Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Lonergan, A Third Collection

Titel: Aristoteles - Natur

Index: Natur als immanentes Prinzip der Bewegung

Kurzinhalt: Now Aristotle defined a nature as an immanent principle of movement and of rest.1 In man such a principle is the human spirit as raising and answering questions.

Text: 13/11 Now Aristotle defined a nature as an immanent principle of movement and of rest.1 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)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Lawrence, The Ethics of Authenticity and the Human Good: Beyond Left and Richt in Politics

Titel: Werturteil

Index: Wert: Werturteil einer authentischen Person

Kurzinhalt: For Lonergan value "is known in judgments of value made by a virtuous or authentic person with a good conscience."

Text: For Lonergan value "is known in judgments of value made by a virtuous or authentic person with a good conscience."

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Lawrence, The Ethics of Authenticity and the Human Good: Beyond Left and Richt in Politics

Titel: Selbsttranszendenz, moralische

Index: Moralische Selbsttranszendenz

Kurzinhalt: 21a ... When a person is not motivated in a calculus of pleasure and pain but by values, he or she is free and "regularly opts, not for the merely apparent good, but for the truly good"; then "the self... is achieving moral self-transcendence ...

Text: 21a ... When a person is not motivated in a calculus of pleasure and pain but by values, he or she is free and "regularly opts, not for the merely apparent good, but for the truly good"; then "the self... is achieving moral self-transcendence[,] ... is existing authentically[,] ... is constituting himself as an originative value, and is bringing about terminal values, namely a good of order that is truly good and instances of the particular good that are truly good."1 Then, too, personal values govern cultural, social, and vital values. Because when we exist as persons, we "meet one another in a common concern for values, (and) seek to abolish the organization of human living on the basis of competing egoisms and to replace it by an organization on the basis of man's perceptiveness and intelligence, his reasonableness, and his responsible exercise of freedom." (Fs) (notabene)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Lonergan, The Ontological and Psychological Constitution of Christ

Titel: Person

Index: Definition: Person

Kurzinhalt: ... a person is a distinct being subsisting in an intellectual nature ...

Text: ... a person is a distinct being subsisting in an intellectual nature ...

Cum persona sit subsistens distinctum in natura intellectuali, primo dicendum erit ...

-----

1/1 Since a person is a distinct being subsisting in an intellectual nature, we must first speak of an intellectual nature both from the side of the object toward which this nature tends (§ 1, Being) and from the side of the subject who easily falls short of so lofty an aim (§ 2, Existenz). (9; Fs)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Coreth, Metaphysik

Titel: Geist

Index: Geist; Bei-sich-Sein: Identität von Sein und Wissen

Kurzinhalt: Geist nennen wir ein Seiendes, das Bei-sich-Sein zu vollziehen vermag, ein Seiendes, in dem sich das Bei-sich-Sein des Seins ereignet,

Text: 31/2 In dieser Identität von Sein und Wissen liegt die spezifische Auszeichnung des Geistes. Der Begriff des Geistes wird später noch zu ergänzen und zu vertiefen sein1. Vorläufig können wir schon sagen: Geist nennen wir ein Seiendes, das Bei-sich-Sein zu vollziehen vermag, ein Seiendes, in dem sich das Bei-sich-Sein des Seins ereignet, in dem also das Sein zu sich selbst kommt und wissend von sich selbst Besitz ergreift: in der Identität von Sein und Wissen. (140; Fs)

32/2 Es wird sich noch zeigen, daß - und in welchem Sinn - Sein wesentlich und ursprünglich Bei-sich-Sein, also sich wissender Geist ist. Weiter wird sich zeigen, warum im endlichen Geist das Bei-sich-Sein im jeweiligen Aktvollzug verwirklicht wird und warum der Aktvollzug immer und notwendig auf gegenständliche Inhalte angewiesen ist. Hier aber genügt es festzuhalten, daß alles Wissen - als ein Wissen um Sein im Horizont des Seins überhaupt - im wissenden Bei-sich-Sein gründet: im Vollzug der Identität von Sein und Wissen. (140; Fs)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Aristoteles, Nikomachische Ethik

Titel: Tugend, Aristoteles

Index: Tugend (Aristoteles)

Kurzinhalt: 32/2 Es ist mithin die Tugend ein Habitus des Wählens, der (1107a) die nach uns bemessene Mitte hält und durch die Vernunft bestimmt wird, und zwar so, wie ein kluger Mann ihn zu bestimmen pflegt

Text: Sechstes Kapitel

Dem Begriff nach ist die Tugend eine Mitte, dem Range nach ein Äußerstes. Grenzen der Anwendung der Kategorie der Mitte bei der sittlichen Beschreibung von Handlungen und Affekten.

32/2 Es ist mithin die Tugend ein Habitus des Wählens, der (1107a) die nach uns bemessene Mitte hält und durch die Vernunft bestimmt wird, und zwar so, wie ein kluger Mann ihn zu bestimmen pflegt. Die Mitte ist die zwischen einem doppelten fehlerhaften Habitus, dem Fehler des Übermaßes und (5) des Mangels; sie ist aber auch noch insofern Mitte, als sie in den Affekten und Handlungen das Mittlere findet und wählt, während die Fehler in dieser Beziehung darin bestehen, daß das rechte Maß nicht erreicht oder überschritten wird. (36; Fs)
Deshalb ist die Tugend nach ihrer Substanz und ihrem Wesensbegriff Mitte; insofern sie aber das Beste ist und alles gut ausführt, ist sie Äußerstes und Ende. (36; Fs)

33/2 Doch kennt nicht jede Handlung oder jeder Affekt eine (10) Mitte, da sowohl manche Affekte, wie Schadenfreude, Schamlosigkeit und Neid, als auch manche Handlungen, wie Ehebruch, Diebstahl und Mord, schon ihrem Namen nach die Schlechtigkeit in sich schließen. Denn alles dieses und ähnliches wird darum getadelt, weil es selbst schlecht ist, nicht sein Zuviel und Zuwenig. Demnach gibt es hier nie ein (15) richtiges Verhalten, sondern immer lediglich ein verkehrtes, und das Gute und Schlechte liegt bei solchen Dingen nicht in den Umständen, wie wenn es sich z. B. beim Ehebruch darum fragte, mit wem und wann und wie er erlaubt sei, sondern es ist überhaupt gefehlt, irgend etwas derartiges zu tun. (36; Fs)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Rhonheimer, Natur als Grundlage der Moral

Titel: Tugend, Thomas

Index: Tugend (Thomas)

Kurzinhalt: "Virtus est habitus electivus existens in medietate quoad nos determinata ratione ut utique sapiens determinabit"

Text: 266b Wenn dann die sittliche Tugend spezifischer von der intellektuellen abgegrenzt wird, dann darf zwar der Bezug auf die grundlegend-allgemeine Bestimmung des "genus" als "habitus operativus bonus" nicht verloren gehen. Die Bestimmung der Tugend muß aber ergänzt werden hinsichtlich des Spezifikums der sittlichen Tugend als jenes operativen Habitus, der das menschliche Handeln oder den actus humanus vervollkommnet. Thomas gelangt dadurch, die Formulierung von Aristoteles aus der Nikomachischen Ethik übernehmend, zur vollständen, das "ethische Proprium" berücksichtigenden Definition der sittlichen Tugend: "Virtus est habitus electivus existens in medietate quoad nos determinata ratione ut utique sapiens determinabit" ("Die [sittliche] Tugend ist ein elektiver Habitus, der in der von der Vernunft bestimmten Mitte in bezug auf uns besteht, so wie der Kluge sie zu bestimmen pflegt").1 Von I-II, q.58 an, wo die Behandlung der sittlichen Tugend beginnt, zeigt Thomas, daß das "recte operari" ein "recte eligere" bedeutet; das Verständnis der sittlichen Tugend als habitus electivus (habitus des richtigen "Wählens" und damit des richtigen Handelns) wird dabei bestimmend. (Fs)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Voegelin,

Titel: Säkularisierung

Index: Definition: Säkularisierung (säkularisierte Geschichte); Marquise du Châtelet, Bossuet, Voltaire;

Kurzinhalt: Als Säkularisierung beabsichtigen wir jene Haltung zu bezeichnen, mit der die Geschichte, einschließlich der christlich religiösen Phänomene, als eine innerweltliche Kette von menschlichen Ereignissen aufgefasst wird, während ...

Text: b. Säkularisierte Geschichte

12a Durch den Appell an ein profanes Prinzip der Universalität forderten die Notizen der Marquise du Châtelet die christliche Universalität offen heraus. Die Bemerkung über die relative Bedeutung Israels brachte Geschichte und Theologie in einen Gegensatz. "Geschichte" ist hier ein vom Plan der Vorsehung unabhängiger Bereich; ihr Sinn und ihre Ordnung - sollte es sie geben - können nicht vom Drama des Falls und der Erlösung abgeleitet werden. Das Volk Israels mag zwar im Heilsdrama eine einzigartige Bedeutung gehabt haben, es hat aber wenig Bedeutung auf einem Gebiet, dessen Struktur durch den Aufstieg und Fall der politischen Mächte bestimmt wird. Dieser Aspekt der Bemerkung wäre für sich noch nicht revolutionär gewesen. Bossuet hätte der Marquise in diesem Punkt gar zugestimmt und darauf bestanden, dass er genau deswegen Israel nicht in Teil III über die Geschichte der Reiche, sondern in der Suite de la religion abgehandelt habe. Die Bemerkung nahm erst dort revolutionäre Züge an, wo sie implizierte, dass die Heilsgeschichte, die "Theologie", unwichtig sei und die Profangeschichte ein Monopol besitze, die Bedeutung von Völkern und Ereignissen zu bestimmen. Das Zentrum der Universalität war von der heiligen auf die weltliche Ebene verlagert worden, und diese Verlagerung gab der Sache jene Wendung, die implizierte, dass die Geschichtskonstruktion in Zukunft nicht dem religiösen Drama unterzuordnen sei, sondern das Christentum als ein Ereignis in der Geschichte zu betrachten sein würde. Durch diese Verlagerung des Interpretationszentrums verschwand der Dualismus zwischen Heils- und Profangeschichte. Profangeschichte ist nur so lange profan als die Heilsgeschichte als absoluter Bezugsrahmen akzeptiert wird. Gibt man diese Position auf, so fließen die beiden Geschichten auf der Ebene einer säkularisierten Geschichte ineinander. Als Säkularisierung beabsichtigen wir jene Haltung zu bezeichnen, mit der die Geschichte, einschließlich der christlich religiösen Phänomene, als eine innerweltliche Kette von menschlichen Ereignissen aufgefasst wird, während gleichzeitig der christliche Glaube an eine allgemeingültige Ordnung der menschlichen Geschichte beibehalten wird. (Fs) (notabene)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Rhonheimer, Die Perspektive der Moral

