Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Analogie in der Metaphysik leitet sich vom Verstehen d. Verstehens ab; Aristoteles (Metaphysik, Buch 9): Form - Potenz : Einsicht - Daten; Verständnis des proportionierten Seins -> analoges Verständnis des absoluten Seins

Kurzinhalt: We can examine in some detail just precisely what is the relation between what is grasped by insight and what is presented in data ... It is not simply that potency is the determinable and form is whatever determines, ...

Textausschnitt: 1.2 The Fundamental Set of Analogies

7/9 If, however, we go on to ask, 'Just what are these proportions? How do we obtain these proportions?' I should say that, in the fundamental case, it is by understanding understanding, by insight into insight. The metaphysician's understanding is analogous, and fundamentally the analogies come from an understanding of understanding. In the first instance, they come from an understanding of human understanding, and so we have a metaphysics of proportionate being. In the second instance, one goes beyond the first stage to the absolute being by analogy, and one has some analogous understanding of absolute understanding. That is the root of the analogies employed in metaphysics. It is a matter of understanding understanding, insight into insight. (202; Fs)

8/9 A standard analogy in metaphysics, that has its origin with Aristotle, is the analogy of form to potency.a Aristotle gives an account of it in the ninth book of the Metaphysics, in terms of a first type of the analogy of potency to act. What is that analogy in its fundamental case? It is the analogy of insight to data, of what is grasped by insight to what is presented by imagination. Aristotle illustrates this analogy by saying that as sight is to eyes, so hearing is to ears, and taste is to the palate, and so on. This illustration is exact. Sight is what we know by insight. We can take a look at eyes, but when we understand the eyes we say that they are organs of sight; sight is the form of the organ that is the eye. (202f; Fs)

9/9 Again, Aristotle elsewhere remarks that the soul is to the whole animal as sight is to seeing.1 Existence is to essence as judgment is to conception, as affirmation is to what is the affirmed content. As conception results from the combination of insight and data, so essence results from the combination of form and potency. But there we have a second instance of potency and act. Aristotle's illustration for this second instance of potency and act - the relation of form to act - is that as sight is to seeing, so the faculty of hearing is to the act of hearing, auditus ad audiendum.2 We happen to use the same word in English both for the faculty of hearing and for the act, but still, the faculty is the form of the organ, the ear, and the act is distinct from both the organ and the faculty, for there are times when we are not hearing anything.3 (203; Fs)

10/9 Our study of knowledge introduces us into the traditional analogies in a fundamental form in which we can control them.c We can examine in some detail just precisely what is the relation between what is grasped by insight and what is presented in data. That is a fundamental instance that can be illustrated wherever you can illustrate the relation of form and potency. On the other hand, you will also note that this analogy gives precision to the relation between form and potency. It is not simply that potency is the determinable and form is whatever determines, and you can apply that distinction wherever you please, ad infinitum. We have form and potency when we have the analogy of insight and data. Again, we have the analogy of existence and essence where we have the analogy of judgment and conception. We may have a triple-termed analogy: potency to form to act, as data in the intellectual pattern of experience to insight to judgment. (203; Fs)