Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Einsicht verhält sich zum Phantasma wie Form zu Materie

Kurzinhalt: Einsicht erfasst das Objekt; von hier aus eröffnet sich der Weg zur philosophischen Form

Textausschnitt: ... the essential definition proceeds from an act of understanding; the real thing is what it is because form has actuated matter. The Aristotelian term T2 was a logical effort to isolate understanding and form, and one has only to consider the difficulties of such isolation to grasp why Aquinas dropped this Aristotelian effort as abortive and proceeded on lines of his own. Because the act of understanding - the intelligere proprie - is prior to, and cause of, conceptualization, because expression is only through conceptualization, any attempt to fix the act of understanding, except by way of introspective description, involves its own partial failure; for any such attempt is an expression, and expression is no longer understanding and already concept. Again, in a sense, the act of understanding as an insight into phantasm is knowledge of form: but the form so known does not correspond to the philosophic concept of form;n insight is to phantasm as form is to matter; but in that proportion, form is related to prime matter, but insight is related to sensible qualities; strictly, then, it is not true that insight is grasp of form; rather, insight is the grasp of the object in an inward aspect such that the mind, pivotingo on the insight, is able to conceive, not without labor, the philosophic concepts of form and matter. (38; Fs) (notabene)