Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Metaphysik: analoges Verstehen, Verhältnis zwischen Wesen und Sein; x1/y2, x2/y2 (x: Wesen - y: Sein);

Kurzinhalt: When one has proper knowledge of a thing, one is understanding it by its essence; but when one has analogical knowledge, one also has some understanding, an understanding of a proportion, of an analogy ...

Textausschnitt: 1. Metaphysical Analysis

1/9 If intellect is intelligence, it seems a fair question to ask,1 What does the metaphysician understand? If he does not understand anything, he does not seem to be using his intelligence. If he does understand something, what is it? Traditionally, the definition of metaphysics is that it is the science of being qua being. This suggests that it is not the science of any particular class of beings. It is not understanding what the physicist understands, what the chemist understands, what the biologist understands, what the anthropologist understands, or what the theologian understands. There does not seem to be anything left for the metaphysician to understand. (200; Fs)

2/9 Again, what he understands does not seem to be being as an abstract residue. One can say that common to all men is intelligence, common to all men and animals is sense, common to men and animals and plants is life, common to those three and the inorganic world is matter, common to all of them and to the angels and to God is substantiality, and common to substances and accidents there is something. What finally is left, after you have taken away what is proper to everything, one may say, is what the metaphysician studies. However, that which is finally left is not anything that exists; it seems to be nothing. Whatever you understand, you understand some essence; essence is what you know when you understand. What is finally left after you have removed what is proper to everything does not seem to be any essence. (200f; Fs)

3/9 Again, one could conceive metaphysics as understanding the essence of God, the essence of the ens per essentiam. God, understanding his own essence, understands absolutely everything else, everything that is possible and everything that is actual, all in a simple intellectual apprehension that is identical with himself. In that case, if one had God's understanding of himself by which God also understands everything else, one would be a metaphysician who understood something; and indeed, the object of that understanding would be being in its total extension. However, we are not God, and in this life we do not have the beatific vision by which we participate in God's knowledge. Moreover, the beatific vision is something beyond the proportion of our natures; consequently, it does not seem to be what constitutes the metaphysician qua metaphysician. (201; Fs)

4/9 What, then, does the metaphysician understand, if it is not any particular class of beings, not the abstract residue of all beings, and not the ens per essentiam? I do not think that the answer is that the metaphysician understands nothing whatever. What does he understand? (201; Fs)

1.1 Analogous Understanding

5/9 I think we have to distinguish between two types of understanding. In theology at least, it is necessary to distinguish between proper knowledge of a thing - knowledge of a thing by its essence - and analogical knowledge; and this suggests two types of understanding. When one has proper knowledge of a thing, one is understanding it by its essence; but when one has analogical knowledge, one also has some understanding, an understanding of a proportion, of an analogy. (201; Fs)

6/9 One may say, then, that the knowledge of the essences of different types of beings pertains to the particular departments of knowledge, and the metaphysician leaves knowledge of those essences to the people working in the particular departments. What will be determined in the various departments are the essences of the different kinds of beings, and that is proper knowledge. But the metaphysician has analogical knowledge. For him, the essences function as a series of x's. When we were discussing the concept of being,2 we saw that in essence intelligence grasps the possibility of being; because of essence, it raises the question of existence. There is a connection, then, between essence and being, essence and existence; beings are compounded of essences and existences. One might say as a first approximation that the metaphysician is concerned with the proportion between essences and existences, with the analogy of the series x1/y1, x2/y2, etc., where existences are indicated by the y's and essences by the x's. That analogy is the occupation of the metaphysician. His understanding is analogous. It is an understanding of being and of all being, but it is not a matter of understanding essences proper to each being. Metaphysics is understanding and exploiting the analogy in all being. This account of metaphysics at least introduces a familiar element. (201f; Fs)