Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Naturrecht - Dialektik der Geschichte; Quelle und Rechtfertigung des Naturrechts

Kurzinhalt: DIALECTIC OF HISTORY; The source of natural right lies in the norms immanent in human intelligence ... The vindication of natural right lies in the dialectic of history

Textausschnitt: 27/11 I have said that people are responsible individually for the lives they lead and collectively for the world in which they live them. Now the normative source of meaning, of itself, reveals no more than individual responsibility. Only inasmuch as the immanent source becomes revealed in its effects, in the functioning order of society, in cultural vitality and achievement, in the unfolding of human history, does the manifold of isolated responsibilities coalesce into a single object that can gain collective attention. (176; Fs)
28/11 Further, the normative source of meaning is not the only source, for the norms can be violated. Besides intelligence, there is obtuseness; besides truth there is falsity; besides what is worthwhile, there is what is worthless; besides love there is hatred. So from the total source of meaning we may have to anticipate not only social order but also disorder, not only cultural vitality and achievement but also lassitude and deterioration, not an ongoing and uninterrupted sequence of developments but rather a dialectic of radically opposed tendencies. (176; Fs)
29/11 It remains that in such a dialectic one finds 'writ large' the very issues that individuals have to deal with in their own minds and hearts. But what before could be dismissed as, in each case, merely an infinitesimal in the total fabric of social and cultural history, now has taken on the dimensions of collective triumph or disaster. Indeed, in the dialectic there is to be discerned the experimental verification or refutation of the validity of a people's way of life, even though it is an experiment devised and conducted not by human choice but by history itself. (176; Fs)
30/11 Finally, it is in the dialectic of history that one finds the link between natural right and historical mindedness. The source of natural right lies in the norms immanent in human intelligence, human judgment, human evaluation, human affectivity. The vindication of natural right lies in the dialectic of history and awesomely indeed in the experiment of history. Let us set forth briefly its elements under six headings. (176; Fs) (notabene)