Titel: Glück

Index: Boethius: Glück

Kurzinhalt: klassische Formel des Boethius "beatitudo est status omnium bonorum congregatione perfectus ", "ein Zustand der durch die Vereinigung aller Güter vollkommen ist"

Text: 76c Man ist vielleicht geneigt zu meinen, dies könne wohl nur das Ideal eines Philosophen (oder Theologen) sein. "Erkennen des Wesens Gottes", das klingt nun allerdings eher trocken. Wir können uns ja nichts darunter vorstellen, als was wir sonst als "Erkennen von etwas" erfahren haben. "Schau Gottes" ist aber etwas wesentlich anderes, so wesentlich anderes, wie eben das wesenhaft Unendliche sich vom Endlichen unterscheidet. Aber Erkennen oder Schauen, deren höchste und umfassendste Form die intellektive Schau ist, heißt so viel wie im Besitz dessen sein, wonach es menschlichem Streben seinem tiefsten Wesen gemäß verlangt. Schau Gottes, das kann nur bedeuten, das Leben Gottes mitzuleben, alle Vollkommenheit, alle Wahrheit, alle Schönheit, Harmonie und Pracht in sich aufzunehmen, daraus zu leben und sie zu genießen; es heißt, in einem "Augenblick, der verbleibt" und zugleich intensivstes Tätigsein ist, alle nur auch irgend erdenklichen authentisch menschlichen Möglichkeiten und Bedürfnisse gesättigt und erfüllt zu haben1. "Erkennen Gottes", das ist mehr als nur das uns bekannte "Wissen um etwas". Was es genau ist, das wissen wir nicht. Selbst ein Paulus kann hier nur sagen er verkünde, "was kein Auge gesehen und kein Ohr gehört hat, was keinem Menschen in den Sinn gekommen ist: das Große, das Gott denen bereitet hat, die ihn lieben" (1 Kor. 2,9). Thomas zitiert die klassische Formel des Boethius "beatitudo est status omnium bonorum congregatione perfectus ", "ein Zustand der durch die Vereinigung aller Güter vollkommen ist"2. (Fs)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Lonergan, Bernard J.F., The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: Emanation, intellektuelle

Index: Intellektuelle Emanation; Wortklärung: Akt, real, natürlich, bewusst

Kurzinhalt: Intellectual emanation, then, is the conscious origin of a real, natural, and conscious act from a real, natural, and conscious act, both within intellectual consciousness and also by virtue of ...

Text: 141a
Intellectual emanation, then, is the conscious origin of a real, natural, and conscious act from a real, natural, and conscious act, both within intellectual consciousness and also by virtue of intellectual consciousness itself as determined by the prior act. (Fs)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Melchin, Lonergan, History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: Intelligibilität

Index: Definition: Intelligibilität

Kurzinhalt: ... 'intelligibility' is defined as that which satisfies the appetite of inquiring intelligence.

Text: 14/3 ...
So intelligent inquiry is conceived1 by Lonergan as an appetite for 'intelligibility' and an act of understanding is defined as that act whereby the appetite for 'intelligibility' is satisfied.2 Implicitly, then, 'intelligibility' is defined as that which satisfies the appetite of inquiring intelligence.

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Lonergan, Bernard J.F., The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: Zeugung, generatio

Index: Ursprung von etwas Lebendigem ...

Kurzinhalt: Taken strictly, generation is usually defined as the origin of something alive from a conjoined living principle, with a resulting likeness in nature.

Text: 191c For Aristotle, 'generation' in the wide sense denotes the origin of a material substance; this is the way the term is used in various places throughout his work On Generation and Corruption. (Fs)

Taken strictly, generation is usually defined as the origin of something alive from a conjoined living principle, with a resulting likeness in nature.

191d Accordingly, the following are not instances of generation in the strict sense of the term:
(1) the origin of something that is not alive (for example, the origin of water from hydrogen and oxygen);
(2) the origin of something alive from a principle that is not living (for example, so-called spontaneous generation);
(3) the origin of something alive from a living principle, but not from a conjoined living principle (for example, the creation of living beings);
(4) the origin of something alive from a conjoined but dissimilar living principle (for example, the origin of hair from the scalp);
(5) the origin of something alive from a conjoined and similar living principle, but a living principle whose similarity to the originated is not in a likeness in nature (for example, the origin of Eve from Adam through a rib, for it does not pertain to the nature of a rib taken from a man that a woman comes to be from it). (Fs)

191a Thus, we can conclude that there is generation in the strict sense of the term if and only if each and every element included in the definition is applicable. And in the present discussion we must pay special attention to the fifth element of the definition, namely, 'with a resulting likeness in nature'; for although it is necessary that what emanates be similar in nature to that from which it emanates, this is not sufficient. To have the formality of generation in the strict sense, this likeness in nature must result by virtue of the emanation itself. (Fs)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Lonergan, Bernard J.F., The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: Natur, Aristoteles

Index: Natur als Prinzip der Ruhe und Bewegung ...

Kurzinhalt: ... nature is defined as the principle of motion and rest in that in which it exists first and per se and not as an accident

Text: 193c Thus, according to Aristotle, nature is defined as the principle of motion and rest in that in which it exists first and per se and not as an accident.1 But God is absolutely simple; otherwise God would not be the first principle of all things. So there cannot be in God a real distinction between a principle of motion or of operation and the motion or operation itself. In this sense, therefore, nature cannot be posited in God. (Fs)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Rahner, Geist in Welt

Titel: Abstraktion

Index: Abstraktion, Allgemeinbegriff, reditio

Kurzinhalt: Abstractio als Gewinnnung des Allgemeinbegriffs ist demnach der Vollzug dieser reditio (reflexio) sbjecti in seipsum.

Text: 83a Jede gegenständliche Erkenntnis ist immer und in jedem Fall die Hinbeziehung eines Allgemeinen auf ein Dieses. Dieses Diesda erscheint so als der dem Wissen gegenüberstehende Beziehungspunkt, auf den der Erkennende sein von ihm (allgemeines) Gewußtes hinbezieht. Damit steht aber gewissermaßen das Subjekt mit seinem Wissensinhalt (dem Allgemeinbegriff) schon in Abstand von jenem Diesem, auf das es den Wissensinhalt hinbezieht. Dieser Wissensinhalt ist gerade deshalb allgemein, weil er auf der Seite des wissenden Subjektes in dessen Gegenstellung zu jenem Diesem steht und darum auf beliebige Diese bezogen werden kann. Oder umgekehrt gesagt: gerade dadurch, daß das Subjekt den Inhalt des Allgemeinbegriffs aus der sinnlichen Ungeschiedenheit von Subjekt und Objekt herauslöste (was durchaus keine Verringerung seines Inhaltes zu bedeuten braucht, da bei dieser Herauslösung ja nur ein völlig leeres Dieses zurückzubleiben braucht), gewinnt das Subjekt sich selbst erstmals in seinem Gegenstehen gegen diese Diesda, es kehrt in sich selbst zurück und hat damit auch erst einen Gegen-stand, auf den es das bei seiner Rückkehr zu sich mitgenommene und so allgemein gewordene Gewußte hinzubeziehen vermag. Die Rückkehr des wissenden Subjekts in sich und die Abhebung eines Allgemeinen von seinen "Subjekten" ist ein und derselbe Vorgang. So ist der Allgemeinbegriff tatsächlich die erste Anzeige für die eine gegenständliche Erfahrung erst ermöglichende oppositio zwischen Subjekt und Objekt. Abstractio als Gewinnnung des Allgemeinbegriffs ist demnach der Vollzug dieser reditio (reflexio) sbjecti in seipsum. (Fs) (notabene)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Rahner, Geist in Welt

Titel: Concretio - Urteil

Index: Concretio; Subjekt und Prädikat sind so je schon für sich ein "concretum"

Kurzinhalt: Das Urteil identifiziert dann das Subjekt (das Diesda) des Satzsubjektes mit dem des Prädikats ... Diese Synthesis heißt in thomistischer Terminologie "concretio",

Text: 84a Gewöhnlich ist das Subjekt eines Satzes nicht ein an sich gänzlich bestimmungsloses Diesda. Es ist für sich schon die Synthesis eines leeren Diesda mit einem allgemeinen Gewußten. Das gleiche gilt, und zwar notwendig, für das Prädikat des Satzes. Der Allgemeinbegriff eines Prädikats ist schon vor seiner Zuteilung an das Subjekt zu konkretisieren, als auf ein mögliches Subjekt bezogen zu denken. Das Urteil identifiziert dann das Subjekt (das Diesda) des Satzsubjektes mit dem des Prädikats. Subjekt und Prädikat sind so je schon für sich ein "concretum" (erster oder zweiter Ordnung), d. h. ein Allgemeines in seinem Insein in einem (beliebigen) Diesda. Diese Synthesis heißt in thomistischer Terminologie "concretio", worauf wir noch zu sprechen kommen. Wir dürfen concretio mit konkretisierender Synthesis übersetzen. Wir können jetzt das vom Allgemeinbegriff Gesagte so formulieren: Jeder Allgemeinbegriff wird erfaßt mit und in einer notwendig mitgedachten concretio, und jedes Einzelne wird gegenständlich gedacht in einer concretio, die schon ein Allgemeines vom Diesda differenziert in sich trägt. (Fs)

84b Gewöhnlich faßt man nun das Urteil auf als die Synthesis der beiden Begriffe von Subjekt und Prädikat. Man kann diese Auffassung dann gelten lassen, wenn man sich der inneren Struktur des Begriffes selbst bewußt ist, der jeweils selbst eine konkretisierende Synthesis ist. Wie ist unter dieser Voraussetzung die Synthesis der zwei Begriffe eines Satzes genauer zu begreifen? Offenbar so, daß das in beiden Begriffen enthaltene Allgemeine mit demselben suppositum synthetisiert wird. Bei der Urteilssynthesis handelt es sich daher gar nicht um die Synthesis von zwei Washeiten von gleicher Stellung untereinander, sondern um die Hinbeziehung von zwei Washeiten auf das gleiche Diesda. Dabei hat das Subjekt in seiner konkretisierenden Synthesis, die vorausgesetzt, nicht vollzogen wird, nur die Funktion der festlegenden Anzeige jenes bestimmten Suppositum, auf das das Allgemeine des Prädikats bezogen werden soll. Während das Prädikat als solches in seiner eben noch betrachteten konkretisierenden Synthesis die mögliche Synthesis eines Allgemeinen mit einem beliebigen Diesda war, bestimmt nun das Subjekt eindeutig, welches Diesda gemeint ist. Mit diesem bestimmten Diesda wird im Urteil nun die Synthesis des im Prädikat enthaltenen Allgemeinen vollzogen. Die konkretisierende Synthesis als mögliche (weil Synthesis mit einem beliebigen Diesda) wandelt sich in eine tatsächlich vollzogene, indem der konkretisierenden Synthesis, die mit dem Prädikatsbegriff gegeben ist, nicht mehr ein beliebiges Diesda, sondern das durch das Satzsubjekt schon bestimmte Suppositum vorgehalten wird, auf das sie sich zu beziehen hat und im Urteil auch faktisch bezieht. Thomas nennt diese Synthesis "complexio", "affirmatio", was wir mit affirmativer Synthesis wiedergeben wollen. (Fs) (notabene)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Lonergan, Analytic Concept of History

Titel: Decline

Index: Abweichung vom Naturrecht

Kurzinhalt: We defined the ideal line as the constant and complete observance of the natural law. Decline is the deviation from the ideal line that is consequent to nonobservance.

