Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Finalität und Inhalt des Wissens; Wesen und Sein; Cajetan (Menschheit - Mensch)

Kurzinhalt: Finality and the Contents of Knowing; die intelligente und rationale Finalität durchdringt alles Denken; Form als Begrenzung der Finalität

Textausschnitt: () Intelligent and rational finality underpins all contents in our knowing; it penetrates them all; and it goes beyond them all.
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The matter may be illustrated by a consideration of the standard question, What is subsistence? There is a whole series of scholastic opinions on it. ... The question is put by Cajetan in terms of the difference betwen humanity and man. ... If it is just matter and form, what you conceive as a result of grasping soul in these data is humanity; but if it is this matter and form as a determination of being, it is a man. Humanity, id quo est, is abstract; man, id quod est, is concrete. Humanity is a principle limiting the being to being a man.
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What is it that you conceive? If you attend only to the sensible presentation and the insight, then what you conceive is humanity, a compound of matter and form. But if you consider the finality of intellect towards being, what you are trying to conceive is being, and matter and form are a determination of that being, and you conceive a man. De facto, we form concrete terms before abstract ones because of the finality of intellect towards being. We have the content 'being' from the desire to know, and the determination of the content from the intelligible form in the sensible matter. According to Cajetan's theory of subsistence, 'man' adds to 'humanity' a mode. On the present analysis, 'man' means a being. You do not know a being until you make a judgment, but you are thinking about being on the level of intelligence.
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In cognitional process there are not merely data of sense and the form grasped in insight, but also finality, the intellectually and rationally conscious finality of intellect towards being. Because of the finality, this humanity is thought as part of a whole, as the matter and form of something that is compounded not merely of matter and form but also of existence. This illustrates the penetration of all contents by being. Your questions are questions about being: What is it? Is it so? Your questions have their root in this fundamental finality.
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This finality also goes beyond all contents. Any degree of understanding gives rise to further questions, to further understanding, and when you reach the further understanding you ask whether it is so. Affirming 'It is so' will itself give rise to further questions. When you grasp the unconditioned, you want to move to the level of knowing being.