Stichwort: Distinctio

Autor, Quelle: Liddy, Transforming Light

Titel: Distinctio realis - hypostatische Union

Index: Leeming, Inkarnation, Suarez, distinctio realis, Definition, Hypostase, Person, Durchbruch, distinctio realis (major or minor); 1 Person, 2 Naturen; hypostatische Union, Chalcedon

Kurzinhalt: ... which convinced me that there could not be a hypostatic union without a real distinction between essence and existence ... if you have a real distinction between esse and essence, the esse can be the ground of the person and the essence ...

Text: 29/7 Lonergan always attributed his basic intellectual conversion to the course he took in the Catholic doctrine on Christ in the fall and spring of 1935-1936 with the Jesuit, Bernard Leeming, S.J. (1893-1971). Of course, he brought his own questions to Leeming's course! (114; Fs)

30/7 To Leeming, along with Maréchal, Lonergan attributes his first acceptance of the label 'Thomist.' 'I had become a Thomist through the influence of Maréchal mediated to me by Stephanos Stephanou and through Bernard Leeming's lectures on the unicum esse in Christo.'1 The whole of his previous development was 'rounded out' by Leeming's course: that is, at this point all the intellectual influences from his early years come together. (114; Fs)

It was through Stephanou by some process of osmosis, rather than struggling with the five great Cahiers, that I learnt to speak of human knowledge as not intuitive but discursive with the decisive component in judgment. This view was confirmed by my familiarity with Augustine's key notion, veritas, and the whole was rounded out by Bernard Leeming's course on the Incarnate Word, which convinced me that there could not be a hypostatic union without a real distinction between essence and existence. This, of course, was all the more acceptable, since Aquinas' esse corresponded to Augustine's veritas and both harmonized with Maréchal's view of judgment.2

31/7 As someone once said to me, 'Moments of enlightenment come during periods of enlightenment.' That this was a period of enlightenment is certainly evident from the feeling-charged letter Lonergan wrote to his superior in January 1935. But 'the whole' of his previous development was 'rounded out' by this moment in Leeming's course, the moment he later remembered as the key moment in his own intellectual conversion. (114; Fs)

32/7 The precise question that was being dwelt with in the course was the unicum esse in Christo, the one act of existence in Christ. What did this mean? What was this 'unicum esse in Christo'? The basic theological issue came down to this: If, as Christian faith always held, Christ was both divine and human, what were these 'two' in him? Furthermore, if we must maintain that there is an underlying and substantial unity in Christ, what is that 'one' in him? (114; Fs)

33/7 At the time traditional European scholastic philosophers were engaged in a battle over the 'real distinction' between essence and existence. Many traditional Thomists held the real distinction between these two principles of being, but others, especially Jesuits influenced by Suarez, denied the distinction and its presence in St. Thomas.3 I remember Jesuits telling me that even during the 1950s, soon after entering the society, they were approached by other young Jesuits during recreation periods to ascertain their fundamental feelings on the 'real distinction.' Difficult as it may seem to believe to people today, it was a question which, at least for some, had an existential import! In an interview Lonergan gives an account of the relevance of the controversy. (115; Fs)

I was very interested in philosophy, but I [had] no use for the scholastic philosophers. I first discovered that Saint Thomas might have something to say when I was taught 'De Verbo Incarnate' in Rome. Can you have one person who has two natures? The argument given me by a good Thomist, Father Bernard Leeming, was that if you have a real distinction between esse and essence, the esse can be the ground of the person and the essence too. If the esse is relevant to two essences, then you can have one person in two natures. On that basis I solved the problem of Christ's consciousness: one subject and two subjectivities. It wasn't the divine subjectivity that was crucified, but the human subjectivity; it was the human subjectivity that died and rose again, not the divine person.4

