Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Horizont: abhängig vom Streben; Widerstand gegen Horizonterweiterung; Liebe (charity)!!; übernatürlich - natürlich

Kurzinhalt: Heraklit: Logion vom Schlaf (Sorge); the known, the known unknown, the unknown unknown; docta ignorantia - indocta ignorantia; an organized resistance to going beyond one's horizon

Textausschnitt: Weiter unten!!.
Liebe / charity: To move into the practical pattern of experience without contracting one's horizon presupposes perfect charity.


21/4 There is, then, a deeper meaning to Heraclitus's statement that when men sleep each lives in a private world of his own, in his dreams, but when they wake up they live in the common world settled by the logos, by reason. Insofar as one lives in one's own world that is settled by one's own concern, by the Sorge at the root of one's flow of consciousness, one is in something of a private world,
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25/4 The horizon, is the boundary, the frontier, between docta ignorantia and indocta ignorantia. What is beyond my horizon is meaningless for me, though it may not be meaningless in itself. It is not worth while for me, but it may be worth while in itself. One's horizon, the boundary between one's docta and indocta ignorantia, corresponds to one's concern, and one knows about one's horizon only indirectly. To know about a horizon one has to have a larger horizon within which one can define the smaller one. But if this is one's horizon one does not have the larger horizon within which one can grasp where the limits lie for the individual. One's own horizon is the limit, the boundary, where one's concern or interest vanishes....
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In the general case, the subject and his concern determine a horizon that selects out of the universe a world. But there is also an intellectual pattern of experience, and correlative to it is the universe, all that exists. The intellectual pattern of experience that corresponds to the universe is beyond any particular horizon. As long as it exists, it is orientated upon totality, upon being, upon everything. But the moment the intellectual pattern of experience ceases to be dominant, then one can shift back to a narrow concern. To move into the practical pattern of experience without contracting one's horizon presupposes perfect charity. There is an intimate correlation between the natural and the supernatural, according to the doctrine of St Thomas. According to St Thomas, there is a natural desire for the beatific vision, a desire to know God by his essence. When consciousness
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In the general case, the subject and his concern determine a horizon that selects out of the universe a world. But there is also an intellectual pattern of experience, and correlative to it is the universe, all that exists. The intellectual pattern of experience that corresponds to the universe is beyond any particular horizon. As long as it exists, it is orientated upon totality, upon being, upon everything. But the moment the intellectual pattern of experience ceases to be dominant, then one can shift back to a narrow concern. To move into the practical pattern of experience without contracting one's horizon presupposes perfect charity. There is an intimate correlation between the natural and the supernatural, according to the doctrine of St Thomas. According to St Thomas, there is a natural desire for the beatific vision, a desire to know God by his essence. When consciousness is rooted in the pure desire to know, and when one knows of the existence of God, one asks what God is. To ask, What? is to desire to know something by its essence, and to know God by his essence is something that is attained only through the beatific vision. Thus the pure desire to know includes in its range the supernatural goal to which de facto we are destined in this life. St Thomas's doctrine causes difficulty chiefly, I believe, to those whose presuppositions are not Thomist but Scotist. I cannot go into that question here and now, except to say that there is no doubt that this is St Thomas's position. He develops it over thirty-five chapters or so in the third book of the Summa contra Gentiles, and it recurs at all the key points in the Summa theologiae. 'The natural moves into the supernatural; grace is the perfection and completion of nature. Such is the position in the Thomist analysis, where 'Thomist' means'of St. Thomas,' not the Thomistic school, which has various opinions on the matter. And that supernatural end correlative to the desire to know is charity. Thus it is by charity that we can move into the practical pattern of experience without contracting our horizon. (90f; Fs)