Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: intentio intendens: Objektivität in Potenz; intentio intenta: Objektivität in actu; Frage u. Antwort transzendieren das Subjekt

Kurzinhalt: Empiricists, Rationalists; objectivity of human knowing is a triple cord; the conditions of the conditioned may be fulfilled, and then the conditioned is virtually an unconditioned

Textausschnitt: 212b It remains that the two relations are not identical. The intentio intendens is not knowing but merely intending: it is objectivity in potency. But the intentio intenta resides not in mere intending but in structured activities of knowing: it is objectivity in act. Moreover, objectivity in act, because it resides not in a single operation but in a structured manifold of operations, is not some single property of human knowing but a compound of quite different properties. Empiricists have tried to find the ground of objectivity in experience, rationalists have tried to place it in necessity, idealists have had recourse to coherence. All are partly right and partly wrong, right in their affirmation, but mistaken in their exclusion. For the objectivity of human knowing is a triple cord; there is an experiential component that resides in the givenness of relevant data; there is a normative component that resides in the exigences of intelligence and rationality guiding the process of knowing from data to judging; there finally is an absolute component that is reached when reflective understanding combines the normative and the experiential elements into a virtually unconditioned, i.e., a conditioned whose conditions are fulfilled. (Fs) (notabene)

213a The objectivity of human knowing, then, rests upon an unrestricted intention and an unconditioned result. Because the intention is unrestricted, it is not restricted to the immanent content of knowing, to Bewusstseinsinhalte; at least, we can ask whether there is anything beyond that, and the mere fact that the question can be asked reveals that the intention which the question manifests is not limited by any principle of immanence. But answers are to questions, so that if questions are transcendent, so also must be the meaning of corresponding answers. If I am asked whether mice and men really exist, I am not answering the question when I talk about images of mice and men, concepts of mice and men, or the words, mice and men; I answer the question only if I affirm or deny the real existence of mice and men. Further, true answers express an unconditioned. Mice and men are contingent, and so their existence has its conditions. My knowing mice and men is contingent, and so my knowing of their existence has its conditions. But the conditions of the conditioned may be fulfilled, and then the conditioned is virtually an unconditioned; it has the properties of an unconditioned, not absolutely, but de facto. Because human knowing reaches such an unconditioned, it transcends itself. For the unconditioned qua unconditioned cannot be restricted, qualified, limited; and so we all distinguish sharply between what is and, on the other hand, what appears, what seems to be, what is imagined or thought or might possibly or probably be affirmed; in the latter cases the object is still tied down by relativity to the subject; in the former the self-transcendence of human knowing has come to its term; when we say that something is, we mean that its reality does not depend upon our cognitional activity. (Fs)

213b The possibility of human knowing, then, is an unrestricted intention that intends the transcendent, and a process of self-transcendence that reaches it. The unrestricted intention directs the process to being; the attainment of the unconditioned reveals that at some point being has been reached. So, quite manifestly, a grasp of dynamic structure is essential to a grasp of the objectivity of our knowing. Without the dynamism one may speak of concepts of being, affirmations of being, even the idea of being; but unfailingly one overlooks the overarching intention of being which is neither concept nor affirmation nor idea.1 Again, without the structure there is no place for three quite different elements of objectivity and no thought of a third resulting from a reflective understanding of the other two; yet the empiricists are right in their insistence on data, for in the givenness of data resides the experiential component of objectivity; there is something to the idealist insistence on coherence, for in the directive exigences of intelligence and rationality there resides the normative component of objectivity; and there is something to the rationalist insistence on necessity, for a conditioned whose conditions are fulfilled is virtually an unconditioned, and reflective understanding grasps such a virtually unconditioned whenever it finds the fulfilment of conditions in the data of sense or consciousness and, at the same time, derives from normative objectivity the link that binds conditions with conditioned. (Fs) (notabene)