Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Sein (esse) - Intellekt; Unterschied: Vernunft (reason) - Intellekt; göttlicher Intellekt: Akt allen Seins

Kurzinhalt: But when reasoning has finished, the intellect begins its work and attempts to apprehend in a single intuitive grasp effects in their causes, conclusions in their principles, and quiddities in their sensible data.

Textausschnitt: 21 The Analogy of Intellect

627b Before going on to consider the mysterious analogies of word and of love, it seems necessary to have a clear and distinct concept of the analogy of intellect itself. (Fs)
627c This analogy, then, is a comparison that is drawn between being and different grades of intellect. St Thomas arrives at a threefold conclusion: the divine intellect is to the totality of being as act; the angelic intellect is to the totality of being as form; the human intellect is to the totality of being as potency. (Fs; tblStw: Relationen)

627d This conclusion is explicitly set forth in Summa theologiae, 1, q. 79, a. 2, and is sufficiently indicated in Summa contra Gentiles, 2, c. 98, ¶9, §1835; but it implicitly contains within itself the whole theory of intellect, and so it will be useful in this connection to read Summa contra Gentiles, 1, cc. 44-71; 2, cc. 46-101; 3, cc. 25-63; Summa theologiae, 1, qq. 14-15, 54-58, 79, 84-89; 1-2, q. 3; 3, qq. 9-12; De veritate, qq. 1-4, 8-12, 14-20; and so forth. (Fs)

629a For an understanding of this, the two most important things to consider are intellect and being. (Fs)

629b As to the intellect, note that the analogy begins from the human intellect with respect to its principal intellectual act. Consequently, that metaphorical conception which regards the human intellect as a kind of spiritual eye will not do. Nor does it help to consider its derived acts, that is, concepts or inner words; all this leads to is a Platonic analogy of intellect which proceeds from universals in our mind to universals that are eternal and subsistent. Nor will it help to go to the origin of the act of understanding, since that origin is called reason rather than intellect.1 But one should attend as carefully as possible to the term of any process of reasoning, when inquiry and discursive reasoning have ceased and the intellect comprehends many things as a unity. For it is the function of reason (1) to inquire into sensible data in order to come to know quiddities; (2) to work from quiddities that are understood separately in order to formulate general principles; (3) to proceed discursively from principles to conclusions; and (4) to argue from cause to effect. (See Summa theologiae, 1, q. 14, a. 7.) But when reasoning has finished, the intellect begins its work and attempts to apprehend in a single intuitive grasp effects in their causes, conclusions in their principles, and quiddities in their sensible data. And the more powerful the intellect, the more things it comprehends in fewer and more synthetic acts. (Ibid. q. 55, a. 3.)

Fußnote zu oben:
2 [See Lonergan, Verbum. 66-68. '... reason is to understanding as motion is to rest. Reason is not one potency, and understanding another potency; on the level of potency the two are identical; they differ only as process to a term differs from achievement in the term.' Ibid. 66.]

629c Now as to being, here we must appeal to that wisdom which makes judgments about primary notions (Summa theologiae, 1-2, q. 66, a. 5, ad 4m). For what is in question here is not being as a common name, as Henry of Ghent supposed. Nor is it being as a kind of univocal idea, having maximum extension but minimum content, meaning 'not nothing,' as Scotus conceived it. Nor is it being as an analogous concept, that is, a known proportion between some unknown essence and its equally unknown act of existence (esse). Although this notion of being is true, it does not suffice for understanding the analogy of intellect. The question here is rather about being taken quidditatively. It is about being that is properly understood when the question, What is being? is satisfactorily answered. It is about the why of being; it is about that by which, when understood, all being is comprehended; it is about the object of every intellect as that object is properly understood. There now, we have expressed the very same thing in five different ways!

631a Summa contra Gentiles, 2, c. 98, ¶9, §1835: 'Intelligible being is the proper object of intellect: that which embraces all differences and all possible kinds of being; for whatever can be, can be understood. Since, however, all knowledge is by way of similitude, an intellect cannot know its object in its totality unless it has within itself a similitude of all being and of all its differences. Such a similitude of the totality of being can only be an infinite nature, one which is not delimited to any species or genus of being, but is the universal principle and active power of all being ... It remains therefore that only God knows all things through his essence.' (Fs)

631b Summa theologiae, 1, q. 79, a. 2 c: 'For there is an intellect which is to universal being as the act of all being; this is the divine intellect, which is God's essence, in which originally and virtually all being preexists as in its first cause ... No created intellect can be as act with respect to the totality of being, for if it were it would have to be infinite being. Hence every created intellect, by the very fact that it is, is not the act of all intelligible realities, but is to those intelligibles as potency is to act.' (Fs)