34/7 The theological problem was to maintain the full integrity of the humanity of Christ and at the same time to explain why such a full humanity is not that of another person besides the person of the Word of God. Francisco Suarez, who held the real identity of essence and existence, held that the personhood of Christ was merely a 'substantial mode' added to the existing essence. To Suarez' position Leeming in his Christology textbook replied that it was not at all evident why a fully existing singular nature would not by that very fact be a suppositum, that is, a thing in itself. The Suarezian 'mode,' in this case the personhood of Christ, seems to be nothing other than an accidental property of something already fully constituted in itself. (115; Fs)

35/7 Leeming chose to follow the opinion which he believed was that of St. Thomas, the opinion also of the Thomistic commentator, Capreolus (1380-1444). The latter held that the core of personhood is to have one's own existence in oneself. By the very fact that essence is united with existence, there is the subsistence and 'incommunicability' of personhood. Capreolus' opinion, Leeming felt, best maintains the integrity of the human nature of Christ, while also explaining the unity of Christ. (115f; Fs)

It shows that Christ is one person, precisely because he has one esse, one act of existence; it shows that in which the human nature and the divine nature communicate: that is, in the esse of the Word; but it leaves the human nature entirely whole in its essence. Christ is one; truly the Son of God is human; truly this man is God; and in these sentences the word 'is' is indeed a logical copula; but in our opinion it is much more than that: it is especially taken in a real sense and not just as a denotation.5

36/7 Leeming goes on in his notes to comment on the use of such philosophical distinctions in the understanding of a theological and religious doctrine. (116; Fs)

Someone might say that this opinion is grounded on a philosophical distinction that, if not uncertain, is at least denied by many, namely the real distinction between essence and existence. To which we reply: the revealed dogma evidently teaches a truth which can be called philosophical: namely, that a singular nature cannot be identified with personhood. We should, therefore, clarify our philosophical concepts in such a way that this truth remains uncontested. But, if among the philosophical systems that try to explain this truth, one is found to be more apt than the others to properly protect this truth, while the others are less apt, then this is obviously an argument in favor of that system.6

37/7 What the terms essence and existence add to Lonergan's philosophical vocabulary are the objective correlatives of the subjective acts he has been so intent on differentiating in his own consciousness. As he would later point out, Aristotle had basically pointed to two types of questions that the human spirit asks: questions of the type, 'What is it?' or 'Why is it so?' and questions of the type, 'Is it?' or 'Is it so?' The first type of question cannot be answered by a 'Yes' or a 'No.' This type of question heads toward an understanding of the nature of something, eventually, its essence. On the other hand, the second type of question can only be answered by a 'Yes' or a 'No'- or 'I don't know.' It aims at judgment, the determination of existence. (116; Fs)

38/7 What Lonergan was coming to see, the core of his own intellectual breakthrough, was that the entire Aristotelian metaphysical system of Aquinas was really the objective 'heuristic' framework for the acts he had all along been so intent on coming to know. One dimension of that metaphysical system was the real distinction between essence and existence. Later on he would define a distinction as real if it is true that (1) P is not Q; (2) P is real; and (3) Q is real. A real distinction is asserted on the level of judgment, not on any previous level of consciousness, certainly not by a prior imagined 'look.'7 Such real distinctions are major or minor. Major real distinctions are between things. Minor real distinctions are between the elements or constituents of proportionate being, such as between essence and existence. (116f; Fs)

39/7 In his Latin Christology notes, written during the 1950s, Lonergan uses the distinction between soul and body as an example of a minor real distinction between constitutive principles of a person.8 He then shows from Church doctrines the effort to express this kind of a distinction in understanding the humanity and divinity of the one person of Christ. It is not just a mental distinction, a distinctio rationis. It is a real distinction, though a minor real distinction: not between two things, but between two principles in the one person of Christ. Of course, because it is a case of understanding the humanity and divinity of the Son of God, all these terms have to be understood analogously. (117; Fs)

