Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Insight

Titel: Insight

Stichwort: Ethik: dynamische Struktur des Wissens als Grundlage von Metaphysik und Ethik

Kurzinhalt: For just as the dynamic structure of our knowing grounds a metaphysics, so the prolongation of that structure into human doing grounds an ethics

Textausschnitt: 626a There follows a conclusion of fundamental importance, namely, the parallel and interpenetration of metaphysics and ethics. For just as the dynamic structure of our knowing grounds a metaphysics, so the prolongation of that structure into human doing grounds an ethics. Just as the universe of proportionate being is a compound of potency, form, and act, because it is to be known through experience, understanding, and judgment, so the universe of man's proportionate good is a compound of objects of desire, intelligible orders, and values, because the good that man does intelligently and rationally is a manifold in the field of experience, ordered by intelligence, and rationally chosen. Just as metaphysics is a set of positions opposed by sets of counterpositions that arise from the incomplete domination in knowing of the detached and disinterested desire to know, so also values are true and false, orders are troubled by disorders, and desires are unnecessarily frustrated, because the detachment and disinterestedness of the pure desire easily fails to develop into fully rational self-consciousness. Just as the counterpositions of metaphysics invite their own reversal by their inconsistency with intelligent and reasonable affirmation, so the basically similar counterpositions of the ethical order, through the shorter and longer cycles of the dialectic of progress and decline, either enforce their own reversal or destroy their carriers. Just as the heuristic structure of our knowing couples with the generalized emergent probability of the proportionate universe, to reveal an upwardly directed dynamism of finality towards ever fuller being, so the obligatory structure of our rational self-consciousness
(1) finds its materials and its basis in the products of universal finality,
(2) is itself finality on the level of intelligent and rational consciousness, and
(3) is finality confronted with the alternative of choosing either development and progress or decline and extinction. (Fs)

626b The theme of the parallel and interpenetration of metaphysics and ethics cannot be expanded further in the present context, but at least something must be said on its methodological ground. We refused to conceive metaphysical method either as an abstract or as a concrete or as a transcendental deduction, not because we denied the exposition of a metaphysics to make use of the deductive form, but because we placed the principles of metaphysics neither in sentences nor in propositions nor in judgments but in the very structure of our knowing. Because that structure is latent and operative in everyone's knowing, it is universal on the side of the subject; and because that structure can be distorted by the interference of alien desires, it grounds a dialectical criticism of subjects. Again, because that structure is employed in every instance of knowing, it is universal on the side of the proportionate object; and because the structure remains dynamic until all questions are answered, it regards every proportionate object concretely. Accordingly, metaphysical method can take subjects as they are, invoke dialectical criticism to bring their fundamental orientations into agreement, and apply this agreement to the whole domain of proportionate being in its concreteness. But essentially the same method is available for ethics. Deductivism is brushed aside, not because there are no universally valid precepts, nor because conclusions do not follow from them,b but because the most basic precepts with all their conclusions fail to go to the root of the matter. For the root of ethics, as the root of metaphysics, lies neither in sentences nor in propositions nor in judgments but in the dynamic structure of rational self-consciousness. Because that structure is latent and operative in everyone's choosing, it is universal on the side of the subject; because that structure can be dodged, it grounds a dialectical criticism of subjects. Again, because that structure is recurrent in every act of choice, it is universal on the side of the object;c and because its universality consists not in abstraction but in inevitable recurrence, it also is concrete. Accordingly, ethical method, as metaphysical, can take subjects as they are; it can correct any aberration in their views by a dialectical criticism; and it can apply these corrected views to the totality of concrete objects of choice. Such a method not only sets forth precepts but also bases them on their real principles, which are not propositions or judgments but existing persons; it not only sets forth correct precepts but also provides a radical criticism for mistaken precepts; it is not content to appeal to logic for the application of precepts, for it can criticize situations as well as subjects, and it can invoke dialectical analysis to reveal how situations are to be corrected; finally, because such a method clearly grasps an unchanging dynamic structure immanent in developing subjects that deal with changing situations in correspondingly changing manners, it can steer a sane course between the relativism of mere con-creteness and the legalism of remote and static generalities; and it can do so, not by good luck nor by vaguely postulating prudence, but methodically, because it takes its stand on the ever recurrent dynamic generality that is the structure of rational self-consciousness. (Fs)