Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Zweideutigkeit: Realismus; Welt des Kindes, des Erwachsenen; naiver Realismus -> Empirimus -> kritischer Idealismus (Hume, Kant Hegel, Piaget)

Kurzinhalt: Such is naive realism. Its offspring is empiricism. For the empiricist takes naive realism seriously and so proceeds to empty the world mediated by meaning of everything that is not given to immediate experience.

Textausschnitt: THE ORIGINS OF CHRISTIAN REALISM1

239a My approach to the question of the origins of Christian realism is determined by three topics. Elsewhere I have treated these topics separately. But it is my hope that you will be interested in having them brought together in a single focus. (Fs)

239b The first topic is the notion of critical realism, i.e., the attempt to get beyond the empiricism of Hume, the critical idealism of Kant, the absolute idealism of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, and the subsequent varieties of subjectivism. The second topic is how did it happen that the Christian Church became involved in such issues. To this the common answer since the pronouncements of Harnack has been the influence of Hellenistic thought. Such an answer, as I have argued in the first volume of my De Deo Trino,2 is quite inadequate. The third topic has to do with contemporary Roman Catholic Christology. Some years ago, Fathers Hulsbosch, Schillebeeckx, and Schoonenberg discussed or proposed revisions of Christological doctrine.3 Father Piet Schoonenberg in 1969 published a book on the topic; a German translation was published in the same year; and in 1971 there appeared an English translation under the title, The Christ.4 (Fs)

239c Apparently contrary to Father Schoonenberg's views, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on February 21, 1972 reaffirmed the doctrines of the Councils of Nicea and Chalcedon. The materials then of this third topic come from Dutch and Roman theology. But the question I propose to treat is the relation of this Dutch-Roman conflict to the views I set forth in my Père Marquette lecture on Doctrinal Pluralism.5 (Fs)

I. The Ambiguity of Realism

240a Many no doubt will feel it quite ridiculous for a theologian to confront head-on a philosophic issue. While at the back of their minds there may linger some old and mistaken notions of sciences defined by their formal objects and consequently completely disparate, more probably in the foreground will be the conviction that philosophic issues are tremendously profound and difficult. (Fs)

240b Let me begin then by assuring you that in proposing to speak of the ambiguity of realism I have not the slightest intention of touching on anything either profound or difficult. For in my opinion the ambiguity of realism arises from the very simple and evident fact that infants do not speak while most adults do speak. From this simple and evident fact it follows that infants, because they do not speak, do not live in a world mediated by language. Their world is a world of immediacy, of sights and sounds, of tastes and smells, of touching and feeling, of joys and sorrows. But as infants learn to speak, they gradually move into a far larger world. It includes the past and the future as well as the present, the possible and the probable as well as the actual, rights and duties as well as facts. It is a world enriched by travellers' tales, by stories and legends, by literature, philosophy, science, by religion, theology, history. (Fs)

240c Now the criteria of reality in the infant's world of immediacy are given in immediate experience. They are simply the occurrence of seeing or hearing, tasting or smelling, touching or feeling, enjoying or suffering. But the criteria of reality in the world mediated by meaning are far more complex. They include immediate experience but they also go beyond it. To the criteria of immediate experience they add the criteria of relevant understanding, of accurate formulation of correct judgment or prudent belief. (Fs)

241a For the world mediated by meaning is not just given. Over and above what is given there is the universe that is intended by questions, that is organized by intelligence, that is described by language, that is enriched by tradition. It is an enormous world far beyond the comprehension of the nursery. But it also is an insecure world, for besides fact there is fiction, besides truth there is error, besides science there is myth, besides honesty there is deceit. (Fs)

241b Now such ambiguity and insecurity do not bother the average man but they do trouble philosophers. For philosophers ask strange questions. What am I doing when I am knowing? Why is doing that knowing? What do I know when I do it? Having put to themselves the questions of cognitional theory, of epistemology, and of metaphysics, they are apt to go into a deep huddle with themselves, to overlook the number of years they spent learning to speak, to disregard the differences between the infant's world of immediacy and the adult's world mediated by meaning, to reach back to their infancy, and to come up with the infantile solution that the real is what is given in immediate experience. Knowing, they will claim, is a matter of taking a good look; objectivity is a matter of seeing what is there to be seen; reality is whatever is given in immediate experience. (Fs)

