diverse patterns of conscious operation one is oneself in accord with some facet of one's being and some part of one's universe; and while one lives in only one pattern at a time in some cycle of recurrence, still the subject is over time, each pattern complements, reinforces, liberates the others, and there can develop a differentiation of consciousness to deal explicitly with differentiations of consciousness. That pattern is, of course, reflective subjectivity in philosophy and in theology. It follows the Hellenic precept "Know thyself." It follows the example of Augustinian recall, scrutiny, penetration, judgment, evaluation, decision. It realizes the modern concern for the authenticity of one's existing without amputating one's own rational objectivity expressed in prepositional truth. (Fs)

29b Fourthly, maturity understands the immature. It has been through that, and it knows what it itself has been. It is aware that in childhood, before reaching the age of reason, one perforce works out one's quite pragmatic criteria for distinguishing between the "really real" and the merely imagined, desired, feared, dreamt, the sibling's trick, joke, fib. Still more clearly is it aware of the upset of crisis and conversion that is needed to purge oneself of one's childish realism and swing round completely and coherently to a critical realism. So it understands just how it is that some cling to a naive realism all their lives, that others move on to some type of idealism, that others feel some liberation from idealism in a phenomenology or an existentialism while, at the opposite extreme, there is a conceptualist extrinsicism for which concepts have neither dates nor developments and truth is so objective that it gets along without minds. (Fs) (notabene)

30a Such is the disorientation of contemporary experience, its inability to know itself and its own resources, the root of not a little of its insecurity and anxiety. Theology has to take this fact into consideration. The popular theology devised in the past for the simplices fideles has to be replaced. Nor will some single replacement do; for theology has to learn to speak in many modes and on many levels and even to minister to the needs of those afflicted with philosophic problems they are not likely to solve. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Leslsie Dewart: unüberbrückbar: Gott in sich selbst - Gott in unserem Wissen; Lonergan: Differenz: Gott in unserem Denken - Wissen

Kurzinhalt: Dewart asserts an unbridgeable difference between the way in God is in himself and the way in which he is in our knowledge

Textausschnitt: 31a Now this argument has a certain validity if in fact human knowing consists in concepts and empirical intuitions. But empirical intuition is just a misleading name for the givenness of the data of sense and of consciousness. In linking data to conception, there are inquiry and gradually developing understanding. The result of all these together is not knowledge but just thinking. To reach knowledge, to discern between astronomy and astrology, chemistry and alchemy, history and legend, philosophy and myth, there are needed the further activities of reflection, doubting, marshalling and weighing the evidence, and judging, Finally, this process of judging, in an important because clear instance, is like scientific verification, not as verification is imagined by the naive to be a matter of looking, peering, intuiting, but as verification in fact is found to be, namely, a cumulative convergence of direct and indirect confirmations any one of which by itself settles just nothing. (Fs) (notabene)

31b I quite agree, then, that our concepts are in principle unable to make known to us the actual existence of God. I would add that they are in principle unable to make known to us the actual existence of anything. For concepts are just thinking; thinking is not knowing; it is only when we reach judgment that we attain human knowledge of anything whatever, whether of essence or existence, whether of creature or Creator. (Fs)

31c There is, however, a further point; for Dewart asserts an unbridgeable difference between the way in God is in himself and the way in which he is in our knowledge. This, of course, while absolutely possible, is not possibly known within our knowledge, and so the reader may wonder how Dewart got it into his knowledge. The fallacy seems to be Dewart's confusion of thinking and knowing. In our thinking we may distinguish a concept of divine existence from a concept of divine essence. In our knowing we may affirm (1) that we think in the above manner and (2) that there is no distinction between the reality of the divine essence and the reality of the divine existence. The contrast is, then, not between God in Himself and God in our knowledge, but between God in our knowledge and God in our thinking. Nor is there anything unbridgeable about this contrast or difference; for the thinking and judging occur within one and the same mind, and the whole function of our judging may be described as determining how much of our thinking is correct. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Unterschied: inquiry - investigation

Kurzinhalt: I think it will be helpful to draw a distinction ... between inquiry and investigation; inquiry is the active principle. It takes one beyond whatever is given, perceived, known, ascertained

Textausschnitt: 33b I think it will be helpful to draw a distinction, at least for present purposes, between inquiry and investigation. By investigation I would mean the process that is initiated in the subject by intellectual wonder or curiosity, that methodically seeks, accumulates, classifies possibly relevant data, that gradually through successive insights grows in understanding and so formulates hypotheses that are expanded by their logical presuppositions and implications to be tested by further observation and perhaps experiment. (Fs)

33c Within this process there occur both insight and inquiry, with insight responding to inquiry, and further insight to further inquiry. Inquiry is the active principle. It takes one beyond whatever is given, perceived, known, ascertained. It does so, not by perceiving or knowing anything more, but simply by intending something more. What it intends is an unknown. By the intending it becomes a to-be-known. An unknown that is to be known may be named. In algebra it is named "x"; in physics it will be some indeterminate function such as "F (X, Y, Z, T) = O"; in common English usage it is named "nature"; so we may speak of the nature of light or the nature of life, not because we know these natures, but because we name what we would know if we understood light or life. (Fs) (notabene)

34a Now this intending is also a striving, a tending, and its immediate goal is insight. When insight occurs, the immediate goal is reached, and so the striving for insight, the tending to insight, ceases or, perhaps better, it is transformed. It becomes a striving to formulate, to express in concepts and in words, what has been grasped by the insight. Once this is achieved, it is again transformed. It becomes a striving to determine whether or not the insight is correct. (Fs)

34b Inquiry, then, and insight both occur within the larger process that is learning or investigating. Inquiry is the dynamic principle that gradually assembles all the elements in the compound that is human knowing. Among these elements insight is the most central. Like the others, insight too responds to inquiry. But it is not the total response. (Fs)

34c May I add a final word on definition? All defining presupposes undefined terms and relations. In the book Insight the undefined terms are cognitional operations and the undefined relations are the dynamic relations that bind cognitional operations together. Both the operations and their dynamic relations are given in immediate internal experience, and the main purpose of the book is to help the reader to discover these operations and their dynamic relations in his own personal experience. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Nowak; Lonergan, Ethik;

Kurzinhalt: Though I did not in Insight feel called upon to work out a code of ethics, neither did I exclude such a code. On the contrary ....

Textausschnitt: 39a Professor Novak has given a subtly accurate account of my position on philosophic ethics. I quite agree (1) that, as I base metaphysics, so also I base ethics not on logically first propositions but on invariant structures of human knowing and human doing, (2) that this basis leaves room for a history and, indeed a development of morals, (3) that there is a concrete level of intelligibility reached by insight but missed when universal concepts are applied to particular instances, and (4) that such concrete intelligibility is relevant not only to science but also to conduct. (Fs)

39b I have said, however, that Professor Novak's account was not just accurate but subtly accurate. The fact is that Professor Novak is an apostle as well as a scholar and I have the feeling that he is inviting or nudging or even perhaps pushing me a little farther than I have gone on my own initiative. (Fs)

39c He attributes to me the rejection of an "objective code of ethics out there." This is quite true inasmuch as I reject naive realism and so reject the "out there" as a measure and standard of objectivity. It is quite true inasmuch as I reject an anti-intellectual conceptualism and so reject an anti-historical immobilism. It is quite true, further, that I do not base a code of conclusions upon a code of verbal propositions named first principles. It is quite true, again, that while I assigned invariant structures as the basis for the possibility of ethics, I did not proceed to work out a code from such a basis. It is quite true, finally, as Professor Novak contends, that the basis I offer in invariant structures provides foundations for personal ethical decision and for personal concern with the concrete good in concrete situations. (Fs) (notabene)

39d Now I am completely at one with Professor Novak in his concern for personal ethical decision about the concrete good. But I wish to forestall any misapprehension about my position. Though I did not in Insight feel called upon to work out a code of ethics, neither did I exclude such a code. On the contrary I drew a parallel between ethics and metaphysics. In metaphysics I not only assigned a basis in invariant structures but also derived from that basis a metaphysics with a marked family resemblance to traditional views. A similar family resemblance, I believe, would be found to exist between traditional ethics and an ethics that, like the metaphysics, was explicitly aware of itself as a system on the move. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Lonergan: Analyse der Frage (eg: Anklänge an Rahner); Gottesbeweis, Fr. Burrell

Kurzinhalt: It follows that to say that being is completely intelligible is not an idle empty phrase. It is true that we have no immediate knowledge of complete intelligibility ...

Textausschnitt: 40b Father Burrell has given a most helpful account of my position and he has followed it up with a forcefully presented objection to an argument for the existence of God. The argument began: If the real is completely intelligible, God exists. (Fs)
40c The objection is to the expression "completely intelligible." He grants that anything we know is known through its intelligibility, so that any reality we know must be intelligible. But he urges that we have no acquaintance with complete intelligibility; indeed, we cannot know it since knowing it would be enjoying an unrestricted infinite act of understanding. It follows that the minor premiss must be mistaken. If we cannot know complete intelligibility, then we cannot know that the real is completely intelligible. (Fs)

40d My answer would be that, besides knowing, there is intending. Whenever one asks a genuine question, one does not know the answer. Still, one does intend, desire, ask for the answer; one is able to tell when one gets an appropriate answer; and one is able to judge whether the appropriate answer is also correct. So between not knowing and knowing there is the process of coming to know. That process is intentional. It starts from experience but goes beyond it to understanding and judgment. Such going beyond is not blind. It is aware of itself as a going beyond the given, the incompletely known. This awareness consists in a conscious intending of an unknown that is to be known. (Fs)

1.Kommentar (26/01/08): Lonergans Analyse der Frag zeigt Anklänge an Rahners.

41a Now such intending has to be channelled and controlled. A fool can ask more questions than a wise man can answer. Even the wise man has to advert to the strategy that asks questions in a proper order, that selects the questions that can be answered now, that prefers the questions that once solved, lead to the solution of other questions. (Fs)

41b Behind this need for control and planning is the fact that the intending is of itself unrestricted. Our libraries are too small, yet more books keep being published. Our numerous and vast research projects only open the way for further research. To answer questions only gives rise to still further questions, and there is no prospect of this stream drying up from lack of further questions. (Fs)

41c Moreover, while questions can and must be criticized, they may not be arbitrarily brushed aside. Such arbitrary refusal is obscurantism, and to be an obscurantist is to cease to be an authentic human being. (Fs)

41d It follows that our intending intends, not incomplete, but complete intelligibility. If it intended no more than an incomplete intelligibility, there would be a point where further questions could arise but did not, where the half-answer appeared not a half-answer but as much an answer as human intelligence could dream of seeking. If the dynamism of human intellect intended no more than incomplete intelligibility, the horizon not merely of human knowledge but also of possible human inquiry would be bounded. Whether or not there were anything beyond that horizon, would be a question that could not even arise. (Fs) (notabene)

41e It follows that to say that being is completely intelligible is not an idle empty phrase. It is true that we have no immediate knowledge of complete intelligibility, for we have no immediate knowledge of God. It remains that our intelligence, at its living root, intends intelligibility but not incomplete intelligibility and so complete intelligibility. Further, since intending is just another name for meaning, it follows that complete intelligibility, so far from being meaningless to us, is in fact at the root of all our attempts to mean anything at all. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Thomas, Thomismus der Zukunft; 5 notwendige Änderungen; von Logik -> Methode, Wissenschaft: von Notwendigkeit -> verfizierbare Möglichkeit, von Seele -> Subjekt ...

Kurzinhalt: A Thomism for tomorrow has to move from logic to method; from science as conceived in the Posterior Analytics to science as it is conceived today; from the metaphysics of the soul ...

Textausschnitt: 49b To begin from the second point, the technique of the quaestio aimed at a logically coherent reconciliation of conflicting authorities. It met the demands of human intelligence seeking some understanding of its faith, and it did so in the grand manner. But its scrutiny of the data presented by Scripture and tradition was quite insufficient. On the whole it was unaware of history: of the fact that every act of meaning is embedded in a context, and that over time contexts change subtly, slowly, surely. A contemporary theology must take and has taken the fact of history into account. Inasmuch as it does so, St. Thomas ceases to be the arbiter to whom all can appeal for the solution of contemporary questions; for, by and large, contemporary questions are not the same as the questions he treated, and the contemporary context is not the context in which he treated them. But he remains a magnificent and venerable figure in the history of Catholic thought. He stands before us as a model, inviting us to do for our age what he did for his. And, if I may express a personal opinion of my own, a mature Catholic theology of the twentieth century will not ignore him; it will learn very, very much from him; and it will be aware of its debt to him, even when it is effecting its boldest transpositions from the thirteenth century to the twentieth. (Fs)

49c What are such transpositions? I have prepared my answer to that question by my list of five emphases of classical Thomism. A Thomism for tomorrow has to move from logic to method; from science as conceived in the Posterior Analytics to science as it is conceived today; from the metaphysics of the soul to the self-appropriation of the subject; from an apprehension of man in terms of human nature to an apprehension of man through human history; and from first principles to transcendental method. Before considering these transitions singly, let me remark in general that they are not exclusive; a transition from logic to method does not drop logic, and similarly in most of the other cases. (Fs)

50a First, then, from logic to method. Today we frequently hear complaints about metaphysics as static. But what is static is not metaphysics as such but a logically rigorous metaphysics. Indeed, anything that is logically rigorous is static. Defined terms are abstract and abstractions are immobile. Presuppositions and implications, if rigorous, cannot shift a single iota. Logic embodies an ideal of clarity, coherence, and rigor. It is an ideal that we must ever pursue, but the pursuit is a matter not of logic but of method. A method is a normative pattern of related and recurrent operations. There are operations: for instance, to take the simplest example, in natural science there are observing, describing, defining problems, making discoveries, formulating hypotheses, working out their presuppositions and implications, devising experiments, testing hypotheses by experiments, determining whether the hypothesis so far is satisfactory or already is unsatisfactory, and so proceeding to new questions or to a revision of the hypothesis already made. All such operations are related, for each leads to the next. They are recurrent, for they form a circle that is repeated over and over and cumulatively extends the mastery of human intelligence over ever broader fields of data. The pattern of such related and recurrent operations is normative, for that is the right way to do the job. Finally, while this pattern includes all logical operations, it also includes many operations that lie outside a formal logic, such as observing, discovering, experimenting, verifying. (Fs)

51a Secondly, from the conception of science in the Posterior Analytics to the modern conception of a science. On point after point the two conceptions are opposed. In the Aristotelian notion necessity was a key category; in modern science it is marginal; it has been replaced by verifiable possibility. For the Aristotelian, science is certain; for the modern, science is no more than probable, the best available scientific opinion. For the Aristotelian, causality was material, formal, efficient, exemplary, or final; for the modern, causality is correlation. For the Aristotelian, a science was a habit in the mind of an individual; for the modern, science is knowledge divided up among the scientific community; no one knows the whole of modern mathematics, of modern physics, of modern chemistry, or modern biology, and so on. (Fs)

51b Thirdly, from soul to subject. I do not mean that the metaphysical notion of the soul and of its properties is to be dropped, any more than I mean that logic is to be dropped. But I urge the necessity of a self-appropriation of the subject, of coming to know at first hand oneself and one's own operations both as a believer and as a theologian. It is there that one will find the foundations of method, there that one will find the invariants that enable one to steer a steady course, though theological theories and opinions are subject to revision and change. Without such a basis systematic theology will remain what it has been too often in the past, a morass of questions disputed endlessly and fruitlessly. (Fs)

51c Fourthly, from human nature to human history. The point here is that meaning is constitutive of human living. Just as words without sense are gibberish, so human living uninformed by human meaning is infantile. Next, not only is meaning constitutive of human living but also it is subject to change; cultures develop and cultures decline; meaning flowers and meaning becomes decadent. Finally, Christianity is an historical religion; it is a statement of the meaning of human living; it is a redeeming statement that cures decadence and fosters growth. (Fs)

51d Fifthly, from first principles to transcendental method. First principles, logically first propositions, are the foundations for a mode of thought that is inspired by logic, by necessity, by objectivity, by nature. But the contemporary context, the tasks and problems of a theology that would deal with the issues of today, call for method, verified possibility, full awareness of the subject, and a thorough grasp of man's historicity. Its foundations lie, not in abstract propositions called first principles, but in the structural invariants of the concrete human subject. When the natural and the human sciences are on the move, when the social order is developing, when the everyday dimensions of culture are changing, what is needed is not a dam to block the stream but control of the river-bed through which the stream must flow. In modern science, what is fixed is not the theory or system but the method that keeps generating, improving, replacing theories and systems. Transcendental method is the assault on the citadel: it is possession of the basic method, and all other methods are just so many extensions and adaptations of it. (Fs)

1.Kommentar (27/01/08): "... Its foundations lie, not in abstract propositions called first principles, but in the structural invariants of the concrete human subject." Lonergan scheint mir die Methode etwas überzubetonen im Hinblick auf die Resultate, zu denen eine Methode führt. In der Philosophie gelangt zu "unwandelbaren" Einsichten, wie immer man sie auch in Begriffe fassen mag. Die invariante Struktur des Menschen ist leer; wenn die Methode wichtiger erscheint als das Ziel, zu dem sie führt, ist die Folge eine Beliebigkeit.

52a Finally, let me note that, when such transpositions are effected, theology will be more strictly theology than it has been. The development of method makes an academic discipline stick to its own business. Religion is one thing, and theology is another. Religion is necessary for salvation and theology is not. It is the office of the bishop to teach religious truth. It is the task of the theologian to reflect on the religious fact, and it is the task of the Christian theologian to reflect on the Christian religious fact. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Erneuerung der Theologie, aggiornamento; 1680, Butterfield: Naturwissenschaft; "dogmatische" Theologie, Melchior Cano

Kurzinhalt: ... if theology is to be brought up to date, it must have fallen behind the times. Again, if we are to know what is to be done to bring theology up to date, ...

