Autor: Thomas Aquinas

Buch: Aquinas on Being and Essence

Titel: Aquinas on Being and Essence

Stichwort: Das Ersterfasste: Seiendes; zeitlich, analytisch zuerst; something-there (Beispiel: Kind erfasst die Bedeutung von "heiß", nicht von "seiend")

Kurzinhalt: What the Intellect First Conceives Is Being ... The concept of being is the analytical beginning point of all human intellectual activity apropos of sensible things.

Textausschnitt: Paragraph 1

2a Apropos of what he does in (1), we must make clear the sense of the claim that "being and essence are what is first conceived by the intellect." Why does he say that the intellect first conceives both being and essence? Why not being alone, or essence alone? What is the meaning of "first"? What is the content of this first concept? (Fs) (notabene)

2b To begin with, we must notice that in other works he says that what the intellect first conceives is being, making no mention of essence.1 What, then, does it mean to say that what the intellect first conceives is being? And why is "and essence" added here? (Fs)

What the Intellect First Conceives Is Being.

3a In the Summa of Theology, in a context in which he had just mentioned Boethius' distinction between what is self evident to all and what is self evident to the wise, St. Thomas writes: "In the case of things which are apprehended by all men, there is an order. For what is first apprehended is being, the understanding of which is included in everything, whatever it may be, which anyone apprehends."2 From this, and from what he writes elsewhere,3 it is clear that whatever else he may mean by "first," he means not simply temporally first, but, more importantly, analytically first. Thus, the meaning or concept of the temporally first word we learn to use contains, though implicitly, the meaning or concept which we attach later to the word "being." When one's intellect first begins to function, even in a context which is conceivable as temporally prior to one's learning to use his first word, whatever else it may grasp in conception about sensible things, it grasps that concept to which one later on attaches the word "being." (Fs) (notabene)

3b To make this clear, one must consider the following. Human knowledge about real things is by sense and by intellect; knowledge by sense focuses on unique features of individuals, knowledge by intellect on shared features; knowledge by sense is temporally prior to knowledge by intellect, and knowledge about sensible things is temporally prior to knowledge about nonsensible things. Thus, our temporally first knowledge is sense knowledge about sensible things. Knowledge by intellect is dependent on knowledge by sense as on an origin; since this is so, our temporally first knowledge by intellect is about things which are sensed. (Fs)

3c At this point two things are to be noticed: (1) that our temporally first concept bears explicitly on a sense experience, and implicitly includes the concept of being; and (2) that the expression "analytically first" in the claim that the concept of being is our analytically first concept can be given a clearer and fuller meaning in terms of a reference to the intellect's three operations. First, since our temporally first knowledge is sense knowledge about sensible things, then the human knower first grasps these sensible things by means of their sensible qualities. By virtue of their sensible qualities these things are first actual for, or present to, human sense. And it is through their first actuality for, or first presence to, human sense that these things become first actual for, or first present to, the human intellect. They become first present to the human intellect as something-there, i.e., as something asserting itself, as something different from us and confronting us, as something doing things to our senses. This means that our temporally first knowledge by intellect is a knowledge the content of which is rooted in a sense experience. (Fs)

4a Consider, for example, a child who is just learning to talk, and who has just burned his finger on the kitchen stove. His mother, pointing to the stove, says, "Hot!"; the child soon learns to do the same thing. What, now, do both mother and child intend to communicate by the word hot when they point to the kitchen stove and say that it is hot? That that thing, which the child will later learn to call by the name stove, and by many other names—e.g., thing, something, something-there—is a thing which, when one touches it with his finger, burns the finger. They are explicitly concerned with communicating the fact that the kitchen stove burns the finger. They are not explicitly concerned with communicating the fact that the kitchen stove is something-there, though knowledge of this fact is the least possible knowledge presupposed by and implied in knowledge of the fact that it bums the finger. Thus, our temporally first intellectual knowledge can be described as a knowledge whose explicit content is rooted in some sense experience or other, the implicit content of which is at least what can be expressed as something-there, i.e., being. J. Maritain puts it briefly and clearly:

5a This [being] is the first of all concepts, because it springs in the mind at the first awakening of thought, at the first intelligible coming to grips with the experience of sense by transcending sense.... The first idea formed by a child is not the idea of being; but the idea of being is implicit in the first idea which the child forms.4 (Fs)

