Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Wirkursache: Widerlegung -> Frage nach der Realität des Influx; potentia agendi and ipsum agere; motus est in mobili, actio est in passo

Kurzinhalt: Either the influx is or it is not really distinct from what it produces. If it is, there is an infinite series. If it is not, ...

Textausschnitt: 1.3 Critique of Views on Efficient Causality

57a Such are six views on the issue. I believe that the first three are easily refuted, that the fourth and fifth involve fallacies, that the sixth is demonstrated validly. The troublesome question for anyone who would defend any of the first three views is whether the influx is a reality. If it is not a reality, then efficient causality is not a reality but only a thought or, perhaps more accurately, a bit of imagination. But if the influx is a reality, it would seem that there must be an infinity of influences for each case of efficient causality. For if the influx is a reality, it must be produced itself; that production would involve a further influx, and that influx a further production. One might wish to say, Sistitur in primo.f But why? Either the influx is or it is not really distinct from what it produces. If it is, there is an infinite series. If it is not, then influx is just another name for the effect. At this point, the defender will urge that the influx is indeed a reality, that there are not an infinity of influences for each effect, and the reason is that the influx is a different type of reality from the effect - the type that eliminates the infinite series. But what type is that? I know only one, the real relation. There is no real efficient causality of efficient causality, and so on to infinity, because the reality of efficient causality is the reality of a real relation, and 'relatio relationis est ens rationis.'g It should seem that the first three views, while they differ profoundly on the reality of mediate efficient causality, have in common the source of their differences, namely, a failure to think out what is the reality of efficient causality as such. (Fs) (notabene)

57b The fourth view (the first on the second concept of efficient causality) involves a fallacy. When I see, it is true that I act in the sense that grammatically 'I' is subject of a verb in the active voice. But that does not prove that ontologically I am the efficient cause of my own seeing. Nor is it likely that anyone will find a proof that I am. For both Aristotle and Aquinas, external sensation has its efficient cause in the sensible object. Again, for both, 'intelligere est pati.' Again, for both, 'appetibile apprehensum movet appetitum,' and in later Thomist doctrine of the will, the act of willing an end is effected quoad exercitium actus by God. (Fs)

58a The fallacy of the fifth position lies in affirming that the real difference between potentia agendi and ipsum agere is a reality added to the agent as agent; in fact, that reality is the effect, added to the patient as patient (motus est in mobili, actio est in passo), and predicated of the agent as agent only by extrinsic denomination; it has to be so, for otherwise either metaphysical laws have exceptions or else a motor immobilis would be a contradiction in terms; nor is it possible to demonstrate that, while action as action is predicated of the agent by extrinsic denomination, still created action as created is predicated of the agent by intrinsic denomination; what alone is demonstrable about created action as such is that it is conditioned, and that happens to be the premise of the sixth view. (Fs)