Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Philosophische Entwicklung - Ggs zum technischen Fortschritt

Kurzinhalt: Linie: Parmenides - Herakli t- Plato - Aristoteles - Thomas; Arianismus, Nestorianismus; philosophic develpment: the subject is also one of the objects

Textausschnitt: 29/4 Philosophic development is different. By philosophic development I mean developments in philosophy, in human science, in theology. In those fields there occur crises and developments of the same type as in the scientific field. Parmenides' attention to being was such a development; Heraclitus's attention to the logos was such a development; Plato's distinction between sensible and intelligible, aisthêta and noêta, was such a development. Aristotle's characterization of the intelligible as the causa essendi in the sensible - the noêton is the aition tou einai immanent in the sensible, form immanent in matter - was going beyond Platonic modes of thought. When Aquinas went beyond hylomorphism, the composition of substantial form with prime matter, to posit a third metaphysical entity - esse, existence - he was going beyond Aristotle in a profound and radical fashion. (94; Fs) (notabene)
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32/4 So there are crises and real developments within the philosophic field, just as there are in mathematics and science. However, the difference in the philosophic field is that the recession of the horizon does not result in a universal and permanent difference. The new horizon is accepted by some and not by others, ... The definition of the consubstantiality of the Son was accompanied by Arianism. The affirmation of one person in two natures in Christ was accompanied by Nestorianism and Monophysitism. The working out of the doctrines of the sacraments, grace, and the church in the medieval period was followed by the Protestant negation of all of these developments at the time of the Reformation. The moments of development within this field do not result in universal and permanent achievement. (95; Fs)
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33/4 Not only is the new development accepted by some and rejected by others - there is the formation of schools - but the new schools then tend to splinter, to have periods of decay and revival. What is happening in a period of decay within a school? The words of the master are faithfully repeated, but the meaning has been devaluated and contracted to fit into a narrower horizon, a lower stage of development. These periods of decay are followed by periods of revival, a restoration of the original meaning. What is happening is a revival in subjects who have horizons large enough to follow the thought of the original inspiration. And so we have neo-Platonism as well as Platonism, neo-Aristotelianism ...
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34/4 The ground of this difference between the scientific and the philosophic developments is not hard to find. The scientific development involves a transformation of the object, a rethinking of basic categories, postulates, and axioms. Similarly in the philosophic field. However, the difference between the scientific and the philosophic is that in the case of the philosophic the subject is also one of the objects. The subject can accept the transformation in the conception of the object only if he effects a transformation in his own living. Because the subject is one of the objects, there can occur the transformation of the object only on the condition that there occurs a radica1 conversion, a real development, in the subject. That real development in the subject is something that every subject dreads. Because of that dread of subjects there can be found down the centuries a family resemblance between materialists, between idealists, between realists, that is independent of the purely intellectual development that has been occurring. There is a fundamental philosophic difference of subjects themselves, of the capacity of subjects to broaden their horizon to the point where it includes the universe. (96; Fs) (notabene)