Textausschnitt: 55a Any theology of renewal goes hand in hand with a renewal of theology. For "renewal" is being used in a novel sense. Usually in Catholic circles "renewal" has meant a return to the olden times of pristine virtue and deep wisdom. But good Pope John has made "renewal" mean "aggiornamento," "bringing things up to date." (Fs)

55b Obviously, if theology is to be brought up to date, it must have fallen behind the times. Again, if we are to know what is to be done to bring theology up to date, we must ascertain when it began to fall behind the times, in what respects it got out of touch, in what respects it failed to meet the issues and effect the developments that long ago were due and now are long overdue. (Fs)

55c The answer I wish to suggest takes us back almost three centuries to the end of the seventeenth century and, more precisely, to the year 1680. For that, it seems, was the time of the great beginning. Then it was that Herbert Butterfield placed the origins of modern science, then that Paul Hazard placed the beginning of the Enlightenment, then that Yves Congar placed the beginning of dogmatic theology. When modern science began, when the Enlightenment began, then the theologians began to reassure one another about their certainties. Let me comment briefly on this threefold coincidence. (Fs)

55d When Professor Butterfield placed the origins of modern science at the end of the seventeenth century, he by no means meant to deny that from the year 1300 on numerous discoveries were made that since have been included within modern science and integrated with it. But he did make the point that, at the time of their first appearance, these discoveries could not be expressed adequately. For, the dominant cultural context was Aristotelian, and the discoverers themselves had Aristotelian backgrounds. Thus there existed a conflict between the new ideas and the old doctrines, and this conflict existed not merely between an old guard of Aristotelians and a new breed of scientists but, far more gravely, within the very minds of the new scientists. For new ideas are far less than a whole mentality, a whole climate of thought and opinion, a whole mode of approach, and procedure, and judgment. Before these new ideas could be formulated accurately, coherently, cogently, they had to multiply, cumulate, coalesce to bring forth a new system of concepts and a new body of doctrine that was somehow comparable in extent to the Aristotelian and so capable of replacing it. (Fs)

56a In brief, Professor Butterfield distinguished between new ideas and the context or horizon within which they were expressed, developed, related. From about the beginning of the fourteenth century the new ideas multiplied. But only towards the close of the seventeenth century did there emerge the context appropriate to these ideas. The origin of this context is for Professor Butterfield the origin of modern science and, in his judgment, "it outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and the Reformation to the rank of mere episodes, mere internal displacements, within the system of medieval Christendom."1 (Fs) (notabene)

56b Coincident with the origins of modern science was the beginning of the Enlightenment, of the movement Peter Gay recently named the rise of modern paganism.2 Moreover, while this movement is commonly located in the eighteenth century, the French academician Paul Hazard has exhibited already in full swing between the years 1680 and 1715 a far-flung attack on Christianity from almost every quarter and in almost every style.3 It was a movement revolted by the spectacle of religious persecution and religious war. It was to replace the God of the Christians by the God of the philosophes and, eventually, the God of the philosophes by agnosticism and atheism. It gloried in the achievements of Newton, criticized social structures, promoted political change, and moved towards a materialist, mechanist, determinist interpretation no less of man than of nature.4 (Fs)

57a It would be unfair to expect the theologians of the end of the seventeenth century to have discerned the good and the evil in the great movements of their time. But at least we may record what in fact they did do. They introduced "dogmatic" theology. It is true that the word "dogmatic" had been previously applied to theology. But then it was used to denote a distinction from moral, or ethical, or historical theology. Now it was employed in a new sense, in opposition to scholastic theology. It replaced the inquiry of the quaestio by the pedagogy of the thesis. It demoted the quest of faith for understanding to a desirable, but secondary, and indeed, optional goal. It gave basic and central significance to the certitudes of faith, their presuppositions, and their consequences. It owed its mode of proof to Melchior Cano and, as that theologian was also a bishop and inquisitor, so the new dogmatic theology not only proved its theses, but also was supported by the teaching authority and the sanctions of the Church.5 (Fs)

1.Kommentar (31.01.08): Cf. David Walsh über den Nominalismus.

57b Such a conception of theology survived right into the twentieth century, and even today in some circles it is the only conception that is understood. Still, among theologians its limitations and defects have been becoming more and more apparent, especially since the 1890's. During the last seventy years, efforts to find remedies and to implement them have been going forward steadily, if unobtrusively. The measure of their success is the radically new situation brought to light by the Second Vatican Council. (Fs)

58a There is, perhaps, no need for me here to insist that the novelty resides not in a new revelation or a new faith, but in a new cultural context. For a theology is a product not only of the religion it investigates and expounds but also of the cultural ideals and norms that set its problems and direct its solutions. Just as theology in the thirteenth century followed its age by assimilating Aristotle, just as theology in the seventeenth century resisted its age by retiring into a dogmatic corner, so theology today is locked in an encounter with its age. Whether it will grow and triumph, or whether it will wither to insignificance, depends in no small measure on the clarity and the accuracy of its grasp of the external cultural factors that undermine its past achievements and challenge it to new endeavors. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Theologie, neue Grundlage; Konversion

Kurzinhalt: The new largely empirical approach to theology can too easily be made into a device for reducing doctrines to probable opinions ... If our renewed theology is not to be the dupe of every fashion, it needs a firm basis ...

Textausschnitt: 63a I have been speaking of our renewed theology and now I must add that a renewed theology needs a renewed foundation. The old foundation will no longer do. But we cannot get along with no foundation at all. So a new foundation and, I should say, a new type of foundation is needed to replace the old. (Fs)

63b First, some foundation is needed. If change is to be improvement, if new tasks are to be accomplished fruitfully, discernment is needed and discrimination. If we are to draw on contemporary psychology and sociology, if we are to profit from the modern science of religions, if we are to revise scholastic categories and make our own the concepts worked out in historicist, personalist, phenomenological, or existentialist circles, then we must be able to distinguish tinsel and silver, gilt and gold. No less important than a critique of notions and conclusions is a critique of methods. The new largely empirical approach to theology can too easily be made into a device for reducing doctrines to probable opinions. A hermeneutics can pretend to philosophic neutrality yet force the conclusion that the content of revelation is mostly myth. Scientific history can be so conceived that a study of the narrative of salvation will strip it of matters of fact. If our renewed theology is not to be the dupe of every fashion, it needs a firm basis and a critical stance. (Fs)

63d Secondly, the old foundations will no longer do. In saying this I do not mean that they are no longer true, for they are as true now as they ever were. I mean that they are no longer appropriate. I am simply recalling that one must not patch an old cloak with new cloth or put new wine in old wineskins. One type of foundation suits a theology that aims at being deductive, static, abstract, universal, equally applicable to all places and to all times. A quite different foundation is needed when theology turns from deductivism to an empirical approach, from the static to the dynamic, from the abstract to the concrete, from the universal to the historical totality of particulars, from invariable rules to intelligent adjustment and adaptation. (Fs) (notabene)

[...]

65a So much for our first approximation. It illustrates by an example what might be meant by a foundation that lies not in a set of verbal propositions named first principles, but in a particular, concrete, dynamic reality generating knowledge of particular, concrete, dynamic realities. It remains that we have to effect the transition from natural science to theology, and so we turn to our second approximation. (Fs)

65b Fundamental to religous living is conversion. It is a topic little studied in traditional theology since there remains very little of it when one reaches the universal, the abstract, the static. For conversion occurs in the lives of individuals. It is not merely a change or even a development; rather, it is a radical transformation on which follows, on all levels of living, an interlocked series of changes and developments. What hitherto was unnoticed becomes vivid and present. What had been of no concern becomes a matter of high import. So great a change in one's apprehensions and one's values accompanies no less a change in oneself, in one's relations to other persons, and in one's relations to God. (Fs) (notabene)

66a Not all conversion is as total as the one I have so summarily described. Conversion has many dimensions. A changed relation to God brings or follows changes that are personal, social, moral and intellectual. But there is no fixed rule of antecedence and consequence, no necessity of simultaneity, no prescribed magnitudes of change. Conversion may be compacted into the moment of a blinded Saul falling from his horse on the way to Damascus. It may be extended over the slow maturing process of a lifetime. It may satisfy an intermediate measure. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Subjekt - objektive Wahrheit; veritas formaliter est in solo iudicio

Kurzinhalt: truth exists formally only in judgments ... What God reveals is a truth in the mind of God and in the minds of believers, but it is not a truth in the minds of nonbelievers

Textausschnitt: 69c In contemporary philosophy there is a great emphasis on the subject, and this emphasis may easily be traced to the influence of Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Buber.1 This fact, however, points to a previous period of neglect, and it may not be amiss to advert to the causes of such neglect, if only to make sure that they are no longer operative in our own thinking. (Fs)

70a A first cause, then, is the objectivity of truth. The criterion, I believe, by which we arrive at the truth is a virtually unconditioned.2 But an unconditioned has no conditions. A subject may be needed to arrive at truth, but, once truth is attained, one is beyond the subject and one has reached a realm that is non-spatial, atemporal, impersonal. Whatever is true at any time or place, can be contradicted only by falsity. No one can gainsay it, unless he is mistaken and errs. (Fs)

70b Such is the objectivity of truth. But do not be fascinated by it. Intentionally it is independent of the subject, but ontologically it resides only in the subject: veritas formaliter est in solo iudicio. Intentionally it goes completely beyond the subject, yet it does so only because ontologically the subject is capable of an intentional self-transcendence, of going beyond what he feels, what he imagines, what he thinks, what seems to him, to something utterly different, to what is so. Moreover, before the subject can attain the self-transcendence of truth, there is the slow and laborious process of conception, gestation, parturition. But teaching and learning, investigating, coming to understand, marshalling and weighing the evidence, these are not independent of the subject, of times and places, of psychological, social, historical conditions. The fruit of truth must grow and mature on the tree of the subject, before it can be plucked and placed in its absolute realm. (Fs)

71a It remains that one can be fascinated by the objectivity of truth, that one can so emphasize objective truth as to disregard or undermine the very conditions of its emergence and existence. In fact, if at the present time among Catholics there is discerned a widespread alienation from the dogmas of faith, this is not unconnected with a previous one-sidedness that so insisted on the objectivity of truth as to leave subjects and their needs out of account. (Fs)

71b Symptomatic of such one-sidedness was the difficulty experienced by theologians from the days of Suarez, de Lugo, and Bañez, when confronted with the syllogism: What God has revealed is true. God has revealed the mysteries of faith. Therefore, the mysteries of faith are true.3 There is, perhaps, no need for me to explain - why this syllogism was embarrassing, for it implied that the mysteries of faith were demonstrable conclusions. But the point I wish to make is that the syllogism contains an unnoticed fallacy, and the fallacy turns on an exaggerated view of the objectivity of truth. If one recalls that truth exists formally only in judgments and that judgments exist only in the mind, then the fallacy is easily pinned down. What God reveals is a truth in the mind of God and in the minds of believers, but it is not a truth in the minds of nonbelievers; and to conclude that the mysteries of faith, are truths in the mind of God or in the minds of believers in no way suggests that the mysteries are demonstrable. But this simple way out seems to have been missed by the theologians. They seem to have thought of truth as so objective as to get along without minds. Nor does such thinking seem to have been confined to theoretical accounts of the act of faith. The same insistence on objective truth and the same neglect of its subjective conditions informed the old catechetics, which the new catechetics is replacing, and the old censorship, which insisted on true propositions and little understood the need to respect the dynamics of the advance toward truth. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Subjekt - Seele (Aristoteles); metaphysische Analyse der Seele - Analyse des Bewusstseins

Kurzinhalt: The study of the subject is quite different, for it is the study of oneself inasmuch as one is conscious. It prescinds from the soul, its essence ...

Textausschnitt: 72b A third source of neglect of the subject is the metaphysical account of the soul. As plants and animals, so men have souls. As in plants and animals, so in men the soul is the first act of an organic body. Still the souls of plants differ essentially from the souls of animals, and the souls of both differ essentially from the souls of men. To discern these differences we must turn from the soul to its potencies, habits, acts, objects. Through the objects we know the acts, through the acts we know the habits, through the habits we know the potencies, and through the potencies we know the essence of soul. The study of the soul, then, is totally objective. One and the same method is applied to study of plants, animals, and men. The results are completely universal. We have souls whether we are awake or asleep, saints or sinners, geniuses or imbeciles. (Fs)

73a The study of the subject is quite different, for it is the study of oneself inasmuch as one is conscious. It prescinds from the soul, its essence, its potencies, its habits, for none of these is given in consciousness. It attends to operations and to their centre and source which is the self. It discerns the different levels of consciousness, the consciousness of the dream, of the waking subject, of the intelligently inquiring subject, of the rationally reflecting subject, of the responsibly deliberating subject. It examines the different operations on the several levels and their relations to one another. (Fs)

73b Subject and soul, then, are two quite different topics. To know one does not exclude the other in any way. But it very easily happens that the study of the soul leaves one with the feeling that one has no need to study the subject and, to that extent, leads to a neglect of the subject.1 (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Konzeptualismus: 3 Kennezeichen: Immobilität, Abstraktheit,

Kurzinhalt: As insights fulfil three functions, so conceptualism has three basic defects.

Textausschnitt: 74a But there are less gross procedures. One can accept an apparently reasonable rule of acknowledging what is certain and disregarding what is controverted. Almost inevitably this will lead to an oversight of insight. For it is easy enough to be certain about concepts; their existence can be inferred from linguistic usage and from scientific generality. But it is only by close attention to the data of consciousness that one can discover insights, acts of understanding with the triple role of responding to inquiry, grasping intelligible form in sensible representations, and grounding the formation of concepts. So complex a matter will never be noticed as long as the subject is neglected, and so there arises conceptualism: a strong affirmation of concepts, and a skeptical disregard of insights. As insights fulfil three functions, so conceptualism has three basic defects. (Fs)

74b A first defect is an anti-historical immobilism. Human understanding develops and, as it develops, it expresses itself in ever more precise and accurate concepts, hypotheses, theories, systems. But conceptualism, as it disregards insight, so it cannot account for the development of concepts. Of themselves, concepts are immobile. They ever remain just what they are defined to mean. They are abstract and so stand outside the spatio-temporal world of change. What does change, is human understanding and, when understanding changes or develops, then defining changes or develops. So it is that, while concepts do not change on their own, still they are changed as the mind that forms them changes. (Fs)

74c A second defect of conceptualism is an excessive abstractness. For the generalities of our knowledge are related to concrete reality in two distinct manners. There is the relation of the universal to the particular, of man to this man, of circle to this circle. There is also the far more important relation of the intelligible to the sensible, of the unity or pattern grasped by insight to the data in which the unity or pattern is grasped. Now this second relation, which parallels the relation of form to matter, is far more intimate than the first. The universal abstracts from the particular, but the intelligibility, grasped by insight, is immanent in the sensible and, when the sensible datum, image, symbol, is removed, the insight vanishes. But conceptualism ignores human understanding and so it overlooks the concrete mode of understanding that grasps intelligibility in the sensible itself. It is confined to a world of abstract universals, and its only link with the concrete is the relation of universal to particular. (Fs)

75a A third defect of conceptualism has to do with the notion of being. Conceptualists have no difficulty in discovering a concept of being, indeed, in finding it implicit in every positive concept. But they think of it as an abstraction, as the most abstract of all abstractions, least in connotation and greatest in denotation. In fact, the notion of being is not abstract but concrete. It intends everything about everything. It prescinds from nothing whatever. But to advert to this clearly and distinctly, one must note not only that concepts express acts of understanding but also that both acts of understanding and concepts respond to questions. The notion of being first appears in questioning. Being is the unknown that questioning intends to know, that answers partially reveal, that further questioning presses on to know more fully. The notion of being, then, is essentially dynamic, proleptic, an anticipation of the entirety, the concreteness, the totality, that we ever intend and since our knowledge is finite never reach. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Objektivität - Immanenz; Picture-thinking - Kant

Kurzinhalt: Once picture-thinking takes over, immanence is an inevitable consequence; "Object" is what one looks at; looking is sensitive intuition

Textausschnitt: 76a The key to doctrines of immanence is an inadequate notion of objectivity. Human knowing is a compound of many operations of different kinds. It follows that the objectivity of human knowing is not some single uniform property but once more a compound of quite different properties found in quite different kinds of operation.1 There is an experiential objectivity in the givenness of the data of sense and of the data of consciousness. But such experiential objectivity is not the one and only ingredient in the objectivity of human knowing. The process of inquiry, investigation, reflection, coming to judge is governed throughout by the exigences of human intelligence and human reasonableness; it is these exigences that, in part, are formulated in logics and methodologies; and they are in their own way no less decisive than experiential objectivity in the genesis and progress of human knowing. Finally, there is a third, terminal, or absolute type of objectivity, that comes to the fore when we judge, when we distinguish sharply between what we feel, what we imagine, what we think, what seems to be so and, on the other hand, what is so. (Fs)

76b However, though these three components all function in the objectivity of adult human knowing, still it is one thing for them to function and it is quite another to become explicitly aware that they function. Such explicit awareness presupposes that one is not a truncated subject, aware indeed of his sensations and his speech, but aware of little more than that. Then, what is meant by "object" and "objective," is something to be settled not by an scrutiny of one's operations and their properties, but by picture-thinking. An object, for picture-thinking, has to be something one looks at; knowing it has to be something like looking, peering, seeing, intuiting, perceiving; and objectivity, finally, has to be a matter of seeing all that is there to be seen and nothing that is not there. (Fs)

77a Once picture-thinking takes over, immanence is an inevitable consequence.2 What is intended in questioning, is not seen, intuited, perceived; it is as yet unknown; it is what we do not know but seek to know. It follows that the intention of questioning, the notion of being, is merely immanent, merely subjective. Again, what is grasped in understanding, is not some further datum added on to the data of sense and of consciousness; on the contrary, it is quite unlike all data; it consists in an intelligible unity or pattern that is, not perceived, but understood; and it is understood, not as necessarily relevant to the data, but only as possibly relevant. Now the grasp of something that is possibly relevant is nothing like seeing, intuiting, perceiving, which regard only what is actually there. It follows that, for picture-thinking, understanding too must be merely immanent and merely subjective. What holds for understanding, also holds for concepts, for concepts express what has been grasped by understanding. What holds for concepts, holds no less for judgments, since judgments proceed from a reflective understanding, just as concepts proceed from a direct or inverse understanding. (Fs)

77b This conclusion of immanence is inevitable, once picture-thinking is admitted. For picture-thinking means thinking in visual images. Visual images are incapable of representing or suggesting the normative exigences of intelligence and reasonableness, and, much less, their power to effect the intentional self-transcendence of the subject. (Fs)

77c The foregoing account, however, though it provides the key to doctrines of immanence, provides no more than a key. It is a general model based on knowledge of the subject. It differs from actual doctrines of immanence, inasmuch as the latter are the work of truncated subjects that have only a partial apprehension of their own reality. But it requires, I think, no great discernment to find a parallel between the foregoing account and, to take but a single example, the Kantian argument for immanence. In this argument the effective distinction is between immediate and mediate relations of cognitional activities to objects. Judgment is only a mediate knowledge of objects, a representation of a representation.3 Reason is never related right up to objects but only to understanding and, through understanding, to the empirical use of reason itself.4 (Fs)

78a Since our only cognitional activity immediately related to objects is intuition,1 it follows that the value of our judgments and our reasoning can be no more than the value of our intuitions. But our only intuitions are sensitive; sensitive intuitions reveal not being but phenomena; and so our judgments and reasoning are confined to a merely phenomenal world.2 (Fs)

78b Such, substantially, seems to be the Kantian argument. It is a quite valid argument if one means by "object" what one can settle by picture-thinking. "Object" is what one looks at; looking is sensitive intuition; it alone is immediately related to objects; understanding and reason can be related to objects only mediately, only through sensitive intuition. (Fs)

78c Moreover, the neglected and truncated subject is not going to find the answer to Kant, for he does not know himself well enough to break the hold of picture-thinking and to discover that human cognitional activities have as their object being, that the activity immediately related to this object is questioning, that other activities such as sense and consciousness, understanding and judgment, are related mediately to the object, being, inasmuch as they are the means of answering questions, of reaching the goal intended by questioning. (Fs)

79a There is a final point to be made. The transition from the neglected and truncated subject to self-appropriation is not a simple matter. It is not just a matter of finding out and assenting to a number of true propositions. More basically, it is a matter of conversion, of a personal philosophic experience, of moving out of a world of sense and of arriving, dazed and disorientated for a while, into a universe of being. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Das existentielle Subject; Analyse des Bewusstsein - metaphysische Psychologie (faculty psychology); 6 Grade des Bewusstseins; Hegel: sublation

Kurzinhalt: Existential Subject ... intellect and will, or different uses of the same faculty, such as speculative and practical intellect ... None of these distinctions adverts to the subject as such ...

