As to the Thomist Ayala to whom Doug refers

[jaraymaker]

Hi all,

 

Doug recently wrote to Pierre, Hugh and myself the following message:

 

"I recall that Fiorenza, in his Introduction, claims that Lonergan is a Neo-Kantian, supporting a line of thought developed by Marechal.  I also ran-across a student of Vertin's who lumps Rahner, Lonergan and von Balthasar together as misinterpreting Aquinas due to Kant's influence - I invited him to participate, but he has his own career to develop; he did say that Vertin had a great course on the difference between Rahner and Lonergan, and was "disappointed" that Andres (Ayala) didn't pursue that contrast." End message.

 

I would note that Ayala is a traditional Thomist as can be deduced from his message sent to philarchive (see below) John.   

 

https://philarchive.org/rec/AYATTD

 

"What is the distinction between understanding and forming a concept? In my view, for Aquinas, intelligere (the act of understanding) and dicere (the forming of a verbum or mental word) are not two different acts, but simply two different aspects of the same act of understanding. In the following, I will explore more in depth what this distinction means for Aquinas. Firstly, I will give a mostly doctrinal or systematic overview of the issue and, secondly, I will support my claims with relevant textual evidence, taken exclusively from Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae. This study, as an appendix, is part of “The Influence of Kant in Transcendental Thomism: Rahner, Lonergan and Von Balthasar” (forthcoming). In my view, Lonergan’s way of distinguishing intelligere and dicere is different from St. Thomas’ way. In the body of my book, I focus on Lonergan’s reasons to distinguish these notions in his own particular way, whereas this study focuses on St. Thomas’ doctrine. It is my hope that the (above) lines will foster an understanding of St. Thomas’ epistemology and of its application to Trinitaarian theology." End quoting Ayala. 

 

[David Bibby]

Dear John,

Thank you for that link to Ayala.  I found his criticism very illuminating for Lonergan's doctrine.  This is a quote from page 92-93 of Ayala's book, The Influence of Kant in Transcendental Thomism:

3) Human Understanding’s Twofold Origin: Lonergan, Kant and Aquinas 

Let us now study other texts in which Lonergan’s Kantian approach can be identified. See, next, how the intellectual light is made into a formal a priori, that is, into the source of intelligible content in human understanding. 

Again, human knowledge has a twofold origin - an extrinsic origin in sensitive impressions, and an intrinsic origin in intellectual light in which virtually the whole of science is precontained. Hence the reflective activity whence judgment results is a return from the syntheses effected by developing insight to their sources in sense and in intellectual light. The latter element of the return is mentioned more frequently; it is described as an instance of 'ratio terminatur ad intellectum'; and as the context makes clear, the intellectus in question is the habitus principiorum, the naturally known first principles that peculiarly are an effect of intellectual light. (Lonergan, Verbum, 76-77)

Above, Lonergan is showing clearly his Kantian point of departure, which is that, in human understanding, what comes from experience (a posteriori) are sensible impressions and, instead, whatever is intelligible has a subjective origin. Lonergan immediately tries to conform St. Thomas to his views. Why is this a Kantian point of departure? Because Lonergan is denying that the source of intelligible content is experience itself, which is the Thomistic point of departure, as we have shown. 

https://philpapers.org/archive/AYATTD.pdf

I believe the crux of the matter is "...Lonergan is denying that the source of intelligible content is experience itself..."  That is true.  But is Lonergan correct?  That is a question for introspective inquiry.  If Lonergan is correct, then Ayala could be guilty of the very fault he ascribes to Lonergan, namely aligning St Thomas to his own views.

Kind regards,

David

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