Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Thomas: Betonung der Unbegrentzheit des natürlichen Lichtes; Seinsbegriff

Kurzinhalt: as active is potens omnia facere; as passive, it is potens omnia fieri; intellectual light is referred to its origin in uncreated Light

Textausschnitt: ... Thomist thought does stress that native infinity, and on the other hand, from such infinity one can grasp the capacity of the mind to know reality.
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as active is potens omnia facere; as passive, it is potens omnia fieri. This is not merely an Aristotelian commonplace which Aquinas endlessly repeated; he also knew how to transpose and apply it in rather startling fashion. Any finite act of understanding has to be a pati, because intellect as intellect is infinite. Because of its infinite range, the object of intellect must be ens; this object cannot be unknown; it is known per se and naturally. As there are different types of intellect, so there are different modes of knowing ens. Since ...
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For the concept of ens is not just another concept, another quod quid est, another but most general essence; the concept of ens is any concept, any quod quid est, any essence, when considered, not as some highest common factor nor again simply in itself, but in its relation to its own actus essendi, which is known in the act of judgment. ... further, since we know we know by knowing what we are, it is by reflection on the nature of intellect that we know our capacity for truth and for knowledge of reality. But the native infinity of intellect as intellect is a datum of rational consciousness. It appears in that restless spirit of inquiry, that endless search for causes which, Aquinas argued, can rest and end only in a supernatural vision of God. ... Just as Thomist thought is an ontology of knowledge inasmuch as intellectual light is referred to its origin in uncreated Light, so too it is more than an embryonic epistemology inasmuch as intellectual light reflectively grasps its own nature and the commensuration of that nature to the universe of reality.