Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Insight

Titel: Insight

Stichwort: Freiheit; Unterschied: Gesetz d. Materie - d. Geistes

Kurzinhalt: ... they differ radically from the laws of matter, not only in their higher point of application, but also in their nature and content

Textausschnitt: 641a At this point, however, there crops up the ambiguity of the notion of law. There are, then, the laws of matter and the laws of spirit.e The laws of matter are investigated by empirical scientists, and when spirit is said to be legislative, one means that spirit originates intelligible orders that are parallel to the intelligibilities investigated by empirical scientists. On the other hand, the laws of spirit are the principles and norms that govern spirit in the exercise of its legislative function; and they differ radically from the laws of matter, not only in their higher point of application, but also in their nature and content. As has been seen, the laws of matter are abstract, and they can be applied concretely only by the addition of further determinations from a nonsystematic manifold. But the laws of spirit reside in the dynamic structure of its cognitional and volitional operations, and their concrete application is effected through spirit's own operations within that dynamic structure. Thus, in working out the notion of the good, we discovered in the rationally self-conscious subject an exigence for consistency between his knowing and his doing, and we saw how a body of ethical precepts could be derived simply by asking what concretely was implicit in that exigence. As metaphysics is a corollary to the structure of knowing, so ethics is a corollary to the structure of knowing and doing; and as ethics resides in the structure, so the concrete applications of ethics are worked out by spirit inasmuch as it operates within the structure to reflect and decide upon the possible courses of action that it grasps. (Fs) (notabene)