Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Insight

Titel: Insight

Stichwort: Ethik; Hedonist: Position - Gegenposition

Kurzinhalt: ... a quite coherent position, as long as no claim is made that it is either intelligent or reasonable.

Textausschnitt: 629c Feelings and sentiments are bypassed for, though one begins from objects of desire, one finds the potential good not in them alone but in the total manifold of the universe. This step does not suppose the discovery of some calculus to measure pleasure and pain, nor does it introduce any claim that the pleasure outweighs the pain. Quite simply it notes that objects of desire are manifold, that this manifold, so far from being isolated, is part and parcel of the total manifold, and that it is in the total manifold that concretely and effectively the potential good resides. Now it is to this first step that the hedonist or sentimentalist must object. He must claim that the meaning of the term 'good' is settled on the unquestioning and unquestionable level of experience, that the good has to be the good as experienced, and that opposite to the good there is the no less real category of evil as experienced. Moreover, the foregoing is a quite coherent position, as long as no claim is made that it is either intelligent or reasonable. The trouble is that the claim cannot be avoided, and once it is made the contradiction becomes obvious; for it is only by excluding the relevance of questions for intelligence and reflection that the good can be identified with objects of desire; and if such questions are excluded, then intelligence and reasonableness are excluded. On the other hand, if the determination of the notion of the good is a matter of intelligent inquiry and critical reflection, then critical reflection's affirmation will be knowledge of the actual component of the good, intelligent inquiry's explanation will be knowledge d of the formal component of the good, the manifold of objects of desire can be no more than a potential good, and the way is open to the discovery that the manifold of indifferent objects and even the manifold of objects of aversion also are a potential good. Finally, to throw in the obvious methodological note, the positions and counterpositions of metaphysics not only have their prolongations into ethics but also these prolongations respectively invite development or invite reversal by the same dialectical procedures as the metaphysical originals. (Fs) (notabene)