Autor: Liddy, Richard M.

Buch: Transforming Light

Titel: Transforming Light

Stichwort: Hoenen, Herkunft d. Prinzipien, (Ganzes - Teile); Cajetan, intellectus agens; Thomas, Scotus: Verstehen -- Begriffsbildung, De Veritate, Scotus -> Kant

Kurzinhalt: Hoenen was convinced that mathematical principles could not be derived ... from a mere analysis of the terms of those principles. The question was: what is the origin of an intellectual first principle such as: the whole is greater than the part?

Textausschnitt: 2/6 From his studies on mathematics Hoenen was convinced that mathematical principles could not be derived, as generally scholastics had held, from a mere analysis of the terms of those principles. The question was: what is the origin of an intellectual first principle such as: the whole is greater than the part? Traditional scholasticism had interpreted such knowledge as a comparison of concepts, such as 'whole,' 'part,' 'greater than.' On the contrary, Hoenen contended, first principles derived from an insight into the image, the 'phantasm,' and a grasp of the 'nexus' or relationship between the terms in the phantasm. Experience, then, at least imaginative experience, was necessary for the abstraction of both universal ideas and universal principles. 'We experience in singular instances the nexus between the subject and predicate and from this experience we attain to an intellectual grasp of the nature of this nexus. Consequently, without previous analysis the resultant knowledge, because it is derived from experience, will be immediate and, because it concerns the nature, universal and necessary.'1 (91f; Fs)

3/6 Hoenen presents quotes from Thomas de vio Cajetan, the sixteenth-century commentator on St. Thomas, giving his understanding of Aquinas and Aristotle on this point. According to Cajetan, Aristotle felt that even empirical science was a grasping of the universal in the particular. 'Hence Aristotle in the same context adds the assertion that from the experimental knowledge of this and that herb there results the complex universal: every herb of this kind cures this kind of disease.'2 Hoenen summarizes Cajetan's summary of Aristotle on the process of abstraction: (92; Fs)

The intellect is only moved by that which is intelligible in act; but intelligible realities, as they are found in particular instances, are only intelligible in very remote potency because of an excess of materiality; in order that they may be gradually reduced to act, they are first brought to the exterior senses, then to the common sense, then to the cogitative faculty; then a frequent conversion and operation of the cogitative faculty is required in order that the realities may become close to intelligibility in act.3

4/6 An intellectual process is required then, whereby the presentations of sense and the representations of imagination are brought to the point at which understanding can grasp an intelligibility. Hoenen gives Cajetan's own understanding: 'Then when the matter has been so disposed and reduced to such a degree of spirituality, it becomes, by the operation of the agent intellect, truly universal and intelligible in act, and consequently moves the possible intellect to knowledge of itself.'4 (92f; Fs)

5/6 The opposite opinion, that of Duns Scotus, was simple: the agent intellect abstracts universal terms and concepts from experience and compares those terms and concepts. Some years later Lonergan would summarize the Scotist position: (93; Fs)

Scotus posits concepts first, then the apprehension of nexus between concepts. His species intelligibilis [eg: species intelligibilis] is what is meant immediately by external words; it is proved to exist because knowing presupposes its object and indeed its object as present; its production by agent intellect and phantasm is the first act of intellect, with knowing it as second act or inner word; it is not necessarily an accident inhering in the intellect but necessarily only a sufficiently present agent cooperating with intellect in producing the act of knowing; ordinarily it is the subordinate, but may be the principal, agent; sensitive knowledge is merely the occasion for scientific knowledge; as our inner word proceeds from the species, so the divine word proceeds from the divine essence. The Scotist rejection of insight into phantasm necessarily reduced the act of understanding to seeing a nexus between concepts; hence, while for Aquinas understanding precedes conceptualization which is rational, for Scotus, understanding is preceded by conceptualization which is a matter of metaphysical mechanics.5 (notabene)

6/6 This misunderstanding of the human process of knowing as some kind of 'metaphysical mechanics' is a recurrent theme in Lonergan's writings. We already noted his statement in the Blandyke Papers where he opposes any 'mechanical' theory of reasoning on the analogy of a slot machine: 'Put in a penny, pull the trigger, and the transition to a box of matches is spontaneous, immediate and necessary.' Elsewhere he will say our process of coming to know is not a kind of 'metaphysical sausage machine, at one end slicing species off phantasm, and at the other popping out concepts.'6 And again, still later, our mind is not a 'black box' in which there is sensitive 'input' at one end and words emerge as 'output' at the other end.7 On the contrary, as Lonergan was increasingly to formulate it, our understanding is a conscious process of 'grasping the intelligible in the sensible.' And this fact about our human knowing can be grasped by concretely attending to our own human understanding in act. (93; Fs)

7/6 Hoenen's article directed Lonergan to where this position could be found in St. Thomas Aquinas. In his commentary on Boethius' De Trinitate Thomas speaks of the first principles of the sciences, such as 'every whole is greater than its parts': (94; Fs)

