Understanding and Being Discussion 3:2

CD/mp3 144, second part of third discussion session at Halifax lectures on Insight. Corresponds to CWL 5: 322-34. Sponsored by Jeanne Belair, in the name of Fr. Jack Belair. Patterns of experience. The point of identifying patterns is to draw attention to the variety of ways in which we are intelligent, and to open a questioning of the complete satisfactoriness of one's mode of living, if one presupposes the omnicompetence of common sense. Common sense and history. Common sense is not going to be superseded by some age of reason. We always need specialization in the concrete and practical. Common sense is the one competent judge in its own field. Science and common sense. We don't have to choose between them. The sciences aim at complete explanation of all phenomena. Medicine is an applied science, and personal relationships come into it, governed by common sense in the concrete situation. The cognitional and the ontological. The questioner had a problem with the act of understanding being the measure of everything else. But for Aquinas intellect fully in act is infinite, and so is the measure of being. There is no absolute way of beginning. Philosophy and theology. The distinction is not as simple as it was. The answer to evil is theological. But the distinction has moved into separation. There still is a distinction.

Database and descriptions © Copyright 2017 by Robert M. Doran

 

Audio restoration by Greg Lauzon