Stichwort: Bild, Abbild, Imagination

Autor, Quelle: Voegelin, Hitler and the Germans

Titel: Imago Dei - imago hominis

Index: Nicht-Erfahrung der Transzendenz -> Entmenschlichung; imago Dei -> imago hominis; Reibung: erste - zweiter Realität

Kurzinhalt: When concupiscent fantasy shifts the accents of reality, it then superimposes a false image on reality; phenomena of friction between second and first reality

Text: 48. Nonexperience of Transcendence Leading to Dehumanization

261a Let us characterize the period further. (Fs)

We notice that there occurs within it a remarkable shifting of the accent in the representation of what is reality. The reality of reason and spirit, which reveals itself in noetic and pneumatic experiences, fades away, and in its place the accent is transferred to the experience of the world of things in space-time existence. This has various consequences-some dubious, some gratifying. The period itself is dubious, insofar as all reality that does not have the manner of being of world-immanent existing things sinks to nonreality. The period is gratifying for us in the new situation of philosophizing, insofar as the energetic contraction of the expression "existence" to the manner of being of world-immanent things fits well into exact concept-formation and so should be adopted. In this way we gain the freedom of speaking with precision of the realms of reason and the spirit as nonexistent reality. At all events, this manner of speaking seems actually clearer than Heidegger's attempt to claim the expression "existence" for the transcending being of man and, further, to connect it with the problem of historicity, since this attempt at a compromise will not do justice to the world-immanent existing things, to our experiences of transcendence, or to history. (Fs) (notabene)

261b But let us remain with the period we are discussing. Within it, the accent of reality shifted toward immanent being, and in this period the expressions "science" and "experience" were monopolized for this realm; the science of experience became the science of world-immanent things. On the other hand, with regard to the nonexistent reality of reason and spirit, the symbols of philosophy and revelation, in which the experiences of transcendence are interpreted, became opaque for their experiential content. And this increasing opacity was further limited by the atrophy of experience in the sense of the denial of the meditative interest and of the energy for the articulation of the nonexistent realms of reality. There was no further living meditative reality, and consequently the language of reason and spirit became obscured to the point of the famous value-judgments, which from the viewpoint of world-immanent experience had no basis in critical experience. The episteme in the classical sense was dead. (Fs) (notabene)

262a Yet even if the life of the spirit sinks to the level of enlightened reason, to bourgeois morality, and to liberal or nonliberal Weltanschauungen, and even if the symbols of transcendence are subjected to serious deformations of their meaning and become discredited, nevertheless these occurrences leave the order of being itself utterly unchanged. Even if Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche thoroughly murder God and explain him away as dead, divine being remains eternal and man must still get on with living his life sealed by his creatureliness and by death. When concupiscent fantasy shifts the accents of reality, it then superimposes a false image on reality. We speak of this fantasy image as the second reality. And when man tries to live in this second reality, when he attempts to transform himself from the imago Dei into an imago hominis, then conflicts arise with the first reality, whose order continually exists. Characteristic for the period, then, are the phenomena of friction between second and first reality-even if their very beginnings reach further back in time. For us the most interesting frictions are those that emerge at the point of fracture with the realms of the nonexistent realities of reason and spirit, which have been discredited and explained away as nonreal. I will enumerate some of these phenomena: (Fs)

Stichwort: Bild, Abbild, Imagination

Autor, Quelle: Rhonheimer, Natur als Grundlage der Moral

Titel: Imago Dei - Autonomie

Index: Imago Dei, Thomas - Autonomie

Kurzinhalt: Bezeichnenderweise steht die Quaestio 93 der Prima Pars, in welcher die imago Dei im Menschen zur Sprache kommt, unter dem Titel: "Über das Ziel der Erschaffung des Menschen"

Text: 192a In seinem vielzitierten Prolog zur Prima Secundae bezeichnet Thomas, einem Text von Johannes Damaszenus folgend, diese personale Autonomie als imago, Ebenbild der göttlichen potestas. "Da (...) der Mensch insofern als Abbild Gottes geschaffen betrachtet wird, als mit 'Abbild' das bezeichnet wird, was intellektiv und in seiner Willensentscheidung frei und durch sich selbst Herrschaft besitzend ist, so muß, nachdem vom Urbild (exemplar) die Rede war, d. h. von Gott, und dem, was, seinem Willen gemäß aus der göttlichen Macht hervorgegangen ist, nun noch von seinem Abbild gesprochen werden, das heißt: vom Menschen, insofern auch er selbst Prinzip seiner Handlungen ist, also freien Willen und Herrschaft über seine Handlungen besitzt."1 Bereits hier ist das Thema der Partizipation angesprochen: Denn die imago ist eine Partizipation am exemplar, dem göttlichen Urbild. (Fs)

192b Nun wurde innerhalb der Summa Theologiae vom Menschen als imago Dei bereits in der Prima Pars gesprochen, und unter Berücksichtigung der dortigen Ausführungen zeigt sich, daß der im Prolog zur Secunda Pars verwendete imago-Begriff nicht der eigentliche und grundlegende ist. Das ist wichtig, um aus seiner Verwendung im Zusammenhang der Moral nicht falsche Schlüsse zu ziehen.2 (Fs)

192c Bezeichnenderweise steht die Quaestio 93 der Prima Pars, in welcher die imago Dei im Menschen zur Sprache kommt, unter dem Titel: "Über das Ziel der Erschaffung des Menschen" (De fine sive termino productionis hominis): Die Gottebenbildlichkeit des Menschen gibt nicht nur Aufschluß über den personal-autonomen Charakter menschlichen Handelns, sondern auch und zuerst über Sinn und Ziel des menschlichen Daseins, - und deshalb dann auch über Sinn und Ziel der dieser imago zugehörigen Herrschaft oder Freiheit. (Fs) (notabene)

...