5b Secondly, knowledge by intellect takes place by three different acts: (1) simple apprehension, the result of which is a concept; (2) composition and division, the result of which is a proposition; and (3) reasoning, the result of which is an argument. These three acts are so related to one another that the second cannot occur if the first does not; or can the third if the second does not; also, if the first does not, either can the third. This is to say that if simple apprehension does not occur, no intellectual activity at all occurs; or that whenever intellectual activity of any sort at all occurs, simple apprehension always occurs. This is also to say that propositions are per se constituents of arguments; and concepts, of propositions; i.e., just as propositions are analytically prior to arguments, so too concepts are analytically prior to propositions. Similarly, the concept of being, that which we expressed above as something-there, is so related to all our concepts about sensible things that nothing other than it can be conceived if it is not conceived; or whenever whatever else is conceived about sensible things, something-there is always conceived. Thus, something-there is a per se constituent of, or is analytically prior to, all other concepts about sensible things; but not vice versa. Thus, further, whenever the intellect does anything at all apropos of sensible things, it conceives something-there. The concept of being is the analytical beginning point of all human intellectual activity apropos of sensible things. (Fs)

6a One can make an approach toward establishing that something-there expresses the content of our analytically first concept about sensible things by considering the human intellect's natural passing from potentiality to actuality in its acquisition of knowledge. The human intellect moves from knowing nothing to knowing something; humans are born with no knowledge; they are born only with powers for acquiring knowledge. In moving from no knowledge about sensible things to knowledge about them, the human intellect functions through the senses to move first to some (as opposed to a complete) knowledge; then, as one's sense experience with sensible things grows, to progressively more and more knowledge about them. But what is the least the intellect can possibly come to know about sensible things, when it first comes to know anything at all about them? Perhaps one can say: next to nothing. But to know next to nothing about sensible things, and to know this by intellect, is to know about them something which is at the highest possible level of universality. Knowledge by intellect is from the outset a universal knowledge; and the least possible knowledge by intellect is the most universal possible knowledge. It is such, therefore, that it is applicable to any and every individual sensible thing of any and every sort, but without expressing anything which is proper to, or distinctive of, any individual or sort. When the intellect first conceives the sensible thing, what can the intellect conceive about a sensible thing less than this, namely, something-there (where 'there' takes on its meaning in one's recognition, however implicit, that something other than himself is asserting itself, is doing things to his senses). For the intellect to conceive less than this would, clearly, imply that the intellect's first concept was uttered at once about things which are there and about things which are not there. This is clearly impossible; for 'what is not there' can be taken to mean (1) absolute nothing, which is of itself inconceivable; it is conceivable only in terms of a reference to what is there; or (2) something nonsensible, which we conceive only after, and in terms of a reference to, what is there. (Fs)

7a One must keep in mind that what is said about what it is that the intellect first (both temporally and analytically) conceives about sensible things—namely, the concept of being—is said by way of analysis. One must, therefore, be careful to remind himself of what this means. It means that in order to come to an understanding of that first concept, one will employ many concepts and distinctions made after that first concept. These concepts and distinctions will have a precision and distinctness which that first concept did not have. And some of these concepts and distinctions will be used in talking about the content of that first concept; one must guard against attributing the precision and distinctness of these to the content of that first concept. For example, one will use the distinction between sense knowledge and intellectual knowledge; the distinction among conceiving, composing and dividing, and reasoning; the notion of the most universal possible; which have already been used in some way in what has been written above. (Fs)

7b It means that one will also use other concepts and distinctions, for example, the distinction between a word and the concept to which we attach the word; the distinction between the time when the first concept is formed by the intellect and the time when that first conception is given a verbal formulation; the distinction between signifying things as a whole and signifying them as a part; the different ways in which we know something which is a whole; the distinction between essence and existence. The last three distinctions just named will be used below at a more appropriate place (see pages 199-203). (Fs)

7c Since humans use words to give their ideas a more precise, a more elaborated, and a less emotionally hindered expression than can be given them by the crying of a hungry baby, or by a laugh, or by the movement of a hand, one might ask: When is the word "being" attached to the intellect's first concept? We attach words to concepts about sensible things, so that the words stand for these things through the mediacy of the concepts. It would be difficult, impossible perhaps, to determine when, in the lifetime of a given individual, the individual first attaches the word "being" to that which was his first conception about sensible things. (Fs)

8a When one says, here and now—i.e., in making an analysis—that the intellect first grasps a sensible thing as something-there, it should be made clear that this first grasp did not, then and there, receive the verbal formulation "something-there." This verbal formulation, like the verbal formulation "being" (and like any verbal formulation in respect to its corresponding conception),5 is attached to the first conception of the intellect only after one has heard the formulation used by others, and has heard it so used a sufficient number of times to allow him to gather that the user of the word has in his own mind attached the word to this first conception. The first verbal formulation was almost certainly a formulation bearing on the sensible quality through which the sensible things was being grasped by sense when the intellect first began to function; and this first verbal formulation was a formulation given to him ready-made: given to him, most likely, by his parents; ready-made, from the language spoken by his parents. For example, "hot" may have been a given child's first verbal formulation (see page 4). (Fs)