Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Erfahrung: innere, äußere

Kurzinhalt: external experience may be of spatial objects, it itself is not a spatial object and, still less, is internal experience

Textausschnitt: 209b Fifthly, then, experience commonly is divided into external and internal. External experience is of sights and sounds, of odors and tastes, of the hot and cold, hard and soft, rough and smooth, wet and dry. Internal experience is of oneself and one's apprehensive and appetitive activities. Still, if the meaning of the distinction is clear, the usage of the adjectives, internal and external, calls for explanation. Strictly, only spatial objects are internal or external and, while external experience may be of spatial objects, it itself is not a spatial object and, still less, is internal experience. Accordingly, we must ask what is the original datum that has been expressed by a spatial metaphor;h and to that end we draw attention to different modes of presence. (Fs)

209c There is material presence, in which no knowing is involved, and such is the presence of the statue in the courtyard. There is intentional presence, in which knowing is involved, and it is of two quite distinct kinds. There is the presence of the object to the subject, of the spectacle to the spectator; there is also the presence of the subject to himself, and this is not the presence of another object dividing his attention, of another spectacle distracting the spectator; it is presence in, as it were, another dimension, presence concomitant and correlative and opposite to the presence of the object. Objects are present by being attended to; but subjects are present as subjects, not by being attended to, but by attending. As the parade of objects marches by, spectators do not have to slip into the parade to become present to themselves; they have to be present to themselves for anything to be present to them; and they are present to themselves by the same watching that, as it were, at its other pole makes the parade present to them. (Fs)

210a I have been attempting to describe the subject's presence to himself. But the reader, if he tries to find himself as subject, to reach back and, as it were, uncover his subjectivity, cannot succeed. Any such effort is introspecting, attending to the subject; and what is found is, not the subject as subject, but only the subject as object; it is the subject as subject that does the finding. To heighten one's presence to oneself, one does not introspect; one raises the level of one's activity.1 If one sleeps and dreams, one is present to oneself as the frightened dreamer. If one wakes, one becomes present to oneself, not as moved but as moving, not as felt but as feeling, not as seen but as seeing. If one is puzzled and wonders and inquires, the empirical subject becomes an intellectual subject as well. If one reflects and considers the evidence, the empirical and intellectual subject becomes a rational subject, an incarnate reasonableness. If one deliberates and chooses, one has moved to the level of the rationally conscious, free, responsible subject that by his choices makes himself what he is to be and his world what it is to be. (Fs)