Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Wissen als Bewegung (Plato) u. Vervollkommnung (Aristoteles); menschl. Intellekt erkennt sich selbst

Kurzinhalt: For the Aristotelian confrontation is secondary. Sense in act is the sensible in act. Intellect in act is the intelligible in act; Potenz, Habitus und Akt

Textausschnitt: The conception of knowing as movement appears in Plato's dilemma that the subsistent Idea of Being either must be in movement or else must be without knowing. The same dilemma forced Plotinus to place the One beyond knowing; Nous could not be first, because Nous could not be simple. In St Augustine the notion that knowing is by confrontation appears in the affirmation that we somehow see and consult the eternal reasons. ...
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For the Aristotelian, on the other hand, confrontation is secondary. Primarily and essentially, knowing is perfection, act, identity. Sense in act is the sensible in act. Intellect in act is the intelligible in act. In this material world, of course, besides the knower in act and the known in act, there are also the knower in potency and the known in potency; and while the former are identical, still the latter are distinct. Nonetheless, potency is not essential to knowing, and therefore distinction is not essential to knowing. It follows that in immaterial substances, as one negates potency, so also one negates distinction: 'In his quae sunt sine materia, idem est intelligens et intellectum.' A Platonist subsistent Idea of Being would have to sacrifice immobility to have knowledge; but Aristotle, because he conceived knowing as primarily not confrontation but identity in act, was able to affirm the intelligence in act of his immovable mover.
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Unlike the natures of material things, which can be known only by what they do, human intellect can be known by what it is. Efficiently, it is the light of intelligence within us, the drive to wonder, to reflection, to criticism, the source of all science and philosophy. Receptively, it offers the three aspects of potency, habit, and act. As potency, human intellect is the capacity to understand; it is common to all men, for even the stupidest of men at least occasionally understand. As habit, human intellect is fivefold:
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For intellectual habit is not possession of the book but freedom from the book. It is the birth and life in us of the light and evidence by which we operate on our own. It enables us to recast definitions, to adjust principles, to throw chains of reasoning into new perspectives according to variations of circumstance and exigencies of the occasion.