40/7 Certainly, such a distinction puts a great weight on words. But so does modern science. And so do all the doctrines of the Church. They reflect the understandings and judgments of the human family. They mediate our knowledge of reality. As he would later point out in the article 'The Origins of Christian Realism,' the ability to make such distinctions is rooted in the fact that we are human beings. We exist, not just in the infant's world of immediacy, but in the far vaster world mediated by meaning.9 (117; Fs)

41/7 An empiricist or a naive realist confuses the criteria for knowing the world mediated by meaning with the criteria for the world of immediacy. The latter is known by merely feeling and touching and seeing. The idealist knows there is more to human knowing than what the empiricist or naive realist assert, but he conceives that 'more' in sensitive terms and so concludes that our knowing cannot be objective. The critical realist asserts that objective human knowing takes place, not just by experience, but by experience completed by human understanding and correct judgment. (117; Fs) (notabene)

42/7 The Thomistic metaphysical terms used by the Christian community to interpret its belief are 'heuristic' categories correlative to human understanding and judgment. Just as the scientist uses technical terms to penetrate to the constituents of physical reality, so the theologian uses terms like 'nature,' 'person,' 'essence,' 'existence,' to understand the realities of Christian faith. They aid our human understanding. While later developments put persons and natures in many further contexts, the context of the ancient Council of Chalcedon needs no more than these heuristic concepts. (117f; Fs)
What is a person or hypostasis? It is in the Trinity what there are three of and in the Incarnation what there is one of. What is a nature? In the Trinity it is what there is one of and in the Incarnation what there are two of.10

43/7 Though such a heuristic understanding seems incredibly 'simple,' still it can be a tremendously rich method of focussing our thinking within the framework of the judgments of faith. It is similar to the methods of the scientists that enable them to focus on unseen realities far beyond the realm of immediate experience. (118; Fs)

44/7 It was in relationship to this course in 1935-1936 with Bernard Leeming on Christology that Lonergan first uses the term 'intellectual conversion' to identify the intellectual transition he was undergoing. (118; Fs)

So there was considerable room for development after Aristotle and you get it in St. Thomas when he distinguishes existence from essence and makes them really distinct; and to make them distinct really you have to have something equivalent to an intellectual conversion even if you don't know what is meant by an intellectual conversion. I had the intellectual conversion myself when in doing theology I saw that you can't have one person in two natures in Christ unless there is a real distinction between the natures and something else that is one. But that is the long way around.11

45/7 Lonergan spoke of his intellectual breakthrough as taking 'the long way around,' since it came by way of his theology course on Thomistic Christology. He implies that there could be a short way around-perhaps by reading his Insight? (118; Fs)

46/7 In the same interview Lonergan gives a pithy description of the ultimate psychological and intellectual basis for the Thomistic real distinction between essence and existence. 'I once gave a talk to psychiatrists at Halifax General Hospital and at the end of the talk one of the doctors said to me, 'Our patients have all kinds of insights; the trouble is they're wrong!' Well that is the basis of the distinction between essence and existence. They have hold of an essence, but it isn't true.'12 (118f; Fs)

47/7 Before going on, let us note a line from his 1972 Method in Theology where he explicitly speaks of faith in the Word of God as a possible source of intellectual conversion. (119; Fs)
Finally, among the values discerned by the eye of love is the value of believing the truths taught by the religious tradition, and in such tradition and belief are the seeds of intellectual conversion. For the word, spoken and heard, proceeds from and penetrates to all four levels of intentional consciousness. Its content is not just a content of experience but a content of experience and understanding and judging and deciding. The analogy of sight yields the cognitional myth. But fidelity to the word engages the whole man.13

48/7 In the mid-1930s it seems obvious that Lonergan has explicitly recognized 'the cognitional myth' that conceives of intellectual activities in sensible terms. But if, as in his own case, intellectual conversion is promoted by faith in the Word of God, still in itself it regards coming to know the intrinsic character of our own human intelligence and the relationship of that intelligence to reality. (119; Fs)