Textausschnitt: 79b So far, our reflections on the subject have been concerned with him as a knower, as one that experiences, understands, and judges. We have now to think of him as a doer, as one that deliberates, evaluates, chooses, acts. Such doing, at first sight, affects, modifies, changes the world of objects. But even more it affects the subject himself. For human doing is free and responsible. Within it is contained the reality of morals, of building up or destroying character, of achieving personality or failing in that task. By his own acts the human subject makes himself what he is to be, and he does so freely and responsibly; indeed, he does so precisely because his acts are the free and responsible expressions of himself. (Fs)

79c Such is the existential subject. It is a notion that is overlooked on the schematism of older categories that distinguished faculties, such as intellect and will, or different uses of the same faculty, such as speculative and practical intellect, or different types of human activity, such as theoretical inquiry and practical execution. None of these distinctions adverts to the subject as such and, while the reflexive, self-constitutive element in moral living has been known from ancient times, still it was not coupled with the notion of the subject to draw attention to him in his key role of making himself what he is to be. (Fs) (notabene)

79d Because the older schemes are not relevant, it will aid clarity if I indicate the new scheme of distinct but related levels of consciousness, in which the existential subject stands, so to speak, en the top level. For we are subjects, as it were, by degrees. At a lowest level, when unconscious in dreamless sleep or in a coma, we are merely potentially subjects. Next, we have a minimal degree of consciousness and subjectivity when we are the helpless subjects of our dreams. Thirdly, we become experiential subjects when we awake, when we become the subjects of lucid perception, imaginative projects, emotional and conative impulses, and bodily action. Fourthly, the intelligent subject sublates the experiential, i.e., it retains, preserves, goes beyond, completes it, when we inquire about our experience, investigate, grow in understanding, express our inventions and discoveries. Fifthly, the rational subject sublates the intelligent and experiential subject, when we question our own understanding, check our formulations and expressions, ask whether we have got things right, marshal the evidence pro and con, judge this to be so and that not to be so. Sixthly, finally, rational consciousness is sublated by rational self-consciousness, when we deliberate, evaluate, decide, act. Then there emerges human consciousness at its fullest. Then the existential subject exists and his character, his personal essence, is at stake. (Fs)

80a The levels of consciousness are not only distinct but also related, and the relations are best expressed as instances of what Hegel named sublation, of a lower being retained, preserved, yet transcended and completed by a higher.1 Human intelligence goes beyond human sensitivity yet it cannot get along without sensitivity. Human judgment goes beyond sensitivity and intelligence yet cannot function except in conjunction with them. Human action finally, must in similar fashion both presuppose and complete human sensitivity, intelligence, and judgment. (Fs)

80b It is, of course, this fact of successive sublations that is denoted by the metaphor of levels of consciousness. But besides their distinction and their functional interdependence, the levels of consciousness are united by the unfolding of a single transcendental intending of plural, interchangeable objectives.2 What promotes the subject from experiential to intellectual consciousness is the desire to understand, the intention of intelligibility. What next promotes him from intellectual to rational consciousness, is a fuller unfolding of the same intention: for the desire to understand, once understanding is reached, becomes the desire to understand correctly; in other words, the intention of intelligibility, once an intelligible is reached, becomes the intention of the right intelligible, of the true and, through truth, of reality. Finally, the intention of the intelligible, the true, the real, becomes also the intention of the good, the question of value, of what is worthwhile, when the already acting subject confronts his world and adverts to his own acting in it. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Operatio intellectus: prima, secunda; Bedeutung: Objekt einer Tätigkeit

Kurzinhalt: ... first and a second operation of the intellect; ... several meanings of the notion 'the object of an operation' ... It can mean what moves us to the operation, or the term immanently produced by the operation ...

Textausschnitt: 11b After speaking of the goal, we move to the act by which we attain it. That act requires our attention because, even though our aim is understanding and not certitude, still we hardly want an understanding that is uncertain rather than certain, or false rather than true. Therefore we must accurately grasp what the act of understanding is, what its properties are, and how this act is connected with what is true and what is certain.1 (Fs)

11c Ever since Aristotle, a distinction has been recognized between a first and a second operation of the intellect. In the first operation we ask, 'What is it?' or 'Why is it so?' and we grasp some reason or cause, and we conceive a definition or a hypothesis; but in the second operation we ask, 'Is it?' or 'Is it so?' and we weigh the evidence, and because of the evidence we utter a true judgment, and through the true as through a medium we contemplate being. (Fs)

11d The distinction of first and second operations does not regard a difference in time. Although the first spontaneously gives rise to the second (for we immediately ask whether what we conceive really is so), still the second operation also invites us to a further and better exercise of the first, since we want to understand better what we already know is so. Thus, in order to distinguish these two operations, we have to pay attention to their objects.2 (Fs) (notabene Fußnote)

13a There are several meanings of the notion 'the object of an operation.' It can mean what moves us to the operation, or the term immanently produced by the operation, or the objective of the operation. In the first operation the proper object, the object that moves, is, in the conditions of this present life, an intelligibility or nature that exists as embodied in corporeal matter;1 and the object as term is the conceived definition or hypothesis. In the second operation the object that moves is sufficient evidence, and the object as the immanently produced term is the true. But with each operation the object as the objective is being, which is intended throughout the entire intellectual process.2 (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Theologisches Verstehen (Glaubensgeheimnisse ): vermittelt, unvollkommen, analog ... 10 Punkte

Kurzinhalt: theological understanding ... imperfect, analogical, obscure, gradually developing, synthetic, and highly fruitful

Textausschnitt: 15e First, then, the object that moves us to theological understanding is not some intelligibility embodied in corporeal matter, but the intelligibility of God, in whom the mysteries are hidden. This intelligibility moves us, not immediately as in the beatific vision, but mediately through the truth that God has revealed and that we have accepted in faith. (Fs)

15f Second, theological understanding is imperfect. It is a finite act, limited by a finite species. But a finite act is in no way proportionate to understanding perfectly the infinitely perfect God. Therefore, since its object is some mystery hidden in God, theological understanding cannot possibly ever be perfect in this life, this side of the beatific vision. (Fs)

17a Third, this imperfect understanding is analogical. For a finite act of understanding bears directly on something finite; but what bears directly on something finite can be extended only analogically to whatis infinite. (Fs)

17b Fourth, this imperfect and analogical understanding is obscure. For analogy is valid to the extent that there is a similarity between Creator and creature, and 'any similarity, however great, that is discovered between Creator and creature will always leave a still greater dissimilarity to be discovered' (DB 432, DS 806, ND 320). Thus, just as from the similarity comes some light, so from the dissimilarity comes a still greater darkness. (Fs)

17c Fifth, this imperfect, analogical, and obscure theological understanding develops over time. The human mind is such that it advances one step at a time through intermediate acts to acts that are more perfect. As in all else, so in theology, grace does not destroy nature but perfects it. This is clear from the history of theology. So it must be said that theological understanding develops in the course of time. (Fs)

17d Sixth, this imperfect, analogical, obscure, and gradually developing theological understanding is also synthetic. For the human mind is such that it does not wonder about things just individually but, understanding individual elements, goes on to ask how they are connected with one another. And so after the individual mysteries have been considered on their own, further questions arise about how they are connected with one another and with our last end. Answering these questions provides a synthetic understanding. (Fs)

17e Seventh, this synthesis is itself imperfect, analogical, obscure, and gradually developing. For a synthesis is no more than the understanding of many things together. The same reasons that prove that our understanding of individual matters is imperfect, analogical, obscure, and gradually developing also prove that the same will be true of understanding all those matters together. (Fs)

17f Eighth, although even synthetic theological understanding is imperfect, analogical, obscure, and gradually developing, still it is highly fruitful. The condition of one who understands is always better than the condition of one who does not, whether it be in apprehending truth or in teaching it to others or in moving one's inmost will or in counseling and directing others. The more theological understanding is extended to all that has been revealed, the more fully then are those revealed matters apprehended, the more effectively are they taught, and the more faithfully is the whole of human life in all its aspects directed to its final supernatural end. (Fs) (notabene)

19a Ninth, the benefit derived by someone who seriously strives for theological understanding but attains it only in small measure is neither slight nor to be disparaged. Whoever searches for theological understanding has to attend to everything that can lead to such understanding, and that means attending to what God has revealed to us and what the church of God proposes to be believed by all. But neither slight nor to be disparaged is the benefit that is derived from a serious, lengthy, careful, exact consideration of the truths that God has revealed and we are to believe, both in themselves and in all that follows from them. And so it is a mistake to conclude that, unless each one of us actually arrives at an understanding of the mysteries, time is being wasted. (Fs)

20a Tenth, does such theological understanding exist - imperfect, analogical, obscure, gradually developing, synthetic, and highly fruitful? Vatican I has answered that question authoritatively. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Wert: transzendentaler "Begriff" (wie Sein); Intention des Wertes, aber kein Wissen davon; das gute Subjekt; Sündenkatalog

Kurzinhalt: What, then, is value? I should say that it is a transcendental notion like the notion of being ... can catalogue sins in almost endless genera and species yet always remain rather vague about the good ...

Textausschnitt: 81a I am suggesting that the transcendental notion of the good regards value. It is distinct from the particular good that satisfies individual appetite, such as the appetite for food and drink, the appetite for union and communion, the appetite for knowledge, or virtue, or pleasure. Again, it is distinct from the good of order, the objective arrangement or institution that ensures for a group of people the regular recurrence of particular goods. As appetite wants breakfast, so an economic system is to ensure breakfast every morning. As appetite wants union, so marriage is to ensure life-long union. As appetite wants knowledge, so an educational system ensures the imparting of knowledge to each successive generation. But beyond the particular good and the good of order, there is the good of value. It is by appealing to value or values that we satisfy some appetites and do not satisfy others, that we approve some systems for achieving the good of order and disapprove of others, that we praise or blame human persons as good or evil and their actions as right or wrong. (Fs)

82a What, then, is value? I should say that it is a transcendental notion like the notion of being. Just as the notion of being intends but, of itself, does not know being, so too the notion of value intends but, of itself, does not know value. Again, as the notion of being is dynamic principle that keeps us moving toward ever fuller knowledge of being, so the notion of value is the fuller flowering of the same dynamic principle that now keeps us moving toward ever fuller realization of the good, of what is worth while. (Fs)

82b This may seem nebulous, so I beg leave to introduce a parallel. There is to Aristotle's Ethics an empiricism, that seems almost question-begging. He could write: "Actions ... are called just and temperate when they are such as the just or the temperate man would do; but it is not the man who does these that is just and temperate, but the man who also does them as just and temperate men do them."1 Again, he could add: "Virtue ... is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean, i.e. the mean relative to us, this being determined by a rational principle, and by that principle by which the man of practical wisdom would determine it."2 Aristotle, it seems to me, is refusing to speak of ethics apart from the ethical reality of good men, of justice apart from men that are just, of temperance apart from men that are temperate, of the nature of virtue apart from the judgment of the man that possesses practical wisdom. (Fs)

82c But, whatever may be the verdict about Aristotle, at least the approach I have just noted fits in admirably with the notion of the good I am outlining. Just as the notion of being functions in one's knowing and it is by reflecting on that functioning that one comes to know what the notion of being is, so also the notion or intention of the good functions within one's human acting and it is by reflection on that functioning that one comes to know what the notion of good is. Again, just as the functioning of the notion of being brings about our limited knowledge of being, so too the functioning of the notion of the good brings about our limited achievement of the good. Finally, as our knowledge of being is, not knowledge of essence, but only knowledge of this and that and other beings, so too the only good to which we have firsthand access is found in instances of the good realized in themselves or produced beyond themselves by good men. (Fs) (notabene)

83a So the paradox of the existential subject extends to the good existential subject. Just as the existential subject freely and responsibly makes himself what he is, so too he makes himself good or evil and his actions right or wrong. The good subject, the good choice, the good action are not found in isolation. For the subject is good by his good choices and good actions. Universally prior to any choice or action there is just the transcendental principle of all appraisal and criticism, the intention of the good. That principle gives rise to instances of the good, but those instances are good choices and actions. However, do not ask me to determine them, for their determination in each case is the work of the free and responsible subject producing the first and only edition of himself. (Fs)

83b It is because the determination of the good is the work of freedom that ethical systems can catalogue sins in almost endless genera and species yet always remain rather vague about the good. They urge us to do good as well as to avoid evil, but what it is to do good does not get much beyond the golden rule, the precept of universal charity, and the like. Still the shortcomings of system are not an irremediable defect. We come to know the good from the example of those about us, from the stories people tell of the good and evil men and women of old, from the incessant flow of praise and blame that makes up the great part of human conversation, from the elation and from the shame that fill us when our own choices and deeds are our own determination of ourselves as good or evil, praiseworthy or blameworthy. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Das existentielle Subjekt: kein Primat der Resultate (Wille Vernunft; Primat des Subjekts als: überlegend, abwägend, entscheidend, handelnd

Kurzinhalt: Results proceed from actions, actions from decisions, decisions from evaluations, evaluations from deliberations, and all five from the existential subject, the subject as deliberating, evaluating ...

Textausschnitt: 84a I have been affirming a primacy of the existential. I distinguished different levels of human consciousness to place rational self-consciousness at the top. It sublates the three prior levels of experiencing, of understanding, and of judging, where, of course, sublating means not destroying, not interfering, but retaining, preserving, going beyond, perfecting. The experiential, the intelligible, the true, the real, the good are one, so that understanding enlightens experience, truth is the correctness of understanding, and the pursuit of the good, of value, of what is worthwhile in no way conflicts with, in every way promotes and completes, the pursuit of the intelligible, the true, the real. (Fs)

84b It is to be noted, however, that we are not speaking of the good in the Aristotelian sense of the object of appetite, id quod omnia appetunt. Nor are we speaking of the good in the intellectual, and, indeed, Thomist sense of the good of order. Besides these there is a quite distinct meaning of the word "good"; to it we refer specifically when we speak of value, of what is worthwhile, of what is right as opposed to wrong, of what is good as opposed not to bad but to evil. It is the intention of the good in this sense that prolongs the intention of the intelligible, the true, die real, that founds rational self-consciousness, that constitutes the emergence of the existential subject. (Fs)

84c Finally, let me briefly say that the primacy of the existential does not mean the primacy of results, as in pragmatism, or the primacy of will, as a Scotist might urge, or a primacy of practical intellect, or practical reason, as an Aristotelian or Kantian might phrase it. Results proceed from actions, actions from decisions, decisions from evaluations, evaluations from deliberations, and all five from the existential subject, the subject as deliberating, evaluating, deciding, acting, bringing about results. That subject is not just an intellect or just a will. Though concerned with results, he or she more basically is concerned with himself or herself as becoming good or evil and so is to be named, not a practical subject, but an existential subject. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Das entfremdete Subjekt; Grenzen der Intentionalitätsanalyse; Leugnung des Subjektes durch Immanentismus

Kurzinhalt: The Alienated Subject; the very wealth of existential reflection can turn out to be a trap ... there are those that resentfully and disdainfully brush aside the old questions of cognitional theory, epistemology, metaphysics

Textausschnitt: The Alienated Subject

85a Existential reflection is at once enlightening and enriching. Not only does it touch us intimately and speak to us convincingly but also it is the natural starting-point for fuller reflection on the subject as incarnate, as image and feeling as well as mind and will, as moved by symbol and story, as intersubjective, as encountering others and becoming "I" to "Thou" to move on to "We" through acquaintance, companionship, collaboration, friendship, love. Then easily we pass into the whole human world founded on meaning, a world of language, art, literature, science, philosophy, history, of family and mores, society and education, state and law, economy and technology. That human world does not come into being or survive without deliberation, evaluation, decision, action, without the exercise of freedom and responsibility. It is a world of existential subjects and it objectifies the values that they originate in their creativity and their freedom. (Fs)

85b But the very wealth of existential reflection can turn out to be a trap. It is indeed the key that opens the doors to a philosophy, not of man in the abstract, but of concrete human living in its historical unfolding. Still, one must not think that such concreteness eliminates the ancient problems of cognitional theory, epistemology, and metaphysics, for if they occur in an abstract context, they recur with all the more force in a concrete context. (Fs) (notabene)

85c Existential reflection, as it reveals what it is for man to be good, so it raises the question whether the world is good. Is this whole process from the nebulae through plants and animals to man, is it good, a true value, something worthwhile? This question can be answered affirmatively, if and only if one acknowledges God's existence, his omnipotence, and his goodness. Granted those three, one can say that created process is good because the creative fiat cannot but be good. Doubt or deny any of the three, and then one doubts or denies any intelligent mind and loving will that could justify anyone saying that this world is good, worthwhile, a value worthy of man's approval and consent. For "good" in the sense we have been using the term is the goodness of the moral agent, his deeds, his works. Unless there is a moral agent responsible for the world's being and becoming, the world cannot be said to be good in that moral sense. If in that sense the world is not good, then goodness in that sense is to be found only in man. If still man would be good, he is alien to the rest of the universe. If on the other hand he renounces authentic living and drifts into the now seductive and now harsh rhythms of his psyche and of nature, then man is alienated from himself. (Fs) (notabene)

86a It is, then, no accident that a theatre of the absurd, a literature of the absurd, and philosophies of the absurd flourish in a culture in which there are theologians to proclaim that God is dead. But that absurdity and that death have their roots in a new neglect of the subject, a new truncation, a new immanentism. In the name of phenomenology, of existential self-understanding, of human encounter, of salvation history, there are those that resentfully and disdainfully brush aside the old questions of cognitional theory, epistemology, metaphysics. I have no doubt, I never did doubt, that the old answers were defective. But to reject the questions as well is to refuse to know what one is doing when one is knowing; it is to refuse to know why doing that is knowing; it is to refuse to set up a basic semantics by concluding what one knows when one does it. That threefold refusal is worse than mere neglect of the subject, and it generates a far more radical truncation. It is that truncation that we experience today not only without but within the Church, when we find that the conditions of the possibility of significant dialogue are not grasped, when the distinction between revealed religion and myth is blurred, when the possibility of objective knowledge of God's existence and of his goodness is denied. (Fs)

86b These are large and urgent topics. I shall not treat them. Yet I do not think I am neglecting them entirely, for I have pointed throughout this paper to the root difficulty, to neglect of the subject and the vast labor involved in knowing him. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Arten von Fragen: Kohärenz, Einsicht, Existenz; Abälard, Sic et Non

Kurzinhalt: In a first way, the question can be understood to express a problem of coherence ...