Text: 20b We defined the ideal line as the constant and complete observance of the natural law. Decline is the deviation from the ideal line that is consequent to nonobservance. (Fs)

It is to be noted that we deal not with a new line but with a deviation from the line already established. Though in this outline we merely indicate the abstract form of decline, it is not to be inferred that we have left over a problem of relating decline with the ideal line but only of making the theory of decline more full and detailed. (Fs)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Lonergan, Analytic Concept of History

Titel: Sünde, Decline

Index: Sünde als Prinzip des Decline

Kurzinhalt: The goal of decline is contained in its principle, sin. Sin is the repudiation of reason in a particular act. Decline is the social rule of sin, i

Text: 20c The goal of decline is contained in its principle, sin. Sin is the repudiation of reason in a particular act. Decline is the social rule of sin, its gradual domination of the dialectic and the minds of men dependent upon this dialectic because of their solidarity. Thus the goal of decline is the unchaining of the animal with intellect, so far from being master, that it is the slave of instinct and passion. (Fs)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Pinckaers, Christus und das Glück

Titel: Entscheidungsfreiheit

Index: Petrus Lombardus: Entscheidungsfreiheit

Kurzinhalt: Die Entscheidungsfreiheit (liberum arbitrium) ist die Fähigkeit des Verstandes und des Willens, vermöge dessen man das Gute wählt unter Beistand der Gnade, oder das Böse, wenn die Gnade fehlt (Sentenzen, Buch II, 24. Distinktion, 3. Kapitel)

Text: 60b Der gemeinsame Bezugspunkt der Diskussionen ist die klassische Definition der Entscheidungsfreiheit bei Petrus Lombardus in den Sentenzen aus der Mitte des 12. Jahrhunderts:

Die Entscheidungsfreiheit (liberum arbitrium) ist die Fähigkeit des Verstandes und des Willens, vermöge dessen man das Gute wählt unter Beistand der Gnade, oder das Böse, wenn die Gnade fehlt (Sentenzen, Buch II, 24. Distinktion, 3. Kapitel). (Fs)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Rahner, Geist in Welt

Titel: Definition, incomplexum

Index: defintion: incomplexum

Kurzinhalt: Insofern auch die definitio als bloße Synthesis von begrifflichen Merkmalen als solchen noch keine bejahende Hinbeziehung auf eine Sache an sich, keine "comparatio {88} vel applicatio ad rem" enthält ...

Text: 87a Die complexio bei Thomas. Thomas unterscheidet im Gewußten incomplexa (indivisibilia) und complexa. Incomplexa sind z. B. Haus, Heer, Mensch, der Inhalt einer Definition usw.1. Es wird schon daraus allein klar, daß die concreta, von denen eben die Rede war, zu den incomplexa gehören, daß also die konkretisierende und die affirmative Synthesis nicht dasselbe sind. Das complexum ist ein enuntiabile2, ein Urteil. Der Mensch erkennt immer "secundum quandam complexionem"3. Diese complexio geschieht "per affirmationem vel negationem", in einer Urteilsbejahung oder Urteilsverneinung. Warum ein Urteil und seine Bejahung als Synthesis (complexio) aufgefaßt werden muß, und zwar als solche, die nicht mit der concretio zusammenfällt, wird bei Thomas auch deutlich: das complexum entsteht durch eine "comparatio incomplexi (also des schon konkretisierten Allgemeinen!) ad rem", durch eine Synthesis des konkretisierten Allgemeinen mit dem bestimmten Ansich des Objekts4. Insofern auch die definitio als bloße Synthesis von begrifflichen Merkmalen als solchen noch keine bejahende Hinbeziehung auf eine Sache an sich, keine "comparatio {88} vel applicatio ad rem" enthält, ist sie an sich noch ein incomplexum, es sei denn, sie enthalte implizit das Urteil der sachlichen Vereinbarkeit ihrer Merkmale oder die urteilende Hinordnung der Definition auf eine Sache an sich als auf eine von der Definition wirklich getroffene5. So versteht es sich von selbst, daß Wahrheit im eigentlichen Sinne, d. h. als erkannte Übereinstimmung mit dem Ansich der Sache, nur in den complexa, nicht aber in den incomplexa gegeben sein kann6. (Fs)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Pinckaers, Christus und das Glück

Titel: Glück, Augustinus

Index: Glück - Wahrheit - das selige Lebe

Kurzinhalt: »Also besteht das selige Leben in der Freude über die Wahrheit (gaudium de veritate)«

Text: 69b Im Anschluss daran legt er seine berühmte Definition des Glücks vor, die klassische Bedeutung erhalten hat: »Also besteht das selige Leben in der Freude über die Wahrheit (gaudium de veritate)« (X, 23, 33, S. 276). Der tiefere Sinn dieser Definition geht aus einer Passage hervor, in der Augustinus Gott direkt anspricht:

Gibt es doch eine Freude, die den Gottlosen nicht gegeben wird, sondern nur denen, die dich selbstlos verehren, deren Freude du selbst bist. Und das ist das selige Leben - sich freuen zu dir hin, über dich, deinetwegen. Dies ist es und kein anderes (X, 22, 32, S. 276). (Fs)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Lonergan, Die Einsicht

Titel: Bewusstsein, Gewahrwerden

Index: Bewusstsein: Innesein (Gewahrwerden)

Kurzinhalt: Unter Bewußtsein wird ein Innesein (Gewahrwerden) verstanden, das den Erkenntnisakten immanent ist. Diese Akte aber sind von verschiedenen Arten, und so unterscheidet sich auch

Text: 376a Unter Bewußtsein wird ein Innesein (Gewahrwerden) verstanden, das den Erkenntnisakten immanent ist. Diese Akte aber sind von verschiedenen Arten, und so unterscheidet sich auch das Innewerden in seiner Art je nach den Akten. Es gibt ein empirisches Bewußtsein, das für das Empfinden, Wahrnehmen, Vorstellen charakteristisch ist.

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Lonergan, Die Einsicht

Titel: Sein

Index: Sein: Zielobjekt des reinen Wissenstrebens.

Kurzinhalt: 405b Sein ist das Zielobjekt des reinen Wissenstrebens. 372b Being, then, is the objective of the pure desire to know.

Text: 1. Eine Definition [348-50]

405b Sein ist das Zielobjekt des reinen Wissenstrebens.

Mit dem Wissenstreben meinen wir die dynamische Ausrichtung, die sich in Fragen nach Einsicht und nach Reflexion manifestiert. Es ist nicht die sprachliche Äußerung von Fragen. Es ist nicht die begriffliche Formulierung von Fragen. Es ist nicht eine Einsicht oder ein Gedanke. Es ist nicht ein reflektierendes Erfassen oder Urteilen. Es ist der vorausgehende und umfassende Trieb, der den Erkenntnisprozeß von der Sinneserfahrung und der Vorstellung in der Einbildungskraft zum Verstehen führt, vom Verstehen zum Urteil, vom Urteil zum vollständigen Kontext korrekter Urteile, den wir Erkenntnis nennen. Das Wissensstreben ist deshalb einfach der untersuchende und kritische Geist des Menschen. Indem es ihn dazu bewegt, verstehen zu suchen, hält es ihn davon ab, sich mit dem bloßen Fluß der äußeren und inneren Erfahrung zufriedenzugeben. Indem es ein adäquates Verstehen verlangt, bindet es den Menschen in den sich selbst korrigierenden Lernprozeß ein, in welchem weitere Fragen zu komplementären Einsichten führen. Indem es den Menschen dazu bringt zu reflektieren, das Unbedingte zu suchen, uneingeschränkte Zustimmung allein dem Unbedingten zu geben, hält es ihn davon ab, sich mit Hörensagen und Legenden, mit unverifizierten Hypothesen und ungeprüften Theorien zufriedenzugeben. Indem es schließlich noch weitere Fragen nach Einsicht und Reflexion aufwirft, schließt es selbstgefällige Trägheit aus; denn wenn die Fragen ohne Antwort bleiben, kann der Mensch nicht selbstzufrieden sein; und wenn Antworten gesucht werden, ist der Mensch nicht träge. (Fs)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Lonergan, Bernard J.F., The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: Zeugung

Index: Definition: Zeugung (Aristoteles) im engen und weiten Sinn

Kurzinhalt: For Aristotle, 'generation' in the wide sense denotes the origin of a material substance; this is the way the term is used in various places throughout his work On Generation and Corruption.

Text: The Formality of Generation

191c For Aristotle, 'generation' in the wide sense denotes the origin of a material substance; this is the way the term is used in various places throughout his work On Generation and Corruption. (Fs)

Taken strictly, generation is usually defined as the origin of something alive from a conjoined living principle, with a resulting likeness in nature.

191d Accordingly, the following are not instances of generation in the strict sense of the term:
(1) the origin of something that is not alive (for example, the origin of water from hydrogen and oxygen);
(2) the origin of something alive from a principle that is not living (for example, so-called spontaneous generation);
(3) the origin of something alive from a living principle, but not from a conjoined living principle (for example, the creation of living beings);
(4) the origin of something alive from a conjoined but dissimilar living principle (for example, the origin of hair from the scalp);
(5) the origin of something alive from a conjoined and similar living principle, but a living principle whose similarity to the originated is not in a likeness in nature (for example, the origin of Eve from Adam through a rib, for it does not pertain to the nature of a rib taken from a man that a woman comes to be from it). (Fs)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Doran, Trinification of the Word

Titel: C.G. Jung - Bewusstsein

Index: Bewusstsein, Ich-Komplex

Kurzinhalt: It should be pointed out that consciousness for Jung is itself a complex, whose centre is the ego. In general, consciousness for Jung is ego-consciousness, whereas the unconscious is everything that lies beyond the ego's differentiated realm.

Text: 113c The feeling-toned complex is a common phenomenon, not limited to acute or pathological states or cases. Some, especially those connected with religious experience, even lead to long-lasting emotional stability.6 This discovery led Jung very early to grant a greater significance to the inner content of an emotional experience than was accorded it by Freud.7 Furthermore, complexes tend to exhibit a tenacious inner cohesiveness and stability, a unity of structure resulting from the association of feeling and idea. "Every minute part of the complex reproduced the feeling-tone of the whole, and, in addition, each affect radiated throughout the entire mass of the associated idea."8 (Fs)

Fussnote 6:
[...] It should be pointed out that consciousness for Jung is itself a complex, whose centre is the ego. In general, consciousness for Jung is ego-consciousness, whereas the unconscious is everything that lies beyond the ego's differentiated realm. We shall later be pointing to a different and, I believe, more accurate and far-reaching notion of both consciousness and the unconscious. For the moment, though, we are concerned only with Jung.