Stichwort: Distinctio

Autor, Quelle: Liddy, Transforming Light

Titel: distinctio realis

Index: distinctio realis zwischen Sein und Wesen, Verstehen und Urteil

Kurzinhalt: This 'real distinction' between essence and existence, ultimately rooted in the real distinction between understanding and judgment, was the core of Lonergan's own 'intellectual conversion'

Text: eg: Notwendigkeit der Konverison zur Erfassung der realen distinctio

20/9 This 'real distinction' between essence and existence, ultimately rooted in the real distinction between understanding and judgment, was the core of Lonergan's own 'intellectual conversion' in Bernard Leeming's course on the Incarnate Word in Rome in the mid-1930s. By the mid-forties and his studies of Aquinas he was arriving at expressing that distinction ever more clearly. The culminating step would be his writing of Insight. (143f; Fs)

21/9 An intellectual conversion is needed to grasp all this. So pervasive is 'the native tendency to extroversion' that it appears in a multiplicity of guises. Typically it is found in conceptualist philosophies that are so focussed on concepts that they miss the intellect from which they emerge. 'For intellectual habit is not possession of the book but freedom from the book. It is the birth and life in us of the light and evidence by which we operate on our own.'1 On the contrary, 'Con-ceptualists conceive human intellect only in terms of what it does; but their neglect of what intellect is, prior to what it does, has a variety of causes. Most commonly they do not advert to the act of understanding. They take concepts for granted; they are busy working out arguments to produce certitudes; they prolong their spontaneous tendencies to extroversion into philosophy, where they concentrate on metaphysics and neglect gnoseology.'2 (144; Fs)

22/9 The Aristotelian-Thomist program is not the simple matter of conceiving understanding as some kind of a 'spiritual look' in the tradition of Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. (144; Fs)

We can have no knowledge of our intellects except by reflecting on our own acts of understanding. Evidently, the Aristotelian and Thomist program is not a matter of considering ocular vision and then conceiving an analogous spiritual vision that is attributed to a spiritual faculty named intellect. On the contrary, it is a process of introspection that discovers the act of insight into the phantasm and the definition as an expression of the insight, that almost catches intellect in its forward movement towards defining and its backward reference to sense for the concrete realization of the defined.3

23/9 Toward the end of Verbum Lonergan pays tribute to Aquinas' transposition of Aristotle, instead of taking up as his working philosophy the various forms of Platonism that were available. 'Least of all could Aquinas have lost himself in the Platonist fog and at the same time steadily progressed from the Sentences toward the clear and calm, the economic and functional, the balanced and exact series of questions and articles of the via doctrinae in the Summa, in which the intellectualism of Aristotle, made over into the intellectualism of St. Thomas shines as unmistakenly as the sun on the noonday summer hills of Italy.'4 (144; Fs)
24/9 It is in conjunction with these Verbum articles that we find Lonergan's first use of the phrase 'intellectual conversion.' In an early draft of the articles, written around 1945, Lonergan discussed Cajetan's opposition to Scotus: (145; Fs)

But Cajetan was not born an anti-Scotist. He underwent an intellectual conversion [...]. But if Cajetan had to have a conversion to grasp the Aristotelian theory of knowledge by identity, may one not say that that theory is anything but obvious?5

25/9 In conjunction with these emphases in the Verbum articles, we can also point to some other brief statements in book reviews written in the late 1940s. For example, regarding a collection of commentaries on medieval issues, including the real distinction between essence and existence, Lonergan writes: 'George Klubertanz, S.J., deals with the same question in St. Bonaventure, to find that esse and essentia do not differ, while existere, in its technical sense, meant for St. Bonaventure esse hic et nunc; it would seem that there is a patron saint for the naive epistemologists who are concerned exclusively with the real as 'something out there.'6 (145; Fs)

26/9 In another review of Dom Illtyd Trethowan's Certainty: Philosophical and Theological, Lonergan criticizes the author's 'dogmatic intuitionism.' For Trethowan knowledge is intuitive apprehension of certainty, whether in the natural or supernatural order. (145; Fs)

