Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Stichwort: Der kritische Realist; Denken in Bildern; Bilderwelt - Ausstreckung auf das Sein (intention of being)

Kurzinhalt: ... objective knowledge of reality in looking, perceiving, Anschauung? It is because their world is a picture world. If their world were the universe of being ...; ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem

Textausschnitt: 218a Against the idealist of the type in question the critical realist maintains that sense does not know appearances. It is just as much a matter of judgment to know that an object is not real but apparent, as it is to know that an object is not apparent but real. Sense does not know appearances, because sense alone is not human knowing, and because sense alone does not possess the full objectivity of human knowing. By our senses we are given, not appearance, not reality, but data. By our consciousness, which is not an inner sense, we are given, not appearance, not reality, but data. Further, while it is true enough that data of sense result in us from the action of external objects, it is not true that we know this by sense alone; we know it as we know anything else, by experiencing, understanding, and judging. Again, it is not true that it is from sense that our cognitional activities derive their immediate relationship to real objects; that relationship is immediate in the intention of being; it is mediate in the data of sense and in the data of consciousness inasmuch as the intention of being makes use of data in promoting cognitional process to knowledge of being; similarly, that relationship is mediate in understanding and thought and judgment, because these activities stand to the originating intention of being as answers stand to questions. (Fs)

218b Finally, against both the naive realist and the idealist of the types in question, the critical realist urges the charge of picture thinking. Why does the naive realist ground objective knowledge of reality in looking, perceiving, Anschauung? Why does the idealist assert that it is by Anschauung that our cognitional activities have their immediate relationship to objects?1 It is because their world is a picture world. If their world were the universe of being, they would agree that the original relationship of cognitional activity to the universe of being must lie in the intention of being. But their world is a picture world; the original relationship of cognitional activity to the picture is the look; and so it is in looking that the naive realist finds revealed the essence of objectivity, and it is in Anschauung that the critical idealist places the immediate relation of cognitional activity to objects. There exists, then, something like a forgetfulness of being. There exists in man a need for an intellectual conversion ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem. (Fs) (notabene)