Textausschnitt: 21c In a first way, the question can be understood to express a problem of coherence, and so, on hearing die question, one at once answers no (Videtur quod non), because the Holy Spirit is from the Father and die Son, and what is from others is not from itself; but then one remembers (Sed contra est) that the Holy Spirit is God, and God is a se, and so the Holy Spirit is a se. Two arguments are used, to prove each side of a contradiction. That is a problem of coherence. (Fs)

21d In a second way, the question can be understood to express a problem for understanding. Granted that the Holy Spirit is both a se and not a se, how can both statements simultaneously be true? The matter would be quite simple if die Holy Spirit were composite; then the Holy Spirit could be a se in one respect and not a se in another. But the Holy Spirit is utterly simple, and so there arises a very serious problem for understanding. (Fs)

21e In a third way, the question can be understood to express a problem of fact, such that the meaning of the question is, Does there really exist a third divine person? Is this really taught in the sources of revelation? Is it understood in the same sense in the sources of revelation as it was later in the councils and among theologians? (Fs)

21f Furthermore, although diese three kinds of problems are very closely interconnected, still in any particular period more attention might be paid to one kind than to another. Thus, in the early stages of scientific inquiry when it is still necessary to persuade people to devote themselves to science, it might be extremely useful to focus on the problem of coherence; and so Abelard, continuing in the footsteps of some canonists, composed his Sic et non (ML 178, 1339-1610), in which he presented supporting reasons for both the affirmative and the negative side of 158 theological propositions. But it would be of little value to prove the existence of questions yet never attempt to solve them. Hence some people composed books of Sentences to collect and organize, from scripture and the Fathers, material for problems. Others began working out answers, either in the form of commentary on those books of Sentences or independently in shorter collections of questions or in larger works that expounded a summa of the whole of theology. (Fs)

23a Seeking answers moved theologians beyond the problem of coherence to the problem of understanding. Working on that problem, they soon discovered that questions cannot be put in any order whatsoever. Some questions simply cannot be answered until others have been resolved. And sometimes the answers to one question immediately provide the answers to others. This discovery lies behind the differing order of the questions in St Thomas's commentary on the Sentences and his Summa theologiae. He indicated the difference in the prologue to the first part of the Summa, where he distinguished the order of learning from the order demanded by running commentaries. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Unterschied: theologische Schlussfolgerung - Urteil über theologisches Verstehen

Kurzinhalt: The judgment about a theological understanding differs, then, from any and all theological conclusions ... In contrast, a judgment about a theological understanding is not easy ...

Textausschnitt: 47b Ninth, a judgment as to the consequent truth of theological understanding appears to rest chiefly on three considerations. First, we can examine this understanding in terms of what issues from it precisely as understanding. Does it solve some problem? Is the problem that it solves a divine mystery, something that can be understood by us in this life mediately, imperfecdy, analogically, obscurely? Is the understanding fruitful in the sense that it provides a virtual solution to other connected problems? Is there another analogy that is better or at least as good in resolving all the same problems, or is there no other analogy that can be known by us in this life?

47c Second, we can examine the same understanding not in itself but by way of historical comparison. Has the same problem been considered before? Was it considered directly or only indirectly? Was it considered in the same complex of problems or in a different one? Was the same analogy used or a different one? If the same one, is the analogy now being grasped more profoundly? Are new aspects being added to it, whether because of progress in the natural and human sciences or because of progress in studies of scripture, the councils, the Fathers, the medievals, and so on? Does understanding the principle really ground all the other conclusions deduced later in the treatise? Are more and more complete conclusions being deduced now than before? Is an overall view of the whole material now more easily reached? Can we now see further problems that call for and practically demand further progress in understanding, knowledge, and wisdom? (Fs)

49a Third, we can examine the same understanding by comparing it with the pseudo-problems and pseudo-systems that may have arisen with regard to this subject matter, that may have spread abroad, and that may still to some extent prevail. Are all the questions that have ever been considered with regard to this subject matter being given equal treatment, or is a selection perhaps being made, so that certain questions are given priority, others are treated as secondary, and still others are left unmentioned? And if a selection is being made, is it made on the basis of custom, or on the basis of some principle? Is the principle found in the fact that what is being sought is some understanding of divinely revealed mystery, and that problems that have arisen from misunderstanding are not to be considered except where treating them is the only way to remove certain widely held obstacles to understanding the mystery?

49b Tenth, if it is true that one major fruit of education is that we learn to use different criteria of judgment for different materials, then it is useful to compare the judgment regarding a theological understanding with other judgments that are made in theology. (Fs)

49c The judgment about a theological understanding differs, then, from any and all theological conclusions. Nothing is easier than to conclude correctly: once the premises are posited, the conclusion either follows necessarily or it does not; if it does not, it is not valid; if it does, it is no less true than the premises. (Fs)

49d In contrast, a judgment about a theological understanding is not easy; it is extremely difficult. What is in question is not a conclusion but a principle. The principle may be merely possible. It may be more or less probable. Sometimes all we can say about it is that at least it may be on the line or along the way that alone leads to the understanding that Vatican I referred to. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Glaube - Vernunft; Schlussfolgerungen aus Glaubensgeheimnissen vs. Verstehen derselben;
"Schlusstheologie" (conclusions theology)

Kurzinhalt: What happens when deductions are made from revealed mysteries is that the problems clearly and distinctly emerge. The more numerous and the more exact the deductions ...

Textausschnitt: 55d Again, the way in which this understanding of mysteries is compared to conclusions, whether pure or mixed, is also not in the least obscure. What happens when deductions are made from revealed mysteries is that the problems clearly and distinctly emerge. The more numerous and the more exact the deductions, the more numerous and the more difficult are the problems that emerge; and since the problems stand forth the way they do because the premises of the deductions tell of divine mysteries, the problems can never be solved unless some understanding of the mysteries is attained.1 (Fs) (notabene)

55e Again, when this understanding is attained 'from the analogy of what the mind knows naturally,' a certain hypothetical element is introduced. Materially speaking, it is possible that the same analogy is hinted at, insinuated, or suggested in the sources of revelation; it may even be clearly indicated. But one can never prove that the formally identical analogy along with all its systematic implications is present in the sources. (Fs)

55f It follows that the idea that theology deals only with pure and mixed conclusions is simply mistaken. Logic applied to revealed mysteries leads to problems, the solutions of which can come only through some understanding of the mysteries. When these solutions introduce a hypothetical element (and at least the system virtually contained in a fruitful understanding is hypothetical), then there is posited a specifically theological principle that comes neither from faith alone nor from reason alone, but from reason enlightened by faith and inquiring diligently, reverently, and judiciously. (Fs)

57a We need, then, to indicate the extent to which 'conclusions theology' does harm to theology as a science. (Fs)
57b First, it fosters a tendency to impose on earlier authors the systematic discoveries of a later time. Those who love system and know no other method of verification but deduction from the sources generally find their system in the scriptural, patristic, or medieval sources. (Fs)

Second, since not all systematic theologians are of one mind and heart, in the end not one but many different systems will be read into the sources. (Fs)

Third, since the real criterion of the validity of a system is not deduction from the sources, then if 'conclusions theology' prevails, it will hardly be possible to refute inept systems and seriously argue the case for more adequate ones. (Fs)

Fourth, now that scriptural exegesis, patristics, and medieval historical studies abound, theologians who deduce systems generally earn criticism for their ignorance of the scriptures, the Fathers, and medieval history. (Fs)

Fifth, as long as scripture scholars, patristic scholars, and medievalists are aware of no kind of systematic verification other than deduction from the sources, they will regard every system as so much empty speculation. (Fs)

57c On the other hand, if we abandon the idea that theology is about pure or mixed conclusions, not only will there be no real conflict between positive theologians and systematic theologians, but they will actually be of enormous assistance to one another. Understanding a doctrine is really not that far removed from understanding the history of the doctrine. If the doctrine is always the same, that is, the same dogma, the same meaning, the same view, and if moreover understanding, knowledge, and wisdom about the same doctrine grow and progress from age to age, then no valid reason remains why positive and systematic theologians should oppose one another. What is now understood by systematic theologians has been a long time in preparation, and so by understanding the history, systematic theologians will come to understand their task fully and exactly, just as by understanding later solutions positive theologians will be able to grasp more clearly and judge more accurately what really were the earlier states of affairs and in what direction they tended. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Kriterien für theologisches Verstehen: menschliche Natur, Ursprung der Offenbarung; Erbsünde, intellektuelle Konversion; Autorität der Kirche

Kurzinhalt: ... the two supreme criteria by which the truth of a theological understanding has to be judged. One has to do with human nature ...

Textausschnitt: 57d Twelfth, we still have not mentioned the two supreme criteria by which the truth of a theological understanding has to be judged. One has to do with human nature, the other with the divine source of revelation. (Fs)

57e When we speak of human nature, we must not overlook the wound of original sin. Because of it human beings, immersed in sensible things, more or less create for themselves their own special kind of problems. The questions and the solutions that theology presents1 are generally outside the horizon of wounded human beings, to whom such things seem to wander far from reality, from serious living, and from any kind of usefulness. What people want and need, they say, is completely different from what they are taught and almost feel compelled to parrot. The existential problem is this: people have to emerge from the sensible, so as not only to say but also to agree and, as it were, to feel that the real becomes known not in the 'given' but in the 'true.' But if this existential problem is transferred to the objective level, if it is presupposed that the issue is not the intellectual conversion of the subject but theology itself, a very serious deviation, easily finding large numbers of adherents, has begun. (Fs) (notabene)

59a As for the divine source of revelation, it is clear that the meaning of any truth has to be measured by the understanding of the one from whom the truth proceeds. A revealed truth proceeds from divine understanding and therefore it is measured only by divine understanding. Moreover, since here on earth God has entrusted divine revelation to none other than the church to guard it faithfully and declare it infallibly, it is clear that theologians cannot rely ultimately on their own wisdom but ought always to acknowledge that the church's teaching alone is determinative of the meaning of revealed truth and of sacred dogmas (DB 1788, 1800, 1818; DS 3007, 3020, 3043; ND 217, 136, 139). (Fs) (notabene)

59b Theologians who, as the very nature of the material demands, promptly and gladly submit their own wisdom to that of the church will find in so doing a remedy for the disease, the wound of sin discussed in the preceding point. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Wissenschaft: Erkenntnis aus Gründen; Ziel, zwei Wege: Analyse, Resolution ... (Dogmatik, dogmatische Theologie) - Synthese, Komposition ... (systematische Th.); Theologen: Missverständnis der differenzierten Einheit

Kurzinhalt: It follows that the dogmatic way can be conceived as similar to the analytic way ... for like reasons the systematic part of theology can be conceived as similar to the way of synthesis ...

Textausschnitt: 59d How these two movements are related to each other can be clarified from the very notion of science. Science is the certain knowledge of things through their causes; but before things are known through their causes, the causes have to be discovered; and as long as the causes have not yet been discovered we rely on the ordinary prescientific knowledge by which we apprehend things and describe them even before knowing their causes. (Fs)

61a So the first movement toward acquiring science begins from an ordinary prescientific description of things and ends in the knowledge of their causes. This first movement has been called:

(1) analysis, because it starts from what is apprehended in a confused sort of way and moves to well-defined causes or reasons,
(2) the way of resolution, because it resolves things into their causes,
(3) the way of discovery, because previously unknown causes are discovered,
(4) the way of certitude, because the ordinary prescientific knowledge of things is most obvious to us, and so the arguments we find most certain begin from such knowledge and go on to demonstrate matters that are more remote and more obscure to us, and
(5) the temporal way, because causes are not usually discovered instantaneously, any more than they are discovered by just anyone or without a certain amount of good luck.1 (Fs)

61b The other movement starts from the causes that have been discovered and ends by understanding things in their causes. This movement is called:

(1) synthesis, because fundamental reasons2 are employed both to define things and to deduce their properties,
(2) the way of composition, because causes are employed to produce things or to constitute them,
(3) the way of teaching or of learning, because it begins with concepts that are fundamental and especially simple, so that by adding a step at a time it may proceed in an orderly way to the understanding of an entire science,
(4) the way of probability, partly because it often attains no more than probability, but also because people frequently have no clear discernment of just where or when they have reached certitude, and
(5) the way of logical simultaneity, because, once the principles have been clearly laid down, all the rest takes comparatively little time; it can be accomplished in a few short deductions and applications. (Fs)

61c For examples of the two ways, compare the history of a science like physics or chemistry with the textbooks from which these sciences are taught. History reveals that these sciences worked out their various demonstrations starting from the most obvious sensible data. But when one goes to a textbook, one finds at the beginning of the book, in chemistry, only the periodic table of elements from which three hundred thousand compounds are derived, or, in physics, Newton's laws, Riemannian geometry, or those remarkable quantum operators. The reason for this difference is, of course, that inquiring, investigating, and demonstrating begin with what is obvious, while teaching begins from those concepts that can be understood without understanding other elements. (Fs)

63a Now since theology is analogously a science, its dogmatic part is not completely different from the way of analysis, nor is its systematic part completely different from the way of synthesis. Just as in the natural order we begin from ordinary prescientific knowledge, so also in theology we begin from what God has revealed in particular historical circumstances. Just as in the natural order we proceed to the discovery of causes, so theology states universally in the same meaning the same truth that was once biblically3 revealed. Just as in the natural order the discovery of causes leads to the knowledge of things through the causes, so in theology once the divine mysteries have been declared or defined universally, they can be imperfectly and obscurely but still most fruitfully understood. (Fs)

63b It follows that the dogmatic way can be conceived as similar to the analytic way. It is a way of certitude in that it expresses the same truth with the same meaning as what was revealed by God. Second, it is a way of discovery in that it finds an expression appropriate to the needs of a universal church that is to endure till the end of time. Third, it is a way of analysis in that it moves from historical Hebraic particularity to generally known and well-defined reasons. Fourth, it is a way of resolution in that it discerns the divine mysteries in the multiplicity of what has been revealed, and gives expression to those mysteries. Finally, it is a temporal way because a universal expression of the mysteries is attained only in the course of time. (Fs)

63c In like manner and for like reasons the systematic part of theology can be conceived as similar to the way of synthesis. For it is the way in which teachers teach and students learn, at least if it is true that for something truly to be learned it must be understood and that the only way to reach understanding is to start with that whose understanding does not require the understanding of anything else. It is, moreover, a way of synthesis in that, starting from one principle or another, it lays out all the rest in an orderly fashion. Third, it is a way of composition in that it composes the whole of a divine mystery from a series of aspects and a multiplicity of reasons. Fourth, it is a way of probability because, rather than deducing certainties from what has been revealed, it derives what has been revealed from some prior hypothetical supposition. Finally, it is a way of logical simultaneity in that, once in one's wisdom one discovers the order of the questions, and once in one's understanding one grasps a principle, then the conclusions and the applications follow of their own accord. This derivation of conclusions may be deficient in terms of logical rigor, since it proceeds from a principle that is only imperfectly and obscurely understood; but that does not mean that the process of arriving at conclusions from a systematic principle is the kind of thing that proceeds one step at a time over a long stretch of years, with a certain amount of luck. (Fs)

65a While we have acknowledged in the dogmatic way something of the process of analysis, of resolution, of discovery, of certitude, and of a temporal way, and in the systematic way something of the process of synthesis, of composition, of teaching and learning, of probability, and of logical simultaneity, we cannot ignore the fact that these terms are used analogously. Analysis and synthesis are understood in one way in physics and in another way in chemistry; they are understood in one way in the natural sciences, in another way in the human sciences, and in another way in theological disciplines. The way we understand the nature of material things is different from the way we understand the words of Plato; and when we understand Plato, we next judge whether what Plato held is true. But we believe that the word of God is true even before we investigate what it teaches. Therefore the dogmatic way has its own mode of being a way of analysis, of resolution, of discovery, of certitude, and a temporal way, and the systematic way has likewise its own mode of being a way of synthesis, of composition, of teaching or learning, of probability, and of logical simultaneity. (Fs)

65b How intimately these two ways are linked must be particularly stressed because there never seem to be lacking those whose diminished wisdom is ready and eager to take a part for the whole and to pass it on as such to others. Analysis and synthesis, resolution and composition, discovery and teaching, certitude and the understanding of what is certain, lengthy investigation and a brief compendium of results - these constitute a single whole. Those who choose but one part and neglect the other not only lose the whole but also spoil even the part that they have chosen. Those who neglect the dogmatic part in order to cultivate the systematic more profoundly are in fact neglecting what they are seeking to understand. Soon pseudo-problems emerge and pseudo-systems start to sprout, systems that dispute ever so subtly about everything while overlooking the understanding of the mysteries. But those who neglect the systematic part in order to hold faithfully and exactly to the dogmatic so resolve the one divine revelation into many different mysteries that no move can be made back from this multiplicity to unity; from what God has revealed for all to understand, they devise in the course of time a technical expression of that revelation, but they do not grasp how these technical matters are to be taught and learned. They know with certainty many technical matters, but choose to overlook the understanding of what they are certain of. They rummage through the past collecting and accumulating technically established information concerning the councils, papal documents, the Fathers, the theologians, but they avoid the task of assembling a wisely ordered, intelligible compendium of all these matters. And after all this, they stand amazed that devout people reject dogmatic theology and take refuge in some form of biblicism that is itself hardly secure. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Titel: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Stichwort: Fachgeschichte (technical history); Collingwood; Unterschied zu occasional history

Kurzinhalt: That type of historical work I venture to call technical history ... There are points at which that technique can be applied; but there are equally the lacunae ...

