Autor: Mehrere Autoren: Method, Journal of Lonergan Studies, 11,1

Buch: Method, Journal of Lonergan Studies, Volume 11, Number 1

Titel: Lonergan, Bernard - Analytic Concept of History

Stichwort: Geschichte: ideale "Linie";

Kurzinhalt: 5. THE IDEAL LINE [OF HISTORY] ... The ideal line of history is the history that would arise did all men under all conditions in all thoughts, words, and deeds obey the natural law ...

Textausschnitt: 5.1 What is meant by an ideal line

15b In mechanics the ideal line is drawn by Newton's first law: That a body continues to move in a straight line with uniform speed as long as no extrinsic force intervenes. It is the first approximation in the determination of every mechanical motion. And its value is undiminished by the fact that in this world of ours, the first law is absolutely impossible of actual verification. (Fs)

15c Hence by an ideal line of history we mean the determination of the course of events that supplies the first approximation to any possible course of human history. (Fs)

5.2 What is the ideal line of history

15d The ideal line of history is the history that would arise did all men under all conditions in all thoughts, words, and deeds obey the natural law, and this without the aid of grace. (Fs)

16a It envisages, then, a state of pure nature, in which men as a matter of fact do not sin, though they are not destined to a supernatural end and do not need the 'healing grace'1 that counteracts the wounds of original sin. (Fs)

5.3 What is the earthly task of man

16b The proximate end of man is the making of man: giving him his body, the conditions of his life, the premotions to which he will respond in the fashioning of his soul. (Fs)

Essentially history is the making and unmaking and remaking of man: in the ideal line we consider only the making of man by man. (Fs)

5.4 That there is progress

16c The earthly task of man is not a routine but a progress. (Fs)
"In the genus of intelligible things the human being is as potency."1 "Understanding progresses through incomplete acts to the perfected act."2 (Fs)

16d But this gradual actuation of man's intellectual potency is the achievement not of the individual, nor of a few generations, but of mankind in all places and through all time. What the angel, a species to himself, attains instantaneously in an eon3 - an indefinitely distended point, that man achieves in time, the whole time of his earthly existence. (Fs)

16d But this gradual actuation of man's intellectual potency is the achievement not of the individual, nor of a few generations, but of mankind in all places and through all time. What the angel, a species to himself, attains instantaneously in an eon1 - an indefinitely distended point, that man achieves in time, the whole time of his earthly existence. (Fs)

5.5 That the course of human progress may be determined from the nature of the human mind2

16e The instrument of human progress is the mind of man. If then the mind of man is such that some things must be known first and others later, an analysis of mind will reveal the outlines of progress. (Fs)

5.6 The nature of the mind of man3

16f The human intellect is a conscious potency conditioned by sense. (Fs)

Insofar as it is a conscious potency, there are two types of intellectual operation: spontaneous and reflex. (Fs)

17a Since the reflex use of intellect presupposes the discovery of the canons of thought and the methods of investigation, it follows that there is first a spontaneous period of thought and second a period of reflex thought. (Fs)

17b Next, inasmuch as the human intellect is conditioned by experience we may roughly distinguish two fields of knowledge. (Fs)
First there is the philosophic field in which thought depends upon the mere fact of experience (general metaphysic) or upon its broad and manifest characters (cosmology, rational psychology, ethics). (Fs)
Second there is the scientific field in which thought depends not upon experience in general nor upon its generalities but upon details of experience observed with the greatest care and accuracy. (Fs)
Finally, roughly corresponding to these two fields of knowledge are two manners or methods of thought: deductive from the general to the particular; inductive from the particular to the general. (Fs)

17c Now on the one hand deductive thought proceeds in a straight line of development, while on the other inductive thought proceeds in a series of revolutions from theses through antitheses to higher syntheses.4 (Fs)

17d Deductive thought proceeds in a straight line, for its progress is simply a matter of greater refinement and accuracy. There is an exception to this rule, for deductive thought does suffer revolutionary progress until it finds its fundamental terms and principles of maximum generality: there were philosophers before Aristotle, and, more interesting, modern mathematics has been undergoing revolutions not because mathematics is not a deductive science but because the mathematicians have been generalizing their concepts of number and space. (Fs)

17e Inductive thought proceeds by thesis, antithesis and higher synthesis. This follows from the nature of the understanding, the intellectual light that reveals the one in the many. For 'intellect is per se infallible';5 but de facto understanding is of things not as they are in themselves but as they are apprehended by us. The initial understanding of the thesis is true of the facts as they are known, but not all are known; further knowledge will give the antithesis and further understanding the higher synthesis. (Fs)

18a Thus, there are two ways of being certain of one's understanding: the first is philosophic and excludes the possibility of higher synthesis; the second is full knowledge of the facts, Newman's real apprehension.6 Granted a real apprehension and an understanding of what is apprehended, we may be certain: for 'intellect is per se infallible,' while the real apprehension excludes the possibility of antithetical fact arising. (Fs)