Abditum mentis

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Abditum mentis ("hiding place of the mind" or "the secret of the mind") is a Latin term of the late antique and medieval intellect theory . In the late antique church father Augustine, the expression denotes an area in the depths of the human spirit, the content of which is supposed to be a priori knowledge, which is the basis of thought and all knowledge. According to Augustine's theory, this knowledge is always present there, but hidden and therefore unconscious; however, it can be brought to consciousness through thought. Late medieval authors took up the ancient concept and developed it further. It was controversial among them whether the abditum mentis should be equated with the “active intellect” ( intellectus agens ) or whether it transcended it . Meister Eckhart identified it with the “ soul ground ”, an area of ​​the human soul in which, according to his teaching, God is present.

Augustine

The term abditum mentis was coined by Augustine († 430). In his work De trinitate the Church Father explained his theory of knowledge . The starting point of his considerations was the fact that knowledge is latently present in the human mind (mens) even if it is not presently brought into view through thinking. The mind always remembers itself; at any time he has a self-related insight (intellectus) and loves himself. These three self-referential acts are performed incessantly, even when the mind does not think of itself as something different from what it is not. Here, however, Augustine encountered a difficulty: the insight belongs to thinking, the knowledge of a thing, on the other hand, which the mind possesses even when it is not thinking of this thing, is only assigned to the memory (memoria) . This seemed to lead to the conclusion that insight and love presuppose a present act of thought. That would mean that memory, insight and self-love are not always given at the same time. Rather, the mind should first remember itself - that is, become aware of its existence as a separate entity - and begin to think; only then could he gain self-referential insight and love himself. Augustine found this idea obviously absurd. He cited the example of a musician who understands and loves music even when he is not thinking about it, but concentrating entirely on geometry. According to the explanations in De trinitate , this circumstance indicates that “there is certain knowledge of certain things hidden in the mind, and that these, when one thinks of them, emerge in a certain way into the center of consciousness and, as it were, more evident in the field of vision of the mind be set up ". Then the mind finds that even while thinking about something else, it has had insight into and love for these things. Those who are reminded of something they have forgotten are reminded of a knowledge that they strangely have, although apparently they don't know that they know. Thus there is an insight that does not depend on the actual performance of an act of thought. Their “place” is the abditum mentis . The "more hidden depth of our memory" is the place where people find content that does not come from their stored memories, but that they think for the first time. There the “innermost word” is generated, which does not belong to any language. An insight appears in thinking that comes from an insight that was previously in the memory, but was hidden there.

These considerations of Augustine are influenced by Neoplatonic ideas. However, the expression abditum mentis occurs only once in him; it is evidently not a terminologically established term. On the question of whether Augustine understood it to be a specific authority and a guiding principle of the whole of psychic life, there are differing views in research. Andreas Speer believes that the Church Father was only referring to a particular way of the presence of knowledge in the human mind; the interpretation of the abditum mentis as an instance corresponds to the medieval interpretation, but is not covered by the text in De trinitate .

High Middle Ages

In the 12th century, Richard von St. Viktor - taking up a thought of Augustine - stated that in the human spirit “the highest is undoubtedly the innermost at the same time and the innermost at the same time the highest”. It is possible to ascend to the “highest and innermost womb of the spirit”, to grasp and hold it and to contemplate the invisible divine there. However, this perception is only granted to a few; it is carried out with the spiritual sense (sensus intellectualis) , which is to be distinguished from the rational sense (sensus rationalis) , and does not depend on human will. With the sense of reason man perceive his own invisible. The divine realm in the human mind is separated by a thick curtain of oblivion. Whoever goes there forgets not only everything outside, but also everything that is in himself. Even when returning to the familiar world, the curtain brings about a forgetting, but not a complete one; therefore one can later remember what has been experienced, but only in an inadequate way, no longer in the original truth and clarity.

In his sentences, Petrus Lombardus quoted and explained Augustine's considerations on the relationship between memory, insight and self-love in the human mind.

Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Times

In 1286 the influential scholar Heinrich von Gent († 1293) examined and affirmed in a quaestio the question of whether there is “hidden knowledge” in man, that is, knowledge as a hidden act without recourse to the images ( phantasmata ) . He interpreted the knowledge located in the Augustinian abditum mentis not as a state of affairs (intelligere habituale) , but as an active one (intelligere actuale) . He did not see it as a habitus (competent property or permanent disposition), but as a hidden act that precedes any external cognitive activity. This mode of knowledge is given by nature to the human spirit because of an inwardly and completely inwardly shaping presence of God. However, their luster is darkened because the soul is weakened by original sin and weighed down by the body; she fell victim to self-forgetfulness, the forgetting of her own true self. Apparently it was Heinrich who coined the expression "hidden knowledge" (intelligere abditum) .

