Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Aristoteles: vertikale Finalität; Psychologie (Potenz), Kirchenväter, Thomas; Theorie vor Wille; praeparatio evangelica

Kurzinhalt: that Aristotle's thought offered rather stony ground for the objectification of the life of the spirit; psychology: causality not intentionality (Intentionalität); priority of intellect over will

Textausschnitt: 18/3 In a celebrated passage Aristotle granted that his ideal of the theoretic life was too high for man and that, if one lived it, one would do so not as a man but as having something divine present within one. Nonetheless he went on to urge us to dismiss those that would have us resign ourselves to our mortal lot. He pressed us to strive to the utmost to make ourselves immortal and to live out what was finest in us. For that finest, though slight in bulk, still surpassed by far all else in power and in value. (27; Fs) (notabene; FN: Aristoteles, Ethik)
()
19/3 It is not hard to discern in this passage an acknowledgment of vertical finality in its multivalence and in its obscurity. In its multivalence, for there is in man a finest; it surpasses all else in power and in value; it is to be let go all the way. In its obscurity, for what is the divine in man, and what would be going all the way? (27; Fs)
()
20/3 One has only to shift, however, from the corpus of Aristotelian writings to that of the Christian tradition, to recognize in Aristotle's position a sign of things to come. So Christian humanists have spoken of a praeparatio evangelica in the Gentile world and, more bluntly, St. Paul said to the Athenians: "What you worship but do not know-this is what I now proclaim". (Acts 17:23). (27; Fs)
()
21/3 If in the Greek patristic tradition theoria became the name of contemplative prayer, if medieval theologians derived from Aristotle's principles an argument that man naturally desired to know God by his essence, it still remains that Aristotle's thought offered rather stony ground for the objectification of the life of the spirit. For the priority accorded the object gave metaphysics a dominant role. Psychology had to think in terms of potencies, or faculties, that were not among the data of consciousness. Worse, since psychology envisaged plant as well as animal and human life, the relation of operation to object was conceived, not precisely as intentionality, but vaguely as causality. Further, the priority of objects entailed a priority of intellect over will, since will was conceived as rational appetite; and on the priority of intellect over will, there somehow followed a priority of speculative over practical intellect. (27f; Fs) (notabene)
()