Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Bestimmung: Subjekt; Bewusstsein: conscientia-experientia - conscientia-perceptio

Kurzinhalt: ... what precisely is the difference between the two positions, between consciousness conceived as an experience and consciousness conceived as the perception of an object?

Textausschnitt: 2 The Notion of the Subject

162b The notion of the subject is difficult, recent, and primitive. (Fs)

It is difficult. St Thomas once remarked that everyone knows he has a soul, yet even great philosophers go wrong on the nature of the soul. The same is true of the subject. Everyone knows he is a subject, and so everyone is interested in the consciousness of Christ. Not everyone knows the nature of the subject, and so there is a variety of opinions. (Fs)

162c The notion is also recent. If one wishes to find out what a soul is, one has only to read St Thomas. If one wishes to find out what a subject is, it is not enough to read ancient or medieval writers. They did not treat the matter explicitly. They did not work out systematically the notion of the subject. They did not integrate this systematic notion with the rest of their philosophic and psychological doctrine.1 (Fs; Fußnote!)

163a In the third place, the notion is primitive. It cannot be reached merely by combining other, better known concepts. It can be reached only by directing one's attention to the facts and to understanding them correctly. Nor is this enough. A difficult, recent, and primitive notion is not theologically useful until it has been transposed into the classical categories of scholastic thought;e and obviously such a transposition supposes some research into the exact meaning and the latent potentialities of classical writers such as St Thomas. (Fs)
163b Needless to say, I did not attempt all this in a set of notes for theological students. I had explored Thomist intellectual theory in a series of articles published in Theological Studies.2 I had explored the complex speculative issues in a book, Insight.3 In my De constitutione Christi I was simply making available in Latin and for my students the conclusions I had reached in other studies. (Fs)

163c My procedure was to present two opposed notions of consciousness: the first I named conscientia-experientia, and I employed it as the basis of my view of the consciousness of Christ; the second I named conscientia-perceptio, and I employed it to account for the opinions of those with whom I happened to disagree. Since the former met dogmatic requirements and the latter, I believed, did not, there seemed to me no need to leave the properly theological level of thought and to enter into philosophic and psychological questions. (Fs)

163d Still, what precisely is the difference between the two positions, between consciousness conceived as an experiencef and consciousness conceived as the perception of an object? In my booklet I set forth these differences at length (130-34), but for present purposes it will be sufficient, perhaps, to select the fourth difference (ad) out of six, namely, that if consciousness is conceived as an experience there is a psychological subject, while if consciousness is conceived as the perception of an object there is no psychological subject. To establish this point I shall begin by indicating one manner in which the notion of conscientia-perceptio may arise; I shall next point out the defect in this notion; thirdly, I shall indicate the essentially opposed character of conscientia-experientia; and finally I shall turn to Fr Perego's objections. (Fs)

164a Consider, then, the two propositions, John knows his dog, John knows himself. In both, the subject is John. In the first, the object is John's dog. In the second, the object is John himself. It follows that knowing is of two kinds: there is direct knowing in which the object is not the subject; there is reflexive knowing in which the object is the subject. Name reflexive knowing consciousness. Define the subject as the object of consciousness. Then it cannot be disputed, it seems, that consciousness is a reflexive knowing, for in consciousness the knower himself is known; and it cannot be disputed, it seems, that the subject is the object of consciousness, for whatever is known is an object. Nothing, it seems, could be simpler or clearer or more evident. (Fs)

164b Still, it may be well to attend to a difficulty that could be raised. A cognitive act exercises no constitutive effect upon its object;8 it simply reveals what the object already is; it exercises no transforming power over the object in its proper reality, but simply and solely manifests what that proper reality is. Accordingly, if consciousness is knowledge of an object, it can have no constitutive effect upon its object; it can only reveal its object as it was in its proper reality prior to the occurrence of the cognitive act or function named consciousness. (Fs)

164c Thus, to illustrate this aspect of conscientia-perceptio, if without consciousness John is simply a prime substance (such as this man or this horse) then by consciousness John is merely revealed to himself as a prime substance. Again, if without consciousness John has no other psychological unity beyond the unity found in the objects of his knowledge, then by consciousness John is merely manifested as having no psychological unity beyond the unity found in the objects of his knowledge. Again, if without consciousness John cannot possibly be the conscious subject of physical pain, then by consciousness John is merely manifested as being incapable of suffering. Similarly, if without consciousness John cannot be the consciously intelligent or the consciously rational or the consciously free or the consciously responsible principle of his own intelligent, rational, free, or responsible acts, then by consciousness as knowledge of an object John merely knows himself as neither consciously intelligent, nor consciously rational, nor consciously free, nor consciously responsible.h (Fs)

165a My difficulty, then, with the simple, clear, and evident view, which I named conscientia-perceptio, is that it is simpliste. It takes account of the fact that by consciousness the subject is known by the subject. It overlooks the fact that consciousness is not merely cognitive but also constitutive. It overlooks as well the subtler fact that consciousness is cognitive, not of what exists without consciousness, but of what is constituted by consciousness. For consciousness does not reveal a prime substance; it reveals a psychological subject that subsequently may be subsumed, and subsumed correctly, under the category of prime substance. Similarly, consciousness does not reveal the psychological unity that is known in the field of objects; it constitutes and reveals the basic psychological unity of the subject as subject. In like manner, consciousness not merely reveals us as suffering but also makes us capable of suffering; and similarly it pertains to the constitution of the consciously intelligent subject of intelligent acts, the consciously rational subject of rational acts, the consciously free subject of free acts, and the consciously responsible subject of responsible acts. (Fs) (notabene)