The philosopher and theologian Dietrich von Freiberg († after 1310) shared Heinrich's view, but went far beyond it. He put forward an epistemology, the starting point of which was Augustine's remarks. Dietrich further developed the concept of Augustine, sharpening the terminological use of abditum mentis , which had been rather vague until then . According to his understanding, knowledge is finding the truth in the hiding place of the spirit, a hidden treasure trove that one can discover in one's own soul. Man does not need to look for truth in the outside world, because he already has it in himself. The hiding place of the spirit is, as it were, the place in the soul where its treasures of knowledge are stored. There she has always carried the knowledge within her, but she only becomes aware of it when she directs her attention to it.

Dietrich introduced an innovation by equating the abditum mentis of Augustine with the "active intellect" of the Aristotelian - scholastic philosophy. Aristotle introduced the term “active intellect” . Following the ancient thinker, the late medieval scholars understood the scholastics, including reason, which actually comes into action and currently grasps an object of knowledge. The Thomists , the followers of the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas , viewed the active intellect as an ability or mode of functioning of the soul (virtus animae) , which is added to the soul as something external, as it were from the outside "something added". He behaves to her like an instrument, the only task of which is to enable her to know. Dietrich contradicted this view. According to his teaching, the active intellect is not a mere means of knowledge, but is itself the knowing authority. It is a substance but does not exist independently of the soul; he does not join it from outside, but is within it as a constituent factor and makes it what it is. Through its own essence, the active intellect bears a resemblance to the totality of beings. Therefore, in principle, he can recognize everything. In knowing himself, he also recognizes his cause (God), whose image (imago) he is, and the rest of the things. Thus the abditum mentis in Dietrich's model of the order of creation occupies an extraordinarily high place. It is a consciousness that develops out of itself and is entirely active on its own. Thoughtful grasping takes place in that the thinking emerges from the hiding place of the spirit and forms a certain general thought content. This emergence is the cognition of the cognitive object through an act of thought.

In early Thomism, Augustine's conception was reinterpreted; an attempt was made to make it compatible with the Aristotelian-Thomistic doctrine of the soul by interpreting the "hidden insight" as a potency , not an act. Heinrich von Gent's interpretation of the Augustinian abditum mentis as a hidden act was sharply rejected by the Dominican and Thomist Johannes Picardi von Lichtenberg, who commented on it in a 1303 quaestio . Dietrich's theory did not mention Johannes, although he obviously disagreed completely. Dietrich may not have stated his position until after 1303 and thus reacted to John's explanations. According to another hypothesis, Johannes did not dare to openly and harshly contradict Dietrich, since he was a powerful personality in the Dominican order at that time.

Also Meister Eckhart († 1327/1328) followed up on the comments of Augustine of the unseen spirit. He took up the formulation in abdito mentis , often quoted the St. Augustine passage and translated it into Middle High German in the most hidden of the sêle and similar expressions . He gave the expression a new meaning, because his thinking went in a direction that led him beyond the concept of Augustine. The ancient church father had dealt with the workings of unconscious ideas (notitiae) , which precede the current consciousness and emerge in the act of thinking in the field of consciousness (conspectus mentis) . He had located these ideas in the abditum mentis . Eckhart, on the other hand, meant by the “most hidden of the soul” the divine, uncreated “soul ground”, in which, according to his teaching, the deity is always present. There the soul has no conceptions, neither of itself nor of anything created. There she has “neither working nor understanding”, because everything created is excluded from this area, which is reserved for God alone. There all distinctions are abolished, there is no difference between the deity and the uncreated of the soul. Unlike the abditum mentis Augustine is Eckhart's time- and placeless soul reason, no "thing" he does not count for reified beings, can not be in the category system of Aristotle classified and therefore deprived of discursive thought.

Johannes Tauler († 1361) expressed himself in this sense in his sermons. He quoted the passage from De trinitate and reproduced the expression abditum mentis with hidden appetgrunde (hidden abyss). Tauler identified the abditum mentis with the “purest, most intimate, noble” part of man, the “innermost ground”, where there is only true unity. The statement of Augustine relates to this ground that the soul possesses a hidden abyss in itself, which has nothing to do with temporality and this whole world. Tauler decidedly rejected equating the abditum mentis with the active intellect, because he was convinced that the soul ground transcend the intellect. He said that human beings are made up of three people: the "beastly" human being who lives according to the senses, the rational and the "supreme, inner" human being, who is "god-shaped, god-formed". One should orient oneself to the highest person; It is important to draw the outward-looking person into the interior and to direct him from the pictorial, visible things to the invisible ones. The “supreme” man is the area that Augustine called abditum mentis . Tauler called on his listeners to hide their "hidden mind", as Augustine had called it, in the "hiddenness of the divine abyss". In secrecy, the created spirit is carried back into its unshakeable nature, where it was eternal before it was created.