Textausschnitt: 55b History as a scientific subject had its principal development in the nineteenth century, say, since von Ranke; and I will now try to suggest the notion of technical history. (Fs)

55c History begins as belief; the historian is not at all places at all times. He does not see and hear everything, he needs the reports of other people, and he takes the word of others for what happened elsewhere and at other times. There can arise conflicting testimonies, and in a conflict between what the witnesses say and what the historian believes could really happen, there will arise a critique of witnesses - of what they could know, how accurate their knowledge is likely to be, how truthful they are, whether they have ulterior motives, and so forth. However, as Collingwood points out in a fable in his The Idea of History, the historian need not be simply a believer. Collingwood composed a detective story in which all the witnesses were lying and all the clues were planted and yet the detective could figure out what really happened. He was not believing any of the witnesses, he was not trusting any of the clues, yet he could determine just what happened, who was the criminal.1 (Fs)

56a With that point reached, history turns over from a collection of beliefs to something analogous to an empirical science. It is concerned not with testimonies but, if I may use the word of Professor Renier, with 'traces.'2 Everything that exists in the present and had its origin in the past constitutes a trace of the past. It may be a document; it may be anything else in the way of ruins, buildings, coins, inscriptions, folkways, traditions, and so forth. All that comes from the past into the present is so much raw material. To the historian it is data, it constitutes data, and as a datum it is valid. It is irrelevant as yet whether it is going to be classified as something truthful or as a lie, as a genuine moment of the past or as a fake. That will depend upon how we classify it, what period it will be attributed to, what value will be placed upon it. All of that will depend upon the judgment of the historian. Just as the physicist considers all the colors he sees in the spectroscope and all the measurements obtained, and so on, as so much data in which he seeks an understanding and as the start of the hypothetico-deductive process, so in somewhat similar fashion the historian is not simply a believer of what other people have told him, a shrewd believer sizing up, accepting some, discounting others, but something like a scientist seeking an understanding of all the traces of the past that are existing into the present. (Fs)

56b That understanding reached by the historian is a thing that develops as do the empirical sciences. If one historian interprets the data a certain way, another, by pointing to data that have been overlooked or misinterpreted, can challenge his conclusions and set up a new view on the subject, which can be a progressively improving interpretation of what happened in the past. However, history differs from the empirical sciences in two ways. First of all, historical understanding is not of general laws. It is of the particular and the concrete. Consequently, following upon this first difference, it is not possible for the historian to check his understanding of this case by appealing directly to other cases. If the physicist says that the ratio between the angle of incidence and the angle of refraction of a ray of light is some constant which he applies to this particular case, well, he can appeal to all similar cases to check his interpretation, his account of the phenomena. The historian is interpreting just this particular case; other cases may all differ; he does not have the type of check which the empirical scientist has. On the other hand, he does have something similar insofar as the historical interpretation of a period, of all the particular cases in a given section of space-time, has to present something of a coherent picture; an interpretation of one set of events has to be able to fit in with another closely related set of events; so there is a fair analogy between the understanding the historian seeks of the traces of the past and the procedure of the empirical scientist. That type of historical work I venture to call technical history. (Fs)

[...]

58b On the other hand, technical history has its weakness. That type of interlocking of the data is not something that can be applied along the whole historical continuum. There are points at which that technique can be applied; but there are equally the lacunae, and the lacunae can occupy many more places than the points. Consequently, there remains a permanent temptation for the historian to fill in the blanks, and there is a fundamental problem in historical method with regard to these periods in which there are some data but not enough to give you that interlocking of a whole series of considerations that pins down the meaning of the event. Herbert Butterfield takes the stand that history is a limited undertaking.1 We do what we can; we do not undertake to answer all questions; and that is pretty much the common sense of the historian. He will indicate his various degrees of confidence in the exactitude of what he is saying, point out that he is not quite sure of that, and so forth. One does not hesitate to say one does not know, is not sure. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Titel: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Stichwort: Fachgeschichte (technical history; Relativismus (Huizinga); Bultmann (Verständnis, Vorverständnis)

Kurzinhalt: Huizinga, and his definition was that history is a people interpreting to itself its past ... Bultmann ... The historian's view of human nature, of human destiny, plays a fundamental role in the selection ...

Textausschnitt: 59a A second view is relativism. Now that is an extremely large doctrine. I will just take a single and rather simple example of it, using one of the set of papers in a Festschrift presented to Ernst Cassirer on his sixtieth birthday, about 1936, with the title Philosophy and History.1 If I remember rightly, the first essay was by Johan Huizinga,2 and his definition was that history is a people interpreting to itself its past. But the people of today who do the interpreting are not the people who did the interpreting fifty years ago, and they have quite a different slant on things. A lot of water has gone under the bridge, and consequently the interpretation of the past in the present history is not the interpretation of the past of fifty years ago, and much less of a hundred years ago, and so on. There are several histories. This relativism can come out in many ways. You can have the English history of England, the French history of England, the German history of England, and the three are not exactly the same; and similarly, you can have several other combinations. The possibility of that arises insofar as history is not simply the strict technical history, insofar as it fills in the blanks or holes, or leans rather heavily on qualities and probabilities that depend a good deal upon the subject who is writing the history. (Fs)

59b A third view comes out in Rudolph Bultmann. He distinguishes between understanding and preunderstanding, Verständnis and Vorverständnis.1 The understanding, the Verständnis, is this interlocking of the data (although he expresses himself somewhat differently). But the preunderstanding, the Vorverständnis, is a philosophy, and his philosophy for interpreting the New Testament is Heidegger's. I think he has the better part of the argument against the less sophisticated New Testament scholars, insofar as they say he is using a philosophy to interpret the New Testament. 'But so are you,' he says, 'and I know what my philosophy is; yours is just a set of unconscious assumptions. I am making it quite plain to people what I am presuming. You are unconsciously - perhaps deliberately, but then you are just trying to fool them - passing off your assumptions without letting them know.' Again it is a case of the interlocking of the data; give one, take one, so far, but the questions that are raised about history, and especially about a history such as that of the New Testament, are not easily settled in that manner. The historian's view of human nature, of human destiny, plays a fundamental role in the selection, first of all, of the field that he studies (why is he interested in the New Testament?) as well as in the way he goes about it, the types of thought he appeals to to illuminate the New Testament, the selection of topics, and so on. (I suppose there is no element in history that has been studied with such intensity and such a terrific flow of volumes during the past century as all that is concerned with the New Testament. It is an overworked field, in many ways.) There is very clearly in the New Testament, taken as a historical document, the problem of how far does our understanding of the text take us, and how much does that understanding of the text depend upon other factors. (Fs)

60a Finally, of course, there is the naive approach, unaware of the issue. People have their own minds, and that's good common sense; when the odier fellow's assumptions begin to appear and reveal differences of interpretation, well, he's wrong. But they have not too much consciousness that they are doing the same sort of thing themselves. (Fs)
So much for technical history. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Titel: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Stichwort: Erklärende Geschichte (explanatory history) in der empirischen Wissenschaft; Lonergan's Schere (lower, upper blade)

Kurzinhalt: A man who really understands his mathematics can write an extremely intelligible history of mathematics, and similarly for these other subjects. The subject can be put together as a whole ...

Textausschnitt: 1.3 Explanatory History

60b Next, explanatory history. Technical history, I said, had a clear assimilation to empirical science, but there is a very important and a very fundamental difference methodologically, and we have been heading to that difference in our discussion, for example, of Bultmann. (Fs)

1.3.1 In Empirical Science

60c In empirical science, the most conspicuous part is the work of observation, of measurement, of collecting measurements, putting them on a graph, curve-fitting, finding a formula; but that is what I call insights, simply the lower blade of the method. The method is a pair of scissors, and it has not only a lower blade but also an upper blade, and the two come together. Galileo proceeded from falling bodies, bodies falling from the leaning tower of Pisa and bodies sliding down inclined planes. He also had an upper blade: the understanding of nature was going to fit into Euclidean geometry. That general assumption was just as much a determinant of his results as the observations and measurements. Newton substitutes for Euclidean geometry a similar deductive science called mechanics. It was a matter of setting down definitions and axioms and deducing things like movement of bodies in central fields of force, discovering that bodies moved just as Kepler had found the planets to move. Again, that mechanics is an upper blade that combines with the lower blade and gives you empirical science. Later, there came, in the place of Newton's mechanics, Einstein's relativity mechanics; and the quantum theory introduces notions of discontinuity and indeterminacy. (Fs) (notabene)

61a There is always operative an upper blade; and the same holds in the other empirical sciences. There is not just simply a matter of proceeding from the data; there is also always operative an upper blade, usually expressed in differential equations or something like that. Can the weakness of technical history, the problem of going beyond the sure points where the data interlock, of having a systematic type of bridgework between those strong points, those piers as it were, be met by the introduction of an upper blade into historical method? (Fs)

61b Now in particular fields that is not only possible but achieved. If you think of such a subject as the history of mathematics, the history of physics, the history of chemistry, of astronomy, geology, biology, technology, medicine, economics, it is quite possible in such a limited field of history to write an explanatory history that goes beyond the interlocking points in the data and satisfies everyone; and that is quite possible because there is a science of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and so on, on which everyone agrees. You cannot write the history of mathematics unless you are a mathematician, you cannot write the history of medicine unless you are a medical doctor; of course, you have to be a historian and know the techniques of the historian, but you also have to have this specialized knowledge, and without it you would be lost. You would not be able to pick out what are data relevant to a history of the field unless you know the subject inside out; you would not be able to pick out what is significant, or when what is significant arose, or what section is fulfilling its promises immediately, and so on. A man who really understands his mathematics can write an extremely intelligible history of mathematics, and similarly for these other subjects. The subject can be put together as a whole, and you have operating in your method not only the lower blade that comes from the interlocking of the data but also the upper blade which is derived from the science at the present time. And that type of history, too, is subject to revision. Insofar as mathematics or physics will further develop, new points will become significant in the future that previously were not; and similarly, insofar as new data come to light, you will have fuller data to connect your history. It is a type of change; it is not falling into a relativism of any sort, but rather it is the same sort of 'subject to change' that is found in the empirical sciences themselves. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Titel: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Stichwort: Erklärende Geschichte (explanatory history) in: Philosophie, Kunst, allgemeine Geschichte; Sorokin

Kurzinhalt: ... but the trouble is that you get many histories because you have many different upper blades.

Textausschnitt:
62a Now we go a little further into the complexity of the problem. We ask about the history of philosophy. A philosopher from the viewpoint of his philosophy can write an explanatory history of philosophy, and he can fill in the lacunae. But another philosopher with a different philosophy can do the same thing, and you get different results, because any philosophy will supply an upper blade if it is sufficiently developed, and it can take on the form of a philosophy of philosophies. Also, it can take on the task of fulfilling the function of an upper blade in the history of philosophy. The trouble is that there are many philosophies, and the debate here obviously shifts. It is not to be settled so much by historical criteria as by the debate between the philosophies themselves. (Fs)

1.3.3 In Art and Culture

62b The problem of relativism is illustrated in reduced form by the problem of the history of philosophy. A third instance,1 where a further complication arises, occurs when you come to the history of art, the history of a literature or literatures, the history of culture, the history of religions. The further complication is not only that there are many types of religious belief, many types of literature, and so on - there are many philosophies, and the multiplicity of the philosophies is also reflected in the religions and the arts and the cultures - but also that in this case there is a concreteness, and so a resistance to the systematic conceptualization which is of the essence, as it were, of such subjects as mathematics or physics. (Fs)

1.3.4 In General History

63a Now one comes to the final question on this point of explanatory history. There can be an upper blade for things like mathematics and medicine, and to get, as it were, unambiguous results, not a multiplicity of results, you can write explanatory history, you can complement technical history with explanatory. Secondly, you can write explanatory history of philosophy and similar things, or of theology, but the trouble is that you get many histories because you have many different upper blades. History of art and culture introduces a further complexity in its concreteness. Can there be an upper blade for general history, history in the ordinary sense as contrasted with, say, a history of capitalism?2 (Fs) (notabene)

63b A contender for the position is sociology. Sociology is the study of human society at a given time and place, but this sociology over time should provide history with an upper blade, should do for history what the science of mathematics does for the history of mathematics. Something along that line was attempted by a sociologist, a Russian emigre, Pitirim Sorokin. In the thirties, he published four large volumes of Social and Cultural Dynamics.3 It is largely artistic but deals also with several other types of things that he was classifying. What he was proving was the existence of a cycle, and it was applied to Hellenistic and Western culture extended over 2500 years. All I know about this work is that, to do a thing like this, you have to introduce categories, such as a field, and Sorokin's categories were not properly sociological; rather they were philosophic. His fundamental division was of cultures: were they sensate, idealistic, or ideational? These categories correspond roughly to Kierkegaard's three spheres of existential subjectivity: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious;4 and again, they correspond to the three spheres you get from Insight according as your emphasis is on experience, understanding, or judgment.5 (Fs)

64a What Sorokin really was doing was using philosophic categories rather than sociological categories. Sociological categories would be something much more precise, and would find an application (say, of a cycle, if it were defined sociologically) without going over tremendous amounts of time. And, of course, in the human sciences there is quite a leap from the merely descriptive type of science to explanatory science - even greater than moving in empirical science from talking about things being heavy, hot, and so on, to talking about mass (which is something quite distinct from weight) or temperature (something quite distinct from being hot). That, perhaps, in sociology, is coming out at the present time in a work by Robert Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (which the people at the Gregorian University in Rome who are teaching sociology speak of as 'the bible for sociologists').6 Merton seems to be introducing explanatory categories. Insofar as he is successful, there perhaps will be from sociology a tool that will supply an upper blade. We will discuss that further in this course, and many questions will be raised. (Fs)

64b Another illustration or contender as an upper blade in explanatory history is provided by Arnold Toynbee's A Study of History.7 What is history about? Is it like the history of Canada, or the history of England, or the history of Czechoslovakia? History, says Toynbee, is history of civilizations. The unit of study is the civilization. He pins the subject down to one object, what he calls the civilization; he defines the civilization as a field of interdependence. You cannot write the history of Canada and prescind from the history of France and England. You cannot write the history of a European country and prescind from the history of the neighboring Europeans. But you can write the history of Modern Europe (great parts of it, anyway) and allow for merely incidental contacts between it and, say, China. Consequently, there is here a norm of what he means by civilization - the functional concept of civilization. He uses this to say that there are many civilizations, and he makes a guess at the number. Each has its origin, its development, its breakdowns, its decline, its decay. There are relations in space and time between different civilizations. Finally, in volumes 7 to 10 the push, the moving thing behind the whole business, behind the whole of history, is religion; the basic carrier wave is religion. There you have, taken out of historical study, a set of explanatory categories and a set of principal questions for the historian to deal with. Does that set of categories stand to explanatory history as differential equations stand to physical theory, physical explanation? That is the question. (Of course, I am not supposed to answer them all!) (Fs)

65a Now that is not the whole of Toynbee. There is something else besides that fundamental conceptualization of what history is about (namely, about civilization's distinctive developments). This 'something else' is a set of humanistic categories. I spoke a moment ago about terms like weight, something heavy, and terms like mass, which can be defined only by relation to other masses, and ultimately by the inverse-square law of gravitation. And that is a step which is a purely theoretical type of conceptualization. Again, in scholastic philosophy the fundamental terms come out in pairs: potency and act, matter and form, substance and accident; and their meaning is contained in their relations to one another; you have a closed conceptual system. Now humanistic categories are not of that type. A large part of Toynbee's thinking is in categories drawn from the Greek tragedies, from Shakespeare and the Bible, of course, and from Goethe. It is a type of systematic conceptualization that has a meaning to the cultured Westerner, but it is not a type of systematic conceptualization that you have in explanatory science. (Fs) (notabene)

65b Another try along this line is that of Eric Voegelin. His Order and History has, so far - after the mid-fifties - three volumes published by the Louisiana State University Press.8 He has since gone to Munich. Before that, in the early fifties, the University of Chicago Press published his New Science of Politics.9 In these works, the upper blade is a philosophy of man, a philosophy of man of the type that is not just tied down to Heidegger, but is very much in the movement in which you find Heidegger and historians of religion of the type of Mircea Eliade and Ernst Cassirer - Cassirer's Philosophy of Symbolic Forms10 - and so on. (Fs)

66a Well, this discussion of history as a subject provides perhaps a step towards philosophy of history. I mentioned an occasional history, which we did not bother to analyze, to set up in opposition; technical history, which is very much down to earth and very solid but appeals to professors; it does not appeal so much to students and even less to the man on the street - he wants 'meaningful' answers to questions! Also, there is explanatory history, which has a great appeal and is beset with very fundamental difficulties. The difficulty that has been most conspicuous is the problem of relativism; it becomes conspicuous in dated history ('that was a fine historical work, but for 1850 or 1910; it does not count any more') or national history, or history that is acceptable to people of certain philosophic convictions or of certain religious convictions - Catholic history, Protestant history, Jewish history, history that will satisfy Arabs, and so on. That problem of relativism, and the possibility of surmounting it somewhat on the historical level, was raised in connection with the notion of explanatory history. I will now attempt to handle briefly my second topic, namely, philosophy of... (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Vergleich: dogmatische - systematische Methode

Kurzinhalt: Thus, in the dogmatic way ... there are first the missions of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ... In the systematic way ... the first consideration is of the one God

