Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Seins als proportioniertes Objekt, Intelligibilität des Seins, Thomas: Weisheit

Kurzinhalt: Finality as a Structured Notion (potency, form, and act), Sein ist intelligibel: ens per essentiam, ens per participationem; Weisheit im Zusammenhang mit geistiger Finalität bei Thomas

Textausschnitt: () Insofar as knowing develops on three stages, it is inevitable that the known involves a combination of three contents. If knowing is experiencing and understanding and judging, and if all three are required to have the known, then the known will involve a content from the experiencing, a content from the understanding, and a content from the judging, all combined into a single object.
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This combination of all three contents in a single object is what is classically termed the proportionate object of our intellect - potency, form, and act ..
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Again, if being is the object of the verb 'to know,' and our knowing is by inquiry and insight, reflection and judgment, then to say that something is a being is also to say that it is intelligible. The intelligible is what you can know by understanding and judging.
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So we have arrived at a notion of being that is unrestricted, that includes everything about everything, that is not within any genus. It underpins, goes before, penetrates, runs into, coincides with, and goes beyond any particular act of knowing and any particular content of knowing which we may have. It is the core of all meaning, and it is a structured notion.
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For Aquinas, the highest intellectual habit is wisdom. It is wisdom that selects the terms that determine the principles which determine everything in our knowledge. But how do we acquire wisdom? We cannot use principles here, for wisdom is their source. Aquinas would derive wisdom from two sources: ... One's choice of the notion of being is going to determine everything else. So we have to have the right notion of being to acquire wisdom, but also we have to have wisdom to settle what the right notion of being is.