Hi all,
Gerard reminds us that recently the "Verbum 2" thread has not been referring to that chapter. Rather, the thread has been more concerrned with potency, form and act as David reminds us. Just a glimpse at p. 457 of Insight 15.1, Lonergan stresses "that potency, from, and act constitute a unity" etc.
David keeps us on track. It may be relevant to link this stress on unity with what L writes in Verbum, ch 1, p. 43 on potency, understanding and act: "Ulimate concepts, like derived concepts, proceed from understanding;" and on p. 28 where L argues that Aristotle maintained that intelligible objects "do not exist apart from concrete extension but are in sensible forms....", etc.
I, for one, appreciate David's sticking to L's actual texts and to L's lifelong development, recasting, extending his thought based on his solid researches into historical-philosophical-psychological- cultural-theological etc developments. This is a more solid, relevant approach than hypothesizing about a putative possibility that metaphysics should take precedence over epistemology a la Gilson. This is not a "putdown of Gilson."
Piotr Jarosczynski, for one, in his "Gilson Studies revisits Étienne Gilson’s prodigious scholarship to help keep it alive for future generations, familiarize readers with Gilsonian humanism, and foster among contemporary and future intellectuals a greater appreciation of the philosophical and Thomistic realism that was part of the life-blood of Gilson’s method of philosophizing." Or compare this from
Selection from Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, (New York: Random House, 1956), 35-36.
[The question of the real distinction] goes directly to the very heart of the act-of-being. To posit such an act, without other determination is to posit it as absolute, since it is wholly act-of-being, and it is also to posit it as unique, since nothing can be conceived as being, which the pure act-of-being is not. If we are speaking of this act-of-being, no problem of essence and existence can arise. It is what we shall later call God. But the existing beings here under consideration are of a different sort. They are, as we have said, concrete substances, objects of our sense experience. None of them is known to us as a pure act-of-being. We find each distinguished from the others as being 'an existing animal,' or 'an existing man.' This specific determination of the acts of existing, by their forms which place each of them in a definite species, is precisely what we call their essence. Now, in the case of such beings, the only ones we know empirically, the problem of their existence challenges our thinking. Whether the pure act of existing exists or not, we do not know at this stage of our investigation. But it is at least clear that if such a being exists, it exists somehow or other in its own right, as one whose very essence is to exist. But it is quite otherwise with a tree, an animal, or a man. Their essence is to be either a tree or an animal or a man. In no case is it their essence to exist. The problem, then, of the relation of the essence to its act-of-being (esse) arises inexorably about every being whose essence is not to exist.
Such also is the so-called distinction between essence and existence, which it would be better to call the distinction between essence (essentia) and the act-of-being (esse). It cannot be doubted that this distinction is real, but it arises in the metaphysical order of act and potency, not in the physical order of the relation of parts within a material whole. This distinction is real in the highest degree, since it expresses the fact that a being whose essence is not its act of being has not of itself the wherewithal to exist. We know from experience that such beings exist, since they are all we know directly. They exist therefore, but we know too that they do not exist in their own right. Since their lack of existential necessity is congenital, it is with them as long as they endure. So long as they exist, the remain being whose existence finds no justification in their own essence. It is this that is the distinction between essence and the act-of-existing. And because it is profoundly real, it poses the problem of the cause of finite existence, which is the problem of the existence of God.
END quote.
Note that the quote asserts that 1) "the distinction between essence (essentia) and the act-of-being (esse) cannot be doubted. 2) This distinction is real, but it arises in the metaphysical order of act and potency, not in the physical order of the relation of parts within a material whole. This distinction is real in the highest degree, since it expresses the fact that a being whose essence is not its act of being has not of itself the wherewithal to exist.
For Lonergan also the essence-esse distinction is real but this real distinction is established through a laborious psychological-historical-epistemological inquiry and tellingly applied in MiT and other later Lonergan writings. As I noted in one of my books Lonergan brings philosophy and us "down to earth," a good starting point and an "effective standpoint" allowing for untold applications in our immensily complicated, diversified world,
John
Dear Hugh,
We may not be understanding one another, but that doesn’t mean we are heading for trouble. On the contrary, we might find that our disagreement is the potency for conversion, understanding, and ultimately agreement.
Perhaps the present disagreement can be explained simply by a difference of terminology. I am using potency, form, and act in the sense Lonergan describes in Insight 15.1 (page 456-460), whereas your usage, derived from Aristotle, seems to be on the development of knowledge within a concrete individual. That is a far more complicated matter, because although there are potencies involved, it is not simply a change from not knowing X to knowing X. Rather, we have to distinguish between the conscious and unconscious developments, so that the normative standard of human development lies in there being conscious harmony between the two (see Lonergan’s law of genuineness, Insight 15.7.4, page 499-503). So while there do exist orders and causal relationships, these are not properly metaphysical, but a combination of science and meaning in the study of human psychological development.
I take your point that “David is in England” comes before my knowing this (in the chronology of human development). But consider the statements “David is in England”, and “God knows this”. Which comes first? They are metaphysically equivalent.
Kind regards
