Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Byrne, Patrick H., Insight and the Retrieval of Nature

Stichwort: Aristoteles: die menschliche Natur in der Natur; Bindeglied: Vernunft, Intelligibilität;

Kurzinhalt: The foregoing sub-sections show that "form" provides the key to Aristotle's notion of "nature." ... In other words, what makes anything natural for Aristotle is its intelligibility, its luminosity to intelligence. Exactly ...

Textausschnitt: 1.7 Human Nature in Nature

23a How is this sketch of Aristotle's standard of human nature connected with the general context of his teachings on nature? The foregoing sub-sections show that "form" provides the key to Aristotle's notion of "nature." The form is the immanent nature of something; a thing's operations are natural insofar as they accord with that form or are realizing the final form. But form is known through the formula or definition as grasped by acts of nous, intelligence, not through sensation or anything else. In other words, what makes anything natural for Aristotle is its intelligibility, its luminosity to intelligence. Exactly the same holds true for human affairs. Human characters, deeds, and institutions are "natural" precisely insofar as they share in the intelligibility which is grasped by nous and expressed in definition. In brief, they are natural just insofar as they are intelligent and reasonable. Hence, Aquinas goes on to teach that the "natural law" is participation in reason (Summa Theologiae IIa-Iae: Q90a1; 91a2). (Fs) (notabene)

23b This interpretation of Aristotle reveals a striving for definiteness about what is humanly "natural" and "unnatural." There is no nonsense in Aristotle that there are deeds and ways of living which are either naturally right or unnaturally evil and so evil. Nevertheless, Aristotle himself noted there is also a real indeterminacy (1094b12-26). Because of so much diversity in human affairs, there is an ongoing need to define exactly what is "the right time, toward the right objects, toward the right people, for the right reason and in the right manner" (1106b20-22). And knowledge of this flows from highly developed habits of reasoning, particularly phronesis. (Fs) (notabene)

23c Finally, Aristotle was far more aware of the indeterminacy in human forms of behavior than rationalistic moralists of the modern period. Nevertheless, a failure to differentiate adequately form as such from the circumstances having higher probabilities was still operative as for instance in remarks regarding the "natural superiority" of certain kinds of people, or, again, in his inability to discern a "natural" function in the interest paid upon borrowed money.1 This failure was open eventually to deep distortions in the notion of nature, especially so when Aristotle's nuanced context was not adequately understood. To this we now turn. (Fs)