Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Erste Tätigkeit d. Verstandes: direktes Verstehen - Begriff (dicere); Intelligibilität im Phantasma; quid (an) sit; inner word

Kurzinhalt: First Operation: Direct Understanding; the intelligibility (intelligible species) grasped in an act of direct understanding is immanent in a phantasm; concepts are grounded in acts of understanding

Textausschnitt: 20/1 If I am trying to understand a circle, I draw or imagine a circle as best I can. Then I begin to reason. What makes it look like that? I manipulate the image: I can draw lines from a point in the centre to the circle; what if I make one line longer than all the rest? The result is a curve that is no longer smooth. What if I make one a little shorter? A similar result. Gradually I come to realize that circularity must have something to do with the equal length of lines radiating from the centre of the circle. This process of reasoning continues until I grasp, all at once in an act of understanding, the entire set of terms and relations essential to making the circle what it is, namely, a locus of coplanar points equidistant from a centre. This grasp is what Lonergan calls an act of direct understanding; it consists in an insight into phantasm, an apprehension of the intelligibility - that is, the form, pattern, order, structure, coherence - that interrelates the various elements of the phantasm. Aquinas designates this act, which satisfies the wonder manifested in a particular occurrence of the question quid sit, as the first operation of the human intellect. (10; Fs)
21/1 In every instance, the intelligibility (in Thomist phraseology, 'intelligible species') grasped in an act of direct understanding is immanent in a phantasm; it is the intelligibility of the phantasm:
[O]ne cannot understand without understanding something; and the something understood, the something whose intelligibility is actuated, is in the phantasm. To understand circularity is to grasp by intellect a necessary nexus between imagined equal radii and imagined uniform curvature. The terms to be connected are sensibly perceived; their relation, connection, unification, is what insight knows in the sensitive presentation.
22/1 Thus phantasms are indispensable to human knowing because by insight we grasp an intelligibility precisely as related to the particular data of some phantasm. But intelligibility is not itself something that can be either sensed or imagined: (10; Fs)
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24/1 There are two aspects to the first operation of the intellect: insofar as it is an insight, a grasp of the intelligibility of a phantasm - and this is the only aspect I have treated up to this point - it is an act of understanding (intelligere); but insofar as it produces an expression of the intelligibility grasped in understanding, it is an act of conceptualizing or defining (dicere). While by insight we grasp an intelligibility as related to or immanent in a phantasm, we can conceptualize because simultaneously (and precisely because of our insight) we also know the intelligibility as something distinct from the phantasm. The reason we have to ask quid sit in the first place is that a phantasm as phantasm is unexplained; our inquiry anticipates an explanation that is not conveyed by our mere experience of a field of data. Consequently, when we understand, we are conscious of the fact that we have grasped something over and above what is given by our senses or formed in our imaginations, and as a result we can express the content of our insight as an intelligibility - an explanatory set of terms and relations - precisely as distinct from the phantasm. When I understand a circle, I grasp through insight the intelligibility of the particular image that I have been trying to understand; I express the content of that insight as the pattern of distinctions and relations that constitute the concept or essential definition of a circle. This is the essence of the circle, the goal of the question quid sit. As such, it is universal and unchanging (V:51). For an essence, a concept, a quod quid est, is an intelligibility that has been set free, so to speak, from the sensible conditions in which it was initially grasped, an intelligibility that pertains not to any particular instance but to an indefinite number of similar instances. Archimedes ...
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25/1 The foregoing analysis is of great importance because it reveals that concepts are grounded in acts of understanding. We can express a concept precisely because, and only because, we have discovered through an insight an intelligibility immanent in a phantasm. And the 'because' does not mean only that insight and concept are related as efficient cause and effect; rather, as Lonergan points out, 'Conceptualization is the self-expression of an act of understanding; such self-expression is possible only because understanding is self-possessed, conscious of itself and its own conditions as understanding' (V:42; cf. 33-34). When we understand, in other words, we also know both that we understand and that our understanding constitutes sufficient grounds for the expression of an intelligibility. Hence conceptualizing is not an optional activity that may or may not follow on the occurrence of an insight; an act of direct understanding cannot but express itself in this way. (11f; Fs) (notabene)

26/1 It is important to be clear about what a concept is. It is not to be confused with the name of a thing or with a verbal definition. Names or sets of words can be used to signify concepts; but concepts themselves are preverbal expressions of acts of understanding. In the language of Aquinas, concepts are 'inner words,' meanings, self-expressions of intelligence in act, admitting a variety of expressions in the 'outer words' (whether spoken or otherwise manifested) of human language (V: 1-4). (12; Fs) (notabene)
27/1 It is not too difficult to verify the genetic relation of insight to concept in one's own experience. With relative ease one can memorize and perhaps even use correctly a set of words or symbols that express a concept; but if one has not experienced an act of understanding in which the intelligibility expressed in the concept is grasped in sensible data, then one is not really in possession of the concept, the inner word. Many students find themselves in this situation when they learn mathematics in school: they memorize verbal definitions and learn to apply them correctly when asked to solve familiar sorts of problems, but they do so by rote and not because they understand; when faced with an unfamiliar problem or application, suddenly they are at a loss as to how to proceed. The point, then, is that concepts and definitions are expressions of acts of understanding; they mean or define what is understood; and so ideas parroted without understanding are devoid of their proper meaning. (12; Fs)