Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Verstehen, Akt des Verstehens = AV (operatio, energeia); AV zu Intellekt im Akt wie Existenz zu Sein im Akt; processio: operationis - operati; Aristoteles - Avicenna (Nautur - aktive Potenz); intellectus possibilis - agens

Kurzinhalt: But the agent intellect acts and the possible intellect is acted upon inasmuch as a phantasm is the instrument by which the agent intellect impresses an intelligible species upon the possible intellect.

Textausschnitt: 9 Application to the Act of Understanding

553c We can resolve what we have said into some unity if we apply it to the act of understanding. (Fs)

To understand, then, is a perfection, a second act, an act of what is complete, a motion in the broad sense. It is called an action or operation, not in the sense of a production, poiesis, but in the sense of an act, energeia. (Fs) (notabene)

It is either an infinite or a finite act. If it is infinite, it is the very act of understanding itself and is simply identical with the very act of existence itself. Also, when predicated equally of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit it is an essential, not a notional, act. (Fs)

553d But if it is a finite act, it is an accident, and is to the intellect in act as existence is to being in act. Besides, just as the act of existence follows upon substantial form, so does the act of understanding follow upon the intelligible species. But the intelligible species is in the category of quality. Therefore, just as existence is resolved into the category of substance, so understanding is resolved into the category of quality. Finally, every finite being is from another as from its efficient cause, and therefore finite understanding is from another and is a being-changed, a reception, that is to say, a pati not in the proper sense but in the general sense [see §6 above]. Hence, the possible intellect also is a passive potency. (Fs) (notabene)

555a In the terminology apparently derived from Avicenna, the possible intellect, informed by an impressed species, is a principle of action or operation, and indeed the formal principle of action or operation. This action or operation is the act of understanding. And although in this terminology the possible intellect informed by a species is an active potency with respect to the act, the action, the operation, of understanding, nevertheless the process from this active potency to the act of understanding is not a processio operati but a procession of an operation [see §5 above]. For understanding is related to the intellect informed by a species not as an effect to its efficient cause but as a perfection to a perfectible. On the other hand, the word that is the term of the action, the operation, the act of understanding, and is produced by this action, operation, act, is a product or effect; hence, in relation to the word, the intellect informed by a species is the principle of an effect or the principle of a product, and the procession of the word is said to be aprocessio operati. (Fs)

555b In the Aristotelian terminology, both the possible intellect and the species by which the intellect is informed are principles of the act of understanding. These principles, however, since they produce the act in that being in which the act is, are referred to not as passive potency or active potency but as nature. For a passive potency is the principle of motion or change from another as from that other; active potency is the principle of motion or change in another as in that other. Accordingly, the possible intellect is a passive potency in comparison with the agent intellect, and the agent intellect is an active potency in comparison with the possible intellect. But the agent intellect acts and the possible intellect is acted upon inasmuch as a phantasm is the instrument by which the agent intellect impresses an intelligible species upon the possible intellect. Moreover, just as whatever has produced a heavy or a light object also moves it locally, so in general an agent gives something not only a form but also the motion that is consequent upon the form. In this way the agent intellect is a mover whenever an act of understanding follows upon an intelligible species. (Fs) (notabene)

555c Beware of the common error of thinking that the mover [movens] is the sole principle of an act. For a mover as such is something extrinsic, and the more it contributes to an act the less perfect is the subject. Thus, if one is moving towards an act of understanding through one's possible intellect alone as the natural principle of this act, both the agent intellect and the teacher have the most work to do. But if one is moving towards the act not by one's possible intellect alone but also by an intelligible species as by the natural principles [of the act of understanding], then that person has no need of a teacher and operates whenever he or she wishes. And the larger a collection of well-ordered species one possesses (which is an intellectual habit), the more does one tend to understand, and the more easily does one understand and add new insights to what one has already understood. (Fs) (notabene)

557a It was for this reason that St Thomas in investigating the essential notion of life made a distinction between life itself and the external sign of life. 'For the use of the word "life" is based upon an external feature of the [living] thing, the fact that it moves itself; but this word does not signify this feature but rather the substance to which self-movement belongs by its nature or to move itself to operation in any way at all' (Summa theologiae, i, q. 18, a. 2 c). Then, when he was treating the question of the degrees of perfection among living things, he did not consider those beings to be more alive in which more principles of motion and mobility were to be found, but stated this rule: 'Since things are said to be alive insofar as they operate by themselves and not as if moved by something else, it follows that the more this feature belongs to a thing, the higher is the degree of perfection of the life to be found in it' [ibid. a. 3, c]. Accordingly, proceeding through all the levels of life, and excluding the very lowest level as that which is moved to something by something else, St Thomas arrived at that being 'whose act of understanding is its very nature, and which, in what it naturally possesses, is not determined by another' [ibid.]. This act of understanding fits the definition of life, that is, to move oneself to operation in any way at all. For understanding is an operation and a motion in the broad sense; but God understands himself, and 'that which understands itself is said to move itself [ibid, ad im], Yet, it must not be understood from this that there is any, even a minimal, duality in God; for God's existence and understanding are so much one that in God truth is present not according to a conformity (which supposes duality) but through the absence of dissimilarity (ibid. q. 16, a. 5, ad 2m). Hence, it follows that the processions in God cannot be proved from the fact that God is alive and that a living thing moves and is moved. For the most perfect life is pure act without the least admixture of potentiality. (Fs)