Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Ontological and Psychological Constitution of Christ

Titel: The Ontological and Psychological Constitution of Christ

Stichwort: Person (Elemente d. Definition); Existenz; Ziele und Mittel (direkt, indirekt, natürlich, übernatürlich); Einsicht, Vernunft (Kultur des Dialoges: Antike, Mittelalter) ; natürliche M. nicht ausreichend: Akademie -> Skeptizismus, Lyceum -> Empirismus

Kurzinhalt: However, since natural means of this kind are indirect, they are also not so effective as to exclude all possibility of self-deception. For they do not act in such a way as to diagnose the disease and cure it; rather they propose the goals, provide ...

Textausschnitt: 9 End and Means (eü)

31/1 9 As to what can help one to be converted and so begin to 'exist,' we must distinguish between end and means, between direct and indirect means, and between natural and supernatural means. (23; Fs)

32/1 Means that are natural and indirect are clear enough. When you speak, you have to use your mind and reason; and when you use your mind and reason, you have not only to attend to the data of sense but you are also concerned with the intelligible and the true. For this reason both the ancient Greeks with their love of talk and the medievals with their passion for disputation arrived at being, led along as it were by human nature itself. Modern thinkers, on the other hand, who have worked out their systems in isolation, more often than not have drawn from their profound musings ideas indicating that they have hardly been liberated from a kind of sensism. (23f; Fs) (notabene)

33/1 Again, when human persons interact with one another, they must use their intellect and reason and also be aware that the others are likewise using theirs. Through this exercise there arises and develops an orientation that is the opposite of that which characterizes animals. For to the extent to which one does not 'exist,' one is a kind of focal point of thoughts and desires in relation to which everything else is judged useful or useless. Intellect and reason are of so little importance as to be deemed comparable to animal faculties; for the intellect is considered to be to a human being what swiftness is to a deer, bravery to a lion, or venemous fangs to a snake. But when one has begun to 'exist,' one understands that there is a certain order to the universe and concludes that one is a subordinate part of that order, and so learns to put the common good before one's own private good. On this basis, therefore, the present-day esteem for the person must be reckoned among the aids that contribute to personal conversion and Existenz, just as in an earlier time the Greek fondness for talk and the medieval passion for disputation had done. (25; Fs)

34/1 However, since natural means of this kind are indirect, they are also not so effective as to exclude all possibility of self-deception. For they do not act in such a way as to diagnose the disease and cure it; rather they propose the goals, provide the circumstances, and favor those actions from which more often than not a happy outcome may be hoped for. Although the ancient Greeks did arrive at being, later on the Academy fell into skepticism and the Lyceum into empiricism. And although the medievals plumbed the depths of being, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries they were unable to stem the tide of decadence, conceptualism, nominalism, and skepticism. Just as in former times the Stoics had propounded a truly lofty doctrine of morality and yet remained materialists, so too the personalists of our day, while they praise true virtue, nonetheless do not refrain from looking down on and holding in contempt disciplines that are truly scientific. (25; Fs)