Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: apprehensive abstraction as second act, actus perfecti; species intelligibilis quae, qua, in qua

Kurzinhalt: the act of apprehensive abstraction (insight), an immaterial similitude of the form that is received materially in the known thing

Textausschnitt: But though apprehensive abstraction is itself cognitional and abstracts from sensibly known individual or sensible matter, still it may be considered insofar as it enters under metaphysical categories. From that viewpoint it is an operation, a second act, an actus perfecti. Because it involves psychological necessity and universality, metaphysically the form whence it proceeds must be received universally, immaterially, and immovably ... Such a form is not the essence itself of the soul but an immaterial similitude of the form that is received materially in the known thing. It is not innate, nor derived from separate substances out of this world, nor consisting exclusively of intellectual light; but it is received from material things inasmuch as phantasms are made intelligible in act by agent intellect; hence neither the acquisition nor the use of science can occur without conversion to phantasm; nor can we even judge properly unless sense is functioning freely.
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Now this form also is called a 'species intelligibilis'; obviously it is quite different from the species of our preceding paragraph, which is an object. If the latter be named 'species quae,' then this form is 'species qua intelligitur'; the 'species quae' is one of various attempts to characterize the preconceptual object of insight; the 'species qua' is not a direct object but a conclusion of metaphysical reflection. When the possible intellect is actuated by the 'species qua,' it is constituted in the first act of apprehensive abstraction; this first act of apprehensive abstraction stands to the second act as does form to esse and as principle of action to action.
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the reception of the 'species qua' is a passion, and the consequent second act is similarly a pati in the general sense of that term; by that second act the preconceptual 'quidditas rei materiallis' or 'forma intelligibilis' or 'species quae' or universal in the particular is known; but in virtue of that second act there is formed the definition, the act of defining thought, the act of meaning; and this, at times, is said to be or to contain a third 'species intelligibilis,' which may be distinguished from the 'species quae' and the 'species qua' by being called a 'species in qua.