Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Abstraktion; 3 Stufen: objektive, apprehensive, formtive

Kurzinhalt: There are three stages to physical and mathematical abstraction: the objective, the apprehensive, the formative.

Textausschnitt: 330 There are three stages to physical and mathematical abstraction: the objective, the apprehensive, the formative. Objective abstraction is the illumitiation of phantasm, the imagined object; it consists in treating the imagined object as something to be understood as far as its specific nature goes; like action and passion, it is one reality with two aspects; as effected by agent intellect, it may be named efficient; as affecting the imagined object, it may be named instrumental. Next, with regard to apprehensive abstraction, one has to distinguish between first act and second act: first act is the possible intellect informed and actuated by a species qua; second act proceeds from first as esse from form and action from principle of action; accordingly, the procession is processio operationis; the second act consists in grasping, knowing, considering an intelligible species quae in the imagined object. Per se this second act is infallible; consequent to it by a sort of reflection, there is indirect, intellectual knowledge of the singular, that is, a reflective grasping that the universal nature understood is the nature of the particular imagined. Thirdly, there is the act of formative abstraction; this consists in an act of meaning or defining; but whenever there is an act of meaning or defining, by that very fact there is something meant or defined; accordingly, formative abstraction may also be described as positing a universal ratio or an intentio intellecta. (187f; Fs)