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Byrne, Patrick, Beitrag zur Konferenz: World Views: Environment, Culture, Religion 7: 1-2 (March 2003)

Titel: Scheme of recurrance

Index: Definition (Lonergan): scheme of recurrence (Ü. G. Sala: Rekursive Schemen)

Kurzinhalt: By "scheme of recurrence" Lonergan means a series of events (or "operations") that are intelligibly linked together by natural laws of physics, chemistry, biology, etc. Schemes of recurrence can be "represented by the series of conditionals, If ...

Text: 1b By "scheme of recurrence" Lonergan means a series of events (or "operations") that are intelligibly linked together by natural laws of physics, chemistry, biology, etc. Schemes of recurrence can be "represented by the series of conditionals, If A occurs, B occurs; if B occurs, C occurs; if C occurs, ... A will recur" (1992, 141), where the intelligible connection between the occurrence of A and B, between B and C, etc. is determined by some law of physics, chemistry, biology, etc. Simple examples of schemes of recurrence include the hydrogen-helium fusion cycles in the interiors of stars, the Krebs cycles in cells that continually regenerate energetic ATP from depleted ADP, and the mutual regeneration of atmospheric CO2 and O2 by animals and plants. Lonergan goes on to note that schemes of recurrence are usually far more complex, involving intricate sub-loops and alternative pathways. (Fs)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Melchin, History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: Emergenz (emergence)

Index: Emergenz - normative Dynamik

Kurzinhalt: The transition or dynamic structure of the movement from non-presence to presence is what is meant here by emergence.

Text: 81/6 Most simply the normative dynamism of development is rooted in the relationship between being and non-being. A coincidental manifold exhibits an absence of system in its recurring events; an absence of intelligibility; an absence of 'form.' When the appropriate conditions are fulfilled the higher order integration of the manifold is the presence of system; the presence of intelligibility; the presence of 'form.' The difference between the two states of the manifold is precisely this presence or absence. The transition or dynamic structure of the movement from non-presence to presence is what is meant here by emergence. And what emerges is being (the term or object of a potential or actual act of intelligence). In each of his examples above, Lonergan is pointing to instances of the emergence of being from non-being. It would appear that the most basic, the most fundamental foundation for any normative or evaluative predication is conceived by Lonergan to be this dynamic relationship between being and non-being. Thus it is not coincidental that Lonergan's eighteenth chapter of Insight on 'The Possibility of Ethics' begins a presentation of 'The Notion of the Good' with the statement 'As being is intelligible and one, so also it is good.'1 For without this most basic equation (or its opposite) any notion of norm or valuation is utterly precluded from the outset. (193f; Fs) (notabene)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Ratzinger, Joseph, Glaube - Wahrheit - Toleranz

Titel: Schleiermacher, Goethe - Religion

Index: Reaktion auf Aufklärung; Religion - Gefühl (Schleiermacher, Fausts Gretchen)

Kurzinhalt: Schleiermacher war der große Theoretiker dieses neuen Religionsbegriffs: »Praxis ist Kunst, Spekulation ist Wissenschaft, Religion ist Sinn und Geschmack fürs Unendliche«

Text: 114b Versuchen wir aber zunächst einmal, zusammenzufassen und zu präzisieren, was bis jetzt zutage getreten ist. Die Aufklärung hatte das Ideal der »Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft« auf den Schild gehoben. Aber diese reine Vernunftreligion zerbröckelte schnell, vor allem aber hatte sie keine das Leben tragende Kraft: Religion, die tragende Kraft für das ganze Leben werden soll, braucht zweifellos eine gewisse Einsichtigkeit. Der Zerfall der antiken Religionen wie die Krise des Christentums in der Neuzeit zeigen dies: Wenn Religion mit elementaren Gewißheiten einer Weltansicht nicht mehr in Einklang zu bringen ist, löst sie sich auf. Aber umgekehrt braucht Religion auch eine Ermächtigung, die über das selbst Erdachte hinausreicht, denn nur so ist die unbedingte Forderung annehmbar, die sie an den Menschen erhebt. So hat man nach dem Ende der Aufklärung aus dem Bewußtsein der Unverzichtbarkeit des Religiösen heraus nach einem neuen Raum für die Religion gesucht, in dem sie unangefochten von den weitergehenden Erkenntnissen der Vernunft sozusagen auf einem nicht mehr erreichbaren, von ihr nicht bedrohten Gestirn sollte leben können. Deshalb hatte man ihr das »Gefühl« als den ihr eigenen Sektor menschlicher Existenz zugewiesen. Schleiermacher war der große Theoretiker dieses neuen Religionsbegriffs: »Praxis ist Kunst, Spekulation ist Wissenschaft, Religion ist Sinn und Geschmack fürs Unendliche«,1 definiert er. Klassisch geworden ist Fausts Antwort auf Gretchens Frage nach der Religion: »Gefühl ist alles. Name ist Schall und Rauch ...« Aber Religion, so nötig ihre Unterscheidung von der Ebene der Wissenschaft auch ist, läßt sich doch nicht sektorial einengen. Sie ist gerade dazu da, den Menschen zu seiner Ganzheit zu integrieren, Gefühl, Verstand und Wille aneinander zu binden und ineinander zu vermitteln und eine Antwort auf die Herausforderung des Ganzen, auf die Herausforderung von Leben und Sterben, von Gemeinschaft und Ich, von Gegenwart und Zukunft zu geben. Sie darf sich nicht anmaßen wollen, Probleme zu lösen, die ihre eigene Gesetzlichkeit haben, aber sie muß zu letzten Entscheidungen befähigen, in denen immer die Ganzheit des Menschen und der Welt im Spiele ist. Und gerade das ist doch unsere Not, daß wir heute die Welt sektorial aufteilen und dabei in einer bisher kaum abzusehenden Weise über sie denkend und handelnd verfügen können, daß aber die nicht abzuweisenden Fragen nach Wahrheit und Wert, nach Leben und Tod damit nur immer unbeantwortbarer werden. (Fs)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Sertillanges A. D. (Gilbert), Der heilige Thomas von Aquin

Titel: Wahrheit - Anselm, Augustin, Avicenna, Isaak

Index: Wahrheit: verschiedene Definitionen

Kurzinhalt: Hierauf beruhen die berühmten Definitionen der Scholastik; die Augustins: 'Die Wahrheit ist die vollkommene Übereinstimmung eines jeden Dings mit seinem Prinzip', die Anselms: 'Die Wahrheit ist die durch den Geist festgestellte Richtigkeit' ...

Text: 77 Hierauf beruhen die berühmten Definitionen der Scholastik; die Augustins: 'Die Wahrheit ist die vollkommene Übereinstimmung eines jeden Dings mit seinem Prinzip', die Anselms: 'Die Wahrheit ist die durch den Geist festgestellte Richtigkeit'; die Avicennas: 'Die Wahrheit eines Dinges besteht in der Eigentümlichkeit des Seins, das ihm zugeteilt ist.' Die Definition des Isaak, die Thomas allen andern vorgezogen hat: 'Die Wahrheit ist die Übereinstimmung der Dinge und des erkennenden Geistes' [adaequatio rei et intellectus], hat einen doppelten Sinn. Sie bezeichnet entweder die Wahrheit 'in uns' oder die 'transzendentale' Wahrheit, je nachdem man unter dem erkennenden Geist unsern Geist oder den schöpferischen Geist versteht. (52; Fs)

78 'Zwischen dem göttlichen und menschlichen Erkennen stehend, wird das Naturding wahr genannt, insofern es mit dem einen und dem andern übereinstimmt1.' Diese Formel hat durch ihre Kürze und Allgemeinheit den heiligen Thomas für sich eingenommen und durch ihn ihre große Bedeutung gewonnen2. (52; Fs) (notabene)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Sertillanges A. D. (Gilbert), Der heilige Thomas von Aquin

Titel: Idee - Thomas

Index: Idee - Thomas; Idee als Vorbild und Erkenntnisprinzip; Ideen Gottes - Wesen

Kurzinhalt: Wie dem auch sei, Thomas bejaht die Ideen und begründet ihre Notwendigkeit auf die folgende Weise. 'Unter Ideen versteht man die Form der Dinge, die außerhalb der Dinge selbst besteht. Nun kann eine solche Form in einem doppelten Sinn genommen werden ...

Text: 82 Wie dem auch sei, Thomas bejaht die Ideen und begründet ihre Notwendigkeit auf die folgende Weise. 'Unter Ideen versteht man die Form der Dinge, die außerhalb der Dinge selbst besteht. Nun kann eine solche Form in einem doppelten Sinn genommen werden, einmal als Vorbild und dann als Erkenntnisprinzip, das heißt, insofern man sagt, daß die Form des Erkannten in dem Erkennenden ist. In beider Hinsicht sind die Ideen notwendig. Denn bei allen Dingen, die nicht durch Zufall entstehn, muß die Form des Hervorgebrachten das Ziel der Tätigkeit des Hervorbringenden sein. (53; Fs; tblVrw)

[]

88 Zunächst sind die Ideen Gottes identisch mit seiner Wesenheit; die Wirklichkeit, die ihnen zukommt, ist einzig und allein die von Verwirklichungsmöglichkeiten [von respectus], die nur unserm unzulänglichen Begriffsvermögen als real voneinander verschieden erscheinen. In sich selbst drücken sie die Erkenntnis aus, die Gott von den Dingen hat, die er schaffen will, insoweit diese Dinge in verschiedener Beziehung, zu der einzigen Wesenheit stehn, an der sie teilhaben und die im Grund ihre gemeinsame Idee ist. (55; Fs)

89 Nur insofern die Kreaturen gegenüber diesem ersten Urbild unzulänglich sind - unzulänglich eine jede auf ihre Weise -, werden sie durch diese zerstückelte Teilnahme vielfach und begründen dadurch gegenüber der schöpferischen Wesenheit ein verschiedenes Verhältnis, dessen alles übersteigende Erkenntnis in Gott, menschlich gesprochen, ihre Idee heißt. (55; Fs)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Sertillanges A. D. (Gilbert), Der heilige Thomas von Aquin

Titel: Das Gute

Index: Das Gute - Quelle des Begehrens

Kurzinhalt: Das Gute ist das, wonach jedes Ding begehrt ...

