Autor: Flanagan, Josef

Buch: Quest for Self-Knowledge

Titel: Quest for Self-Knowledge

Stichwort: Unterschied: Notion (notion) - Begriff; Notion des Seins (notion of being)

Kurzinhalt: A notion generally refers to a vague idea or hunch you have about something before you actually come to know or witness it. Notional knowing is a priori knowing, but ...

Textausschnitt: 64/5 It is important to note that you cannot conceive of being until you have understood it, and you will not understand it until you have understood everything about everything, until you have had an unlimited understanding that understands everything concretely and completely. Therefore, this second-order definition of being is not a concept of being, but a 'notion' of being. A notion generally refers to a vague idea or hunch you have about something before you actually come to know or witness it. Notional knowing is a priori knowing, but the a priori in this case is the sort of notional knowing that emerges with wondering or questioning. Notional knowing, then, is knowing the way your own questioning guides you to acts of understanding, and then moves you beyond understanding to correct judging, and beyond correct judging to repeated questioning toward a final objective that has absolutely no limits. Being, then, is a notion defined in terms not of what it is, but of how it comes to be known and will actually be known. Such an account of being or reality seems rather complicated and abstract. Yet everyone spontaneously assumes that things really exist, without getting involved in any complicated, abstract reasoning process. It is important to distinguish between the spontaneously operative notion of being and a philosophical account of what this notion of being is.1 (138; Fs) (notabene)

65/5 We do not have to teach children to question; they do so spontaneously and effortlessly. When children reach a certain age, we do not have to teach them to ask, Is that really so?, Are you just kidding?, Do you really mean it? Such critical questioning is spontaneous, immediate, and natural. Aristotle says the beginning of wisdom is wonder, but he also spoke of nature as 'the imminent principle of movement and rest.' What stirs up a knower is a question, and what quiets such a knower is a correct answer. Questioning and answering are natural to knowers, which means that the desire to know, and to know in an unrestricted way, is what human nature gives to human knowers. (138; Fs)

66/5 It is natural for all people to want to know being or everything about everything. That is why the child spontaneously asks. What is this?, and eventually, Is it really so? A deliberate effort is needed to stop the question. No doubt the child will have to learn that there is a strategy to questioning and that some questions can be answered only after years of study, but to repress and cover over a question deliberately without sufficient reason goes against our nature. Obscurantism in any form is intolerable for the authentic human knower. (138f; Fs)