Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: metaphysische Analyse; Beispiel: Inkarnation: id quod est; id quo est; intelligere: Scotus - Thomas;

Kurzinhalt: ... there is (fortunately, from my viewpoint) a passage in which St Thomas says that the compound of form and matter is just id quo est. If 'form and matter' is just id quo, then to have the id quod one has to add existence, and we have a third component.

Textausschnitt: 1..5 An Illustration of Metaphysical Analysis

24/9 Enough has been said to indicate that this procedure from a cognitional analysis to metaphysics can be a very expeditious way of arriving with great precision and rapidity at the conclusions that are found in traditional Aristotelian and Thomist metaphysics. Moreover, without a precise cognitional analysis, certain traditional metaphysical questions are very difficult to handle.1 (208; Fs)

25/9 Let us consider our human understanding. Suppose it is true that 'so and so' - Socrates, say - understands something.e If we have Socrates, we have a human central form, and we have prime matter and existence. If Socrates understands, he has to be able to understand; to be able to understand, he has to have a potency by which he is able to understand. If he actually understands, there have to be acts of understanding; and as these acts of understanding are not merely acts of understanding, but acts of understanding this kind of thing, there is needed a formal limitation, a species impressa or an acquired habit, a set of impressed species. (208; Fs)

26/9 Again, we can say that Socrates, the man in question, not merely has the capacity to understand, but on a certain range of topics he does not have to stop and think before he gives the answers. This is not true of everybody. Every man has the capacity to understand, the intellect possibilis. However, this man has the capacity to answer any question in a whole range without stopping to think. As it was defined by Avicenna, habitus est quo quis utitur quando voluerit;2 a habit is what you use whenever you please. One does not have to work up steam to be able to do it. A man who has just the capacity to understand, without any developed intellectual habit, has to learn before he will be able to handle questions in the manner of the man who has learned. That is the element of conjugate form. Thus Aristotle distinguishes between considering and merely having the habit of science. When one considers, one is actually understanding; there is a third element. (208f; Fs)

27/9 Besides the potency to understand, there is also an active principle. We have spoken of wonder, intellectual alertness, and that is the intellectus agens;3 to account for the occurrence of events in the intellect as a potency, you must have an agent intellect that is relevant to the flow of sensations, perceptions, and images. Moreover, when you understand, you are able to define; when you understand, you are able to formulate at least a hypothesis. That is an act that proceeds from the act of understanding by intellectual consciousness. (209; Fs)

28/9 Further, the intellectus agens, when it arrives at a hypothesis or formulation, a verbum interius, is not yet satisfied; it has there simply the ground for going from essence to being by raising the question of existence. When the question of existence is raised one has rational reflection, which heads toward another act, the reflective insight in which you grasp the virtually unconditioned. There can be a habit relevant to that grasp. Some people can make judgments more quickly than others; a man familiar with a particular field is able not merely to put forward hypotheses and possible answers, but he is able to say, 'That's what it is.' He has a habit of wisdom; with regard to practical matters, it is a habit of prudence. That reflective grasp of the understanding expresses itself in the verbum complexum. (209; Fs)

29/9 This analysis, in metaphysical terms, is found in the writings of St Tomas. However, you find an entirely different metaphysical setup in Scotus, who explicitly denied insight into phantasm. But in the commentators, as far as I can see, what you find is Scotist psychology forced upon this Thomist metaphysical setup, and it does not make much sense. It leads to all sorts of disputed questions. The question whether the verbum interius, the formulation, is really distinct from the intelligere, the insight, is debated rather futilely if there is no clear idea of what an act of understanding is. The tendency of a number of commentators is to conceive the intelligere as the activity from the species impressa putting forth the formulation. When the formulation is put forth, intellect takes a look at it and knows the universal. There is no act of understanding; only the activity of producing a concept is acknowledged. As far as I can tell, that seems to be the theory of John of St Thomas. (209f; Fs) (notabene)

30/9 We have given a general sketch of metaphysics and metaphysical analysis on the basis of cognitional analysis. We have a basis, then, from which to deal with metaphysical issues. Three may be considered here.4 (210; Fs)

31/9 First, there is the relation between being and essence. Is existence a third component over and above matter and form? Is being all three? Is the id quod est the compound of all three, a triple compound? Or is the id quod est the form and matter, and does it exercise the act of existence? It's a nice question. (210; Fs)
32/9 Aristotle does not advert to the act of existence; but in St Thomas, we have a series of relevant texts. In the Commentary on the Sentences, the Summa contra Gentiles, and the pars prima of the Summa theologiae, id quod est is the compound of form and matter in material things, and simply the form in angels and God. On the other hand, in the tertiapars,5 q. 17, a. 2, ad 4m, there is (fortunately, from my viewpoint) a passage in which St Thomas says that the compound of form and matter is just id quo est. If 'form and matter' is just id quo, then to have the id quod one has to add existence, and we have a third component. (210; Fs)

33/9 This question is fundamental in the theory of the incarnation, because one and the same is both God and man. If there is a man, we have matter and form; if matter and form give us an id quod, in the man Jesus Christ we have one id quod, and in the second person of the Blessed Trinity we have another; consequently, we do not have one and the same that is both God and man. That is why, in this passage, matter and form are just id quo. Because of this difficulty, in Cajetan the substance, id quod est, is matter and form, but subsistence requires the addition of a mode. A mode must be added for it to be capable of existence, and that mode is missing in the case of the incarnation. (210f; Fs)

34/9 Insofar as you are proceeding from cognitional analysis, you have a means of handling such questions systematically. Your concepts may be of essence - 'humanity' or 'this humanity' - and as such they have only a remote relation to being. If your concept is 'man,' you are seeing the implication of existence in essence; your concept of being involves not only the conception of the essence, the compound of matter and form, but also the intention of existence, the question of existence. Being as what, as a concept, an object of thought, is matter, form, and existence, where matter and form give you 'humanity,' and the question of existence, about to be raised, supplies the other component. If you do not have a precise cognitional analysis, this question is very difficult to handle. (211; Fs)