These principles, known by nature, become manifest to the human person by the light of the agent intellect, which is part of our nature; indeed, by this light, nothing becomes evident to us except in so far as, through it, the phantasms are rendered intelligible in act. For this is the act of the agent intellect, as is said in the De Anima. But the phantasms are derived from sensation; hence the starting point for the knowledge of these principles is sense and memory, as the Philosopher notes at the end of the Posterior Analytics.8 (notabene)

8/6 Human knowledge begins with sense and imagination, therefore, but it does so in the light of the agent intellect: that within us that can shed intelligible light on our experience. In the De Veritate Aquinas says: (94; Fs)

There pre-exist in us certain seeds of the sciences such as the first conceptions of the intellect, which are immediately known by the light of the agent intellect by means of the species abstracted from the sense impressions, whether they be complex, such as the first principles or in-complex, such as the notion of 'being,' and 'one' and such like, which the intellect apprehends immediately. For from those universal principals flow all other principles as from certain seminal reasons.9

9/6 As in Lonergan's early Blandyke Papers, there is an insistence in Hoenen's interpretation of St. Thomas on focussing on the imaginative particular, the schema, as distinct from a focus on universal concepts. But there is also in Aquinas, as well, a metaphysical theory of intellect comprising such terms as the 'agent intellect,' the 'possible intellect,' 'species,' 'abstraction,' etc. What do all these terms mean? What is the origin of all these metaphysical terms that Lonergan had heard bandied about since his student days at Heythrop? That could well have been the young Lonergan's question at the time. Hoenen gave him some clues. For example, he quotes a Thomistic text that Lonergan himself will often quote through the years: (94; Fs)

Anyone can verify this in his own experience, that when he is trying to understand something, he forms some phantasms for himself by way of examples, and in these he as it were looks at what he wants to understand. It is for the same reason that when we want to have someone understand something, we offer him examples by means of which he may be able to form images for himself to aid his understanding.10

10/6 As Lonergan will later bring out, Aquinas is appealing to the reader's own inner experience, his or her own consciousness of themselves as sensing, imagining, understanding. As imagination is important in properly human knowing, so also is the act of understanding. 'As we, without any discourse, know the principles by a simple act of understanding, so also the angels know all that they know; hence they are called intellectual beings; and the habit of the principles in us is called intellect.11 [...] The intellect is so called because of its inward penetration of the truth; reason is so named because of its inquiry and discourse.'12 (95; Fs)

11/6 In general, Lonergan has high praise for Hoenen. He later spoke of him as in the tradition of Thomistic writers for whom he came to have high respect, such as Rousselot and Peghaire.13 He will have high praise for Hoenen's book La théorie du jugement d'après S. Thomas d'Aquin.14 He will attribute to Hoenen the discovery of the eclipse of the act of understanding in the scholastic tradition due to the acceptance of Duns Scotus' theory of knowledge.15 It was Hoenen who discovered the Scotist presuppositions in Kantian thought.16 A point that Lonergan will later point out in regard to Hoenen's work, however, is that the latter's terminology - 'abstracting the nexus from the phantasm' - is Scotist. (95; Fs)

But that terminology - that from phantasm are abstracted not only terms, concepts but also the nexus between concepts - you won't find either in Aristotle or Aquinas. That language is purely Scotist - terms with a nexus between them. You'll find that in Scotus, but you won't find it in Thomas. I've never run across Thomist texts of that type, as far as I can remember; that isn't his way of speaking. What he says is that what you abstract from phantasm is species - species is translating Aristotle's eidos. [...] If you want to say what's grasped by insight, you have Aristotle's expression: form, to ti en einai. It's not a matter simply of a nexus between terms; it's also that, but to describe it as a nexus between terms is a special case relevant to mathematics. Unity is another case - substantial unity. And if what is grasped by insight is form, what is expressed is related concepts. The presentation, the attention, has been so concentrated on the universal and the concept that the notion of the concept has permanence. But conscious intelligence is missing.17



() The question was: what is the origin of an intellectual first principle such as: the whole is greater than the part? Traditional scholasticism had interpreted such knowledge as a comparison of concepts, such as 'whole,' 'part,' 'greater than.' On the contrary, Hoenen contended, first principles derived from an insight into the image, the 'phantasm,' and a grasp of the 'nexus' or relationship between the terms in the phantasm. ... Consequently, without previous analysis the resultant knowledge, because it is derived from experience, will be immediate and, because it concerns the nature, universal and necessary.'
()
The Scotist rejection of insight into phantasm necessarily reduced the act of understanding to seeing a nexus between concepts; hence, while for Aquinas understanding precedes conceptualization which is rational, for Scotus, understanding is preceded by conceptualization which is a matter of metaphysical mechanics.
()
These principles, known by nature, become manifest to the human person by the light of the agent intellect, which is part of our nature; indeed, by this light, nothing becomes evident to us except in so far as, through it, the phantasms are rendered intelligible in act. For this is the act of the agent intellect, as is said in the De Anima. But the phantasms are derived from sensation; hence