Autor: Thomas Aquinas

Buch: Summa Theologiae: Man 1a. 75-83

Titel: Summa Theologiae: Man 1a. 75-83

Stichwort: Seele - Unsterblichkeit: Thomas (De veritate - Reflexion; Summa - Erkennen, Sein); analoges Wissen (Denken) um Gott und d. Seele; Scotus; Bewusstsein (Butler, Newman)

Kurzinhalt: ... that knowledge means actually being some other thing (however imperfectly), rather than on doing something ... man's knowledge is of things as, precisely, existing or able-to-exist. Existence does not belong to the sense order. This means that ...

Textausschnitt: 259a St Thomas pursued various analyses in arriving at his untrammelled conviction that man's immortal substance and destiny is something that lies open to proof. In the De veritate I, 9, he appeals to the intellect's power of complete reflection or reflection upon itself; Joseph Butler's analysis of reflection in his Fifteen Sermons is probably the most serious post-medieval development of this argument. Again, 11 Sent. 19, 1 uses a rather subtle variation based on the Neoplatonic text, the Liber de causis; 'Every knower which knows its own essence is returning to its own essence by a complete return.' This, St Thomas argues, is impossible for an organic power, hence human understanding, which understands itself, is non-organic and spiritual. (Fs; tblStw: Seele) (notabene)

259b The Summa, however, does not even allude to this line of reasoning, despite its attractions, but takes its stand on a principle which most moderns find opaque, though Cajetan calls it evident (per se nota).1 The force of the argument depends on the axiom that knowledge means actually being some other thing (however imperfectly), rather than on doing something. Man's ability-to-be (by knowledge) any material being would be impossible were he already fixed in his being to the essence of one material form. But since sense knowledge, in its own humble way, is other things, the analysis has to rise clear of the material order by insisting that man's knowledge is of things as, precisely, existing or able-to-exist. Existence does not belong to the sense order. This means that human knowledge finds, in its sense object, something that transcends the material order, something to which it can respond only provided it itself transcends the material order. (Fs) (notabene)

Kommentar (16/11/11): Kom06_476b (467c f.)

259c In maintaining the non-pre-existent yet immortal subsistence of the soul along with its essentially being the entelechy of an organism on which it is objectively dependent, he left a great deal to be tidied up by others. However, his tightly structured analysis of the question in the Contra Gentes had a large school committed to it from 1278 onwards. (Fs)

259d Scotus's critique of St Thomas amounts to this, that his position was not Aristotelean. Even a Thomist of such stature as Cajetan came to agree, and I think we ought now to be of the same opinion. A. C. Pegis remarks that St Thomas 'not only created that baffling Philosopher whose name appears so frequently in the Thomistic writings; he also gave to him a metaphysical setting and foundation that the ancient Stagirite never knew.'2 Van Steenberghen holds that 'to formulate his [eg: Thomas] own psychology in Aristotelean terms, it was necessary to go beyond Aristoteleanism itself'.3

259e St Thomas established the harmony of faith and reason by studies which took Aristotelean passages merely as points of departure. Like his doctrine of substance, his treatment of soul, anima, is the term of Latin Christian doctrinal development. Yet 'the word was so well accredited in the language of Latin Christianity', writes Chenu,4 'that even the truest Aristoteleans used it without reservation to designate the immortal soul of man, and this, to the exclusion of the word spiritus which was not used in the translations of Aristotle'. Which goes to prove two things; that Aristotle, for the main phylum of thirteenth-century thought, provided not the last word, but a reliable framework within which to elaborate an analysis in any major field; and that Boëthius remained a weightier authority even in philosophy. (Fs)

260a We know God for certain by analogy, according to Scripture.5 According to St Thomas and his followers we know the soul's immortality in the same way.6 The word analogy lifts St Anselm's argument clear of illuminism. It is a question, not merely of the need for talk to be analogical, but of the need for thinking to be analogical. Roman Catholic tradition is deeply committed to this body of thought. Some important developments, however, were to originate in the Anglican tradition. Butler and Newman held that we get to know God through conscience, and that what the N.T. meant by conscience is simply man's power of reflection over himself and his acts.7 This experience is fundamental in analogical thought, which is thus rooted in the very nature of human understanding. Note the importance for Butler, in contrast with Kant, of exploring the theological implications of the fact that God and human immortality cannot be disproved; failing to explore these implications means refusing to let faith analogize, and without analogical thought born of reflection or conscience faith must die. Thus, he argued, the Christian faith as a system is as intimately bound up with the analogical contuition of immortality as it is with the analogical contuition of God. There is, partly in consequence, a vast contemporary literature touching analogy, especially in English. But though it glimpses the promised land from afar it cannot safely be said to have entered it. In regard to the whole question we need to probe and ponder the historical, linguistic and logical continuity between St Thomas's analysis here and Newman's treatment of God, immortality, conscience and analogy as a doctrinal whole whose parts cannot survive separately. (Fs)