Stichwort: Frage

Autor, Quelle: Vertin, Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Titel: Lonergan - Grundfragen

Index: Lonergan: drei fundamentale philosophische Fragen

Kurzinhalt: "What am I doing when I am knowing?" "Why is doing that knowing?" "What do I know when I do it?"

Text: 3.1 On the basic philosophical issues

216b Lonergan argues that, when all is said and done, the truly fundamental philosophical questions, the basic issues in philosophy, may be reduced to three: "What am I doing when I am knowing?" "Why is doing that knowing?" "What do I know when I do it?" (1974: 37, 86; 1972a: 307; 1972b: 25, 83, 261, 297, 316). The first question regards one's own concrete activity as a knower: what are the recurrent features of whatever conscious-intentional performances I label "knowing"? The full-blown answer to this question, arrived at through a reflexive objectification of operations that one already experiences oneself performing, constitutes one's cognitional theory, gnoseology, phenomenology of knowing. The second question regards the justification for the positive epistemic value that one ordinarily attributes to the conscious-intentional performances just noted: upon what grounds do I consider my "knowing" to be epistemically valid, secure, objective? The sufficiently detailed response to this question constitutes one's epistemology. The third question regards what one's cognitional performances are oriented toward: what in general is the character of the to-be-known, reality, the universe of being? The fully developed reply to this question constitutes one's metaphysics. Furthermore, the question about reality is third because an adequately critical answer to it is prefigured by one's answers to the other two questions together; and the question about epistemic objectivity is second because an adequately critical answer to it is prefigured by one's answer to the first question alone (1974: 37; 1972a: 307; 1972b: 20-21). Finally, the three questions, ordered in this way, make up what I am calling the integral set of basic philosophical issues. (Fs)

Stichwort: Frage

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

Titel: Grundfragen - Beispiel Kreis

Index: Grundfragen (Aristoteles, Thomas im Verstehenshorizont (Beispiel Kreis): Objekt der Vorstellung - O. d. Verstehens - O. d. Definition

Kurzinhalt: If you have understood this, you will now be able to go on to consider the Aristotelian and Thomistic way of speaking. In Posterior Analytics, II, 1 and 2, Aristotle states that all questions can be reduced to four types: Whether there is an A? What ...

Text: 577d With regard to their meaning and signification, we have already made a distinction between the imagined equal radii, the understood necessity of roundness, and, finally, the spoken or uttered definition of a circle. Now, anyone can imagine equal radii. It is a matter of intelligence to grasp the necessity of roundness in that equality of radii. Finally, the act of defining is a matter of attributing to a circle and only to a circle that series or locus of points which lie in die same plane surface equidistant from a center. Thus there are three objects: the object of the imagination (equal radii), the object of the understanding (the necessity of roundness), and the object of the interior utterance (the definition of a circle). These are not only distinct but are also interrelated. The object of the imagination is to the object of understanding as matter to intelligible form, and the object of understanding is to the object of an interior utterance or word as its reason or cause or 'because of which' (propter quid). (Fs) (notabene; tblVrw)

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579b That the object of an interior utterance has its reason and cause and its 'because of which' in the object of understanding is clear both from our intellectual experience - we are able to define a thing because we have understood it - and also on the authority of St Thomas: 'Whenever we understand, by the mere fact that we do understand, something proceeds within us, which is the conception of the thing understood, issuing from our intellectual power and proceeding from its knowledge. A spoken word signifies this conception; and this conception is called "the word of the heart," signified by the spoken word.' '... according to intellectual emanation, such as that of the intelligible word from the speaker, which remains within the speaker. Thus does the Catholic faith affirm procession in God' (Summa theologiae, 1, q. 27, a. 1 a). (Fs) (notabene)

579c If you have understood this, you will now be able to go on to consider the Aristotelian and Thomistic way of speaking. In Posterior Analytics, II, 1 and 2, Aristotle states that all questions can be reduced to four types: Whether there is an A? What is an A? Whether A is B? Why A is B? And these four can be further reduced to two; for the first and the third are about existence, while the second and the fourth are about 'why,' 'because of what.'

579d This is easy to see in the case of the first, third, and fourth questions. The first asks about the existence of some A, the third asks about the existence of a property B in a subject A, and the fourth deals expressly with why A is B. But it seems odd, perhaps, that the question, What is an A? is regarded as asking about a why. For it expressly asks What? rather than Why?

579e Yet, as Aristotle remarked, the question What? very often without any difficulty changes into Why? If I ask, for example, 'What is a lunar eclipse?' the question really means, 'Why is the moon covered over like this?' And in fact, whether I understand what an eclipse is, or whether I understand why the moon is covered over, I am understanding the same thing, namely, that the earth moves in between the moon and the sun, thus preventing the moon from being illuminated. (Fs)