Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Titel: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Stichwort: Meinung, Intention, Realität; in Gott Identität von Intention und Realität; intentional - real - natürlich

Kurzinhalt: in God the natural and intentional reality are identical; 'intentional' is not opposed to 'real'; it is opposed to 'natural.'

Textausschnitt: 105a Further, perhaps we had best say a few words on the ontology, the reality, of meaning. One is apt to say that on the one hand there are things that are real and on the other there is 'mere meaning' - as though meaning were not a reality. The proper division is that esse reale, the real, divides into the 'natural' and the 'intentional'; the intentional order is the order of meaning. Now in God the natural and intentional reality are identical. For that reason, the procession of the Word is not simply the procession of the meaning of God, but also the procession of God himself, because in God the esse intentionale and the esse naturale are one and the same; and so when God utters himself, conceives himself, not only is there a concept of God but the reality of God too. There is the identity of the intentional and the natural. In us there is not that identity. We are ourselves even when we are asleep and having no dreams. Our unconscious is as much a part of us as our conscious living, and the two interpenetrate in a very complex fashion (into which we need not go). But it would be a mistake to think that a meaning is not a reality. Our conscious living and the meaning that it carries are just as real as the realities of the spirit, and they do not belong to some shadowy world that really does not count. One mistakes the whole significance of meaning if one does not get that point correct: 'intentional' is not opposed to 'real'; it is opposed to 'natural.'1 (Fs) (notabene)

Kommentar (05/16/06): Die Identität von esse intentionale und reale in Gott ist die ontolgische Voraussetzung für das Realsymbol

105b Besides speaking of the ontology of meaning one might say a few words about the ethics of meaning. What exists by being willed is something that is meant. And of course what exists by being willed is something whose existence can be completely rational because the will is a rational appetite. And in us there is a spiraling upwards: we develop mentally and morally, we reach fuller and fuller meaning, and we realize those meanings in ourselves and in our environment by our willing. It is through this world, this intentional order, that human will has its creative opportunity, and it is within the intentional order that will is effective. Similarly, when I speak about what exists because it is willed, I mean what exists because it is loved, and love is just one instance of this creativity of the will. (Fs)
106a Opposed to what I was saying about meaning is what is called nihilism, the negation of any meaning to human life. Take the often repeated statement of Nietzsche that God is dead. What he meant was that the atheism, the agnosticism, the religious indifference, of the nineteenth century destroyed the meaning of all the cultural tradition on which the century was actually living. What he concluded was the necessity of recreating the whole of culture. The point there is that when you remove the fundamental element in the meaning of life, you have to find a new meaning or people are desperate. A recent book has been published with the title The Struggle for Meaning.11 Human living really is a struggle for meaning, an effort, because meaning is constituent of human living. The effort to live is fundamentally the struggle for meaning. (Fs)