Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Kanon der Metaphysik: Konkretheit, erklärender Gesichtspunkt (explanatory viewpoint); Rückkehr zur Analyse des Verstehensprozesses

Kurzinhalt: the first canon is concreteness: deal with the concrete ... The second canon is the explanatory viewpoint ... Potency, form, and act are not in any immediate correspondence with words, with grammar

Textausschnitt: 1.6 Canons of Metaphysical Analysis1
41/9 When I presented the manuscript of Insight to the publishers, it was first given to a reader who was an English Dominican2 -just who he was I've not yet learnt - and the question my publisher put to me was, 'How can you teach this?' Apparently, the report was, 'This isn't what you find in the other books.' This question has probably occurred to those engaged in teaching. One may feel that this seems so different from anything that is in the books that it could not possibly be taught. The preceding discussion, however, illustrates the possibility. (212; Fs)
42/9 In other words, you need not work through the general scheme completely every time. I make use of this material continually in my theology classes in dealing with the speculative side of problems that arise, and I do so in terms of the fundamental analogies. Aristotle knew about insight; he did not know all forms of all things and from that knowledge conclude to his hylomorphism; he knew about understanding. It was not possible for him to formulate it as we can formulate it today, but he had a marvelous formulation for it, considering the opportunities of language, and so on. If you have a clear idea of what insight is, it is not hard to become convinced that Aristotle knew about it, and that that relation between insight and data is a key to the relation between potency and form, matter and form.3 Again, it was insofar as St Thomas grasped the significance of the judgment of existence that he complemented the Augustinian emphasis on truth with the metaphysical component of existence, and set up the relation between essence and existence. The analogies, as I have worked them out in terms of cognitional theory from self-appropriation, also played their role, I believe, in the historical development of scholastic thought. By using the analogies concretely, one can give exactly the same doctrine in any particular case. (212f; Fs)
43/9 Moreover, with regard to the method, there is a whole chapter, Metaphysics as Science, that works out a number of rather detailed questions. I draw attention particularly to this point, because it is of fundamental importance: one applies metaphysical analysis, first of all, concretely.4 Thomist doctrine is not set up in Euclidean fashion. St Thomas proceeds by answering a series of questions, and the marvelous thing about his procedure is not so much the answers as the series of questions. One can set up principles to be able to answer the questions, but the surprising thing is where those questions came from, the build-up they involve, and the mastery of detail. It is a consideration of concrete questions; metaphysical analysis is applied to the concrete. (213; Fs)
44/9 When we have a truth, we know something. If we wish to go on to the metaphysics of that truth, we want, not an abstract truth, but a concrete truth. We want, for example, 'This man understands,' not 'Man understands.' Because what exists is concrete, the first canon is concreteness: deal with the concrete. We may answer general questions in metaphysical analysis, but the way to approach them always is by an analysis of a concrete instance, because it is the concrete instance that exists. It is Socrates who understands; it is not understanding, not cognitional process. Cognitional process is not a being; it is a component; it is something that happens in a being. Deal with the concrete. (213f; Fs)
45/9 The second canon is the explanatory viewpoint. It is more difficult, but it is also very fundamental. I believe that all sorts of difficulties, obscurities and insoluble problems are caused insofar as metaphysical analysis is attempted from truths that are merely descriptive. Truths cast in the form of Aristotle's predicaments, where you have descriptive knowledge that does not imply any great understanding but only a minimum of understanding, where you have an understanding of things as they are related to us or an understanding of words, are not a sufficient basis for metaphysical analysis. Even if your knowledge on a question is only descriptive, you have to cast it in explanatory form. When your knowledge is descriptive, it merely anticipates the understanding we are talking about, and you have to transpose, as it were, the descriptive knowing into an intention of explanatory knowing in order to enable the analogies to function properly. The analogies are insight into data, and judgment upon formulation. If your formulation is such that it does not involve any real insight into the thing, then you have to introduce the hypothetical insight, the objective of your heuristic structure, to be able to handle it in terms of the analogy. If you seek a metaphysical analysis that will cover absolutely everything, you get confusion and insoluble disputes. (214; Fs)
46/9 Thirdly, metaphysical analysis is not grammatical analysis; it is not logical analysis. Someone once said to me, remarking on the Thomist synthesis, that it is 'a marvelous synthesis of human psychology, a marvelous synthesis of reality, a marvelous synthesis of grammar.' You can get bogged down in words. You may get concerned with the metaphysical significance of a word; but when questions get onto that level, they become hopeless. You must go behind the words to the experiences, the understanding, the rational judgment, to the analysis of the cognitional process at its root. Potency, form, and act are not in any immediate correspondence with words, with grammar. There are elements in grammar that are closely connected; you can emphasize the 'is,' but it is not 'is' as a word that is metaphysically significant: you can have 'is' merely in the expression of an object of thought or in a question. What counts is the rational act of judgment. Again, what counts is not words but the insight. Unless you reduce your truths to the experience, understanding, and judgment on which their expression rests, you are going to encounter difficulties in metaphysical analysis. (214f; Fs)

47/9 There are, then, three points. The first is concreteness, because being is concrete. The second is the explanatory viewpoint. Suppose we have the descriptive expression, 'He is five feet tall.' Now what are the conjugate potencies, forms, and acts in that? I do not think you can handle the question. You have to conceive the measurement, 'five feet tall,' in terms of an understanding of man, and you can see that it shades off into a datum that is not going to be integrated in any explanatory system; it is just going to be a matter of statistical frequency. The third point is that we are concerned with cognitional acts, not talk. The applications of the canons may be complicated, but if you take those directives you can perform metaphysical analysis in terms of central and conjugate potency, form, and act, and explanatory genera and species, and the analysis will be satisfactory; and I think you will also find - although it is a matter of experience - that the root of a large number of disputed questions is simply a violation of those canons. (215; Fs)