Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Objektivität als innere Relation von Wissen zu Sein; Identität von Sein und Realität; intentio intendens, intenta; noesis, noema

Kurzinhalt: that knowledge is intrinsically objective, that objectivity is the intrinsic relation of knowing to being, and that being and reality are identical.

Textausschnitt: The Epistemological Theorem

211a At this point one may ask why knowing should result from the performance of such immanent activities as experiencing, understanding, and judging. This brings us to the epistemological theorem,j namely, that knowledge in the proper sense is knowledge of reality or, more fully, that knowledge is intrinsically objective, that objectivity is the intrinsic relation of knowing to being, and that being and reality are identical. (Fs)

211b The intrinsic objectivity of human cognitional activity is its intentionality. Nor need this intentionality be inferred, for it is the dominant content of the dynamic structure that assembles and unites several activities into a single knowing of a single object. Human intelligence actively greets every content of experience with the perplexity, the wonder, the drive, the intention, that may be thematized by (but does not consist in) such questions as, What is it? Why is it so? Inquiry through insight issues forth in thought that, when scrutinized, becomes formulated in definitions, postulates, suppositions, hypotheses, theories. Thought in turn is actively greeted by human rationality with a reflective exigence that, when thematized, is expressed in such questions as, Is that so? Are you certain? All marshaling and weighing of evidence, all judging and doubting, are efforts to say of what is that it is and of what is not that it is not. Accordingly, the dynamic structure of human knowing intends being. That intention is unrestricted, for there is nothing that we cannot at least question. The same intention is comprehensive, for questioning probes every aspect of everything; its ultimate goal is the universe in its full concreteness. Being in that sense is identical with reality: as apart from being there is nothing, so apart from reality there is nothing; as being embraces the concrete totality of everything, so too does reality. (Fs) (notabene)

211c This intrinsic relation of the dynamic structure of human knowing to being and so to reality primarily is not pense pense but pense pensante, not intentio intenta but intentio intendens, not noEma but noEsis. It is the originating drive of human knowing. Consciously, intelligently, rationally it goes beyond: beyond data to intelligibility; beyond intelligibility to truth and through truth to being; and beyond known truth and being to the truth and being still to be known. But though it goes beyond, it does not leave behind. It goes beyond to add, and when it has added, it unites. It is the active principle that calls forth in turn our several cognitional activities and, as it assembles them into single instances of knowing, so it assembles their many partial objects into single total objects. By inquiry it moves us from sensing to understanding only to combine the sensed and understood into an object of thought. By reflection it moves us from objects of thought through rationally compelling evidence to judgments about reality. From the partial knowledge we have reached it sends us back to fuller experiencing, fuller understanding, broader and deeper judgments, for what it intends includes far more than we succeed in knowing. It is all-inclusive, but the knowing we achieve is always limited. (Fs) (notabene)

212a As answers stand to questions, so cognitional activities stand to the intention of being. But an answer is to a question, because it and the question have the same object. So it is that the intrinsic relation of the dynamic structure of human knowing passes from the side of the subject to the side of the object, that the intentio intendens of being becomes the intentio intenta of this or that being. So the question, What's this? promotes the datum of sense to a 'this' that has a 'what-ness' and 'is.' The promotion settles no issues, but it does raise issues. It is neither knowledge nor ignorance of essence and existence, but it is the intention of both. What the essence is and whether that essence exists are, not answers, but questions. Still, the questions have been raised, and the very fact of raising them settles what the answers will have to be about. The intentio intendens of the subject summons forth and unites cognitional activities to objectify itself in an intentio intenta that unites and is determined by the partial objects of the partial activities. As the intentio intendens of the dynamic structure, so the corresponding intentio intenta of the structured cognitional activities is intrinsically related to being and reality. (Fs) (notabene)