Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Verbum: Vertiefung der Erkenntnislehre v. Thomas; Kurzfassung dieser Theorie; Begriff; Seele; Introspektion

Kurzinhalt: human knowing: a compound process; the act of understanding: a pivotal moment in human knowing; concepts: the rational self-expression of acts of understanding; introspection

Textausschnitt: 2 The Two Operations of the Human Intellect

2.1 The Introspective Method of Thomas Aquinas

6/1 At the time that he wrote De ente supernaturali, Lonergan was more than halfway through his five-year period of intensive research into Aquinas's trinitarian theory,1 a labour that eventuated in the publication of the Verbum articles and laid the groundwork for his monumental book Insight. Lonergan's interest in this topic was provoked in part by the existence of a disagreement among Catholic theologians as to the meaning of Aquinas's psychological analogy of the Trinity (found in its most developed form in articles 27-43 of the Pars Prima).2 (5; Fs)

7/1 As his research progressed, Lonergan grew in the conviction that the trinitarian controversy was only one symptom of an illness that had infected scholastic philosophy and theology as a whole, an illness whose roots lay in the almost complete failure of that tradition to appreciate the importance accorded by Aquinas to the act of understanding {intelligere)3. The situation could be remedied, he believed, only by penetrating Aquinas's doctrine on human knowing more deeply than the Thomistic tradition had managed to do (V:206-15). The Verbum articles are an impressive witness to the breadth, sophistication, and painstaking care of his inquiry. In the end, what Lonergan claimed to have accomplished was nothing less than an authentic recovery of the Thomist theory of human knowing (V:215-20). Among the most important elements that he sought to restore to their proper place in that theory were the following: that human knowing is a compound process rather than some single intellectual operation; that the act of understanding is the pivotal moment in human knowing; that direct understanding is a conscious act consisting in the grasp of some intelligible pattern in the data of sense or imagination; that concepts are not the product of an unconscious, metaphysical process but rather the rational self-expression of acts of understanding; that reasoning is understanding-in-process, and therefore is not essentially a matter of formal logic; that knowledge of what actually exists is had only after one has passed judgment on the correctness of the intelligibility grasped by understanding; that while Aquinas does employ metaphysical analysis to express his theory, the source of the theory was Aquinas's introspective insight into the intelligibility of his own intellectual operations as he consciously experienced them. I will touch on each of these issues in the present chapter. It will be most helpful to begin with the last, because it explains why Lonergan talks about the Thomist theory of knowledge in the terms that he does and why he appropriates the main lines of the theory as his own. (5f; Fs)

8/1 Both Aquinas and Aristotle explore the problem of how to determine just what it is that makes a human being a human being. They note that human beings are living; and what makes any living being to be alive and to be a particular kind of living being is a soul.4 Hence the problem of acquiring explanatory knowledge of the human being as specifically human boils down to the problem of determining how the human soul differs from other kinds of souls. Aquinas and Aristotle had a method for arriving at such a differentiation: (6; Fs)

[S]ouls differ by difference in their potencies. Since potency is knowable only inasmuch as it is in act, to know the different potencies it is necessary to know their acts. Again, since one act is distinguished from another by the difference of their respective objects, to know different kinds of acts it is necessary to discriminate between different kinds of objects. Knowledge of soul, then, begins from a distinction of objects; specifying objects leads to a discrimination between different kinds of act; different kinds of act reveal difference of potency; and the different combinations of potencies lead to knowledge of the different essences that satisfy the generic definition of soul.5
9/1 Although its categories are metaphysical, Lonergan does not hesitate to call this approach, insofar as it is applied to the study of the human soul, 'a method of empirical introspection.'6 The acts and objects that mark human beings off from members of other animal species are all to be found in human consciousness.7 To attain scientific knowledge of the human soul, therefore, one must begin by examining such distinctive acts and objects; and these, acts and objects alike, are to be found not in some abstract human consciousness but in the consciousness of concretely existing human beings - most notably, oneself. (6f; Fs) (notabene)

10/1 Lonergan does not claim that Aquinas made introspection an explicit theme in his writings.8 He does argue, however, that Aquinas's metaphysical account of human knowing stems in fact from what Aquinas himself understood about his own concrete acts of knowing as experienced by him in his own consciousness.9 To review the (in my judgment, solid) evidence adduced by Lonergan in support of this contention would take me far afield, so I will limit myself to two observations: first, Lonergan claims not only that he has correctly interpreted the position of Aquinas but also that this position, in its essentials, actually offers a correct explanation of human knowing; and second, the reason why Lonergan adopted this position has nothing to do with blind acquiescence to authority, and everything to do with the fact that he was able to verify the position himself by reflecting on his own conscious operations.10 (7; Fs)

11/1 I should point out that by 'introspection' Lonergan does not intend some kind of 'looking within' oneself in order to 'see' what is 'there.' In fact, in later works he tends to avoid the term precisely because of its visual and spatial connotations.11 What he means by 'empirical introspection' and similar terms is simply the practice of attending to, and trying to understand correctly, the process of one's own knowing as it actually occurs in one's own mind.12 That process is not something unconscious. Just as we are aware of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling, so too remembering, imagining, wondering, pursuing clues, having and formulating insights, weighing evidence, concluding to the truth or falsity of one's insights all take place within the field of our awareness and so can be the object of inquiry. (7; Fs)

12/1 What follows, then, is a sketch of the psychological facts underpinning Aquinas's theory of human knowing. He discovered them in his own consciousness; so did Lonergan; and so must the reader, if the goal is to understand these two men as they understood themselves. (7; Fs)