Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: The Notion of Being; Aristotle: ousia, eidos; Augustinus: veritas; Thomas: ens dicitur ab esse

Kurzinhalt: ti estin ousia, what has the same meaning as why; eclipse (moon); what is man? -> aition tou einai, the causa essendi

Textausschnitt: 31/7 Now let us take another instance, one that ties in with the preceding: the notion of being. Parmenides was the first to insist on to on. Plato carried the matter further, but Aristotle was the one who really went to work on the issue. He argues out the meaning of the word ousia in book 7 of his Metaphysics. In the last chapter of that book, after he has considered what ousia is from a whole series of different angles, he says, Now let us begin afresh, let us take matters in another way. It is this last study that will, I think, throw a shaft of light upon what Aristotle is talking about. (170; Fs)
32/7 Aristotle is asking ti estin ousia, What is being ('entity,' in Owens's translation)? He says that to ask what something is is the same question as to ask why. What do you mean when you ask what? The difficulty of that question lies not only in the term 'being' but also in what is meant by what. Aristotle says what has the same meaning as why. This can be shown from simple examples. What is an eclipse? You can change that into a why question: Why is the moon darkened in this fashion? If you can explain why the moon is darkened in this fashion, you can explain what an eclipse is. The same answer goes for both questions. The moon is darkened in this fashion because the earth comes between the moon and the sun, and so the light from the sun does not reach the moon. What, then, is an eclipse? It is the earth blocking off the light of the sun from the moon. The questions what and why are the same. (170f; Fs) (notabene)
33/7 However, Aristotle admitted that not all cases of the question, What is it? can be reduced to questions of why in the same simple fashion. In talking about an eclipse of the moon you can ask, Why is the moon thus darkened? The eclipse is the darkening, the covering up, the leaving out. But when you ask, What is a house? or What is a man? how do you change that into a why question? There is only one term. Aristotle's answer is to distinguish between the materials and the form. Why are these pieces of timber and lumps of stone a house? Because of the form, because of the way the artificial form orders together all the stones and all the pieces of timber. And why are these materials a man? Because of the form, because of the soul; the intellective soul makes this body a man. So he concludes that when you ask the question, What? you can change it into a question, Why? by asking for the formal cause in the ultimate simple instances. And so when Aristotle in book 7 asks, What is a man? the answer is the aition tou einai, the causa essendi, the reason why the materials are something. That is the form, the eidos, the morpé. At the end of book 7, he identifies ousia with eidos, with form, with the causa essendi. Then in book 8 he moves on a step, to discuss material things, and there he says that the aition, the 'What is it?' is the essence. In material things this is the combination of form and matter. In immaterial things it is the form alone. So we have the Aristotelian answer to the question of being in terms of matter and form, or, in the immaterial order, of pure form. (171; Fs) (notabene)
34/7 Now the Aristotelian answer did not satisfy St Thomas. After all, Aristotle is not asking why this man is, but why he is a man, not why this house is, but why it is a house. St Thomas notes, ens dicitur ab esse. 'Being,' the noun, is said from 'to be.' It receives its meaning from the 'to be,' from the 'is.' And the 'is' is something that is not just the same as being something. (171f; Fs) (notabene)
35/7 St Thomas does not drop the Aristotelian notion that what means why. But he has an answer to the question, What is being? - namely, Why is being what it is? He acknowledges an ens per essentiam, a being that in virtue of its own intelligibility is. Direct knowledge of that being is the beatific vision. Any other being is a being by participation. To understand an ens per participationem is to understand, not being, but a kind of being - the being of a rose, or the being of a monkey, or the being of a man, but not being simply. To know being as being is to have the beatific vision. God knows in his essence himself and everything else that is or could be. Insofar as we participate that divine knowledge in the beatific vision, we have knowledge of what being is. But until we have knowledge of what being is, we know being only by analogy, by knowing some beings and extrapolating to the others. (172; Fs) (notabene)
36/7 Now, when St Thomas goes beyond Aristotle on the notion of being, what he is doing is bringing together Augustine and Aristotle. Augustine is the man who first insisted on veritas, on truth. The Aristotelian notion of being was, Sense and understanding correspond to matter and form. But in St Thomas, sense, understanding, and judgment correspond to matter, form, and the act of essence: esse, existence. St Augustine is the one who developed the notion of judgment as fundamental in knowing, the veritas. St Thomas added its metaphysical equivalent, the esse, in the composition of the finite being. (172; Fs) (notabene)