Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Naturrecht - Prinzip der Bewegung: Liebe - Selbsttranszendenz

Kurzinhalt: principle of movement and of rest: being-in-love - ongoing process of self-transcendence

Textausschnitt: 21/11 I have been speaking of nature as a principle of movement and of rest, but I have come up with many such principles and so, it would seem, with many natures. There are different questions: for intelligence, for reflection, for deliberation. Each is a principle of movement. Each also is an immanent norm, a criterion, and thereby a principle of rest once the movement is complete. (174; Fs) (notabene)
22/11 It remains that the many form a series, each in turn taking over where its predecessor left off. What is complete under the aspect of intelligibility, is not yet complete under the aspect of factual truth; and what is complete under the aspect of factual truth, has not yet broached the question of the good. Further, if what the several principles attain are only aspects of something richer and fuller, must not the several principles themselves be but aspects of a deeper and more comprehensive principle? And is not that deeper and more comprehensive principle itself a nature, at once a principle of movement and of rest, a tidal movement that begins before consciousness, unfolds through sensitivity, intelligence, rational reflection, responsible deliberation, only to find its rest beyond all of these? I think so. (174f; Fs) (notabene)
23/11 The point beyond is being-in-love, a dynamic state that sublates all that goes before, a principle of movement at once purgative and illuminative, and a principle of rest in which union is fulfilled. (175; Fs)
24/11 The whole movement is an ongoing process of self-transcendence. There is the not yet conscious self of deep sleep. There is the fragmentarily conscious self of the dream state. There is the awakened self aware of its environment, exerting its capacities, meeting its needs. There is the intelligent self, serializing and extrapolating and generalizing until by thought it has moved out of the environment of an animal and towards a universe of being. There is the reasonable self, discerning fact from fiction, history from legend, astronomy from astrology, chemistry from alchemy, science from magic, philosophy from myth. There is the moral self, advancing from individual satisfactions to group interests and, beyond these, to the overarching, unrelenting question, What would be really worthwhile? (175; Fs)
25/11 Yet this great question commonly is more promise than fulfillment, more the fertile ground of an uneasy conscience than the vitality and vigor of achievement. For self-transcendence reaches its term not in righteousness but in love and, when we fall in love, then life begins anew. A new principle takes over and, as long as it lasts, we are lifted above ourselves and carried along as parts within an ever more intimate yet ever more liberating dynamic whole. (175; Fs)
26/11 Such is the love of husband and wife, parents and children. Such again, less conspicuously but no less seriously, is the loyalty