Text: 129 Dieser Grundbegriff ist näher zu betrachten. Das Gute ist das, wonach jedes Ding begehrt, hat Aristoteles gesagt. Diese schöne Definition, die Thomas ungezählte Male wiederholt, ist für ihn die Grundlage all seiner Sätze über diesen Gegenstand1. Das Gute ist also das Begehrenswerte; wer die Quelle des Begehrens aufdeckt, der hilft, das Gute selbst zu definieren. (65;Fs)

130 Was macht ein Ding begehrenswert, wenn nicht seine Vollkom menheit? Sucht nicht jedes Ding das, was es in dieser oder jener Hinsicht vervollkommnen kann? Die erste Vollkommenheit eines je den Dinges aber ist sein Wirklichsein selbst [in tantum est per fectum unumquodque, in quantum est actu]. (65;Fs)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Flanagan, Josef, Quest for Self-Knowledge

Titel: Notion - Begriff

Index: Unterschied: Notion - Begriff

Kurzinhalt: What distinguishes a notion from a concept is that a notion is defined, not directly, but implicitly in terms of the cognitive acts through which being becomes known.

Text: 2. Metaphysics: Terms and Relations

7/6 Traditionally, the fundamental concepts of metaphysics have been potency, form, and act, but a basic assumption in employing such categories was the philosopher's operative notion or definition of being. The recurring mistake of many philosophers has been to assume that we can form a concept of being, as Parmenides, Plato, and others did, whereas we have insisted on a 'notion' of being. What distinguishes a notion from a concept is that a notion is defined, not directly, but implicitly in terms of the cognitive acts through which being becomes known. More important, these cognitive acts through which being is defined arise from, and are sustained by, the underlying desire to know, as it initiates all our wondering and questioning, and also orients that questioning to an understanding that would grasp the intelligibility potentially present in all of our experiences. (151; Fs; tblVrw)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Lonergan, Bernard J.F., The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: Motiv

Index: Motiv; Potenz - Akt

Kurzinhalt: Nothing is moved from potency to act unless it has something to move it; and this, as capable of moving something, is called a motive or motor, and as actually moving something is called a mover.

Text: 567a Since the intellect has two operations, it has likewise two objects that move it. In order that the intellect be able to speak either a simple or a compound word, it must first understand; but since it is a passive potency, in order to understand it must be moved to an act of understanding. Nothing is moved from potency to act unless it has something to move it; and this, as capable of moving something, is called a motive or motor, and as actually moving something is called a mover.1

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Bellco, Hilaire, The Great Heresies

Titel: Häresie

Index: Häresie, Definition

Kurzinhalt: Heresy is the dislocation of some complete and self-supporting scheme by the introduction of a novel denial of some essential part therein.

Text: 5c We must begin by a definition, although definition involves a mental effort and therefore repels. (Fs)

Heresy is the dislocation of some complete and self-supporting scheme by the introduction of a novel denial of some essential part therein. (Fs) (notabene)

We mean by "a complete and self-supporting scheme" any system of affirmation in physics or mathematics or philosophy or what-not, the various parts of which are coherent and sustain each other. (Fs)

5d For instance, the old scheme of physics, often called in England "Newtonian" as having been best defined by Newton, is a scheme of this kind. The various things asserted therein about the behaviour of matter, notably the law will without disarranging the rest; they are all the parts of one conception, or unity, such that if you but modify a part the whole scheme is put out of gear. (Fs)

6a Another example of a similar system is our plane geometry, inherited through the Greeks and called by those who think (or hope) they have got hold of a new geometry "Euclidean." Every proposition in our plane geometry that the internal angles of a plane triangle equal two right angles, that the angle contained in a semi-circle is a right angle, and so forth is not only sustained by every other proposition in the scheme, but in its turn supports each other individual part of the whole. (Fs)

6b Heresy means, then, the warping of a system by "Exception": by "Picking out" one part of the structure and implies that the scheme is marred by taking away one part of it, denying one part of it, and either leaving the void unfilled or filling it with some new affirmation. For instance, the nineteenth century completed a scheme of textual criticism for establishing the date of an ancient document. One of the principles in this scheme is this that any statement of the marvellous is necessarily false. "When you find in any document a marvel, youched for by the supposed author of that document, you have a right to conclude" (say the textual critics of the nineteenth century, all talking like one man) "that the document was not contemporary was not of the date which it is claimed to be." There comes along a new and original critic who says, "I don't agree. I think that marvels happen and I also think that people tell lies." A man thus butting in is a heretic in relation to that particular orthodox system. Once you grant this exception a number of secure negatives become insecure. (Fs)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Lehramt, Johannes Paul II., Enzyklika Evangelium vitae

Titel: Euthanasie

Index: Euthanasie; Vorsatz, Willen

Kurzinhalt: Unter Euthanasie im eigentlichen Sinn versteht man eine Handlung oder Unterlassung, die ihrer Natur nach und aus bewußter Absicht den Tod herbeiführt, um auf diese Weise jeden Schmerz zu beenden. »Bei Euthanasie dreht es sich also wesentlich um den ...

Text: 65. Für ein korrektes sittliches Urteil über die Euthanasie gilt es zunächst, diese klar zu definieren. Unter Euthanasie im eigentlichen Sinn versteht man eine Handlung oder Unterlassung, die ihrer Natur nach und aus bewußter Absicht den Tod herbeiführt, um auf diese Weise jeden Schmerz zu beenden. »Bei Euthanasie dreht es sich also wesentlich um den Vorsatz des Willens und um die Vorgehensweisen, die angewandt werden«.1 (Fs; tblStw: Kurzdefinitionen) (notabene)

Von ihr zu unterscheiden ist die Entscheidung, auf »therapeutischen Übereifer« zu verzichten, das heißt auf bestimmte ärztliche Eingriffe, die der tatsächlichen Situation des Kranken nicht mehr angemessen sind, weil sie in keinem Verhältnis zu den erhofften Ergebnissen stehen, oder auch, weil sie für ihn und seine Familie zu beschwerlich sind. In diesen Situationen, wenn sich der Tod drohend und unvermeidlich ankündigt, kann man aus Gewissensgründen »auf (weitere) Heilversuche verzichten, die nur eine ungewisse und schmerzvolle Verlängerung des Lebens bewirken könnten, ohne daß man jedoch die normalen Bemühungen unterläßt, die in ähnlichen Fällen dem Kranken geschuldet werden«.2 Sicherlich besteht die moralische Verpflichtung sich pflegen und behandeln zu lassen, aber diese Verpflichtung muß an den konkreten Situationen gemessen werden; das heißt, es gilt abzuschätzen, ob die zur Verfügung stehenden therapeutischen Maßnahmen objektiv in einem angemessenen Verhältnis zur Aussicht auf Besserung stehen. Der Verzicht auf außergewöhnliche oder unverhältnismäßige Heilmittel ist nicht gleichzusetzen mit Selbstmord oder Euthanasie; er ist vielmehr Ausdruck dafür, daß die menschliche Situation angesichts des Todes akzeptiert wird.3

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Lonergan, Bernard J.F., The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: Liebe

Index: Liebe: erfüllte Ruhe (complacentia) im Guten

Kurzinhalt: Love is a certain contented quiescence (complacentia) in what is good; all the other acts of the will are grounded in love and are different from love insofar as they are concerned with something that is connected with or opposed to the object of love.

Text: 675c Sixth, of all the acts that the will performs, the most fundamental is love. Love is a certain contented quiescence (complacentia) in what is good; all the other acts of the will are grounded in love and are different from love insofar as they are concerned with something that is connected with or opposed to the object of love. Thus, longing is concerned with a good that is absent, hope with a future good, joy with a present good, hatred with an evil that is opposed to good, sadness with a present evil, and so forth. See Summa theologiae, 1, q. 20, a. 1 c. (Fs) (notabene)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Biffi, Giacomo, Sehnsucht nach dem Heil

Titel: Heilig - der Heilige

Index: Heilige - Gande, Zustimmung der Freiheit

Kurzinhalt: Heilig ist das, was der Geist des Auferstandenen unter Achtung und mit der Zustimmung der geschaffenen Freiheit hervorruft.

Text: Der "Heilige"

132a
12. Der Geist Gottes kennt keine Grenzen in seiner Ausgießung über die Welt. Alle geistlichen Reichtümer, die wir aufgezählt haben, können im Herzen eines jeden Menschen vorhanden sein, wie seine äußere Befindlichkeit auch immer sei. Die tatsächliche Verwirklichung dieser Sublimierung des Geschöpfes in den einzelnen Phasen bleibt jedoch immer ein Geheimnis Gottes. Uns ist es nicht gegeben, die "Landkarte" der Heiligkeit zu kennen, die das Ergebnis des ewigen Pfingsten ist. Der Grund, daß es unseren Augen verborgen bleibt, ist nicht nur und nicht in erster Linie das Geheimnis des Heiligen Geistes, sondern beruht ganz einfach auf dem Geheimnis der freien Antwort des Menschen, die dem Auge eines anderen Menschen verborgen bleibt. Die Gegenwart des Heiligen Geistes, von der wir gesprochen haben, ist im mündigen Gläubigen von seiner Öffnung und freien Zustimmung abhängig. Besser: Der Heilige Geist handelt immer zuerst, führt aber das Erneuerungswerk fort, indem er der freien Antwort des Menschen Raum läßt. Das ist von außen nicht vorauszusehen und, genaugenommen, nachher nicht mehr festzustellen. Infolgedessen ist es uns nicht gegeben, das Ausmaß des Glaubens, der Liebe und der heiligmachenden Gnade in der Welt zu erkennen. Nun sind wir so weit, daß wir auch verstehen, was mit dem Wort "heilig" gemeint ist: Heilig ist das, was der Geist des Auferstandenen unter Achtung und mit der Zustimmung der geschaffenen Freiheit hervorruft. (Fs) (notabene)

132b So versteht man, wie Heiligkeit überall zu finden ist, wo ein Menschenherz fähig ist, zum Geist "ja" zu sagen, so verschiedenartig und ungünstig auch die äußeren Bedingungen dafür erscheinen mögen (vgl. G. Biffi, Io credo, Mailand 1980, S. 157-161). (Fs)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: McAleer, Graham James, Homicide

Titel: Totalitarismus - Kolnai

Index: Totalitarismus, Humanitarismus (humanitarianism), Konai, McAleer

Kurzinhalt: I accept Kolnai's definition of totalitarianism: hostility to centers of privilege that curtail unified power. Privileged agents include the nation state, the courts, the military, private schools and hospitals, foundations, and the like; but ...