241c Such is naive realism. Its offspring is empiricism. For the empiricist takes naive realism seriously and so proceeds to empty the world mediated by meaning of everything that is not given to immediate experience. In turn empiricism begets critical idealism. It awakens Kant from his dogmatic slumbers by revealing to him that the one and only immediate apprehension we have of objects is by sensible intuition. It follows that the categories of understanding of themselves are empty, that they can refer to objects only insofar as they are applied to the data of sense. It further follows that the ideals of reason are doubly mediated, for they can be referred to objects only insofar as they guide the use of the categories of understanding when the categories themselves are applied to the data of sense. (Fs) (notabene)

242a There results Kant's critical idealism. Because we have access only to objects sensibly presented, we are confined to a merely phenomenal world. "Things themselves" become a merely limiting concept, a Grenzbegriff by which we designate what we cannot know. Knowledge of the soul, of morality, of God, arises only as conclusions from the postulates of practical reason. (Fs)

242b In reaction to Kant's critical idealism, there were propounded the absolute idealisms of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. It was their aim to restore speculative reason to its ancient eminence though in a new idealist context. But while they enriched philosophy enormously, their basic project has not prospered. In a variety of ways the primacy of practical reason has been reaffirmed. Schopenhauer wrote on Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Kierkegaard took his stand on faith. Newman toasted conscience. Nietzsche praised the will to power. Dilthey wanted a Lebensphilosophie. Blondel insisted on a philosophy of action. Laberthonnière criticized Plato and Aristotle for reducing life to the contemplation of abstractions. Paul Ricoeur has not yet finished his three-volume philosophy of the will. And in similar directions move pragmatists, personalists, and many existentialists. (Fs)

242c I too hold for the primacy of conscience, for the primacy of the questions that lead to deliberation, evaluation, decision. Still, responsible answers to those questions presuppose sound judgments of fact, of possibility, and of probability. But such sound judgments, in turn, presuppose that we have escaped the clutches of naive realism, empiricism, critical and absolute idealism, that we have succeeded in formulating a critical realism. The key to such a formulation is basically simple. It is the distinction already drawn between the infant's world of immediacy and the adult's world mediated by meaning. In the infant's world of immediacy the only objects to which we are related immediately are the objects of sensible intuition. But in the adult's world mediated by meaning the objects to which we are related immediately are the objects intended by our questioning and known by correct answering. In more traditional language, the objects intended are beings: what is to be known by intending Quid sit and An sit and by finding correct answers. (Fs)

243a I have been stressing a contrast between a world of immediacy and a world mediated by meaning. But I now must add certain further features that will round out the picture and, perhaps, forestall objections. The recurrent difficulty in cognitional theory and in psychology generally arises from a failure to distinguish between our actual performance and our abbreviated objectification of that performance. Both the world of immediacy and the world mediated by meaning are abbreviated objectifications. They are not full accounts of what actually occurs. But they are fair approximations to the accounts that people are prone to give of their own performance. Inasmuch as they are fair approximations to what people think they do, they also are fair approximations to the confusions in which cognitional theory becomes involved. (Fs)

243b Infancy, as studied and described by Jean Piaget, is a time of enormous operational development. It is a time in which we learn to use our limbs and senses and to coordinate different uses in all their possible combinations. It is the time in which we discover what is other than ourselves and learn to respond with appropriate affects. It is the time in which we learn to speak and so learn to move beyond the immediate to the world mediated by meaning. All this is true, but it would be untrue to suppose that the infant is a strict empiricist. His activity may be predominantly on the sensitive level but there is no reason to suppose that intelligent activity is to be excluded. (Fs)

244a Again, the entry into the world mediated by meaning does not exclude immediate consciousness of the operations by which that entry is effected. On the contrary, it is only by the objectification of such conscious operations, of our acts of understanding and formulating, of reflecting, weighing the evidence, and judging, of deliberating, evaluating, deciding, that we can reach any real apprehension of the mediation that meaning effects, of the broad and the fine structures of the world that meaning mediates. (Fs)