Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Form und Akt; Erkennbarkeit der Form, Form als Kern, Wirkursache; Akt zu Form wie Urteil zu Begriff

Kurzinhalt: Form is intelligible in itself. Contingent act, finite act, is not intelligible in itself. It is intelligible in the other; material essence is intelligible in itself because

Textausschnitt: Form is intelligible in itself. Contingent act, finite act, is not intelligible in itself. It is intelligible in the other. Existence and events are contingent; they're what corresponds to the proper content of judgment. The proper content of judgment depends upon a virtually unconditioned. A virtually unconditioned is what in fact is unconditioned - in fact has its conditions fulfilled. There's a limitation on the intelligibility there, and for that reason you are led to postulate efficient causes to account for contingent existence and contingent events.
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Form is the nucleus. It's what we know insofar as we understand. But only an object that is exclusively form is totally intelligible in itself - an object, a reality, in which its form is also its act, by identity. Then you have total intelligibility in itself.
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Form, where it's just a component of the real, is the nucleus of intelligibility intrinsic to that reality. Essence is intelligible in itself; material essence is intelligible in itself because, while essence includes both form and potency, or form and matter, and the matter or potency is not intelligible in itself, still it is intelligible in the form, and you've included the form in the essence.
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Now just as the judgment of existence is related to the concept of essence, so existence is related to essence - there is an isomorphism.