Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Möglichkeit -> übernatürlicher Aktes: potentia oboedientialis; Beispiel: erster, zweiter Akt; Fehlschluss: 1. Akt als aktive Potenz

Kurzinhalt: Hence, a finite substance elevated to first act is not thereby able to produce a second act; ... that active potency pertains to second act, not to first, so that a subject must be in second act if it is to produce another second act in itself

Textausschnitt: 16/7 Production involves efficient causality, which is the actuation of some active potency. A being has this potency, the capacity to function as an efficient cause, only to the extent that it is in second act. Thus, an unlit cigarette lighter (first act) is in proximate passive potency to receiving the act of burning (second act); a lighter that has been lit (second act) is in active potency to actuating the passive potency of a pile of wood; the wood as actually burning (second act) is itself in active potency to heating a pot of water or cooking food or setting fire to other nearby objects (all second acts). Viewed from one perspective, the act of burning is passive, for neither the lighter nor the wood causes its own act but rather receives it (the wood receives it from the lit lighter; the lighter receives it remotely from the person who supplies the kinetic energy that causes the spark to be struck). From another perspective, the act of burning is active, for, by virtue of that same immanent act or operation of burning, the wood can cause certain effects to occur in other subjects. (217; Fs) (notabene)

First act is related to second act as a perfectible to its perfection; in this way a substantial form is related to its act of existing, a habit to its use, the form of weight to downward motion, etc. Hence, a finite substance elevated to first act is not thereby able to produce a second act. It is able to produce a second act to the extent to which it has already been elevated to second act. Thus, one who is moved by God to an act of willing a supernatural end is able to produce an act of willing a supernatural means. But one who has not been moved by God to the act of willing the end, even if he has already been elevated by a first act (virtue), cannot produce an act of willing supernatural means. (notabene)
19/7 With this one paragraph Lonergan exposes the speculative incoherence of the theory of vital act. The supporters of this theory supposedly accept the universality of the principle omne agens agit sibi simile, yet they seem blind to the fact that first act is form, that it stands to operation as potency to act, that it is ontologically less perfect than operation (even if it is supplemented by a Bannezian premotion) - in short, that it cannot produce an act in either itself or another because it is not yet in act itself. The two views may be contrasted as depicted in figure 6. A potency is nothing more than a yet-to-be-realized possibility, a yet-to-be-actualized capacity; it cannot perfect itself. No form or habit, therefore, is proportionate to the production of its corresponding second act. Lonergan maintains that, even in those instances where habits are required for the occurrence of supernatural acts, they are required not so that the subject can produce the acts but rather so that it can receive them (DES:88). All of this contradicts the very principle upon which the theory of vital act is predicated, namely, that vital acts are necessarily produced by the subjects in which they occur. (218; Fs) (notabene)