Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Konstitution Dei Filius: Objekt (verschiedene Bedeutungen: Kant, Fichte, Lonergan)

Kurzinhalt: So much for a first meaning of the word "object." There is, however, a second quite different meaning. On this view, objects are what are intended in questioning and what become better known as our answers to questions ...

Textausschnitt: 121c First, then let us consider two meanings of the word "object." On the one hand, there is the etymological meaning of the word, which was systematized by Kant, and remains in various subsequent philosophies that have not broken loose from Kant's basic influence. On the other hand, there is the meaning implicit in all discourse: an object is what is intended in questioning and becomes known by answering questions. (Fs)

121d The Greek word for object, to antikeimenon, means what lies opposite. The Latin, obiectum, whence are derived our word "object," the French, objet, the Italian, oggetto, means what is put or set or lies before or opposite. The German, Gegenstand, means what stands opposite. In all cases, then, "object" connotes something sensible, localized, locally related presumably to a spectator or sensitive subject. (Fs)

122a In full accord with the etymological meaning of "object" is one of the key sentences in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. It occurs at the very beginning of the Transcendental Aesthetic, and it asserts that the one way in which our cognitional activities are related to objects immediately is by Anschauung, by intuition. Since for Kant our only intuitions are sensitive, it follows that the categories of the understanding and the ideals of reason of themselves are empty; they refer to objects only mediately, only inasmuch as they are applied to the objects intuited by sense. Accordingly, our cognitional activity is restricted to a world of possible experience and that a world not of metaphysical realities but of sensible phenomena.1 (Fs) (notabene)

122b Substantially the same position recurs in logical atomism, logical positivism, logical empiricism.2 Inasmuch as there is an insistence on the significance of the logical, discourse is admitted. But this admission is restricted by the affirmation of an atomism, positivism, or empiricism, for the only discourse considered meaningful is discourse that can be reduced to, or be verified in, or at least be falsifiable by sensible objects. (Fs) (notabene)

Kommentar (25.09.08): Cf. Ockhams Verständnis von Intuition

122c However, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have witnessed a series of attempts to get beyond Kant and, in one way or another, these attempts have consisted in an insistence on the subject to offset and compensate for Kant's excessive attention to sensible objects. This was already apparent in the absolute idealisms of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. It took a more personal form with Kierkegaard's emphasis on the contingently existing subject and with the emphasis on will in Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. The phenomenological studies of intersubjectivity by Edmund Husserl and Max Scheler and the various forms of existentialism have set up against die objectivist world of impersonal science a not-to-be-objectified inner world of subjects striving for authenticity. (Fs)

123a Now it is clear that God is not and cannot be an object in the etymological sense, in the Kantian sense, in the sense acceptable to a logical atomism, positivism, or empiricism. Moreover, as long as such a notion of object prevails, phenomenology and existentialism may allow us some access to God as a subject to whom we are subjectively orientated. (Our hearts are restless till they rest in thee), but any procedure that regards God as an object will remain excluded. (Fs) (notabene)

123b So much for a first meaning of the word "object." There is, however, a second quite different meaning. On this view, objects are what are intended in questioning and what become better known as our answers to questions become fuller and more accurate. (Fs) (notabene)

123c Objects are what are intended in questioning. What is this intending? It is neither ignorance nor knowledge but die dynamic intermediary between ignorance and knowledge. It is the conscious movement away from ignorance and towards knowledge. When we question, we do not know the answer yet, but already we want the answer. Not only do we want the answer but also we are aiming at what is to be known through the answer. Such, then, is intending and, essentially, it is dynamic. It promotes us from mere experiencing to understanding by asking what and why and how. It promotes us from understanding to truth by asking whether this or that is really so. It promotes us from truth to value by asking whether this or that is truly good or only apparendy good. As answers accumulate, as they correct, complete, qualify one another, knowledge advances. But answers only give rise to still further questions. Objects are never completely, exhaustively known, for our intending always goes beyond present achievement. The greatest achievement, so far from drying up the source of questioning, of intending, only provides a broader base whence ever more questions arise. (Fs) (notabene)