Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Religious studies - theology; animal: rationale - symbolisches; Natur - Geschichte

Kurzinhalt: animal rationale, the rational animal - the symbolic animal; man understood as nature - understood as historic; religious studies confined to what is in the world

Textausschnitt: 1/8 Traditionally man was defined with abstract generality as the zoon logikon, the animal rationale, the rational animal. More concretely today he is regarded as the symbolic animal, whose knowledge is mediated by symbols, whose actions are informed by symbols, whose existence in its most characteristic features is constituted by a self-understanding and by commitments specified by symbols. On the abstract view man was understood as nature. On the relatively recent view man is understood as historic: for the symbols that inform his being vary with the cultures into which he is born, and the cultures themselves change with the passage of time. They emerge, they develop, they flourish, they influence one another, they can go astray, vanish with their former carriers, only to reappear with fresh vitality and vigor grafted upon new hosts. (115; Fs)