Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Offenheit als Tatsache, Haltung und Geschenk (Lonergan, Aristoteles, Thomas), Staunen; unbegrenztes Streben; gratia sanans, elevans

Kurzinhalt: unrestricted desire to know; Openness as a fact is the pure desire to know; Openness as achievement is the self in its self-appropriation and self-realization;

Textausschnitt: 186a The basic orientation,d finally, is the pure, detached, disinterested, and unrestricted desire to know. I should note that this desire, when it is functioning, is no less immediate than the levels of consciousness when they are functioning. (Fs) (notabene)

3 Opennesse as (1) fact, (2) achievement, (3) gift.

186b Openness as a fact is the pure desire to know. It is, when functioning, immediately given. It is referred to by Aristotle when he speaks of the wonder that is the beginning of all science and philosophy. f It is referred to by Aquinas when he speaks of the natural desire to know God by his essence. (Fs) (notabene)

186c Openness as an achievement has two aspects. In its more fundamental aspect it regards the subject, the noEsis, the pense pensante. Here stages towards its acquisition are communicated or objectified in precepts, methods, criticism. Achievement itself arises when the actual orientation of consciousness coincides with the exigences of the pure, detached, disinterested, unrestricted desire to know. (Fs) (notabene)
186d But openness as achievement also has a consequent aspect that regards the object, the noEma, the pense pense. For the pure desire to function fully, to dominate consciousness, there are needed not only precepts, methods, criticism, but also a formulated view of our knowledge and of the reality our knowledge can attain. Thus I should maintain that the crop of philosophies produced since the Enlightenment are not open to revealed truths because they possess no adequate account of truth. (Fs) (notabene)
I have spoken of openness as (1) fact and (2) achievement. (Fs)

186e As fact, it is an intrinsic component in man's makeup. But as fact it does not consistently and completely dominate human consciousness. (Fs)

186f It is a fact to which man has to advert, which he has to acknowledge and accept, whose implications for all his thinking and acting have to be worked out and successfully applied to actual thinking and actual acting. (Fs) (notabene)

186g Hence, besides openness as primordial fact, there also is openness as achievement. The history of religion, of science, of philosophy in all their vicissitudes is the history of such achievement. (Fs) (notabene)

But there is also openness as a gift, as an effect of divine grace. (Fs)

186h Man's natural openness is complete. The pure desire is unrestricted. It inquires into everything, and asks everything about everything. (Fs)

The correlative to the pure desire is 'being,' omnia, at once completely universal and completely concrete. (Fs) (notabene)

186k Nonetheless, there is a contrast, almost an antinomy, between the primordial fact and achievement, for the primordial fact is no more than a principle of possible achievement, a definition of the ultimate horizon that is to be reached only through successive enlargements of the actual horizon. (Fs) (notabene)

187a But such successive enlargements only too clearly lie under some law of decreasing returns. No one ever believed that the world would be converted by philosophy. In the language at once of scripture and of a current philosophy, man is fallen. There is then a need of openness as a gift, as an effect of grace, where grace is taken as gratia sanans. (Fs) (notabene)

187b Further, the successive enlargements of the actual horizon fall into two classes. There are the enlargements implicit in the very structure of human consciousness, the enlargements that are naturally possible to man. But there is also an ultimate enlargement, beyond the resources of every finite consciousness, where there enters into clear view God as unknown, when the subject knows God face to face, knows as he is known. This ultimate enlargement alone approximates to the possibility of openness defined by the pure desire; as well, it is an openness as a gift, as an effect of grace and, indeed, of grace not as merely sanans but as elevans, as lumen gloriae. (Fs) (notabene)

4 Openness and religious experience.g

187c The three aspects of openness are to be related. Openness as fact is for openness as gift; and openness as achievement rises from the fact, and conditions and, at the same time, is conditioned by the gift. (Fs)

187d But openness as fact is the inner self, the self as ground of all higher aspiration. (Fs)
Openness as achievement is the self in its self-appropriation and self-realization. (Fs)
Openness as gift is the self entering into personal relationship with God. (Fs) (notabene)