Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Intellekt als intellect-in-process; Einsicht der Engel; Aristoteles: verschiedene Substanzen; Thomas: Einsicht der Engel,

Kurzinhalt: Abhängigkeit des Intellekts vom Phantasma: contra Kant; Platon, Aristoteles: Extrapolation; aristotelische und thomistische Theorie des Intellekts: verschiedene Substanzen - Engel

Textausschnitt: This dependence of human intellect on sense for its object and for the preparatory elaboration of its object implies that human intellect is essentially intellect-in-process or reason. We do have occasional flashes of insight; but angelic, and still more, divine knowledge is exclusively that sort of thing, a continuous blaze of the light of understanding. ... Hence the theory of innate ideas - and, one may add, of Kantian a priori forms - contradicts the experience we all have of working from, and on, a sensible basis towards understanding.
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As soon as Aristotle arrived at the meaning of the question, What is a man? he immediately concluded that the separate substances must be objects of a different type of knowledge and inquiry. The Platonist extrapolation to higher regions was modeled on the universal concept, and Aristotle rightly criticized the anthropomorphism of such a procedure. Aristotle's own extrapolation is not from universal concepts, but from the act of insight: ... Thus the pure Aristotelian theory of intellect is to be sought in the Aristotelian account of his separate substances ... Similarly, the pure Thomist theory of intellect is to be sought in the Thomist account of angelic knowledge, and from that account J. Peghaire rightly begins his investigation of Thomist notions of intellect and reason.
Now, just as human intellect is mainly reason, because it operates from sense as a starting point, so the quiddity known by the human intellect is different in kind from that known by the angelic. The angel has no senses, and so his acts of understanding cannot be insights into sensibly represented data