Unfortunately the postulated intuitions do not seem to exist. In its first moment on each level, knowledge seems to be act, perfection, identity; such identity of itself is not a confrontation; confrontation does arise, but only in a second moment and by a distinct act, of perception as distinct from sensation, of conception as distinct from insight, of judgment as distinct from reflective understanding. On this showing confrontation is not primitive, but derived; and it is derived from what is not confrontation, not intuition, nor formal and explicit duality.7

27/9 Lonergan goes on to admit the difficulty of accepting the view he is proposing. It demands a momentous personal change. 'Admittedly it is difficult to justify such derivation. Overtly to accept such difficulty is a basic and momentous philosophic option.' Even the eminent historian of philosophy, Etienne Gilson, is not spared the critique of intuitionism. In a generally favorable review Lonergan adds the reservation: 'Finally, the insistence upon a 'return to sense' and the affirmation of an intuitive experience of acts of existing (pp. 206 f.) are strangely reminiscent of something like Kierkegaard's esthetic sphere of existential subjectivity.'8

Stichwort: Distinctio

Autor, Quelle: Coreth, Metaphysik

Titel: distinctio realis

Index: Sein, Wesen, Thomas, Suarez , Axiome, Seinsprinzipien

Kurzinhalt: Wenn das Sein 'realiter' Prinzip unbegrenzten Seinsgehaltes ist und wenn es darum 'realiter' begrenzt werden muß zu einem endlich bestimmten Seinsgehalt, dann müssen sich beide - als Prinzipien auch 'realiter' unterscheiden ...

Text: s. unten
Actus de se est illimitatus.
Actus non limitatur nisi per potentiam.
Actus et potentia realiter distinguuntur.
Actus in se subsistens est simpliciter infinitus.
---

38/3
1. Bezüglich der Konstitution des Seienden stehen in der scholastischen Philosophie vor allem zwei Auffassungen einander gegenüber: die thomistische, an Thomas von Aquin orientierte, und die suarezianische, von Franz Suarez stammende Lehre. Beide kommen zunächst darin überein, daß im Seienden eine Zweiheit unterscheidbar ist, sofern das Seiende befragt werden kann, ob es ist (an sit) und was es ist (quid sit). Daraus ergibt sich die Zweiheit von Sein und Wesen (esse und essentia) oder von Dasein und Sosein (existentia und quidditas). Sie unterscheiden sich aber in der Bestimmung des Verhältnisses zwischen beiden Elementen und - dem zugrundeliegend - in der Bestimmung der beiden Elemente selbst, die in ein jeweils verschiedenes Verhältnis zueinander gesetzt werden. (187; Fs)

39/3
a) Die thomistische Seinslehre versteht unter 'Sein' (esse) nicht nur das Dasein (existentia), wodurch Seiendes von bestimmter Washeit (quidditas) in den faktischen Zustand aktuellen Wirklichseins gesetzt ist, sondern, insofern es in der ganzen Fülle seines Seinsgehaltes (perfectio essendi) gesetzt ist, das Prinzip realen oder aktuellen Seinsgehaltes überhaupt. (187f; Fs) (notabene)

40/3 Wenn das Sein aber das Prinzip von Seinsgehalt überhaupt ist, d. h. Prinzip aller gesetzten und setzbaren, also wirklichen und möglichen Seinsgehalte von Seiendem, dann ist es in sich selbst und aus sich selbst schlechthin unbegrenzt: reine Positivität, reine Aktualität, die sich nicht selbst eine Grenze setzen kann. Wenn im endlichen Seienden ein begrenzter Seinsgehalt als seiend gesetzt ist, so fordert die Begrenztheit als solche ein anderes, vom Sein verschiedenes Prinzip, das den reinen Seinsgehalt zugleich aufnimmt und begrenzt: Gegenüber der reinen Positivität des Seins ist es Prinzip der Negativität, welches durch Aufhebung weiterer Seinsgehalte die Grenze setzt; gegenüber dem Sein als dem Prinzip reiner Aktualität ist es Prinzip der Potentialität, des bloßen Seinkönnens, das als solches der Aktuierung durch den Seinsakt (actus essendi) bedarf. Diese Seinslehre wird vielfach durch folgende Axiome zum Ausdruck gebracht, die wir jedoch nicht axiomatisch voraussetzen dürfen, aber hier zur Erläuterung anführen wollen: (188; Fs) (notabene)