Text: 7a In EM I explored the implications of Thomistic natural law for sexual politics. In the last chapters of that book, I argue that the issues of marriage and fertility, as crucial to social order as the rules of killing, are liable to serious misunderstanding if natural law is excluded from a formative role in national law. Indeed, my point there was to show that John Paul II's claim that most modern Western states are totalitarian is defensible. In this commentary, I seek to defend the claim anew with more attention to the rule of law and God's place at law. Yet how can this possibly be when Western people are so "nice," so humane? How could the ethical sensibility of someone like Bono relate remotely to totalitarianism? Yet I think it is so. Through a variety of issues in law, I show that pressures exist within humanitarianism that drive it on to subvert rule of law. Its appetite for justice, and attendant low tolerance for moral contingency, provokes humanitarianism to diminish protections for the innocent and guilty alike. Why is this dynamic within humanitarianism? I accept Kolnai's definition of totalitarianism: hostility to centers of privilege that curtail unified power. Privileged agents include the nation state, the courts, the military, private schools and hospitals, foundations, and the like; but there are also privileged values, like innocence, toward which deference is required. Elemental to humanitarianism is its equali-tarianism: therewith intolerance of both social privilege, which diffuses power amidst social points in a community, and moral hierarchy, which discriminates amongst acts and demands deference from agents. (Fs)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Bernard J. F. Lonergan, CWL18

Titel: Definition - Phänomenologie

Index: Phänomenologie: Definition von Lonergan

Kurzinhalt: What is phenomenology? It is an account, description, presentation of data structured by insight. That is my own definition of it: an account, description, presentation of data structured by insight. (Fs) (notabene)

Text: 1 The Nature of Phenomenology

266a It will be more helpful to start from the question of the nature of phenomenology. What is phenomenology? It is an account, description, presentation of data structured by insight. That is my own definition of it: an account, description, presentation of data structured by insight. (Fs) (notabene)

1.1 'Of Data'

266b It is 'of data,' of what is given, what is manifest, what appears, phenomena. It is not just of external data, external phenomena, but also of inner data. That is the basis of its opposition to experimental psychology as commonly understood, to all behaviorism, to all types of mechanism. It includes the internal among the data, the phenomena, what is manifest, what is given. But it is also not exclusively of internal data. The inner intentional act terminates at the outer datum, and the outer datum is just the term of the inner intentional act. The subject is nothing apart from the intended term, and the intended term is nothing apart from the intending subject. The synthesis of both is found in the intentional act. (Fs) (notabene)

266c Nothing is excluded from consideration. Phenomenology is not a matter of considering primitive data as opposed to derived, natural as opposed to cultural, sensitive as opposed to intellectual, cognitional as opposed to emotional or conative. It is concerned with everything that appears, everything that is given, everything that is manifest. (Fs)

1.2 Data Structured by Insight

267a However, it is of data structured by insight. In other words, it is selective. It does not offer an exhaustive description of all and any data whatever. There is a structure to it, a selection, and the selection is of the significant. It seeks basic, universal structures. Husserl spoke of the eidetic (from eidos, form), the structure in the data. He also spoke about Wesensschau, an intuition of essence. I bring in the word 'insight' because what he is talking about seems to me to be quite parallel to the distinction in Aristotle's Metaphysics in book vii, about chapter 10, between parts of the matter and parts of the form.1 With regard to a circle, for instance, the form is the necessary roundness of the circumference, resulting from the equality of all radii, where radii are multiplied to infinity. If all the radii are absolutely equal, you see that the curve has to be perfectly round. And if any one is not equal to any of the others, you see that this curve, because of the inequality of any one radius, involves a bump or a dent. That is something manifest, something presented, something that appears, and it is structured by the insight. Parts of the matter, on the other hand, are, for instance, the fact that the circle is white on black, that the drawing is in chalk, or that it is in almost a vertical plane, or that it is just this size and no bigger or smaller. But the parts of the form are the perimeter, the equal radii, and the center. You understand why the circle has to be round because of the inner ground of that roundness in the circle. Among the multiplicity of data, some are merely casual and are called parts of the matter, but there also are parts of the form: the center, the equal radii, and the circumference. That is a case of data structured by an insight. Husserl and phenomenology are concerned with considering all data without any exclusion, as structured by insight, as given a form, an eidos, from the insight. (Fs)

267b Now to present data structured by insight, Husserl does not proceed on the basis of the first bright idea that comes along. To find what really is the proper structure of the data takes effort and time; it calls for scrutiny, penetration, contrasts, and tests. It may be necessary to overcome spontaneous tendentiousness, systematic oversights, common over-simplifications, preconceptions arising from a scientific outlook or a philosophic position or any other source. In other words, we are not accounting for data structured by the first insight that comes along but for data structured by an ultimate insight that hits things off and meets the issues. (Fs)

1.3 Not Insight as Such

268a On the other hand, phenomenology is not concerned with insight as such. Insight as such is something extremely elusive. If the phenomenologist had hold of the insight itself, the act of intelligence by which you grasp the necessity of roundness when the radii are equal and the impossibility of roundness when they are unequal, he would immediately be led to unity, to a unification of insights into a science, to the movement of the sciences from lower to higher viewpoints, to the integration of the sciences, and to the integration of science and common sense in philosophy. A study of insight leads immediately to a synthetic position, as is illustrated in the book called Insight. And there is not that kind of tendency to unity in phenomenology.1 Husserl spent his life perpetually discovering new fields of possible investigations. He would investigate something and define the issue more and more closely. He would set aside other fields, and the fields of possible investigation in which data might be structured by insight kept multiplying. He kept filling in more and more pages of notes in shorthand.2 Again, there is no tendency to unity among his successors either; they do brilliant work in particular limited fields, but phenomenology does not head towards a synthesis, towards a unification. (Fs)

1.4 Data, Not Concepts

268b Finally, it is the data as structured by insight that are the objects of phenomenology, not the subsequent conceptualization or definition or theoretic statement of the data in their essential features. What you have to attend to in the circle, the data as structured by an insight, consists in these radii or other particular radii that you imagine, and similarly this circumference or another particular circumference that you imagine: not the concept of radius, of which there is only one, or the concept of center, of which there is only one. The basis on which you grasp this necessity is only in the imagined multiplicity. You need an infinity of radii to be able to get the insight: only if every possible radius is absolutely equal to every other one do you get this necessary roundness. (Fs)

269a There is a sharp distinction, then, in phenomenology between what appears as structured by proper insights and, on the other hand, the thematic treatment, the phenomenological exposition, of the data as structured by the insight. What is manifest is one thing, and on the other hand what the phenomenologist says is quite something else. Just as when you grasp this necessary roundness in the data you define the circle as the locus of coplanar points equidistant from the center, so the phenomenologist, considering what is manifest, what is given, what appears, as intelligently structured, distinguishes that sharply from his thematic treatment of the data. He is not concerned with his own statement about it; that is just his report. His report is one thing, and what he reports on is another. (Fs)

269b Consequently, there is in phenomenology a terrific emphasis on what is called the pre-predicative, that is, what is known before you conceptualize, before you formulate any theory, before you make any judgment or any statement. It is the pre-predicative manifest, what is manifest pre-predicatively, pre-theoretically, pre-judicially, what is there, what is given, that the phenomenologist is concerned with. He distinguishes that sharply from what he calls the thematic treatment, exposition, presentation, which is his writing, his report, his observations. The etymology of the word 'phenomenology' speaks of phenomena and legein: to read off the phenomena. The phenomena are what are manifest, and reading them off, legein, is what the phenomenologist does. I make my own statement in terms of insight because I think it makes the matter very clear, and I have provided a broader context for it. But they do not speak of insight, although they are sufficiently aware of the fact. (Fs)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Schindler, David C., Jun, The Catholicity of Reason

Titel: Wirkursache: Thomas - moderne Auffassung

Index: Thomas: Wirkursache (Ursache von Sein; Gemeinsamkeit zw. Ursache u. Wirkung); moderne Auffassung: U. als Kraft, die eine Veränderung herbeiführt; bloße äußere Einwirkung

Kurzinhalt: ... in Aquinas's words, "A cause is that from whose being another being follows" — it comes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries "to mean an active force or impulse that initiated change by transference of energy to another

Text: 141b As Kenneth Schmitz explains it, whereas efficient causality originally indicated an ontological principle, so that it would be defined as the communication of being—in Aquinas's words, "A cause is that from whose being another being follows"1 — it comes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries "to mean an active force or impulse that initiated change by transference of energy to another, resulting in displacement of particles in a new configuration and with an accelerated or decelerated rate of motion among the particles."2 In both cases, the notion of efficient causality indicates a relation between two entities. One of the ways we could describe the difference between these two characterizations of efficient causality, however, is that the newer understanding "exteriorizes" this relation. A communication implies — as we will explain further in relation to formal causality — a sharing, which means that there is some (identically) one "thing" in common uniting the two sharers. What the two are individually includes, then, the reality in which they are united. In the modern conception of efficiency, by contrast, there is no sharing: force is precisely an extrinsic imposition of determination.3 (Fs; tblStw: ) (notabene)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Schindler, David C., Jun, The Catholicity of Reason

Titel: Verflochtenheit: Wirkursache - Formursache

Index: Verflochtenheit d. Ursachen; Wirkursache (Ursache v. Sein; Zeugung) Vermittlung von Sein durch Form

Kurzinhalt: .... the efficient cause cannot be what it is, namely, the communication of being sibi simili, without reference to form: the formal cause, in other words, belongs to the efficient cause properly understood.

Text: The Interweave of the Causes

145a Let us briefly consider each of the causes in turn with a view to at least some aspect of their interdependence.1 As we saw above, classically understood, the efficient cause is not a force that sets a mechanistic event in motion, but in the first place is a communication of being: the paradigm of such causality for Aristotle would be the generation of progeny; for Aquinas — as we will explore further in a moment — the only "instance" of efficient causality in the strictest sense, which establishes the meaning for every other analogical instance, is God's act of creation. This act is a communication of being simpliciter. It is worth pointing out that, in contrast to the modern notion of cause which is necessarily a temporal event, this act designates in the first place an ontological relationship; it is not a change that occurs within the world. Now, setting aside the act of creation for a moment, and considering efficient causality in a general sense, the word "communication" implies that something is shared, which as we suggested above means that there is some unity between the cause and the effect. This unity lies in the form: a father and mother "cause" a child by passing on to him the human form, and they have a unity with him because this form is in some respect identically the same. The general principle in classical thought, omne agens agit sibi simili, holds by virtue of this unity in form, so that there would be no unity were there no form. This means, then, that the efficient cause cannot be what it is, namely, the communication of being sibi simili, without reference to form: the formal cause, in other words, belongs to the efficient cause properly understood. As we argued in the previous chapter, if it is separated from the formal cause, the efficient cause cannot communicate anything, but can only transfer energy, which, precisely because it is necessarily extrinsic in this case, takes the form of force. (Fs; tblStw: Kausalität) (notabene)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Schindler, David C., Jun, The Catholicity of Reason

Titel: Verflochtenheit: Materialursache - Formursache

Index: Verflochtenheit d. Ursachen; Materialursache <-> Formursache (Potenz - Form)

Kurzinhalt: matter, as a "potency for," implies the priority of form, and form cannot exist as such except as received by matter. This means that there cannot be a temporal priority of one or the other, so that they are then added together in a subsequent "moment."

