Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Titel: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Stichwort: Symbol: Definition

Kurzinhalt: A symbol is an image that either induces an affect, causes the affect to arise, or on the other hand expresses an affect - one has the affect first and the image emerges

Textausschnitt: 98d Now briefly consider symbolic meaning. It is the meaning of affect in the most elementary form. By affects and our affections - affections are something more elaborate than affects - we have our orientation in life, in the world. They reveal the direction of our living, our attitudes to the world, to other persons, to things. A symbol is an image that either induces an affect, causes the affect to arise, or on the other hand expresses an affect - one has the affect first and the image emerges. Further, images that are symbols, that is, expressions or causes of affects, also reveal the attitude and the orientation of a person in the world and towards other persons. (Fs) (notabene)
Kommentar (05/15/06): Definition Symbol ... (Fs)

99a Now such affects, such symbols, have been studied very thoroughly in this century. The Freudian study of symbols, particularly of dream symbols, is based largely on interpersonal relations, and interpersonal relations gone wrong. The Greek cycle of Seven against Thebes,1 in which the family centering around Oedipus was involved in all sorts of crimes and hatreds, provides the fundamental nucleus of the description. There is an entirely different analysis worked out by Jung. But I would like to mention a recent study by Gilbert Durand, Les Structures anthropologiques de I'imaginaire.2 There are some thirty-five pages of bibliography, so he has been over a fair amount of material. (Fs)

99b Durand sets aside all the Freudian analysis of symbols as pertaining to a certain type of civilization, a certain type of family problem, and he does not go on to the higher dynamics of Jungian psychology, but he connects symbols, images that express affects, with three fundamental dominant reflexes. There is the reflex by which we maintain our balance: if one is going to fall, one's reflex interrupts everything else until one recovers one's equilibrium. It is a dominant reflex: it operates spontaneously, masterfully; it cuts out everything else (as do the other dominant reflexes: swallowing and mating).3 (Fs)

100a Connected with maintaining one's equilibrium, there are what Durand calls the ascensional symbols: rising, standing, being upright, exercising control, manipulation, power, the sceptre, the sword, going up the ladder, the bird that flies, the tree that rises from the earth, all the symbols that express uprightness in the moral connotation of the word - something a child develops very strong feelings about in learning to walk, in learning to maintain its balance. (Fs)
100b Opposed to these ascensional symbols there are all the symbols of fear, and you get the whole combined in, for example, the image of St George and the dragon. The dragon combines in one monster all the symbols of fear or a vast number of them. On the other hand, St George destroying the dark dragon is mastering the object of fear; he is upright, he is riding, he holds the spear. A whole affective orientation is expressed in that symbol. (Fs)

100c The second dominant reflex is swallowing. You get an entirely different attitude from St George and the dragon when you take Jonah and the whale. The whale is just as much a monster as the dragon, but it is not terrifying. The object of terror is euphemized; it is not so bad after all. Jonah went down into the whale but he came out three days later and was just as well off as ever. Instead of mastering the object of fear, controlling it, dominating it, there is resignation, quietness, peace, and not the fall from the upright position but the descent, improving the descent when one is falling.4 (Fs)

100d You can see how Durand's analysis of symbols is connected with very fundamental physiological, psychic facts, and how it enables him to put together vast arrays of symbols. In the symbol there is a meaning, not on the conceptual level but still on a very real level; it has a meaning for people, all the meaning, for example, in the word 'upright'; it has connected with it all sorts of meanings, all sorts of feelings and suggestions, that are fundamentally affective and symbolic; the affective is directed toward something, and the meaning of the symbol is the meaning of the affect; or there can be a combination of affects, an interplay between affects as, for example, with courage overcoming fear, and so on. (Fs)