41/3 'Actus de se est illimitatus.' Der Seinsakt ist in sich und aus sich selbst unbegrenzt, da er reine Positivität, nicht aber Negativität setzt. Grenze besagt aber Negation von Seinsgehalt. Würde das Sein sich durch sich selbst begrenzen, so würde es zugleich Seinsgehalt setzen und nicht setzen, sondern aufheben; es wäre zugleich Prinzip des Seins und des Nichtseins - die Aufhebung seiner selbst. Also ist das Sein von sich aus Prinzip reinen und darum unbeschränkten Seinsgehaltes. Damit ist die Möglichkeit der Beschränkung des Seins im endlichen Seienden nicht ausgeschlossen. Wenn aber das Sein im endlichen Seienden begrenzt ist, so ist es nicht durch sich selbst - als Sein - begrenzt, sondern fordert ein anderes Prinzip der Begrenztheit des Seins. (188f; Fs) (notabene)


42/3 'Actus non limitatur nisi per potentiam.' Das Andere des Seins als Prinzip der Begrenzung kann weder selbst Sein als reine Positivität sein, noch auch schlechthin Nichtsein als reine Negativität, sondern ein relatives Nichtsein, das dem Sein als bloßes Seinkönnen, der Aktualität als Potentialität gegenübersteht, die Möglichkeit eines Seienden von bestimmt begrenztem Seinsgehalt vorgibt und den Seinsakt sowohl aufnimmt als begrenzt. Dies bedeutet jedoch nicht, daß das Sein dieses Seienden zuerst unbegrenzt ist und dann erst durch das potentielle Prinzip eingeschränkt wird; vielmehr sind beide Prinzipien zugleich gesetzt in dem einen und identischen Seienden, das durch sie innerlich konstitutiert ist. Das potentielle Prinzip ist das Wesen des endlichen Seienden (essentia finita) gegenüber dem aktuellen Prinzip des Seins (actus essendi). In welchem Verhältnis stehen sie zueinander? (189; Fs) (notabene)

43/3 'Actus et potentia realiter distinguuntur.' Akt und Potenz, Sein und Wesen, sind nicht nur zwei begrifflich verschiedene Aspekte, unter denen wir die eine, real identische Wirklichkeit des Seienden betrachten können, sondern zwei real verschiedene Prinzipien, welche die eine und identische Wirklichkeit des Seienden konstituieren. Wenn das Sein 'realiter' Prinzip unbegrenzten Seinsgehaltes ist und wenn es darum 'realiter' begrenzt werden muß zu einem endlich bestimmten Seinsgehalt, dann müssen sich beide - als Prinzipien auch 'realiter' unterscheiden. Doch ist es nicht eine reale Verschiedenheit zwischen Seienden, die wir physische oder ontische Differenz (distinctio realis physica) nennen, sondern eine reale Verschiedenheit zwischen Prinzipien des Seienden, die niemals getrennt als selbständige Seiende gesetzt sein können; es ist eine metaphysische oder ontologische Differenz (distinctio realis metaphysica). Sie ist niemals empirisch vorfindbar, sondern nur in einem die Erfahrung übersteigenden - meta-physischen - Denken erreichbar. (189; Fs) (notabene)