Text: 146a While matter in the modern conception means mere extension in space, and so designates "physicality," we might say, bereft of any inherent qualities apart from measurability, matter in the classical understanding was an essentially relational term. Specifically, as a potency, it always referred in some sense to form or actuality, in two respects. On the one hand, matter is, in itself, aptitude for form, so that, as we explained above, its intelligibility derives in part from the form that actualizes it and thus determines it in a certain way. Matter is openness upwards, we might say. On the other hand, what is potentiality in one respect will always be actuality in another: the body that represents the material cause of a living organism with respect to its animating principle, namely, the form or soul, is itself the form with respect to its own material principles, namely, the flesh, blood, and bones, and so on down the line. In this sense, matter — understood as formed body — will always have a qualitatively determined nature, in one respect, even while it will remain in another respect open to higher determinations. Although this inference was rarely drawn in classical accounts, it follows in fact that the more relatively determinate matter is, the more receptive it is capable of being for a higher form. But this means that, if matter is defined as a potency for form, the higher, more organized instances of matter, which by virtue of their complexity are more capable of receiving higher-order actualities, represent more fully what matter is than the lower instances. Thus, for example, a human body is a better representative of the nature of matter than, say, a stone, which has little intrinsic potency to receive form.1 Thus, in short, we do not speak of matter, simply, as a thing in itself, but always of the material principle of a particular being. The natural being as a whole is in each case the subject, the fundamental reference point, in relation to which we are able to judge what in fact the material cause is. The material cause alone, without any reference to form or nature, would be simply unintelligible. (Fs; tblStw: Kausalität)

147a Next, we may consider the dependence of form on matter. The key to this dependence is that, if form is not the actualization of some potency, as we noted above, it cannot be the intrinsic principle that it in fact is. Instead, it becomes an abstract formality, so to speak, which must remain by definition superficial, since it does not bear any internal relationship to the thing of which it is the form. In other words, it necessarily turns into a purely extrinsic structure, pattern, or law.2 We thus no longer speak of things as formed, in the sense of being "in-formed," but rather we speak of form as the external patterns to which things are con-formed. To speak of form as an internal principle requires, once again, a reference to a real being — or as Aristotle puts it, a "natural body" — of which it is the form, and a real being is such only by virtue of the relation between form and matter: "nature is twofold, and is both form and matter."3 We can explain this essential relation by saying that, in order for form to be internal to a being, it must be received into it, and it can only be thus received if there is an intrinsic potency for that actuality, i.e., if there is a material principle understood as we have just described it. There is thus a relationship of reciprocal dependence between form and matter: matter, as a "potency for," implies the priority of form, and form cannot exist as such except as received by matter. This means that there cannot be a temporal priority of one or the other, so that they are then added together in a subsequent "moment." Instead, they must always already be involved with one another, so to speak. This is why Aristotle presents organic form, which is always already intrinsically related to its matter, as the paradigm, and treats the form of an artifact, which is to some degree simply imposed on matter that is in a certain respect independent of it, as an analogous sense of the term.4 An intrinsic relation to matter is part of the meaning of form in its strict sense. (Fs) (notabene)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Schindler, David C., Jun, The Catholicity of Reason

Titel: Finalursache

Index: Innere Hinordnung eines Seienden zum Ziel; entelecheai: Besitz (echein) d, Ziels (telos)

Kurzinhalt: [If] the purpose is simply extrinsic to a being, then it becomes wholly accidental that it happens to be this particular being that serves the purpose, and not some other. Things become interchangeable with respect to their purpose, and represent ...

Text: 148a As for final causality, it represents an explanation of the meaning of things, and not simply an arbitrary imposition, only insofar as teleology is taken to be most fundamentally intrinsic. If there is no intrinsic relationship between a being and the purpose it serves, if, in other words, the purpose is simply extrinsic to a being, then it becomes wholly accidental that it happens to be this particular being that serves the purpose, and not some other. Things become interchangeable with respect to their purpose, and represent nothing more than instruments in its service. The purpose, in this case, does not illuminate the meaning of the being, which is to say it has no strictly theoretical role, but as we saw above dissolves into a kind of positivistic pragmatism that is never truly self-explicating but only ever endlessly self-justifying, and indeed, always in terms other than itself. For teleology to have an essentially theoretical dimension, the end must be internal, which is another way of saying that natural things must be their own end. Aristotle coined the term "entelecheia" to refer to organisms: they possess (echein) their end (telos) in (en) themselves; they are, so to speak, "enpurposed." But this simply means that the first aim of an organism is to be itself, to actualize as fully as possible what it is. It follows, then, that final causality, if it is to be something other than external manipulation, requires a reference to formal causality, the essential "whatness" of a thing or its most basic determinate act, and more specifically to an internal notion of form, which as we saw above, is such only with reference to an internal potency. In the paradigmatic case of the organism, once again, the "reference" is so intrinsic as to be materially identical, to represent one and the same thing under a different aspect.6 Finality as a cause is inconceivable without formal causality. (Fs; tblStw: Kausalität)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Schindler, David C., Jun, The Catholicity of Reason

Titel: Kausalität - Intelligibilität

Index: Kausalität 6f; "dynamisches" Verständnis v. K. (Hume): Verlust v. Intelligibilität; Überzeitlichkeit v. Form, Substanz (Billardball) als Voraussetzung f. Wissen

Kurzinhalt: ... the reduction of cause to an event not only precludes the possibility of knowing the necessity or even probability governing the relations between things, but it eliminates the understanding of the things themselves at all, since no "thing" ...

Text: The Unraveling of Intelligibility

148b There would be other ways to show the interdependence of the four causes, but the brief account given already establishes the principle that the causes cannot be understood in isolation from one another, so that to separate them is to distort them. Before we raise the issue of what understanding of being is required in order to be able to affirm an integrated notion of causality, we will first consider the implications of this distortion with respect to the intelligibility of things more generally. We have suggested that the modern view of causality did not so much eliminate some of the causes as it did reinterpret them in a dynamic, rather than an ontological, sense. We wish to argue now that this reinterpretation in fact undermines their intelligibility more radically than is typically acknowledged. (Fs)

149a As we saw at the outset, Hume affirmed the dependence of knowledge on causality, which he in turn described as the regular succession of contiguous events in time. Having described things thus, he points out that the mind has no access to any necessary connection between the two, but only to the one event that precedes and the other that follows. This exhaustively "dynamic" notion of causality is, we might say, a paradigmatic expression of the dis-integration we have been describing. Unities are always supra-temporal — which does not mean that they do not exist in time, but only that their existence in time does not account for the whole of their reality. An identity, which is a type of unity, remains numerically the same over the course of a multiplicity of moments, which means that its reality transcends each one of those moments and so cannot be reduced to it. To define causality in strictly temporal terms is not to show that there is no basis for knowledge, but in fact to take the absence of that basis for granted at the outset, which is of course to beg the question. (Fs) (notabene)

149b It is interesting that Hume does not link knowledge to essences or forms, or to intrinsic teleology, all of which imply a unity, but rather to the physical interaction between things, an event. As a merely physio-temporal event, this encounter — if the word is appropriate at all in this context — is wholly extrinsic. Nothing about the interaction reveals the meaning of either of the things involved, or bears significantly on that meaning. Indeed, it is wholly a matter of indifference what the cause and effect are in themselves, but only that they happen to connect at this point in time and space: there is no communication (of form), which means that the effect tells us nothing about the nature of the cause. Now, it follows directly from this that there can be no essential necessity to this relation. If the two things relate to one another in a wholly extrinsic fashion, their interaction will be altogether accidental, or in other words arbitrary in relation to the meaning of things, regardless of the empirical reliability of the law to which they appear to conform. In this case, the regularity of their interaction — should it happen indeed to exhibit some regularity — is simply a matter of probability, a likelihood that always only asymptotically approaches necessity as something extrinsic to itself. Given Hume's definition of causality, he cannot but deny any essential difference between what we call knowledge and the belief based on custom and constantly reinforced by experience. (Fs) (notabene)

150a But Hume did not draw the full implications of his starting assumptions; more needs to be said here. It is not merely the necessity of the connection between cause and effect that gets lost the moment we reductively temporalize the relation and see them therefore as wholly extrinsically connected, but intelligibility itself founders at its root: we are in this case not simply unable to predict things with the absolute certainty that necessity offers, but the very possibility of any sort of understanding is undermined as well. As we mentioned above with reference to Spaemann, even a wholly "positivistic" view of causality derives whatever intelligibility it possesses from an implicit affirmation of teleology. One cannot distinguish a cause from the essentially infinite number of conditions preceding the effect without some minimal reference to final causality: this reality differs from the others in that it acts "for the sake of" this effect; its activity has the purpose of producing such and such an effect. If there is nothing but wholly extrinsic relations, it would make no sense to distinguish a "post hoc, propter hoc" fallacy from a valid analysis of a causal relation, because there would be only "posts" and no "propter." Thus, not only would we lack a basis for attributing any necessity to the connection between cause and effect, but we would in fact have no way of identifying any causes, which means we would also lose the ability to identify something as an effect, insofar as doing so depends on identifying a cause. Along with necessity, there would be no such thing as probability. (Fs) (notabene)

150b At an even more fundamental level, the reduction of cause to an event not only precludes the possibility of knowing the necessity or even probability governing the relations between things, but it eliminates the understanding of the things themselves at all, since no "thing" whatsoever can be a "thing" unless it is an intelligible whole. If there is no form as an internal principle of unity that identifies a thing as what it is and distinguishes it from everything it is not by gathering up the multiplicity of parts and aspects and ordering them around a center, then the mind seeking understanding has, as it were, no place to go in its relation to things. It is interesting to note that, addressing the question of the possibility of knowledge, Hume immediately speaks of the connection between things, and considers whether it is possible to affirm necessity of this connection. But he does not first raise the question of our knowledge of the things themselves that connect. He evidently takes it for granted that we are able to identify the first billard ball, and then the second, even if he rejects the claim that we can identify anything in experience that we could call their causal connection. It is only later that he introduces the issue of substance, and of course denies that we can have knowledge of it, since our experience of things is limited to their accidents: our relation to things is, indeed, just as extrinsic as the colliding billiard balls. For Hume, the mind seeking understanding is drawn outward, away from things and toward their external relationships. (Fs)

151a The implications of this turn however extend further than Hume seems to have realized. He denies substance, and speaks instead of accidents; he denies knowledge, and speaks instead of experiences and impressions that give rise to belief of varying degrees of compelling power. But isn't an accident also an object with its own form, a meaningful whole that is not merely the sum of its parts, and couldn't we say the same for any experience or impression, not to mention the notion of knowledge or belief? The strictures that Hume demands would render unintelligible the very language in which he demands them. (Fs)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Schindler, David C., Jun, The Catholicity of Reason

Titel: Kausalität: Skeptizismus - Intelligibilität

Index: Kausalität 6g; moderne Logik; radikaler Skeptizismus (Hume): Problem d. Intelligibilität; Selbstbeschränkung d. Denkens -> Utilitarismus; Soziologie anstatt pol. Philosophie; Rechtfertigung durch Erfolg; Nihilismus "im Dienste" d. Effizienz

Kurzinhalt: The fragmentation of causality ... undermines intelligibility so radically that intelligibility no longer matters, so radically that intelligibility can be "used," even if it does not in fact have a basis in reality ... as long as its use brings about ...

