Autor: Lawrence, G. Frederick

Buch: Communication and Lonergan

Titel: The Human Good and Christian Conversation

Stichwort: Freiheit u Aristoteles: kein Unterschied zw. Ausübung und Spezifikation des Willens; keine moralische Impotenz

Kurzinhalt: But he did not distinguish clearly between the specification and exercise of free will; no theory of moral impotence

Textausschnitt: 34 Take, for example, the word "liberty" in the structure of the human good. Liberty was acknowledged by the Greeks, but it was not a theme for them. They had a common sense apprehension of the difference between slave or free. Theoretically, Aristotle was explicitly clear about the contingency of terrestrial events, which implies the contingency of all human agency. But he did not distinguish clearly between the specification and exercise of free will. And in spite of having a theory of habit, a notion that intellectual virtues liberate human beings more than even the moral virtues do, a recognition that most men know what is good yet choose what is to their own advantage, he had no theory of moral impotence. In short, we have no reason to suppose that the ancient Greek meaning of liberty coincides with Lonergan's in a more than partial way. (260; Fs) (notabene)

35 On the other hand, liberty has been a theme for the moderns. Indeed, some modern thinkers might agree with Lonergan that liberty is not just indeterminacy but self-determination and even perhaps that "we experience our liberty as the active thrust of the subject terminating the process of deliberation" (1972, p. 50). But none of the modern thinkers I have mentioned would agree with him either that "implicit in human choice of values is the absolute good that is God" (Lonergan, 1967/1988, p. 230); or, correlatively, that freedom of choice is grounded in our ability to criticize any finite course of group or individual action (1972, p. 50). And similarly, despite, their realization that the god must be a being beyond the intracosmic gods, the Greeks did not affirm an explanatory notion of divine transcendence, any more than the moderns do. (260; Fs)