Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: metaphysische Analyse; Beispiel: Beziehung von Substanz zu Akzidenz; zentrale, konjugate Form; Bewusstsein

Kurzinhalt: What is the relation of substance and accident?

Textausschnitt:
35/9 Let us take a second question. What is the relation of substance and accident? I understand by my intelligence. My intelligence is an id quo; it is conjugate or accidental potency. What is it that understands? What is the 'I'? In our analysis of Socrates, we had prime matter, substantial form, substantial act, accidental potencies, accidental forms or habits, and some accidental acts. Is the 'I' that understands the being, the id quod est, the whole, or is it just some id quo?'6 If you think simply in terms of the predicaments, which occur in the Corpus Aristotelicum as an introductory statement and, I believe, as a purely descriptive stage of the science of metaphysics before the question of causes is raised at all, it is almost inevitable that you will answer that the being is just this id quo. You have substance, man, and quality, intelligence, and you have potency, form, and act accounting for the man, and potency, form, and act accounting for the intelligence. On this view, the man, the being, is just the substance, and qualities are added on; they come to the substance. (211; Fs)

36/9 On the other hand, on the analysis of central and conjugate forms that can be worked out from cognitional analysis, what we have is data that we consider in either of two ways: insofar as they are individual, we grasp in these data a central form; insofar as they are of a kind, we reach conjugate forms. It is understanding the same data from different viewpoints that leads to the two types of form. The central form is the comprehensive unity in the whole; consequently, the man is one by his central form, which is the principle of unity in the whole. On this second view it is much easier to understand why a change in the accidents is a change in the man. (211f; Fs)

40/9 Thirdly, there are questions of consciousness. Who is conscious? In virtue of sense and imagination we have an empirical consciousness; by understanding we have an intellectual consciousness; by reflection we have a rational consciousness; and when we go on to will, we have rational self-consciousness. But who is conscious? If 'this' is the man, if it is true that the man is conscious, then it has to be this substance that is conscious. How is it conscious? It is conscious by really distinct accidents. If you say that the man is the whole which is one by the substance, then you can say the man is conscious.

That is a general sketch of metaphysical analysis on the basis of cogni-tional analysis.6 (212; Fs)