Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Leslie Dewart: Kritik an adaequatio rei et intellectus; Lonergan: Antwort darauf; Widerlegung der Kohärenztheorie; Korrespondentzeorie - Dogma

Kurzinhalt: "... truth is no longer the adaequatio rei et intellectus.... But truth remains, and this truth that remains is living and active ..." To deny correspondence is to deny a relation between meaning and meant ...

Textausschnitt: 14a To conclude with a citation from Maurice Blondel's Carnets intimes: "... truth is no longer the adaequatio rei et intellectus.... But truth remains, and this truth that remains is living and active. It is the adaequatio mentis et vitae" (p. 118). (Fs)

14b Prof. Dewart's grounds for his view on truth seem to be partly the flood of light he has derived from phenomenological and existential thought and partly the inadequacy of his interpretation of Scholasticism. (Fs)

14c To the light I have no objection. I would not deny that the authenticity of one's living, the probity of one's intellectual endeavors, the strategy of one's priorities are highly relevant for the truth by which one is truly a man. I have no doubt that concepts and judgments (on judgments I find Dewart strangely silent) are the expression of one's accumulated experience, developed understanding, acquired wisdom; and I quite agree that such expression is an objectification of one's self and of one's world. (Fs)

14d I would urge, however, that this objectification is intentional. It consists in acts of meaning. We objectify the self by meaning the self, and we objectify the world by meaning the world. Such meaning of its nature is related to a meant, and what is meant may or may not correspond to what in fact is so. If it corresponds, the meaning is true. If it does not correspond, the meaning is false. Such is the correspondence view of truth, and Dewart has managed to reject it without apparently adverting to it. So eager has he been to impugn what he considered the Thomist theory of knowledge that he overlooked the fact that he needed a correspondence view of truth to mean what he said. (Fs) (notabene)

15a Let me stress the point. Dewart has written a book on the future of belief. Does he mean the future of belief, or something else, or nothing at all? At least, when he asserts that God is not a being, he assures us that what his statement "means is literally what it says, that God is not a being at all" (p. 175). Again, he wants his proposals tried by the touchstone of public examination (p. 50). But what is that examination to be? What can the public do but consider what he means and try to ascertain how much of what he says is certainly or probably true or false? (Fs) (notabene)

1.Kommentar (17.01.08): Gute Widerlegung der Kohärenztheorie.

15b Dewart urges that the correspondence view of truth supposes what is contrary to both logic and observation, "as if we could witness from a third, 'higher' viewpoint, the union of two lower things, object and subject" (p. 95). But such a statement is involved in a grave confusion. The witnessing from a higher viewpoint is the nonsense of naive realism, of the super-look that looks at both the looking and the looked-at. On the other hand, the union of object and subject is a metaphysical deduction from the fact of knowledge, and its premise is the possibility of consciousness objectifying not only itself but also its world. (Fs)

15c Again, Dewart urges that a correspondence view of truth implies an immobility that precludes development (p. 95) and, in particular, the development of dogma (p. 109). Now I would not dispute that a wooden-headed interpretation of the correspondence view of truth can exclude and has excluded the possibility of development. But that is no reason for rejecting the correspondence view along with its misinterpretation. Least of all is that so at present, when "hermeneutics" has become a watchword and the existence of literary forms is generally acknowledged. For the root of hermeneutics and the significance of literary forms lie precisely in the fact that the correspondence between meaning and meant is itself part of the meaning and so will vary with variations in the meaning. (Fs)

16a Just as he discusses truth without adverting to hermeneutics, so Dewart discusses the development of dogma without adverting to the history of dogma. But the development of dogma is a historical entity. Its existence and its nature are determined by research and interpretation. Moreover, on this approach there are found to be almost as many modes of development, almost as many varieties of implicit revelation, as there are different dogmas, so that a general discussion of the possibility of cultural development, such as Dewart offers, can provide no more than philosophic prolegomena. (Fs)

16a Unfortunately, it seems of the essence of Dewart's prolegomena to exclude the correspondence view of truth. Such an exclusion is as destructive of the dogmas as it is of Dewart's own statements. To deny correspondence is to deny a relation between meaning and meant. To deny the correspondence view of truth is to deny that, when the meaning is true, the meant is what is so. Either denial is destructive of the dogmas. (Fs)

16b If there is no correspondence between meaning and meant, then, in Prof. McLuhan's phrase, it would be a great mistake to read the dogmas as if they were saying something. If that is a great mistake, it would be another to investigate their historical origins, and a third to talk about their development. (Fs)

16c If one denies that, when the meaning is true, then the meant is what is so, one rejects propositional truth. If the rejection is universal, then it is the self-destructive proposition that there are no true propositions. If the rejection is limited to the dogmas, then it is just a roundabout way of saying that all the dogmas are false. (Fs)