Textausschnitt: 6 Comparison of the Dogmatic Way and the Systematic Way

67a We have stated that the dogmatic way and the systematic way are distinct yet connected. Now we will state in greater detail how they are compared to each other. And for concrete examples, we will draw on the brief basic outlines of trinitarian theology. (Fs)

67b Thus, in the dogmatic way (which we have said is a way of analysis, of resolution, of discovery, of certitude, and a temporal way), there are first the missions of the Son and of the Holy Spirit narrated in the New Testament. Second, there is the trinitarian dogma, which affirms, simultaneously, against the Sabellians three who are really distinct and against the subordinationists one sole God (DB 48-51, DS 112-15, ND 301-303). Third, there is the consubstantiality of the three (DB 54, 86; DS 125, 150; ND 7, 305). Fourth, there are the real personal properties, which were worked out by the Cappadocians. Fifth, there is the recognition that these properties are relative and that the relations are relations of origin. Sixth, an understanding of these relations of origin is sought, and in particular an appeal is made to a psychological analogy. (Fs) (notabene)

67c In the systematic way (which we have said is a way of synthesis, of composition, of teaching, of learning, of probability, and of logical simultaneity), the first consideration is of the one God.1 Second, in the one God, who understands, knows, and loves, there are posited intellectual emanations.2 Third, on the emanations are based the relations.3 Fourth, supposing the emanations and the relations,4 the persons are considered all together.5 Fifth, the persons are considered individually.6 Sixth, the persons are related to each of the items considered before the persons were discussed: namely, to the divine essence,7 to the relations or properties,8 and to the notional acts or emanations.9 Seventh, the persons are related to one another10 and to us.11 (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Vergleich 2: dogmatische - systematische Methode; 8 Unterschiede; Verwirrung durch fehlende Unterscheidung zw. Dogmatik und Systematik

Kurzinhalt: What is prior in one is subsequent in the other ... The reason for this inversion is completely universal ... it is not always grasped how much confusion results from not keeping the dogmatic and systematic ways sufficiently distinct

Textausschnitt: 69a That said, let us proceed to the comparison. (Fs)

In the first place, it is clear that the dogmatic and the systematic ways are concerned with the same realities. The missions of the Son and of the Spirit narrated in the New Testament are identical with the missions discussed by St Thomas in question 43 of the Prima pars of the Summa. The divine generation that St Athanasius wrote about is the same generation that St Thomas spoke of both in question 27, before he had presented his systematic conception of the persons, and in question 41, after he had completed that presentation. This kind of identity will be found all across the board, since the synthetic movement is simply an orderly exposition of what was discovered and demonstrated in the analytic process. (Fs)

69b Second, although each movement treats the same realities, still each posits realities in a different order. What is prior in one is subsequent in the other. Thus, Aquinas ends with the missions, while the New Testament starts with them. Again, the patristic inquiry ends with the psychological analogy, while Aquinas starts with it. The reason for this inversion is completely universal: anyone who inquires or removes doubts starts from what is most obvious in order to conclude to what is more remote and more obscure; but anyone who is teaching starts with those notions that can be understood without presupposing the understanding of other notions, so that, by gradually increasing the complexity, one might arrive at an understanding of the concrete. (Fs)

69c Third, although the same realities are treated in each movement, they are conceived differently in each. The concept of a divine mission that is put forward in a Summa of theology, namely, the relation of the one sent both to the sender and to the term, is hardly what came explicitly to the mind of the first Christians as they read the letters of St Paul. Again, the Creed Quicumque teaches that mere are three persons, but it does not mention three subsisting relations. There is also a universal reason for this difference: included in the way of synthesis is the entire explanatory element toward which the way of analysis proceeds one step at a time. This is behind the common distinction in the manuals between 'the fact,' which they prove from authorities, and 'the understanding of the fact,' in regard to which more often than not they show theologians arguing with one another. (Fs)

71a Fourth, this formal difference of concepts increases as we compare the elements that are prior in the dogmatic way with the elements that are subsequent in the systematic. The later an element is posited in the systematic movement, the more it presupposes and includes the whole previous cumulative understanding. But the earlier an element is posited in the dogmatic movement, the more it expresses a simple narration of fact and the more it avoids any controversial understanding. (Fs)

71b Fifth, the same formal difference of concepts diminishes as we compare the elements that are subsequent in the dogmatic way with the elements that are prior in the systematic. For the dogmatic way moves toward the attainment of understanding, and once it has attained understanding it holds onto it and adds it to previous achievements; and the systematic way does not immediately express all of this understanding at the very beginning. Thus, there is no great difference between the psychological analogy at which the dogmatic way concludes and the same psychological analogy from which the systematic way begins. (Fs)

71c Sixth, the proofs of the two ways differ, partly because of the formally different concepts, but also because of the different goals intended. The dogmatic way proves that relations certainly exist in God, arguing from the names of 'Father' and 'Son,' from the necessity that any distinctions in God be purely relative, and from the notional acts. But the dogmatic way is not aware of the relations insofar as they are somehow known prior to the persons;1 nor does it begin to think about the basis of the relations until it has established the fact that relations do exist. The systematic way, in contrast, proceeds from the foundation of the processions to posit the relations, and since it has not yet formed a systematic conception of the persons, it is only by an inappropriate anticipation that it would argue from the names, properties, and notional acts of the persons. The difference is completely universal: every argument proceeds from something prior and moves to something subsequent; but what are prior in the systematic way are subsequent in the dogmatic; and what are subsequent in the systematic way are prior in the dogmatic. Thus, anyone who tries to use a blend of the two at the same time will be compelled to run through practically the entire treatise in every individual thesis. (Fs)

[...]

75a We have distinguished two ways, the dogmatic and the systematic. While they investigate the same realities, they proceed in contrary and opposed orders', they use formally distinct concepts, they employ different methods of proof, they have different relations to theological notes and censures, and they consider opponents and errors in different ways. Why all this? Because 'every act should be performed in a way adapted to its end. Now an argument can be directed to either of two ends.'1 Although it is the one same being that has essence and the act of existence, although it is the same proposition by which there is expressed the intelligible (which is true) and the true (which is intelligible), and although we cannot without reduplication distinguish between intelligible truth as true and intelligible truth as intelligible, nevertheless there is one operation of the mind that attains intelligible truth as true, and a really distinct operation that attains intelligible truth as intelligible. But if the operations are different, so are the methods by which one proceeds to the operations. It follows that if you seek certitude, you begin from those items that are most manifest and gradually arrive at a demonstration of those that are more obscure; but if you seek understanding, you start from those items which you can understand without presupposing the understanding of others; if, however, what you prefer is confusion, then you demand understanding where certitude is the issue, and certitude where what matters most is understanding. (Fs)

77a I trust no one really wants confusion. But it is not always grasped how much confusion results from not keeping the dogmatic and systematic ways sufficiently distinct. Where the goals are different, where the formal objects are different, where the operations by which the different goals are attained are different, where the orders by which one moves toward the goals are different, where different formal concepts are employed, and different proofs and different ways of considering errors, it makes little sense to judge theological works as if they all had but one goal, one formal object, one kind of operation, one ordering of questions, one type of formal concept, one way of proving, and one way of considering errors. And if it makes little sense when the issue regards simply the dogmatic and systematic ways, it makes even less sense when the consideration of history is added. To that we now turn. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Titel: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Stichwort: Philosophie von []; Philosophie und Geschichte, die geschrieben wird (History That Is Written); Philosophie als Grundsatz von Tätigkeiten

Kurzinhalt: 'philosophy of' as the basic group of operations; what would be true about those operations and their products; will all be true of the operations conducted by the historian

Textausschnitt: 3.1 Philosophy and History That Is Written

70a Insofar as one is concerned with the relations between philosophy and the history that is written, our first topic was largely engaged in exploring this relationship. I was using my own philosophic categories to clarify notions of history as a science, its problems, and its possibilities. The indication of the distinctions among occasional, technical, and explanatory history came right out of notions of what the nature of human understanding is as developed in Insight. There is a further point: just as metaphysics is conceived in Insight as the integrating subject, just as the notion of being is conceived as the notion that underpins, penetrates, and goes beyond all other notions, so metaphysics is, as it were, the science of fundamental inquiry. This inquiry is broken up into the inquiries of the several sciences. It is an inquiry that also criticizes the inquiry of the several sciences. It is an inquiry that also criticizes the results of those inquiries and integrates them and goes beyond them. So too, there is, from that view of metaphysics, a connection with history. Insofar as the historian is operating in the light of a philosophy, he can deal with concepts, and raise questions, that people are interested in, even though those concepts and questions do not pertain to a specialized notion of history (such notions as the good, what is right, what is wrong, and so on). Again, insofar as you conceive your 'philosophy of' as the basic group of operations - experiencing, understanding, and judging - what would be true about those operations and their products will all be true of the operations conducted by the historian: his experiencing the traces now existing from the past, his understanding them, and his passing judgments. (Fs)

70b That conception of 'philosophy of,' on the one hand, involves no intrusion into the specific procedures, the autonomy, of the historian qua historian; and at die same time it facilitates either his or his critics' discussion of the fundamental notions involved, and the valuation of his mode of conceiving them, and the relation of his work to other works. Again, that philosophic background makes it possible to relieve the historian of problems that really are not his concern qua historian. (Historians have been greatly troubled by the problem of relativism, and this has been rather pronounced since large numbers of them were expelled from Nazi Germany, and they could not say, 'Well, one opinion is just as good as another, they are all just so many opinions.' Experience was a little too deep for that. Particularly notable is Karl Mannheim, who did his work especially on the sociology of knowledge.)1 (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: univok - äquivok: das Erste für uns; Naturwissenschaften - Human- Geisteswissenschaften; Ausweg aus Relativismus (Objektseide): Tiefenpsychologie, Geschichte

Kurzinhalt: the difference between nature and spirit, between the natural sciences and the properly human sciences, is that, for all practical purposes, those realities that are prior for us ...

Textausschnitt: 77c If we want to see what this historical movement really was like, two considerations are necessary. First, we need to form those concepts that will help us grasp clearly and distinctly the intelligibility of historical reality both in general and in those matters that touch the Catholic faith more intimately. Second, after proposing those concepts in this seventh section, we will seek in the next section some understanding of this theological movement, a movement which is intimately connected with what has been called the development of dogma. (Fs)

77d Again, to begin from general notions, the difference between nature and spirit, between the natural sciences and the properly human sciences, is that, for all practical purposes, those realities that are prior for us, better known to us, more obvious to us seem in the natural sciences to remain stable, whereas in the human sciences they undergo slight but continual changes. Colors and sounds, the heavy and the light, the hot and the cold, the dry and the moist, the smooth and the rough, the hard and the soft, and everything else that becomes known to the senses seem to share a kind of immutability with the unchanged character of the human body. As a result, in the natural sciences the categories that express what is prior for us are univocal. But the law of the spirit is different from the law of nature. Languages and customs, domestic, economic, and political structures, the mechanical and liberal arts, religions and sciences not only are multiplied with great diversity, but they also go through recurrent patterns of increase, flourishing, and decay with an astounding fertility and restlessness. For individual human beings, what is prior, better known, and more obvious is whatever they were seeing, hearing, and doing when they were infants or children or adolescents or young adults. And so, as a result of the very variety and inconstancy of human affairs, the categories that indicate what is prior for us become equivocal in the extreme. The us in question is not something fixed and changeless. There are as many remarkable and deep differences in what are spontaneously counted as prior, better known, and more obvious in human affairs as there are periods, ages, cultures, nations, social classes - in fact, almost as many as there are individual human beings. (Fs) (notabene)

79a These differences, which we may for brevity's sake designate as 'cultural,' give rise at once to a fundamental problem: the problem of finding a transcultural principle that would enable us to pass systematically from what is prior for one person to what is prior for another. (Fs)

79b A first element in the solution is appropriated from depth psychology. Human beings are alike not just in their senses but also in those spontaneous symbols in which sensibility both manifests its own finality to spirit and conversely discloses to itself [...]

79c A second element in the solution is the slower and more difficult process by which scholars manage gradually to acquire the culture and almost the mentality of another place and time. [...]

79d A third element in the solution is that not only can narratives of past events be read, compared, and woven together into a single coherent account, but also everything we know from other sciences can be used to help us reach as full an understanding as possible of the whole life of another age in all its aspects: mechanical, artistic, economic, political, social, scientific, philosophical, religious. (Fs)

81a Still, these three elements, even when taken together, hardly provide a full solution to the problem. They help individual researchers cross over from their own culture to a foreign culture. They allow individual scholars somehow to make their own whatever belongs to the foreign culture. They even make it possible that many investigators, provided they belong to the same culture, age, and school of thought, might agree on the objective sequence and significance of historical events. But that hardly overcomes the very serious and most inconvenient fact that there are as many accounts of what was done and as many interpretations of what was said and written as there are cultures, schools, and tendencies of thought. The transcultural problem may indeed be solved, so to speak, on the side of the object, but on the side of the subject it remains unsolved. And that is why we are often told that there are two types of questions: those that deal with material reality can be settled scientifically, while those that touch rather on human principles, judgments, and decisions are left exposed to an inevitable relativism. (Fs) (notabene)

81b This division of questions can be accounted for partly from what we have said already, and partly from certain philosophical or methodological principles. Certitude is allowed regarding what is more material, because what is prior for us, better known to us, more obvious to us in the realm of nature is for all practical purposes univocal. But skepticism prevails in regard to whatever is cultural and spiritual, because in the properly human realm there is considerable equivocity regarding what is prior for some and prior for others, better known to some and better known to others, more obvious to some and more obvious to others.1 Still, suppose one asks, 'Why do historical scholars settle for the merely relative? Why do they put so much study and so much labor into passing simply from what is relative-to-others to what is relative-to-themselves? Why do they not put their effort into uncovering what is prior, more knowable, more obvious in itself?' The frequent response is either that it is safer to avoid all the opinions of philosophers or that some relativistic philosophy is true. (Fs)

81c This kind of 'historicism,' whether in itself or in its philosophical presuppositions or in the theological consequences of these presuppositions, was condemned again and again by Pius XII in his encyclical Humani generis?2 In another work I have discussed the way to attack the real root of relativism and sketched the method by which one can proceed scientifically to the true interpretation of documents.3 (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Kirche, Theologie, Geschichte, transkulturelles Problem; das Erste: für uns, in sich; Bewegung: transkulturell, theologisch, dogmatisch; patristisches, mittelalterliches ... prior

Kurzinhalt: Furthermore, we can distinguish a transcultural movement, a theological movement, and a dogmatic movement. A transcultural movement is a movement from a 'scriptural prior' to a 'patristic prior,' or ...

Textausschnitt: 83b Now let us come to the theological question. It was inevitable that a transcultural problem arise among Christians. On the one hand, divine revelation was given to a particular people at definite times and under definite circumstances; thus, the words of scripture and the apostolic preaching of the gospel were directed to particular human beings and so were necessarily implicated in and bound up with their cultural conditions. Yet, on the other hand, the church of God is for all people, at every place, in every culture. Therefore our transcultural problem is already constituted by the fact that a universal and Catholic1 church was founded under particular historical circumstances. Indeed, in the New Testament period itself, at the very origins of the church, when it was decided against the advice of the Judaizers not only to preach to the Gentiles but also to exempt them from Mosaic rituals, the transcultural problem was clearly and distinctly displayed, and, moreover, a magnificent example was given of a solution to the same problem. (Fs)

83c Still, if we are to proceed more systematically, we have to develop further the distinction already made between what is prior in itself and what is prior for us. What is prior in itself remains the same, but it may be called a 'systematic prior,'2 a 'theological prior,' or a 'dogmatic prior.' And what we called 'prior for us' should be subdivided into a 'scriptural prior,' a 'patristic prior,' and a 'contemporary prior,' to signify respectively what was prior, better known, more obvious to an ancient Semitic or Palestinian mentality, or to the faithful of the patristic period, or to the faithful of this or that place, time, or culture. (Fs)
85a Furthermore, we can distinguish a transcultural movement, a theological movement, and a dogmatic movement. A transcultural movement is a movement from a 'scriptural prior' to a 'patristic prior,' or from either of these to a 'contemporary prior.' A theological movement is a movement from a 'scriptural or patristic prior' to 'a systematic prior.' And a dogmatic movement occurs when a 'systematic prior' is confirmed, taught, and defined by the church's magisterium. So the entry of the Gentiles into the inheritance of the people of God was a transcultural movement. Likewise, the medieval creation of catenae, of glossae, and of collections of patristic opinions was transcultural. Transcultural movements are investigated both by missiology and by the more profound type of pastoral theology. But conceiving the divine persons as consubstantial, conceiving the incarnation of the divine Word as a union of two natures in a single person, conceiving divine graces as absolutely supernatural habits and motions, and conceiving sacraments as efficacious signs of grace were all theological movements. Finally, the dogmatic movement is illustrated by the Council of Nicea, which defined that the Son is consubstantial with the Father, by the Council of Chalcedon, which defined that Christ is a single person in two natures, and by the Council of Trent and the First Vatican Council, each of which employed a large number of theological elements both to state and to define the faith. (Fs)

85b On this basis we can say that what is set down in the scriptures is not different from the correct conclusions that theologians arrive at. Rather, the same thing is stated in each, in accord with one or another type of priority. Again, what is set down in the scriptures is not different from what is set down in ecclesial definitions. Rather, the same thing is stated in each, though in accord with one or other type of priority. Finally, the primitive Palestinian faith and Hellenistic faith and medieval faith and contemporary faith are not different faiths. Rather, the same thing is believed in all of them, even though expositions differ in accord with one or other priority. (Fs) (notabene)

85c Accordingly, comparing these movements with one another yields the conclusion that a transcultural movement terminates, say, at a Hellenistic phase or at a medieval phase or at some other contemporary phase, whereas a properly theological movement, since it terminates at what is prior in itself, does not terminate at a Hellenistic phase or at a medieval phase or at some other phase bound to particular cultural circumstances. By the same token, then, to regard the homoousion as merely Hellenistic or transubstantiation as merely medieval is to disparage the dogmatic movement. And finally, there is an enormous difference between a theological movement and a dogmatic movement, for while they may coincide conceptually, still it is one thing to offer a judgment on the private authority of a theologian and quite another to state the faith itself infallibly, under the guidance of the Spirit of God. (Fs) (notabene)

87a We still have to determine the great difference that exists between the general transcultural problem and that same problem as it is found in Catholicism. We have seen how historians pass with consummate skill and astuteness from one relative view to another relative view, without daring to ascend to what is prior in itself and absolute, because philosophers propose so many and such diverse teachings. Yet the church of God not only accomplishes such transcultural movements, but also in one and the same voice it can speak to all cultures and all times. For it does ascend to what is prior in itself and, moreover, passes an infallible judgment on its own ascent. (Fs) (notabene)

1.Kommentar (27/03/08): Interssant hier das Argument als prior in itself.

