Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Species expressa: Wort, conceptio, Definition, intentio intellecta, ratio, Idee

Kurzinhalt: It is 'word' inasmuch as it is directly signified by outer words ... It is called 'conception,' 'concept,' 'conceived' inasmuch as it originates from the act of understanding... 'Idea': What the meaning (ratio) is in speculative matters, the idea is ...

Textausschnitt: 589a What later authors termed 'expressed species' St Thomas calls (1) word, (2) concept, (3) definition or proposition, (4) the intention understood, (5) meaning, what is meant (ratio),1 (6) idea, (7) form arrived at and conceived and formulated2 by an act of understanding. (Fs)

589b It is 'word' inasmuch as it is directly signified by outer words, as in Summa thologiae, 1, q. 34, a. 1 and passim, although outer words derive their ability to signify from inner words (De veritate, q. 4, a. 1, ad 7m). (Fs)

591a It is called 'conception,' 'concept,' 'conceived' inasmuch as it originates from the act of understanding. 'It is of the essence of the concept of the heart that it proceed from another, that is, from the knowledge of the one conceiving' (Summa theologiae, 1, q. 34, a. 1 c). '[T]he conception is the effect of the act of understanding ... something expressed by the knowledge of the mind' (De veritate, q. 4, a. 2 c). 'But neither does the word arise from our intellect except insofar as it exists in act; but as soon as intellect exists in act, the word is conceived in it' (Summa contra Gentiles, 4, c. 14, ¶3, §3499). 'For this intelligible reality [God] is the same reality as the understanding intellect, an emanation of which is the conceived Word' (ibid. 4, c. 11, ¶14, §3474); and in other places. (Fs)

591b 'Definition' and 'proposition'3 refer to the division of both words (De veritate, q. 3, a. 2; q. 4, a. 2; De potentia, q. 8, a. 1; q. 9, a. 5; Quaestiones quodlibetales, 5, a. 9; Super Ioannem, c. 1, lect. 1) and conceptions (for example, De veritate, q. 11, a. 1 c: '... the first conceptions of intellect, which are known immediately by the light of agent intellect ... whether they be compound, as first principles, or simple, such as the concept of being ...'). (Fs)

591c The intention understood is distinguished from the thing understood (Summa contra Gentiles, 4, c. 11, ¶6, §3466). A word is 'that which is understood,' 'interiorly understood,' 'that which is actually considered by intellect' (De veritate, q. 4, a. 1), 'that at which the operation of our intellect terminates, which is what is understood, what is called the conception of the intellect' (ibid. a. 2), '... the product of the intellect, but through it the intellect comes to knowledge of the external thing' (ibid. q. 3, a. 2 a). 'This is what is first and per se understood, namely, what the intellect conceives within itself concerning the thing it has understood, whether that concept be a definition or a proposition ..." (Depotentia, q. 9, a. 5). '... the reason that the intellect forms in itself the conception of the thing is this, that it might know the thing understood' (ibid. q. 8, a. 1 a). '... the intellect ... forms a word for this purpose, that it might understand the thing' (Quaestiones quodlibetales, 5, a. 9, ad im). ' ... in [the word] expressed and formed it sees the nature of the understood thing' (Super Ioannem, c. 1, lect. 1); and in other places. (Fs)

591d 'Meaning, what is meant' (ratio): 'The meaning that a noun signifies is the definition of the thing' (In IV Metaphys., lect. 16, §733). 'White and black are outside the mind; but what is meant by these terms is only in the mind' (In IV Metaphys., lect. 4, § 1230). 'There are two ways in which scientific knowledge is of something. In the first and principal way scientific knowledge is of universals upon which it is established. In another, secondary way, and, as it were, by a kind of reflection, scientific knowledge is of those things to which these meanings belong ... (Fs)

593a For a knower uses a universal meaning both as a thing known and as a medium of knowing' (In Boet. De Trin., q. 5, a. 2, ad 4m; or lect. 2, q. 1, a. 2 ad 4m).1 (Fs)

593b 'Idea': What the meaning (ratio) is in speculative matters, the idea is in practical matters. 'The idea of the thing done is in the mind of the doer as that which is understood; but not as the species by which it is understood, which is the form bringing the intellect to act' (Summa theologiae, 1, q. 15, a. 2 c). See the next paragraph, which is also about ideas. (Fs)