Autor: Liddy, Richard M.

Buch: Transforming Light

Titel: Transforming Light

Stichwort: Extroversion, Materialismus, Idealismus, Realismus, Konfraontation, Identität

Kurzinhalt: Neigung z. Extroversion, philosophia perennis, intelligibile in actu est intellectus in actu; Konfraontation- Identität, Augustinus-Vernunft,

Textausschnitt: () A useful preliminary is to note that animals know, not mere phenomena, but things: ... Accept the sense of reality as criterion of reality, and you are a materialist, sensist, positivist, pragmatist, sentamentalist, and so on, as you please. Accept reason as a criterion but retain the sense of reality as what gives meaning to the term 'real,' and you are an idealist; for like the sense of reality, the reality defined by it is non-rational. In so far as I grasp it, the Thomist position is the clear-headed third position: reason is the criterion and, as well, it is reason-not the sense of reality-that gives meaning to the term 'real.' The real is what is and 'what is,' is known in the rational act, judgment.
()
Materialism, idealism, and naive forms of realism all see knowledge as primarily confrontational. How do we get from 'in here' to 'out there'? But for Aristotle and Aquinas knowledge is primarily by identity: sensibile in actu est sensus in actu, et intelligibile in actu est intellectus in actu. Knowledge is primarily union and only secondarily does the human mind, through understanding and accurate judgment, come to distinguish the trees from the forest in the being it grasps-and by which it is grasped.
()
Lonergan contrasts the Aristotelian-Thomistic view of knowledge primarily by identity with the confrontationism of materialism and even Platonic dualism.