44/3 'Actus in se subsistens est simpliciter infinitus.' Dies ergibt sich aus den zwei ersten Axiomen: Wenn und insofern der Seinsakt nicht in einer Potenz aufgenommen und durch sie begrenzt ist (actus receptus), sondern rein in sich selbst steht oder subsistiert (actus subsistens), ist er seinem Wesen gemäß schlechthin unbegrenzt: absolut unendliche Aktualität. Dann ist dem Sein keine Grenze gesetzt, es ist in der absoluten Fülle und Einheit aller nur möglichen Seinsgehalte schlechthin unendlich. Doch ergibt sich aus dem Prinzip noch nicht die Wirklichkeit eines solchen, rein in sich selbst stehenden, absoluten und unendlichen Seins. Sie bedarf eines eigenen Aufweises, den wir erst später erbringen werden. (189; Fs)

Stichwort: Distinctio

Autor, Quelle: Sertillanges, Thomas

Titel: distinctio realis

Index: Thomas, Einfachheit, Unterscheidung, Sein, Wesen

Kurzinhalt: distinctio realis, Sosein, Dasein; esse, existentia, 'hohe Wahrheit, 'Grundwahrheit der christlichen Philosphie'

Text: () Diese 'hohe Wahrheit', wie sie Thomas [C. G. I, 22] nennt, von der Seite Gottes genommen, schließt als offenbares Korrelat den gegensätzlichen Schluß in bezug auf die Geschöpfe ein. In jedem Geschöpf sind Sosein und Dasein unterschieden. Nach dem, was wir über den Gottesbeweis gesagt haben, braucht das kaum mehr betont zu werden. - Die Notwendigkeit, Gott anzunehmen, ruht in der Tat darauf, daß das den Gegenstand unserer Erfahrung bildende Sein sich selbst nicht genügt, daß es sich nicht durch sich selbst rechtfertigt, daß 'das, was es ist' - d. h. seine Wesenheit, sein So-Sein - in keiner Weise erfordert, daß es ist, und daß also sein tatsächliches Da-Sein einer ersten Ursache bedarf, einer Mitteilung dieser Ursache, d. h. also einer Zusammensetzung aus dem, was so mitgeteilt ist, und aus dem, dem es mitgeteilt ist. - Mit anderen Worten: Das, was also nicht erste Wirklichkeit ist, ist an sich bloß möglich; wenn ihm das Dasein verliehen wird, so empfängt es dasselbe als etwas, was ihm hinzugefügt wird. Nicht als ob wir aus Sosein und Dasein zwei Positivitäten machen wollten; aber es sind doch zwei verschiedene Dinge. Sie sind real verschieden, d. h. auf Grund einer wirklichen und tatsächlichen Zusammengesetztheit: nicht einer bloß gedachten Unterscheidung. Wenn man hier von einer bloß gedachten Unterscheidung sprechen wollte, so würde man damit behaupten, in der Wirklichkeit selbst ziehe das Sosein das Dasein nach sich; das Sosein existiere also durch sich selbst damit würde man es Gott entziehen; Gott würde überflüssig, insofern er die Ursache dafür ist, daß das, was ist, ist. Auf Grund dessen hat man sagen können, die reale Unterscheidung von Sosein und Dasein in den Geschöpfen und ihre Identität in Gott stelle die 'Grundwahrheit der christlichen Philosphie' dar.

Stichwort: Distinctio

Autor, Quelle: Lonergan, Understanding and Being

Titel: minor real distinction

Index: minor real distinction: Erfahren - Einsehen - Urteilen; Potenz - Form - Akt; kontradiktorische Prädikate können nicht ein und demselben zugeschrieben werden

Kurzinhalt: Form is neither potency nor act. Form is neither of the other two, because form is intelligible in itself. Neither act nor potency is intelligible in itself, if we are talking about finite act. But one and the same cannot have contradictory predicates ...