Text: 151b Or apparently, at any rate. It turns out that a strategy remains for salvaging at least a kind of intelligibility in the face of a fundamental skepticism with respect to any intelligibility, whether in the world or in the soul. In a book published in 1969 titled Two Logics,1 Henry Veatch describes the supplanting of Aristotelian categorical logic by the symbolic logic represented by Russell and Whitehead, and claims that much more was going on here than simply the expansion of logic's scope and power: symbolic logic, according to Veatch, is essentially a "relating-logic," which in contrast to the Aristotelian "what-logic," is "unable to say what anything is." Although we unfortunately cannot enter into the details of his interesting argument, it is helpful, in relation to our theme, to note one feature of it. At the heart of this transition to symbolic logic, which we find for example in the analytic philosophy that dominates the Anglo-American academy, lies a radical reconception of the basic instance of human thought, namely, the simple proposition: S is P. Whereas in the traditional view, this presented an articulation of the subject and its accident, whereby the accident reveals something about the nature or the reality of the subject, in the modern view this simple proposition represents a relation between two terms, which relationship is conceived as a logical function. In this case, the predicate is not understood to disclose something about the meaning of the subject, but instead represents simply a property that is posited as belonging in this case to the subject. In other words, it assumes an extrinsic relationship between the two terms, so that either the predicate is already contained in the subject and so is not different from it (analytic statement), or the predicate is separate from the subject and can be connected either formally by the logic of categories (synthetic a priori) or materially by experience (synthetic a posteriori). But this way of conceiving things leaves us, on the one hand, the sphere of necessity that is limited to a logical analysis of "what we mean" by the language we use to describe the world or the necessary relations between concepts, and on the other hand the contingent sphere of empirical facts, which can be recorded and organized according to patterns (i.e., form understood extrinsically as law) but not intellectually penetrated as an essential, intrinsic meaning (form as ontological principle). Intelligibility is therefore "saved" in this case by separating thought altogether from things, allowing it the much more modest goal of coherence and consistency, and subsequently extrinsically reconnecting it to the world only in the apparently equally modest mode of a positivistic empiricism. It is just this that we find in both in Hume and in a more sophisticated form in Kant. What Veatch does not say here, but what our previous discussion allows us to see, is that the root of this development in twentieth-century philosophy is a dis-integration of the notion of cause; a metaphysical problem lies at the basis of the epistemological problem. (Fs) (notabene)

152a The question often arises, with respect to this detachment of thought from the world, which is itself a reflection of the displacement of intelligible form from the center of things, whether it does not harbor within itself outright contradiction, along the lines we indicated above with respect to Hume: even within this apparently modest self-limitation of reason, he necessarily speaks of the nature of concepts, of propositions, of reason, and even of the things whose nature is unknown to us. Indeed, this is clearly self-contradictory. But it is crucial to see why the very separation of thought from the world renders this charge gratuitous, at least in a certain respect. The problem in a nutshell is that this contradiction lies too deep to create a difficulty for self-limiting thought; it lies, we might say, in the very realm that reason restrains itself from entering. The result of this self-restraint is that a new criterion for judgment takes the place of truth, namely, a necessarily utilitarian concept of the good. Although this pragmatism cannot justify itself theoretically, it can always persuade itself to take solace in the fact that the essentially contemplative vision of truth presupposed by the ancient science cannot justify itself practically — at least not according to the terms set by pragmatism: i.e., it does not appear to produce anything of immediately utilitarian benefit. The key is that, along with its being shifted from a "theoretical to a pragmatic register, the criterion for judgment is simultaneously "temporalized," in the sense that an idea justifies itself by pointing to its consequences here and now.2 (Fs) (notabene)

153a What is at stake in the question of the proper measure of truth is nothing short of the basic meaning of the cosmos, the meaning of human nature, and indeed ultimately as we will see in a moment the meaning of the God who created both. The fragmentation of causality not only eliminates necessity, but it undermines intelligibility so radically that intelligibility no longer matters, so radically that intelligibility can be "used," even if it does not in fact have a basis in reality or ultimately mean anything, as long as its use brings about desired results — "desired" meaning here only what the utterly arbitrarily imposed final cause determines it to mean in any given case.3 This is a nihilism far more profound than that expressed by Friedrich Nietzsche, who suffered extreme loneliness as a result of his convictions. It is a nihilism compatible with the various truth claims required for efficient living in the contemporary world. The fragmentation of causality puts reality wholly at the service of human aims, and indeed at the service of aims that have become so bourgeois they are no longer human, but merely "all too human." (Fs) (notabene)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Schindler, David C., Jun, The Catholicity of Reason

Titel: Substanz - Kausalität

Index: Kausalität 6h; Aristoteles: Ewigkeit d. Arten - Thomas: Schöpfung; Substanz: absoluter Bezugspunkt für Verständnis d. Ursachen (Beispiel: Frosch unreduzierbar auf Teile); Dilemma: Ganzheit d. S. - Möglichkeit v. Evolution

Kurzinhalt: In a proper substance, none of the four causes, in other words, has its being, so to speak, in itself. Rather, each is a cause of the being in both the objective and subjective sense of the genitive. The substance is the absolute to which the causes ...

Text: Substantial Meaning

153b To respond to this nihilism, we must ask what understanding of being is necessary for an integrated notion of causality. As we have seen, each of the causes has its proper meaning only in relation to the others. But this interdependence would seem to create a logical difficulty: if A cannot be A without B, but B cannot be B without A, then it would seem to be impossible to have either, for each would await the other to attain to its own meaning, which entails an infinite regress with no absolute place to start. But if it is true that one could never move sequentially from A to B, or from B to A, insofar as the two are reciprocally dependent, it is possible to have both of them at the same time, or in other words to take as the starting point the reality of a whole in which A and B are reciprocally dependent as constitutive parts. And here we are brought to the sense of being required for an integrated notion of causality: as Aristotle saw, the essential meaning of being is substance; what are absolute are concrete, natural things, the most basic of which are organisms, and the most derivative of which are in some sense elements and in another sense artifacts.1 A substance is a whole, which is simultaneously complex and irreducibly one. A substance cannot be divided, properly speaking, without ceasing to be the substance it was (homogenous elements come closest to this possibility, but for that very reason are the least deserving of the name "substance"). In it, the constitutive principles — efficiency, matter, form, and finality — interweave in a reciprocally dependent and asymmetrical manner, as we described above. They exist together in some respect "all at once." (Fs; tblStw: Kausalität, Substanz) (notabene)

154a Now, the complex unity of substance has a difficult implication, which could scarcely be entertained today, but which follows from Aristotle's view with strict logical necessity: it is impossible, according to this understanding of the interdependence of causes, for new forms to come to be. Aristotle affirmed the eternality of the species, and it should be clear that he could do nothing else. A whole that is in the strictest ontological sense greater than the sum of its parts cannot be "cobbled together" from those parts. Take a frog: an organism of this sort represents the integration of causality to such an extent that the efficient, formal, and final cause are in this case one and the same (it is the frog, the what of the thing, that moves itself, and it does so in order to be a frog in the fullest sense it can). The material cause, though not in any genuine sense identical to form, nevertheless remains intrinsic to it so that there never exists frogness "as such," but only as individual frogs. Because of this integration, it would be impossible to assemble a frog in the manner of Frankenstein's monster, and to the extent that one could approximate such a thing, it would inevitably serve an extrinsic purpose, which means it would not be an "entelechia," as properly befits an organism. In a proper substance, none of the four causes, in other words, has its being, so to speak, in itself. Rather, each is a cause of the being in both the objective and subjective sense of the genitive. The substance is the absolute to which the causes are relative, it is the essential reference point for the understanding of each. Thus, for Aristotle, substance must be eternal, a frog cannot be produced out of something more basic, but can come only from other, already actualized, frogs. If it did come from something more basic, it would be reducible back to that or those most basic things, which would then represent eternal substance themselves. In this case, what appeared to be the reality would not be the genuine reality.2 Strict novelty, in any event, is impossible for Aristotle; even the creation of apparently original artifacts is the expression of forms that have been derived from other more basic forms, and cannot be said to have been generated from nothing. (Fs) (notabene)

155a We thus appear to stand before a dilemma. On the one hand, we have an integrated causality that represents the condition of possibility for all intelligibility, but to affirm this would require us to accept the eternal reality of substances, for any whole greater than the sum of its parts cannot simply be constructed step by step out of its parts. But this is an essentially "static" notion of the cosmos; it denies development, and very clearly denies the possibility of anything like an evolution of species. It would seem to deny, moreover, the possibility of creation, if one thinks of this divine act as an alternative to the eternality of species. There thus appears to be good reason to reject this understanding of being. On the other hand, actually to do so would present an even more obviously problematic implication: it would entail the dis-integration of the causes, and therefore a purely mechanistic conception of the universe and all things in it, coincident with the loss of any foundation for intelligibility, so that, if there is to be meaning at all, it is forced to fix its outer limits at the hermetically sealed borders of self-enclosed reason. What, in this situation, are we to do? (Fs) (notabene)

156a One might anticipate that it was precisely the worldview brought by Christianity that undid the integration of Aristotle's eternal substances, insofar as the doctrine of creation means that all things in the cosmos "come to be," at least in some respect. But this would only be the case in principle if indeed the sense of being entailed in the doctrine of creation were incompatible with the absoluteness of substance. As Thomas Aquinas shows, there is no contradiction in principle between the world's being created and its being eternal. As he indicates in the short treatise On the Eternity of the World, it is a mistake to think that efficient causality can operate only according to temporal succession.3 While it is true that efficient causality implies a "before" and an "after," he explains, these terms need not indicate an order of time (as they essentially do in Hume, and "before" him in Galileo), but can also indicate an order of nature.4 In other words, the causality of creation does not necessarily imply an event in time, but can simply mean absolute metaphysical dependence — even, in principle, of eternal things. In this respect, Aquinas affirms that the Platonic notion that the world is both eternal and wholly dependent on God is not offensive to reason. (Fs)

Stichwort: Kurzdefinitionen

Autor, Quelle: Manent, Pierre, Nation

Titel: Polis - Strauss, Aristoteles

Index: Definition d. Polis von Leo Strauss und Aristoteles

Kurzinhalt: Strauss: “the polis is that compete association which corresponds to the natural range of man’s power of knowing and of loving.”

Text: 91b Let us begin with the city. Of the three political forms under consideration, it is the only one for which we can give a complete, and thus a completely satisfactory, definition. The city is particularly susceptible to being defined because it is constituted by its fines, by its limits. In Leo Strauss’s felicitous formulation, “the polis is that complete association which corresponds to the natural range of man’s power of knowing and of loving.”1 In such a definition the ought is included in the is. But let us also listen to the best analyst of the ancient city: “the best defining principle for a city is this: the greatest number of members with a view to self-sufficiency of life that is readily surveyable.”2 We need to keep in mind this defining trait of the city: the city is readily surveyable, it is eusunoptos. (Fs)