87b Finally, we must not overlook how intimately this analysis of history squares with what has already been said about the goal of theology, about the act whereby the goal is attained, and about the movement whereby we proceed to that act. For in this section we have added only one element to those considerations, namely, the ambiguity and equivocity of the category that announces what is prior, better known, more obvious with respect to us. Still, once this element is added, there immediately come to light in their main lines (i) a historical series of cultural differences, (2) the Catholic transcultural problem, (3) the importance of the dogmatic way that proceeds from what is prior for so and so to what is prior in itself, (4) the importance of the systematic way that explores in an ordered fashion what is prior in itself, and (5) how great a difference there is between transcultural movements, theological movements, and dogmatic movements. And once all this is grasped, the dogmatic way and the systematic way will be seen not only to enter into their proper concrete historical context, but also are perceived to exercise a special task within the historical process itself. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Theologie, Geschichte allgemein: Bewegung bestimmt vom Ziel her; Häresie - Dogma; Gott, Regierung: das Gute - das Böse

Kurzinhalt: But infallible definitions are certainly good, and heresies are certainly evil; and yet definitions and heresies are not just opposed to each other but also connected with each other.

Textausschnitt: 8 A Further Consideration of the Historical Movement
87c We have distinguished different movements on the basis of their different starting points and goals. Now we have to consider movement itself as it proceeds from the starting point to the goal. Since the issue concerns intellectual movement, we have first to grasp that, no matter how intelligent the people involved in such a movement may be, they cannot understand their own movement clearly and distinctly. Every movement is understood from its goal, and so those who do not understand the goal to which they are moved cannot understand the movement to this goal. Now those who are involved in an intellectual movement are being moved to knowledge as goal, and as long as they are in movement, they do not yet have the knowledge. Therefore they cannot clearly and distinctly grasp what goal they are moving toward; and if they do not so understand the goal, they do not so understand the movement toward the goal. (Fs) (notabene)

1.Kommentar (28/03/08): Das Ziel bestimmt die Bewegung ... das ist ein ganz anderer Lonergan als jener von manchen Lonergan-Experten, die kaum über eine Intentionalitäts-Analyse hinauszukommen vermögen.

89a Thus, there is nothing surprising about the fact that popes and Fathers of the church and the greatest theologians have had practically nothing to say about the development of theology and of dogma, even though they were the ones who effected the development. Some human achievements are understood before they happen, while others have first to happen before they can be understood. Every intellectual movement is of the latter kind. (Fs) (notabene)

89b Still, what happens beyond the range of every human intention is hardly beyond God's intention. The God who founded a universal church through a revelation accommodated to a particular culture has not only grasped the transcultural problem but also has prepared, inspired, and guided its solution. It will not be particularly difficult for one who attends to this divine intention to understand theological and dogmatic development from that development itself. For whatever has happened has happened under God's governance. If something good has happened, it has happened in virtue of God positively willing it; but if something evil has happened, it has happened with God simply allowing it to happen. But infallible definitions are certainly good, and heresies are certainly evil; and yet definitions and heresies are not just opposed to each other but also connected with each other. For in the realm of human intention heresy is the occasion of definitions, and definitions are the remedy for heresy, and in the realm of God's intention evil is allowed so that from the very evil there may be drawn a greater good. Thus, if individual infallible definitions are good, the whole series of definitions, that is, the very development of dogma itself, is a still greater good. If individual heresies are evil, the whole series of heresies is a still greater evil. But if evil is allowed only for the sake of a greater good, then a greater evil is allowed only for the sake of a very great good. The very great good in this case, then, is the development of dogma that proceeded under God's guiding action even before human beings gave it any thought. (Fs) (notabene)

89c That is all very general. To move to particulars, we select four examples. The first is homoousion, in which in a solemn definition the 'scriptural prior' is left behind. The second is Chalcedon's two-natures doctrine, in which in a more tacit manner the 'patristic prior' is left behind. The third is the medieval conflict between Augustinianism and Aristotelianism, from which de facto there developed the systematic shift to what is prior in itself. The fourth, finally, is the subsequent methodological uncertainty, which urges us to examine more accurately the relations between the 'scriptural prior' and the 'systematic prior.' (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Theologie, Geschichte: drei Beispiele: Nizäa (Nicea) Athanasius (Beispiel göttlicher Vorsehung), homoousion; Chalcedon

Kurzinhalt: Yet how greatly the intention of divine providence exceeds human intentions is evident from the fact that even Athanasius would not have affirmed such a general principle

Textausschnitt: 91a First, then, in the Arian controversy that raged through most of the fourth century, there was one question that was primary and was posed openly, namely, 'Is the Son of God a creature?' And there was another question that was secondary and somehow remained hidden, namely, 'Can an explicit and obligatory profession of faith employ words other than those that we read in the sacred scriptures?' Now in fact, as regards this secondary question, Council of Nicea did use the word homoousion. And in fact, after the Council was accepted, there was never any doubt about using nonscriptural language in the symbols of faith. That means that in fact there was firmly established the legitimacy of a shift from the scriptural 'prior to us' to something that is prior in itself. Yet how greatly the intention of divine providence exceeds human intentions is evident from the fact that even Athanasius would not have affirmed such a general principle. When he defended the decrees of Nicea, he was not defending any dogmatic or theological method, but an exception. He thought it was quite satisfactory that every confession of faith be made in scriptural language, but he contended that homoousion was necessary to root out more effectively the Arian heresy. (Fs)

91b Thus, even after Nicea it remained possible to believe that the only licit transition is one that proceeds from a scriptural 'prior for us' to a patristic 'prior for us.' That is what Severus of Antioch thought. Since he found that the Fathers used the word 'nature' to mean a complete, concrete being, so that every nature is also a supposit, he acknowledged only one nature in Christ God and man, and so he rejected the Council of Chalcedon as Nestorian. It would seem, then, that what happened in the case of these Monophysites is not that they defected from the faith because of a christological error,1 but that they refused to comply with the church and the ecumenical council because of a methodological error. Yet the case of the Monophysites was so unclear that it could not keep others from believing that a 'scriptural prior' should never be abandoned except for a transition to a 'patristic prior.'

91c And so we have the third example: the medieval conflict between the Augustinians and the Aristotelians. John Peckham, O.F.M., Archbishop of Canterbury, described the dispute in a letter to Rome:
... and that the Holy Roman Church might please notice how the teaching of the two orders [Franciscans and Dominicans] is almost completely opposed today on every debatable question. The teaching of one of these orders rejects and often contemns the positions of saintly authors. It rests almost entirely on philosophical dogmas. Thus, the house of God becomes filled with idols and with the futility of disputed questions foretold by the apostle. Great danger lies ahead on that route for the church of future generations. Smash the pillars
and the house will fall. Nothing is more inevitable. Despise the teachings of Augustine and other authentic doctors, and in will come the prince of evil as truth collapses before falsehood.2

93a The author seems to have failed to distinguish adequately the two different operations of the mind. Asking 'What is it?' is different from asking 'Is it so?' If, in answering this second question, you do indeed cast aside the teachings of the saints and for all practical purposes depend entirely on philosophical presuppositions, no doubt you do stray from the faith. But if faith is not the issue, if the argument is entirely about questions that really are debatable, how is it possible that the house of God is being filled with idols, or that authentic teachers like Augustine are being contemned, or that the teaching of one of the orders rests almost exclusively on philosophical dogmas? The only ground for such comments seems to be that the commentator was not a sagacious witness, although he was probably no less sagacious than others of the same period. The issue in these debatable questions was not truth but understanding, and not philosophical but theological understanding. The achievement of the thirteenth century, even among the Augustinians, was the transition from what was prior for the scriptural and patristic people of faith to the theological and systematic 'prior in itself.' (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: 3 Irrtümer, Synthese; Futurismus, Archaismus (Fundamentalismus); Vatikan I

Kurzinhalt: There are three ways of making the transition to the systematic without achieving a synthesis. First, ... In parallel fashion, when synthesis is lacking there are three ways of going astray on the positive side

Textausschnitt: 95c There are three ways of making the transition to the systematic without achieving a synthesis. First, the philosophical handmaid can be so dominant that theologians are occupied at great length with questions that at root are philosophical. Second, theologians can attend to both speculative and positive issues but achieve, not a joining and a synthesis, but just a juxtaposition and an aggregate. Third, system itself can be so exaggerated that positive elements become superfluous, since they can be demonstrated. The first tendency can be seen quite clearly in the decadence of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but it also troubled later theology. The second tendency occurs when apologetic exigencies combine with philosophical domination. The third tendency appeared in nineteenth-century semirationalism, whose short life was ended by the First Vatican Council. (Fs)

95d In parallel fashion, when synthesis is lacking there are three ways of going astray on the positive side. The first is an archaism that tempts people to reject at least the later syntheses and return to a more ancient, simple, pure stage of Christianity. The second is a futurism that tempts people to bypass earlier and later syntheses alike and to accept some new and as yet unheard-of overview of everything. The third is the tendency of those whose minds are so exhausted by a plethora of weighty theories that they settle for certitude and exclude all understanding. (Fs)

95e Now the sixteenth-century Reformers and the later Pietists extolled a scriptural archaism; the followers of Baius and Jansenius wanted a patristic and Augustinian archaism; nor are theologians of our own age immune from the same tendency, who so praise biblical or patristic theology that they almost seem to prefer to omit all later theology. Next, futurism is seen in liberals and modernists, who suggest that not only Catholics and Protestants but also the Fathers of the church and the New Testament authors themselves were mistaken regarding the true nature of the Christian religion. Finally, the third error consists, not in the division of labor within positive studies, which is quite proper, nor in insisting on a solid analytic foundation for the way of synthesis, which is also quite proper, but in so highly esteeming the necessity and solidity of the positive path as to end up with a positivistic exclusion of speculation. (Fs)

97a The understanding of mysteries taught by the First Vatican Council is opposed to all of these aberrations. Because there is an understanding of mysteries, there is a strictly theological understanding. Because there is a strictly theological understanding, there are also concepts that express this understanding and principles that will be uttered in these concepts. Because there are concepts and principles that originate from a strictly theological understanding, the proper object of theology, its proper method, and its proper field of activity are vindicated. (Fs)

97b Once these points are grasped, a stable foundation is provided for resisting the domination of philosophy. On the same basis, the notion that theology is a mere aggregate, as if theology had no principles of its own and consisted only in conclusions drawn from revelation alone or from revelation and philosophy, is ruled out. And the positivistic tendency to neglect all understanding is also ruled out. (Fs)

97c Again, since this theological understanding increases age after age, there are ruled out both the archaism that regards later understanding as illegitimate and the anachronism that imagines that later understanding existed much earlier than in fact it did. (Fs)

97d Moreover, because declarations and definitions of the church are protected from error through the assistance of the Holy Spirit, the theological understanding that truly enters into these declarations and definitions will not change.1 And so the figments that we have named 'futurism' are ruled out. (Fs)

97e Finally, since theological understanding is imperfect, rationalism and semirationalism are also ruled out. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Nizäa (Nicea), Chalcedon, Vatikan I; Unterschied: Entwicklung des Dogmas - Absicht der Entwicklung; Absicht, Fügung Gottes; Notwendigkeit des Strebens nach Einsicht

Kurzinhalt: What stands out in all of this is that it is one thing to effect a development of dogma and something else to intend the same development.

Textausschnitt: 97f We have examined four examples of historical movement: (1) the homoousion of Nicea, in which the 'scriptural prior' was left behind; (2) the 'two natures' doctrine of Chalcedon, in which the 'patristic prior' was left behind; (3) the medieval conflict between Augustinians and Aristotelians, in which a move was made to a systematic 'prior in itself; and (4) the subsequent methodological uncertainty, in which we discerned a golden mean between various opposed aberrations. (Fs)

99a What stands out in all of this is that it is one thing to effect a development of dogma and something else to intend the same development. It was not the intention of the Council of Nicea to affirm a general possibility of passing from the 'scriptural prior' to the 'systematic prior.' Nor was it intention of the Council of Chalcedon to affirm a general possibility of passing from the 'patristic prior' to the 'systematic prior.' The medieval theologians, whether Augustinian or Aristotelian, did not argue whether a shift should be made to the 'systematic prior.' Nor was it a common decision of the theologians of the fourteenth and fifteenth century, the Reformers and the Catholic apologists, the Baianists and the Jansenists, the semirationalists and the traditionalists, the liberals and the modernists, that by their different opposed tendencies they would place the Catholic mean in a clearer light. Even the First Vatican Council wished not so much to ground further methodological conclusions as to condemn specific errors and to affirm Christ's saving doctrine. (Fs) (notabene)

99b Still, a development of dogma was brought about, especially in the ecumenical councils from Nicea to Vatican I. But it is one thing to intend the individual definitions, one at a time, as each of the councils undoubtedly did, and it is quite another thing to intend the entire series of definitions and declarations in which the development of dogma can be seen. To intend that entire series surpasses human powers; nevertheless, it was brought about by God's intention, will, governance, and infallible assistance. And the reason why it was brought about is not obscure: it was necessary if the Catholic and universal church of God is to be able to express God's revelation in a Catholic and universal way. (Fs) (notabene)

99c An increase in understanding, knowledge, and wisdom accompanies the development of dogma. One who understands imperfectly homoousion or transubstantiation does understand something - something more than those who may never have reflected seriously on either consubstantiality or transubstantiation. But where more is understood, obviously understanding increases. Then if conclusions are drawn from this increased understanding, knowledge increases as well. The more things there are that are understood and known, the more is progress made toward that wisdom that orders and judges all things. Indeed, since ultimate wisdom about divine matters belongs to God alone, it is not given even to the wisest theologian to pass judgment on divine matters in any absolute fashion; rather, it is necessary for theologians to submit their judgments to the one to whom God has promised infallibility on this earth. (Fs)

101a Finally, God through ministerial instruments brings about the development of dogma and the increase of understanding, knowledge, and wisdom in such a way that the goal God intends cannot fail to be attained. If there are many lovers of intelligible truth, then clearly the understanding, knowledge, and wisdom of one and all, of individuals as well as of the whole church, grows and makes great and vigorous progress. But if the love of intelligible truth grows cold, people are led astray by the false appearance of intelligibility; problems are multiplied; false solutions are urged; heresies arise; and the final result is that those who are not moved by love of the good are at least compelled by the mounting evils. Thus, whether we want intelligible truth or not, the increase that God intends and is effectively producing in inscrutable ways can never be thwarted. (Fs)

101b Thus, we return to our starting point, Aquinas. There are people today who are little moved to doctrinal disputations and speculative theology by the argument that without such disputations the student will 'acquire no knowledge or understanding, but will go away empty.' But if the abstract name of science does not convince them, perhaps the concrete reality of science can attract them. The point at issue is the understanding of mysteries that we have seen as not only gradually developing in the history of the church but also as having been used by God's intention so that revelation, adapted to a particular mentality, might receive a universal and Catholic expression. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Objekt der Theologie; in sich - in Relation zu anderen Wissenschaften

Kurzinhalt: ... since acts are known through objects and movements are known through their terms, we shall have to discuss briefly (1) the twofold aspect of theology, (2) the object as the goal of theology, (3) ...

Textausschnitt: 9 The Object of Theology

101c Now that we have considered the goal, the act by which the goal is attained, and the movement toward that act, it is time to draw all these considerations together, so that they can be grasped from the unity of a single viewpoint. Therefore, since acts are known through objects and movements are known through their terms, we shall have to discuss briefly (1) the twofold aspect of theology, (2) the object as the goal of theology, (3) the object as an immanently produced term, (4) the object as moving, (5) the process from the object as moving to the object as a term, and (6) the process from the object as a term to the object as the goal. (Fs)

101d First, then, theology can be considered either in itself or in relation to other sciences. The consideration of theology in itself regards objects and processes. But the consideration of theology in relation to other sciences calls for a distinction between what is common and what is specific. It is common to all the sciences that, while they must be distinguished from one another, they must not be separated from one another; there is only one universe to be understood, and each human being has only one intellect - an intellect that submits to every mere multiplicity only reluctantly. Moreover, it is common to many sciences that one uses another to move to its own proper perfection; this is increasingly the case as the sciences treat the concrete reality of a more perfect object. Thus, more sciences collaborate in knowing plants than in knowing minerals, more in knowing animals than in knowing plants, more in knowing human beings than in knowing other animals. Finally, there is a need that wisdom (whose role it is to judge and order everything) exercise her specific office and function, in order to determine the proper ends and adapt the proper methods of the individual sciences so that all of them may proceed more effectively to a unified and coherent understanding of the one universe. (Fs)

103a From this it is clear both that theology must make use of the other sciences, and especially the human sciences, and also that the other sciences, and again especially the human sciences, should learn from theology. For in this life every human being is infected with original sin and helped by God's supernatural grace and the magisterium of the church. In that mutual assistance (DB 1799, DS 3019, ND 135), theology performs the function of wisdom, both because theology is guided by the superior light of faith and because only theology can resolve into causes the situation of humankind1 as in fact it exists in this state of fallen and redeemed nature. And so, although theology in the exercise of its sapiential function uses and should use other sciences such as logic, methodology, and philosophy, nevertheless it is up to theology to determine the proper ends of each of these other sciences (DB 1799, DS 3019, ND 135).2 (Fs)

103b As for theology considered in itself as one particular science, it treats objects that become known by the supernatural light of faith, namely, the triune God, the incarnate Word, and other objects that pertain to the economy of salvation. Yet faith and theology differ from one another - not because they intend different objects but because they consider the same objects in different ways. What the believer believes, the theologian to some extent understands; what the believer affirms as true, the theologian intends as an intelligible truth. Just as science is not just any certain knowledge but certain knowledge of things through causes, so theology adds something to simple faith in that it proceeds from a truth that is believed to a truth that is both believed and to some extent understood. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Inneres Wort: zweifach; erste Ebene des Intellekts: Unterschied zw. Theologie u. Glaube; zweite Ebene des Intellekts: Unterschied zw. Theologie und Wissenschaft

Kurzinhalt: Thus, as regards the first operation of intellect, theology differs from faith and is more like science, but as regards the second operation of intellect, theology differs from science and relies on faith.

