Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Kultur, kulturelle Entwicklung: klassisch - empirisch; partikulares Gut, Ordnungsgut, Wert;

Kurzinhalt: patterns of culture and cultural development in general; particular goods, the good of order, and value

Textausschnitt: 106b There are two quite different views of culture. There is an older, classicist, normative view, according to which one draws a distinction between the cultured and the uncultured. But there is also a modern view, which is empirical and anthropological: it acknowledges a multiplicity of cultures, so that the lowliest and the most primitive of tribes have a culture, no less than the most advanced and highly-developed peoples. It is the latter, empirical view of culture that we adopt here. (Fs) (notabene)

106c What we might call the material element of culture is made up of human capacities, human dispositions and habits, and human operations and their products. Capacities, dispositions and habits, operations and products are all interrelated: dispositions and habits are perfections and determinations of capacities; operations proceed promptly, spontaneously and with ease from dispositions and habits; and products, finally, are the results of operations. (Fs)

106d Next, we must note a certain principle or law of combination and composition. For operations are such that they can be joined one to another, to yield a composite product; indeed, a certain few basic operations, taken in a great variety of permutations and combinations, can yield an enormous diversity of results. So, for example, once one has learnt how to write the comparatively few letters contained in the alphabet of any language, one has the necessary equipment for writing everything that is said in that language. The same principle applies to the other arts, whether liberal or practical: in all of these some basic operations are discovered, which can then be modified, in various measures and to varying degrees, and adapted to new circumstances, and so there arises the possibility of an immense range of permutations and combinations. And the same applies to the sciences. If, for example, one examines the geometry of Euclid, or the Contra Gentiles of St. Thomas, one will find that the separate theorems or conclusions proceed from a relatively small number of operations, differently modified and adapted to suit different circumstances. Finally, it is not, of course, only the operations of separate individuals that can combine in this way; every instance of whatever kind of human collaboration involves the combination of operations of different individuals, to yield a composite product. (Fs)

107a But the reason why we act, or operate, is in order to attain some good. Since our ultimate end is essential goodness, our proximate ends are good by participation, and they are of three kinds: particular goods, the good of order, and value. Particular goods are all those things that meet the needs of particular individuals in particular places at particular times. The good of order is a formal principle that ensures a continual flow of particular goods; for example, matrimonial systems, technological, economical and political systems, literary and scientific systems, educational and religious systems are all goods of order. The good of value, finally, is what inspires a rational choice between one good of order and another, for example, Christian marriage, capitalism, democracy, etc. (Fs)

107b One might infer from all of this that what happens is that different races, having different scales of value, choose different goods of order, so that they may enjoy a steady flow of such and such particular goods, arising from such and such particular operations. That, however, would be a somewhat abstract, atemporal way of viewing human affairs. Concretely, values are perceived only in the good of order itself, the good of order is perceived only in the particular goods that it ensures, and the only actual particular goods are those that men, by the operations that they have in fact carried out, have learnt how to produce or to acquire. And so, if one wants to understand how cultures emerge and develop, it is rather on the operations that one ought to focus, to discover how they are carried out, how they are combined with each other, how they gradually coalesce into larger complexes, until eventually a kind of dynamic structure emerges-a structure, however, which is, as it were, only implicitly informed by the good of order and actuated by value, its proximate manifestation being men and women, united in friendship or divided by discord, carrying out operations that are aimed at the attainment of particular goods. (Fs)

108a Let us move on rapidly now to the point that we want to make, which is that some cultures remain for centuries almost unchanged, while others, whether from some kind of internal tension or from the pressure of external circumstances, keep finding new modes of operation, introducing new modifications of operations, trying out new permutations and combinations and enjoying new particular goods, and so even come to experiment with the good of order itself and to perceive new human values. To this fundamental kind of cultural evolution another kind is added when, by the process of communication or by the intermingling of peoples, two different cultures flow into and unite with each other, each adapting to the other, so that a third culture emerges, which is a kind of composite of the other two. (Fs)