Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: materia prima; materia: Unterscheidung; partes materiae - formae; BeispieL Kreissegment, Buchstabe; proportionale Materie

Kurzinhalt: Besides prime matter, there are sensible and intelligible matter, common and individual matter, appendages of matter, parts of the matter, material and individual conditions. What are all these?

Textausschnitt: 258 But the significance of the analogy is not confined to its metaphysical limit of prime matter and substantial form. Besides prime matter, there are sensible and intelligible matter, common and individual matter, appendages of matter, parts of the matter, material and individual conditions. What are all these? The answer is simple if one grasps that natural form stands to natural matter as the object of insight (forma intelligibilis) stands to the object of sense (materia sensibilis).1 But to convince conceptualists, a more detailed approach is necessary. Just as the correspondence between definitions and things was the ultimate ground of the analysis of change into subject, privation, and form,2 whence proceeded the notion of prime matter, so the more detailed correspondence between parts of the definition and parts of the thing should bring to light the other elements in the analogy. Accordingly we proceed to sample a lengthy and complex Aristotelian discussion.3 (155f; Fs)

259 Segments are parts of circles, and letters are parts of syllables. Why is it that the definition of the circle makes no mention of segments, while the definition of the syllable must mention letters? A typical solution is found in the contrast between 'curvature' and 'snubness': curvature is curvature whether in a nose or not; but snubness is snubness only in a nose. In general one may say that, as without proportionate matter there cannot be the corresponding material form (just as without a proportionate phantasm there cannot be the corresponding insight), so for different forms different measures of matter are necessary. There must be letters if there are to be syllables; but the necessary letters are not necessarily in wax or in ink or in stone; hence letters are de ratione speciei or partes speciei; but letters as in wax or as in ink or as in stone are partes materiae. Similarly, one cannot have a particular circle without having potential segments; but the notion of circle is prior to the notion of segment, since the latter cannot be defined without presupposing the notion of the former; and so one can appeal either to the potentiality of the segments or to the priority of the definition of circle to conclude that segments are, with respect to the circle, partes materiae.4 (156; Fs) (notabene)

260 The notion of priority is of wide and nuanced application. The right angle is prior to the acute; the circle to the semicircle; and man to hand or finger. In each of these instances the former is a whole and the latter a part; in each the definition of the former must be presupposed by a definition of the latter; in each, accordingly, the latter does not enter into the definition of the former and so is a pars materiae. But complex cases are not to be solved so simply. Parts of a living body cannot be defined without reference to their function in the whole; again, the whole itself cannot be defined without reference to its formal principle, which constitutes it as a whole; accordingly, the soul and its potencies must be prior to the body and its parts. Still, it does not follow that parts of the body are mere partes materiae, that 'man' can be defined without bothering about corporeal parts just as 'circle' can be defined without bothering whether it be made of wood or of bronze. The difference arises because the principle of priority must here be complemented by the principle of proportion between form and matter; a circle requires no more than intelligible matter; man requires sensible matter;5 and so while bronze and wood are not de ratione speciei circuli still flesh and bones are de ratione speciei hominis.6 (156f; Fs)

261 A sufficient sample has been taken from Aristotle's involved discussion to make it plain that matter is not merely prime matter but also the matter that is sensibly perceived and imaginatively represented. If further one wishes to understand why the discussion is so complex, why Aristotle warned against simple rules of solution,7 even perhaps a conceptualist might consider the hypothesis that the real principle of solution is neither one rule nor any set of rules but rather the fashioner of all rules, intelligence itself in act, determining what it takes as relevant to itself and so de ratione speciei and what it dismisses as irrelevant to itself and so pertaining to the partes materiae. (157; Fs)