Textausschnitt: 105c For, just as there are two operations of intellect, two kinds of questions, and two acts of understanding, so there are two inner words, two terms immanently produced by an act of understanding.1 Now all properly human knowledge is knowledge to the extent that it is formally true; and so the second operation of intellect, in which the true is uttered, belongs to the very constitution of properly human knowledge. But as regards this operation we have to distinguish between faith and other kinds of certain knowledge. The other kinds of knowledge proceed from evidence of an object grasped by the subject, while faith proceeds from evidence of an object grasped not by the subject but by someone else whom the subject believes. And so, since theology rests on faith, it is distinct from other certain knowledge, whether prescientific or scientific. (Fs)

107a Moreover, just as in every finite being existence and essence are distinct, so too in every finite truth the formality of truth is distinct from that to which the formality of truth is added. That to which the formality of truth is added is the term of the first operation of intellect. And since in this operation there is a distinction between prescientific apprehension (in which causes are not yet known) and scientific apprehension (in which things are conceived through causes), one can distinguish on this basis both between science and other kinds of knowledge and, on the supernatural level, between theology and faith. (Fs) (notabene)

107b Thus, as regards the first operation of intellect, theology differs from faith and is more like science, but as regards the second operation of intellect, theology differs from science and relies on faith. The reason for these surprising conjunctions is that, because theology has a supernatural object, theological understanding is imperfect insofar as it never attains to evidence regarding its object. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Objekt der Theologie; das Ziel als bewegendes; nahes, fernes Ziel; Prinzipien - Wissen Gottes

Kurzinhalt: Theology does not begin from sensible data but from truths revealed by God and believed by us; and theology attains, not the kind of understanding that would suffice for discovering with certitude what is true, but ...

Textausschnitt: 107c Fourth, besides the object of intellect in the sense of its goal (being) and its object in the sense of immanent term (intelligible truth), there is also the object in the sense of whatever moves us to understand. The object that moves us to understand, the one proper to us and proportionate to us in our present state, is the intelligibility or nature that exists in corporeal matter. It follows that in this life we cannot understand or conceive God or angels except through analogies; but we do await another life in which the divine quiddity or essence will move our intellect without mediation. (Fs)

107d Thus, the object that moves us to theological understanding is, remotely, the divine essence or quiddity and, proximately, the truth that God has revealed to us about God, that God proposes to us through the church, and that we accept in faith. (Fs)

107e For this reason theology differs from the natural sciences, which begin from sensible data and proceed through understanding to the discovery of what is true. Theology does not begin from sensible data but from truths revealed by God and believed by us;1 and theology attains, not the kind of understanding that would suffice for discovering with certitude what is true, but that obscure, analogical, and imperfect understanding that throws some light on the truth already known from elsewhere, and enables us to possess it more fully. (Fs)

109a Moreover, since the object that moves us to theological understanding is revealed truth, the principles of theological science are called articles of faith. Furthermore, since it is the property of a subordinate science to receive its principles from another science, theology is likened to a subordinate science in that it begins from those principles that it receives from divine knowledge through revelation and faith. Finally, since no science as science is measured by the prescientific knowledge from which it begins, it is incorrect to measure theological science as science by the knowledge of faith from which it begins. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Ziel des Buchs; Ausgangspunkt: intellektuelle Emanation; Scholastik

Kurzinhalt: We do not begin with the relations, for understanding the relations presupposes understanding the processions. And we do not begin with the generation of the Son and the breathing forth of the Holy Spirit, for ..

Textausschnitt: 10 The Purpose of This Work

117a Our goal in this work is that imperfect, analogical, obscure, gradually developing, synthetic, and fruitful theological understanding. As understanding, it is neither true nor false, whether in itself or in its inner word or in its outer word. Of itself it does not lead to a truth that is per se known by us, or to a truth that is demonstrable from its own intrinsic principles, or to a hypothesis whose intrinsic possibility can be either clearly or distinctly grasped. Nevertheless it does relate to the formality of truth, in that it begins from something true that has been explicitly or implicitly revealed, in that it makes use of other truth, whether philosophic or historical, in that all its consequences are coherent with revealed truth, and in that it is an understanding of revealed truth itself. (Fs)

117b It proceeds to this goal, not by the dogmatic way but by the systematic. Therefore, it presupposes not only the revealed truths but also all that is deduced from the revealed truths. Our present intent is not to increase certitude about revealed truths, or to confirm deductions from revealed truths, or to refute more effectively the opponents of Catholic truth. For just as man does not live on bread alone, so knowledge does not live on certitude alone. Thus, presupposing firm certitude with regard to the faith, presupposing conclusions that have been deduced with certainty, presupposing that opponents have already been refuted, we are seeking an understanding of what is certain. (Fs)

119a We begin, then, not from what is most obvious in order to demonstrate something more obscure, but from what is most obscure in order to understand what is already certain and obvious. We do not begin from what is obscure because it is obscure, as if motivated by some strange perversity. Rather we follow the straigh-forward procedure of beginning with what is first in itself even though it is obscure. Anyone seeking understanding in an orderly way begins from what can be understood without presupposing the understanding of anything else. This is why we do not begin with the divine persons, for understanding the divine persons presupposes understanding the relations. We do not begin with the relations, for understanding the relations presupposes understanding the processions. And we do not begin with the generation of the Son and the breathing forth of the Holy Spirit, for these processions, which are specifically distinct from each other, presuppose something prior, something generic in respect to both of them. Our starting point, then, is intellectual emanation, as that which is absolutely basic in the systematic approach. The persons are considered only in chapter 4, the relations only in chapter 3, and the generation of the Son and the spiration of the Spirit only toward the end of chapter 2. But our starting point is intellectual emanation as it can be conceived of in God, before the two processions are distinguished, before the four relations are considered, before the three persons are conceived systematically. (Fs)

119b When we have understood intellectual emanation in God as well as we can, we will go on to distinguish two emanations. Once we have distinguished the two emanations, we will determine whether one is generation and the other not; once the processions have been determined, we will proceed to the relations; and after the relations have been investigated, we end with a treatment of the persons. (Fs)

119c We are seeking nothing else in this process than an ordered and pedagogically guided growth in understanding. We are seeking that special precious quality that Aristotle discerned in the 'epistemonic' or explanatory syllogism, the syllogism that 'makes us know.' While all syllogisms lead equally to conclusions that are certain, the explanatory syllogism brings forth a conclusion that is not only certain but also understood. And so, since theology is analogously a science, it uses syllogisms that are scientific in an analogous way, in order to add some imperfect understanding to a certitude that has been acquired elsewhere.1 (Fs)

121a While the process that is proper and essential to the systematic way can hardly be expressed in human words except through deductions that are also certain, still it aims, not at this certitude, but at the increase of understanding that starts by understanding one item and then gradually extends to understanding others. Thus, given some understanding of intellectual emanation in God, we move to an understanding of the emanation of the Word and the emanation of Love. Having understood what we can of these, we go on to an understanding of generation in God. And so with all other points, one step at a time, we develop our ideas until we come to as much understanding as is available on these matters. Nothing more can be intended directly in this volume, nor should it be. The argument of the volume is already complex enough, the method of dealing with issues of positive research is quite different from what we are doing here, and there is no lack of outstanding works that set forth the positive foundation in a quite complete manner. (Fs)

[...]

121c Today it appears that positive studies are being pursued not only most diligently but also with their own proper and exact methods. Since this is a fact, unless the speculative part of theology is pursued with equal diligence and with a method that is equally proper and specialized, there will arise from this inequality only difficulties, complaints, misunderstandings, crises, even aberrations. The encyclical Humani generis singled out as a regrettable source of errors the opinion that Scholasticism is out of date. If we want to demolish that opinion, I think it will help to have a brief work that illustrates the nature of theological understanding by aiming uniquely at the speculative goal, leaving out everything that might distract from that goal.1 (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Einleitung; die göttlichen Hervorgänge (processio)

Kurzinhalt: ... first we present the problem, and then we list the principal groups of opinions, according to their roots; third, we explain what intellectual emanation is; fourth, we establish three assertions; and fifth, we solve four related questions ...

Textausschnitt: 125a Since the systematic way begins from what can be understood without presupposing the understanding of anything else, we must begin with the processions. For the processions are the basis for the relations, and in accordance with our manner of conceiving, the divine persons are conceived subsequently to conceiving the relations. (Fs)

125b Regarding the processions, first we present the problem, and then we list the principal groups of opinions, according to their roots; third, we explain what intellectual emanation is; fourth, we establish three assertions; and fifth, we solve four related questions. (Fs)

125c The first of the three assertions has to do with the psychological analogy taken generically: the divine processions are to be conceived by their likeness to intellectual emanation. The second assertion has to do with the differentiation of the generic notion: two and only two divine processions can be conceived by means of their likeness to intellectual emanation, namely, the procession of the word from the speaker, and the procession of love from the speaker and the word. The third assertion has to do with an application of the specific notion: the divine emanation of the word is properly called generation but the emanation of love is not. (Fs)

125d The related questions regard the distinction between understanding and the word, the demonstrability of the divine Word, the procession of the divine Word from the understanding of creatures, and the relationship between love and what is called 'the beloved in the lover.' (Fs)

125d In all of this, as perhaps was already stated sufficiently in the first chapter, we are aiming exclusively at the proper goal of the way of synthesis. For this reason, we will not repeat here the positive foundations that are customarily adduced from church documents, from sacred scripture, and from the Fathers and the theologians. First of all, these elements are readily available in many excellent works; second, they are effectively set forth only in their own proper order, and that order is completely contrary to the order of the way of synthesis; third, our argument is already burdened with an overabundance of complexity; and fourth, we judge it most useful to exhibit separately the proper intrinsic nature of the way of synthesis; for, although the way of synthesis is only a part of theology, it is the part that is not too highly esteemed these days. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Die göttlichen Hervorgänge (processio); Problem

Kurzinhalt: The fundamental trinitarian problem lies in the following facts: (1) the Son is both a se, from himself, and not a se, not from himself; (2) the Holy Spirit ...

Textausschnitt: The Problem

127a The fundamental trinitarian problem lies in the following facts: (1) the Son is both a se, from himself, and not a se, not from himself; (2) the Holy Spirit is both a se, from himself, and not a se, not from himself; (3) the way in which the Son is not a se, not from himself, is different from the way in which the Holy Spirit is not a se, not from himself. (Fs) (notabene)


127b Thus, God is a se, from himself. But the Son is God. Therefore, the Son is a se, from himself. Similarly, the Holy Spirit is God. Therefore the Holy Spirit is a se, from himself. (Fs)
127c Nevertheless, the Son is also not a se, not from himself. For he is the Son, the only-begotten, born of the Father, from the Father's substance, God from God, light from light, true God from true God (DB 54, DS 125, ND 7). (Fs)

127d Similarly, the Holy Spirit is also not a se, not from himself. For the Holy Spirit 'proceeds from the Father' (DB 86, DS 150, ND 305) and 'is eternally from the Father and the Son together, having his essence and his subsistent act of existence from the Father and the Son together, and proceeds eternally from both as from one principle and by a single spiration' (DB 691, DS 1300, ND 322). (Fs)

127e Finally, the way in which the Son is not a se, not from himself, is different from the way in which the Holy Spirit is not a se, not from himself. For the Son is the only-begotten (DB 54, DS 125, ND 7), but the Holy Spirit is not begotten but proceeding (DB 39, DS 75, ND 16). Therefore, the Son originates through generation, but the Holy Spirit originates through spiration (DB 691, DS 1300, ND 322). (Fs) (notabene)

127f Now, the same reality under the same aspect cannot be simultaneously affirmed and denied. Therefore, we must say that, in one way, the Son is a se, from himself, and in another way, not a se, not from himself. Similarly, we must say that the Holy Spirit is a se, from himself, in one way, and not a se, not from himself, in another way. Finally, it is necessary that the way in which the Son is not a se, not from himself, is different from the way in which the Holy Spirit is not a se, not from himself." (Fs)

129a The first step toward solving this problem is very easy. It is very easy to say that, as God, the Son is a se, from himself, but, as begotten, the Son is not a se, not from himself. It is also very easy to say that, as God, the Holy Spirit is a se, from himself, but, as spirated, the Holy Spirit is not a se, not from himself. Lastly, it is very easy to say that being begotten is different from being spirated. (Fs)

129b Nevertheless, if the entire solution consists in externally uttered words, then a sound is indeed made in the air but, as nothing is present in the mind, the sound itself is completely without meaning. And if one were to say that the generation of the Son and the spiration of the Holy Spirit are words without meaning, one would surely be a heretic. Therefore, we must go further in order to say what this remarkable emanation is according to which God is from God, and indeed not one God from another God, but the same God from the same God. Moreover, we must say what the difference is between the emanation in which the Son is generated and the other emanation in which the Holy Spirit is spirated. Finally, we must state why the first emanation is generation but the other is not. These are the questions discussed in this chapter on the divine processions. (Fs) (notabene)

129c However, it is not sufficient if we just understand something in the mind when we utter the words 'generation' and 'spiration.' If the something understood in the mind is not also found in reality, it is only a conceptual being. And if one were to say that the generation of the Son and the spiration of the Holy Spirit are merely conceptual beings, one would surely be a heretic. Therefore, we must go still further in order to say how within the absolutely simple God the Son in one way is a se, from himself, and in another way is not. This presents a great difficulty. For since the Son is God, and God is absolutely simple, and within absolute simplicity there is really no this and that, no 'one' and 'another,' it seems to follow that the same Son under the same aspect is both a se, from himself, and not a se, not from himself. The same contradiction seems to follow with respect to the Holy Spirit. Therefore we raise the issue of the divine relations, asking whether the divine relations are real and how many of them are real, whether they are really distinct from one another, whether they are really distinct from the divine essence or only conceptually distinct. These are the questions discussed in the third chapter. (Fs)

129d There remains a further step. Let us grant that generation and spiration exist not only in words but also in the mind, and not only in the mind but also in the very reality of God. Still, nothing is to be posited within the divine nature other than what is really there. The faithful confess three divine persons really distinct from one another; but the preceding outline of steps to be taken has ended with just three subsistent relations that are really distinct from one another. Therefore, in the fourth chapter we must determine whether, both ontologically and psychologically, the divine subsistent relations are persons in the true sense of the word. Once this question is solved, the fundamental trinitarian problem is solved, so that without contradiction and with some understanding the three really distinct persons in one and the same divine nature may be conceived and truly affirmed. (Fs)

131a All that we have viewed as one and in a single glance must now be considered more particularly. First, then, we must discuss the divine processions in order to state (1) how in general the emanation of God from God is to be conceived, (2) how two such emanations and only two are to be conceived, and (3) why the first emanation is generation properly so called, while the other is not. (Fs)

Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Göttliche Hervorgänge; Irrtümer allgemein: Mangel, Übermaß (defect, excess); psychologische Analogie: richtiges Verständnis vom Intellekt (Thomas - Scotus)

Kurzinhalt: The erroneous opinions err either through excess or through defect. The semi-rationalists err through excess; ...

Textausschnitt: Opinions

131b Some opinions about the ways in which the divine processions may be understood are erroneous, others are insufficient, still others are poorly propounded; then there is the opinion of St Thomas. (Fs)

131c The erroneous opinions err either through excess or through defect. The semi-rationalists err through excess; they affirm that the mysteries of faith are demonstrable, and they strive to demonstrate them. This opinion was explicitly condemned under an anathema by Vatican I (DB 1816, DS 3041, ND 137). On the other hand, those who say that we cannot in this life have even an imperfect understanding of the mysteries of faith err by defect. This opinion could once have been understood as piety repelling heretical errors or curbing audacious speculation; but since it openly contradicts Vatican I (DB 1796, DS 3016, ND 132), it should be completely abandoned. (Fs)

131d The insufficient opinions express some truth but in such a way as to show that their proponents have only a slight understanding of the problem. Thus, it is entirely true that the good is self-diffusive; more than that, however, is required. What kind of diffusion is this? How does the first self-diffusion differ from the second? Why is there not a third, a fourth, a six-hundredth instance of self-diffusion? Again, it is entirely true that the triune God is the perfect society of love. But this gives rise to further questions; and they are not solved. (Fs)

131e By poorly propounded opinions I mean opinions of those who employ the psychological analogy, but in a way that overlooks to some extent the proper force and efficacy of the analogy. According to this approach, which we admit is closer to the truth than the previous approaches, some likeness exists between the divine processions and the finite emanations that occur in human intelligence. But human intelligence can be conceived in two ways: first, in accordance with the reality of intelligence itself, and second, in accordance with some analogy drawn from human sensibility. In the first way, the human intellect is conceived in terms of the act of understanding itself; thus St Thomas affirms that 'the human soul understands itself by its understanding, which is its proper act, perfectly demonstrating its power and its nature.'1 In the second way, the human intellect is conceived first as proceeding from external words to universal concepts, then as proceeding from the corporeal act of seeing to some simple spiritual apprehension whereby concepts become known to us; this is the approach of Scotus and the Scotists, and of many others who believe they are following St Thomas. Now, if the human intellect is conceived in accordance with the intellect's proper reality and nature, one is able to press forward to an analogical conception of the divine processions; this is the view that argues in favor of the psychological analogy.2 But if the human intellect is conceived in accordance with some remote analogy founded in sensible data and sensations, one is overlooking the real basis for discovering the likeness between the triune God and the human intellect; and if this is overlooked one may labor strenuously and dispute extensively and yet conclude to nothing clear. (Fs) (notabene)

133a Therefore, not only should the psychological analogy be employed, it must also be understood in such a way that the likeness is not sought between the sensitive part of our nature and the triune God. And if we attend even for a few moments to our own internal and properly intellectual experiences, we make three discoveries. (Fs)

133b First, 'whenever we understand, by the mere fact that we do understand, something proceeds within us, which is the conception of the thing understood, issuing from our intellective power and proceeding from its knowledge.'1 (Fs)

135a Second, 'it is of the nature of love not to proceed except from a conception of the intellect.'2 (Fs)

135b Third, 'what proceeds internally by an intellectual process does not have to be different. Indeed, the more perfectly it proceeds, the more it is one with that from which it proceeds.'3 (Fs)

135c Once we understand these three statements, the entire fundamental trinitarian problem is solved, at least virtually. The rest of what has to be said demands not the acquisition of further understanding, but only further applications of the understanding already achieved. (Fs)