Text: 18/9 We have, then, three types of act, three levels of cognitional activity: the experiential, the intellectual, the rational. As act, these three levels also have content, and the content contained in the act is the content that is known. There is a content corresponding to experience, a content corresponding to understanding, and a content corresponding to judgment. Understanding presupposes and complements experience; judgment presupposes and complements understanding and experience. Consequently, since there are those relations between the acts, there will be relations of a similar sort between the contents. What we experience is what we inquire into; what we inquire into is what we understand; what we understand is what we conceive; what we conceive is what we reflect on; what we reflect on is what we grasp as virtually unconditioned; what we grasp as virtually unconditioned is what we affirm. That what is the content. There is a unity, then. It is always the same object that is being approached through experience, understanding, and judgment. (206f; Fs)

19/9 While there is a unity, there is also a distinction. The component that you know through experiencing is not the same as the component that you know through understanding. Understanding is not just another experiential element; it is a unification that supervenes upon experiential elements, and it stands in a different order. The affirmation of judgment, the 'is,' is a third component that closes the unity. Consequently, just as one knowing involves three components, so one known will involve three components; and one can establish, by setting up definitions of distinctions,1 that, of those three components, one really is not the other; they are really distinct. It is a minor real distinction, because it occurs within one and the same being; nonetheless, it is a real distinction. (207; Fs)

20/9 Form is what in itself is intelligible; it is the component in the known that is known precisely inasmuch as one is understanding. The experienced in itself is not an intelligible, but it is what can be understood; it is related to the intelligible, it is intelligible in the other. Act in itself has a certain intelligibility, but it is an incomplete intelligibility; it corresponds to the virtually unconditioned. Insofar as it is unconditioned, an absolute, it involves some type of intelligibility; but that intelligibility is a dependent intelligibility. It is a virtually unconditioned, an unconditioned that happens to have its conditions fulfilled; it is contingent. It has a reference to the other, and it must have that reference if it is to be fully understood.d (207; Fs) (notabene)

21/9 Now P and Q are really distinct if P is, Q is, and P is not Q. There is form, there is potency, there is act; but the three are as components in one being, and no one is the other two. Form is neither potency nor act. Form is neither of the other two, because form is intelligible in itself. Neither act nor potency is intelligible in itself, if we are talking about finite act. But one and the same cannot have contradictory predicates; one and the same cannot be both intelligible in itself and not intelligible in itself. If there are contradictory predicates, both of which are to be affirmed , then there have to be different subjects. Therefore, form is not potency, form is not act. That is a distinction that is true; therefore, it is a real distinction, it regards reality. (207; Fs) (notabene)

22/9 Again, while both potency and act are intelligible in the other, still it is a different other in which they are intelligible. Potency is intelligible in form; act is intelligible ultimately only in a formally unconditioned act an act that is not simply the virtually unconditioned, but a formally unconditioned that has no conditions at all. What is intelligible only in the formally unconditioned act is not the same as what is intelligible in form. (207f; Fs)

23/9 We may take another angle on this. One can ask, 'Are these three simply posited as real? Are they components of reality, or are they components of reality as known?' We spoke of all three in terms of their intelligibility and that would suggest that they are components of reality as known. However, if we go back to our definition of being - being is the object of the verb 'to know' - we note that it has an intrinsic relation to knowing. Being has to be intrinsically intelligible; otherwise understanding and understanding correctly could not be knowledge of being. (208; Fs)

Stichwort: Distinctio

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

Titel: Endliche intellektuelle Natur - 4 Unterscheidungen

Index: Endliche intellektuelle Natur; Spannung: Endlichkeit - Ausgriff auf Sein; 4 Unterscheidungen: Substanz, Seinsakt, Potenz, Akt

Kurzinhalt: ... Aquinas proves that in every finite intellectual nature these four are really distinct: substance, act of existence, operational potency, and operation itself.

Text: 339a If, however, the intellectual nature is finite, there is an opposition between the finitude of its own reality and the infinity of its adequate object, total being. Because there is this opposition, Aquinas proves that in every finite intellectual nature these four are really distinct: substance, act of existence, operational potency, and operation itself.1 On account of these real distinctions between a subsistent itself and the intrinsic causes by which it is constituted, it is manifest that not everything that is in a finite intellectual nature is also that which is, or subsistent. (Fs) (notabene)