Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Kritik an der Phänomenologie (phenomenology) am Beispiel des Kreises

Kurzinhalt: Teile der Materie, der Form (Aristoteles); der Begriff geht über das Vorstellbare hinaus;

Textausschnitt: The concept steps beyond the level of what can be presented empirically. The circle that satisfies the definition is not anything we can imagine; it can only be conceived. The selection from the data of what is essential to the insight leaves behind elements that are necessary for having any empirical presentation at all, or at least it can do so.
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In this connection, Aristotle in his Metaphysics (book 7, chapter 10) distinguished between parts of the matter and parts of the form. It is the same distinction we made with respect to the image in the example of the circle. In the circle, parts of the matter are the color of the background, the color of the line, ... Parts of the form are the elements that have to be there to have the insight: radii, center, perimeter, and equality.
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The Aristotelian distinction between parts of the matter and parts of the form offers, I think, a fundamental clue to what the phenomenologist is after. The phenomenologist does not want to describe absolutely everything. He gives a selective description, a description of what is significant or, as he himself says, of what is essential, of what is relevant. That description, the presentation of data that communicates to us what is essential, is a selection of the parts of the form that are in the matter. It is not discussion on the level of conception, where one tries to give a general formula that covers all possible cases. The phenomenologist presents us with a concrete situation, and in that concrete situation he picks out the parts of the form from the viewpoint of certain insights. It is a concrete mode of communicating insights. I do not say, of course, that this formulation of phenomenology is that of any phenomenologist, but I think it is a good clue to understanding what phenomenologists are doing.
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Epistemological, metaphysical, and philosophical questions arise on a level that we have not dealt with yet, while phenomenology as engaged in phenomenological description is not even talking on the level of conception.
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**Phenomenologists are communicating insight through the concrete, and not through the general conception that selects what is essential and is found in every case.** Phenomenology is talking to the Athenians the way the Athenians could understand, not in the way Socrates did, for which he was put to death.