Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Spannung zw: Augustinus: mens, animus - anima (Aristoteles); Aristoteles: Potenz - Akt Objekt (Kausalität, nicht Interiorität)

Kurzinhalt: De anima; Seele - Potenz - Akt - Objekt; our immediate concern is to find in Aristotle the point of insertion for Augustinian thought; bei Aristo. u. Thomas: introspective skills

Textausschnitt: The Aristotelian framework was impressive. First, it was a general theory of being, a metaphysics. Secondly, it was a general theory of movement, a physics in that now antiquated sense. Thirdly, it was a general theory of life, a biology. Fourthly, it was a general theory of sensitivity and intelligence, a psychology.
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The interlocking of each part with all the others precluded the possibility of merely patchwork revisions. As Professor Butterfield has observed, to correct Aristotle effectively, one must go beyond him; and to go beyond him is to set up a system equal in comprehensiveness and more successful in inner coherence and in conformity with fact. Still, such attempts have been made and, indeed, in two quite different manners.
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It is not difficult to discern. I distinguished above four components in the Aristotelian framework. I must hasten to add that, in a sense, the distinction between the third and fourth, between biology and psychology, is not as clear, as sharp, as fully developed as may be desired. ... At the same time, it fails to bring out effectively the essential difference between an investigation of plant life and an investigation of the human mind ...
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Souls are differentiated by their potencies; potencies are known by their acts; acts are specified by their objects. But what is meant by an object? That is the decisive question. For the meaning given the term 'object' will settle the specification given acts; the specification of acts will settle the distinction between potencies; and the distinction between potencies will settle the essential differences between the souls of plants, animals, and men.
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A modern reader is apt to take it for granted that by an object Aristotle must mean the intentional term of a conscious act. But quite evidently Aquinas was of a different opinion. In his commentary he defines objects in terms, not of intentionality, but of causality:
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If vegetative acts are not accessible to introspection, sensitive and intellectual acts are among the immediate data of consciousness; they can be reached not only by deduction from their objects but also in themselves as given in consciousness. Finally, when conscious acts are studied by introspection, one discovers not only the acts and their intentional terms but also the intending subject, and there arises the problem of the relation of subject to soul, of the Augustinian mens or animus to the Aristotelian anima.
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As we shall see, Aquinas explicitly appealed to inner experience and, I submit, Aristotle's account of intelligence, of insight into phantasm, and of the fact that intellect knows itself, not by a species of itself, but by a species of its object, has too uncanny an accuracy to be possible without the greatest introspective skill. But if Aristotle and Aquinas used introspection and did so brilliantly, it remains that they did not thematize their use, did not elevate it into a reflectively elaborated technique, did not work out a proper method for psychology, and thereby lay the groundwork for the contemporary distinctions between nature and spirit and between the natural and the human sciences.