Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Insight

Titel: Insight

Stichwort: Freiheit als besondere Form der Kontingenz; Verantwortung

Kurzinhalt: Freedom, then, is a special kind of contingence. It is contingence that arises, not from the empirical residue that grounds materiality and the nonsystematic, but in the order of spirit, ...

Textausschnitt: 641b It follows that there is a radical difference between the contingence of the act of willing and the general contingence of existence and occurrence in the rest of the domain of proportionate being. The latter contingence falls short of strict intelligible necessity, not because it is free, but because it is involved in the nonsystematic character of material multiplicity, continuity, and frequency. But the contingence of the act of will,f so far from resulting from the nonsystematic, arises in the imposition of further intelligible order upon otherwise merely coincidental manifolds. Moreover, that imposition of further intelligible order is the work of intelligence, of rational reflection, and of ethically guided will. Nonetheless, that imposition of intelligible order is contingent. For, on the one hand, even when possibility is unique, so that rational consciousness has no alternative, still the unique possibility is not realized necessarily. To claim that the sole reasonable course of action is realized necessarily is to claim that willing is necessarily consistent with knowing. But that claim is preposterous, for it contradicts the common experience of a divergence between what one does and what one knows one ought to do. Nor is it preposterous merely in fact but also in principle, for actual consistency between knowing and deciding is the result of deciding reasonably, and what results from deciding reasonably cannot be erected into a universal principle that proves all decisions to be necessarily reasonable. (Fs) (notabene)

642a Freedom, then, is a special kind of contingence. It is contingence that arises, not from the empirical residue that grounds materiality and the nonsystematic, but in the order of spirit, of intelligent grasp, rational reflection, and morally guided will. It has the twofold basis that its object is merely a possibility and that its agent is contingent not only in his existence but also in the extension of his rational consciousness into rational self-consciousness. For it is one and the same act of willing that both decides in favor of the object or against it and that constitutes the subject as deciding reasonably or unreasonably, as succeeding or failing in the extension of rational consciousness into an effectively rational self-consciousness. (Fs) (notabene)

642b Accordingly, freedom possesses not only the negative aspect of excluding necessity but also the positive aspect of responsibility. Intelligent grasp of a possible course of action need not result automatically in its execution, for critical reflection can intervene to scrutinize the object and evaluate the motives. Critical reflection cannot execute the proposed action, for it is simply a knowing. Knowing cannot necessitate the decision, for consistency between knowing and willing becomes an actuality only through the willing. The decision, then, is not a consequent but a new emergence that both realizes the course of action or rejects it, and realizes an effectively rational self-consciousness or fails to do so. Nonetheless, though the act of will is a contingent emergence, it also is an act of the subject; the measure of the freedom with which the act occurs also is the measure of his responsibility for it. (Fs)