Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: intellectus possibilis, agens; Habitus: Wissenschaft, Intellekt, Weisheit; Zielobjekt

Kurzinhalt: species intelligibilis; habit: intellect (knowing the first principles of demonstrations), science, wisdom;

Textausschnitt: [F]irst, there is the moving object of direct understanding, namely, the actuated intelligibility of what is presented by imagination; secondly, there is the terminal object of direct understanding, the essence expressed in a definition; thirdly, there is the moving object of reflective understanding, the aggregate of what is called the evidence on an issue; fourthly, there is the terminal object of reflective understanding, the verum [the true] expressed in a judgment; Fifthly, there is the transcendent object, reality, known imperfectly in prior acts but perfectly only through the truth of judgment.
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59/1 Now two of these objects, the immanent intelligibility of the phantasm (the species intelligibilis or quidditas rei materialis ) and the evidence regarding the relevance of the concept to the data, are said to be 'moving' objects; by this Lonergan means that they cause the act of either direct or reflective understanding to occur in the intellect (V: 139-40). In other words, these are agent objects functioning as efficient causes, and with respect to them the intellect is receptive, not active. (The analysis of the intellect and will as passive potencies will prove very significant for Lonergan's understanding of supernatural acts. ) Thus an act of understanding, whether direct or reflective, is an actuation of a passive potency. To this potency, our capacity to understand, Aristotle and Aquinas give the name 'possible intellect'. (24; Fs) (notabene)
60/1 But the intellect also plays an active role in its own actuation. For phantasms become actually intelligible only if they are 'illuminated,' that is, if they are objects of wonder, objects whose nature the intellect seeks to understand. In the same way, evidence becomes relevant only if the intellect is engaged in reflective activity, 'assaying its knowledge' by a reduction to first principles (V:62-63). To account for the production of illuminated phantasms and relevant evidence, which are never simply given as data of either imagination or sense, it is necessary to posit an active principle, the 'agent intellect,' which produces these agent objects as instruments for attaining knowledge: (24; Fs)
Both definition and judgment proceed from acts of understanding, but the former from direct, the latter from reflective understanding. Both acts of understanding have their principal cause in the agent intellect, but the direct act in the agent intellect as spirit of wonder and inquiry, the reflective act in the agent intellect as spirit of critical reflection, as virtus iudicativa.