Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Nominalismus, devotio moderna, via moderna, fideistischer Sprung in den Glauben, Unterwerfung unter die Subjektivität; strikte Trennung zw. Offenbarung und Vernunft

Kurzinhalt: fideistic leap of faith, which was tantamount to the admission of absolute subjectivity; Nominalism, whose deepest impulse lay in the urge to protect the content of revelation from the unravelling effects of rationalism ...

Textausschnitt: 55a All of this was dimly sensed in the dismissal of the Thomasic synthesis of the succeeding generation. The fourteenth century was dominated by the devotio moderna, in which Christian piety underwent a striking intensification, and the via moderna, in which reason was set free to embark on the empirical investigation of the world. The nexus between the two is the emergence of nominalism, which can only properly be understood in light of its theological motives. Nominalism was not just a chastening of the ambition of reason in relation to the problem of universals. It was a recognition of the inability of the Christian revelation to absorb the burgeoning rational energies and the sense that their endowment with a coequal stature with revelation ultimately threatened the latter. Philosophical disputes could readily become disruptive of the coherence of Christian theology. In case of a conflict between the two, one must always opt for revelation as the superior source of authority. The serene confidence of Saint Thomas, in the unity of truth that rendered incompatibility between the two impossible, had disappeared. Now a willingness to surrender the authority of reason seemed the most reliable means of securing the unquestioned truth of revelation. It was in this context that the self-contraction of reason to the investigator of empirical relations was readily accepted. Gone was the prospect of reason as a mode of wisdom guiding us toward the ultimate truth of reality and even to the very threshold of revelation itself. However, the more modest role of investigating individual beings could gladly be accepted because it went together with a flowering of devotional experience and a consolidation of ecclesiastical organization. Theology alone possessed the authoritative divine guidance, and truncated reason could no longer prove a hindrance or a help. (Fs)

56a We recognize the outline of our own world in the fideistic nominalism of the late Middle Ages. Socially, economically, politically, and culturally, it was a period of bursting vitality. Its energies were by no means confined to the mundane sphere, but were extensively translated into new spiritual movements that the Church proved increasingly incapable of absorbing. One has only to contemplate the parochial Christianity of Piers Plowman to observe the disintegration of the universal Church at the experiential level. It was the century of the great mystics-Suso, Tauler, Ruysbroeck, the Theologia Germanica, and The Cloud of Unknowing. The displaced classes of the new towns proved a ripe breeding ground for the appeal of millennarian and mystical anarchists, and peasant rebellions were fed from the same expectations of a universal spiritual renovation. Control of the spiritual initiative slipped away from the Church, despite its formidable organizational achievements, and was free to be captured by figures with the requisite skill and daring, whether saintly monks, itinerant preachers, or the national monarchs. It is the strange combination of rigor and submissivism we recognize from our own naive technicism. Revelation had established its unquestioned primacy as the only medium of authoritative knowledge about reality, but it had lost the capacity for a rational unfolding of the mysteries it preserved. The stage had been set for the increasingly subjective expressions of faith by which it eventually erodes its title to any publicly accessible claim to knowledge. Like so many of the triumphs of the time, it proved hollow. Exclusive preeminence for revelation ultimately pointed toward its alienation from the world of verifiability. Severance of the connection with the world of rational elaboration meant that revelation could eventually be discarded as authoritative knowledge. The only tenuous connection remaining was the fideistic leap of faith, which was tantamount to the admission of absolute subjectivity. On the other hand, the liberation of reason from its revelatory context proved equally illusory. No longer restrained by the pressure of a revelatory tradition, it was certainly free to explore the empirical factuality at will. But without a mooring in transcendent Being, the analyses of science aggregated to no higher meaning. Only with the later expansion of technology did the hollowness of the situation become apparent. It was possible to become equipped with a formidable control over the domain of nature, but, without an ultimate point of reference for the whole, we radically lack a sense of direction. Science could no longer deliver on its implicit promise of wisdom, and religion had ossified into the dogmatic boundaries incapable of reflective engagement with the world. (Fs)

57a Nominalism, whose deepest impulse lay in the urge to protect the content of revelation from the unravelling effects of rationalism, had severed the connection so vital to each of them. Of course, the nature of the civilizational schism does not become apparent until much later. This is why it is necessary to introduce the extrapolations toward the present in order to appreciate the full character of the nominalist rupture. To the contemporaries, and even to later historians, the combination of nominalism and mysticism appears almost as a more viable form of the medieval synthesis. Having abandoned the riskier enterprise of reconciling Aristotle and Christianity, the nominalists could claim to have reached a more stable evocation of the relationship between reason and revelation. What could be clearer than the acknowledgement of their strictly separate spheres? The absence of a classic philosophic inquiry, with all of the dangers of the meditative opening toward Being, could hardly be missed. It was enough that philosophy had been domesticated to the level of a technical analysis of problems. No pressing need suggested its expansion to the level of a comprehensive meditation on the order of reality. Revelation had already occupied that space, and it could be more securely held so long as it no longer faced the prospect of competition from rival sources of inquiry. Not only did the arrangement have the virtue of simplicity, but it also promised the incalculable benefit of stability. The tension between these millennial symbolisms and, more importantly, the tension within each of them between illuminative experiences and the articulation of meaning had been resolved. (Fs)

1.Kommentar (12/12/05): Der Absatz oben lässt die Notwendigkeit des Schrittes von der Ebene der Theorie zu jener der Interiortät im Sinne Lonergans klar werden.

58a Testament to its stability is the degree to which this nominalist arrangement still constitutes our world. It is the unexamined background for all our discussions. Faith is one realm, and science is another. Their heteronomous horizons may touch on one another, but there can be no substantial involvement between them. This is how modern science works, confident in its absolute autonomy and self-confident in the defense of its legitimacy. It knows it does not have to provide answers to the ultimate questions of the meaning of existence and is therefore released to roam as it will over the empirical details of reality. By contrast, religion occupies the space that is beyond science. Its connection with reason is increasingly tenuous, as it knows it does not have to answer for the relationship to rational inquiry. Instead, the dimension of feeling is elevated to the highest degree. Experience alone is fraught with the danger of emptiness and, in order to draw back from the abyss, religion gravitates toward fundamentalism and authoritarianism. The arrangement endures because it is so stable. All parties see their concerns best addressed. All, that is, but one. (Fs) (notabene)