Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Manifestation des intellektuellen Lichtes, prima lux, zweifache Quelle unserer Erkenntnis, visio beatifica

Kurzinhalt: the light of agent intellect is said to manifest first principles, our intellectual light derives its efficacy from the prima lux which is God, beatific vision, Kunst

Textausschnitt: There is, then, a manner in which the light of our souls enters within the range of introspective observation. The most conspicuous instance seems to be our grasp of first principles. Scientific conclusions are accepted because they are implied by first principles; but the assent to first principles has to have its motive too, for assent is rational; and that motive is the light that naturally is within us. ... Just as conclusions are convincing because principles are convincing, so our intellectual light derives its efficacy from the prima lux which is God. Hence the divine and the human teachers may collaborate without any confusion of role. The human teacher teaches inasmuch as he reduces conclusions to principles; but all the certitude we possess, whether of conclusions or of principles, comes from the intellectual light within us by which God speaks to us.
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However, the experienced effects of intellectual light, as the evidence of principles, the motive of assent, the immanent ground of certitude, are not the only instances in which intellectual light, in its indirect fashion, enters into the range of consciousness. It is constitutive of our very power of understanding. It is the principle of inquiry and of discourse ...
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As the principle of inquiry, intellectual light is the source of that search for causes which reveals the natural desire of man for die beatific vision. Our knowledge has a twofold source - an extrinsic origin on the level of sense, but an intrinsic origin in the light of our intellects. Sense is only the materia causae of our knowledge. The object of understanding is supplied and offered to us, as it were materially, by the imagination; formally, as object of understanding, it is completed by intellectual light. Perhaps, agent intellect is to be given the function of the subconscious effect of ordering the phantasm to bring about the right schematic image that releases the flash of understanding; for agent intellect is to phantasm as art is to artificial products.