Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Byrne, Patrick H., Insight and the Retrieval of Nature

Stichwort: Aristoteles: die menschliche Natur; Seele: dynamis, hexis, pathe; Habitus: intellektuell - moralisch; phronesis

Kurzinhalt: His [Aristotle] new beginning consisted in raising the question of the "proper function of a human" (1097b22-23). In doing so, Aristotle was seeking to determine just what sort of powers or potencies characterize a human soul.1 He noted that ... reason

Textausschnitt: 1.6 Human Nature

21a Thus far we have described the general context of Aristotle's thought on nature. We now turn to the particular issue of how Aristotle conceived nature as a standard for evaluating human living. That Aristotle and the classicist tradition considered human nature to provide such a standard is undisputed. What is disputed is precisely what he, if not his followers, took this standard to be. (Fs)

21b Aristotle worked out the foundations of human nature as a norm for human conduct in the Nicomachean Ethics. After a dialectical critique of earlier opinions (including Plato's) regarding the "good life," Aristotle noted that a new beginning was needed. His new beginning consisted in raising the question of the "proper function of a human" (1097b22-23). In doing so, Aristotle was seeking to determine just what sort of powers or potencies characterize a human soul.1 He noted that whatever is in the soul is either a potency (dunamis), a habit (hexis), or an act (pathe).2 Aristotle went on to observe that the activities which are distinctively human always involve reason/thought (logos), so that the sought-for proper functionings of human beings are those which involve reason. Of these, there are two sorts of functionings: those which originate reasons, and those which collaborate with the reasonings (1098a2-8). Corresponding to these two types of acts, there are, respectively, the intellectual and the moral habits-the aretai, excellences or virtues. In particular, the intellectual habit of phronesis or sound judgment orients the emotional life of the soul by determining what is the proper proportion, the mean, of "fear, confidence, desire, anger, pity" and anything of the sort (1106bl8-19). (Fs)

22a By itself, however, phronesis cannot cause moral excellence in behavior; for that, practice in the refinement of the feelings is also required. Thus human nature is to a large extent defined in terms of the excellences or habits of which it is capable. But as Aristotle noted, these habits are not "implanted in us by nature." Rather, "we are by nature equipped with the potency to receive them, and habit brings this potency to completion and fulfillment" (1103al4-25).3 (Fs)

22b Hence, human nature is largely potency, and the finality of that potency is defined in terms of the excellences or virtues.4 As habitual and recurrent characteristics of a person, the excellences (such as courage, generosity, wisdom, and so on) are "forms" in the sense specified above. To put it another way, the form of planetary motion may be thought of as a habit which is given, not developed. Precisely because human forms must be developed-and are therefore properly called "habits"-a human being can either fulfill or violate his or her nature. Hence, the natural and the unnatural become, in human affairs, either right by nature (phusei dikaion) or unnatural and so wrong. The difference regards whether or not the habits are informed by the guiding power of intelligence (virtues) or not (vices). Nor is it surprising that Aristotle would take the "mean of a proportion" as the paradigm of the intellect giving definition to the soul in the moral aretai, since in the history of Greek mathematics, the gradual working out of the definition of proportion stands as the ultimate achievement of thought. (Fs)