The Neoplatonic philosopher Berthold von Moosburg († 1361 at the earliest), who, like Dietrich, Eckhart and Tauler, belonged to the Dominican order , adopted Dietrich's identification of abditum mentis with the active intellect.

In 1487 the humanist Giovanni Pico della Mirandola took a position on “hidden knowledge” in his apologia for justification . In doing so, he cited Heinrich von Gent, whom he agreed with regard to the existence of this mode of knowledge. Also Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639) was in favor of Henry believes.

literature

  • Andrea Colli: Intellectus agens as abditum mentis. Augustine's reception in Dietrich von Freiberg's intellect theory. In: Theologie und Philosophie 86, 2011, pp. 360–371, here: 367–370
  • Klaus Kahnert: Abditum mentis. In: Peter Prechtl, Franz-Peter Burkard (Ed.): Metzler Lexikon Philosophy. Terms and definitions. 3rd, expanded and updated edition. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2008, ISBN 978-3-476-02187-8 , p. 2
  • Matthias Laarmann: Deus, primum cognitum. The teaching of God as the first to be recognized by the human intellect in Heinrich von Gent († 1293). Aschendorff, Münster 1999, ISBN 3-402-04003-4 , pp. 323-336
  • Burkhard Mojsisch : Dietrich von Freiberg - An original recipient of Augustine's mens and cogitatio theory . In: Johannes Brachtendorf (ed.): God and his image - Augustine's De Trinitate in the mirror of current research. Schöningh, Paderborn 2000, ISBN 3-506-71401-5 , pp. 241-248
  • Andreas Speer: Abditum mentis . In: Alessandra Beccarisi et al. (Ed.): Per perscrutationem philosophicam. New Perspectives in Medieval Research. Meiner, Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-7873-1869-8 , pp. 447-474
  • Andreas Speer: In the secret of the spirit: "abditum mentis" with Augustine and Meister Eckhart. In: Markus Pfeifer, Smail Rapic (Ed.): The Self and His Other. Festschrift for Klaus Erich Kaehler. Alber, Freiburg / Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-495-48392-3 , pp. 56-80 (abridged version of Speer's article Abditum mentis , published in 2008 )

Remarks

  1. ↑ Augustine, De trinitate 14,7,9. See also Johannes Brachtendorf: The structure of the human spirit according to Augustinus , Hamburg 2000, pp. 221–229.
  2. ↑ Augustine, De trinitate 15:21, 40.
  3. ↑ Andreas Speer: mentis Abditum . In: Alessandra Beccarisi et al. (Ed.): Per perscrutationem philosophicam , Hamburg 2008, pp. 447–474, here: 447–457. Anders Saskia Wendel : Affective and incarnated , Regensburg 2002, pp. 136–140; Rodrigo Guerizoli: The internalization of the divine , suffering 2006, p. 13 f .; Burkhard Mojsisch: The theory of the intellect in Dietrich von Freiberg , Hamburg 1977, p. 42 f. Cf. Alain de Libera: Introduction à la mystique rhénane , Paris 1984, p. 44 f.
  4. ^ Richard von St. Viktor, Beniamin maior 4,23. See Marc-Aeilko Aris : Contemplatio , Frankfurt 1996, pp. 120-123.
  5. ^ Petrus Lombardus, Libri IV sententiarum , Liber 1 distinctio 3 caput 2.
  6. ↑ Heinrich von Gent, Quaestiones quodlibetales , Quodlibet 9, quaestio 15. See also Alessandra Beccarisi: Johannes Picardi von Lichtenberg, Dietrich von Freiberg and Meister Eckhart: A Debate in Germany around 1308 . In: Andreas Speer, David Wirmer (eds.): 1308. A topography of historical simultaneity , Berlin 2010, pp. 516–537, here: 518–526; Matthias Laarmann: Deus, primum cognitum , Münster 1999, p. 326 f.
  7. ^ Giovanni Di Napoli: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola e la problematica dottrinale del suo tempo , Rome 1965, p. 388.
  8. ↑ Andreas Speer: mentis Abditum . In: Alessandra Beccarisi et al. (Ed.): Per perscrutationem philosophicam , Hamburg 2008, pp. 447–474, here: 455–460.
  9. ↑ See on this concept François-Xavier Putallaz: La connaissance de soi au XIII e siècle , Paris 1991, pp. 349–362, 367, 372; Burkhard Mojsisch: Dietrich von Freiberg - An original recipient of Augustine's mens and cogitatio theory . In: Johannes Brachtendorf (ed.): God and his image - Augustin's De Trinitate in the mirror of contemporary research , Paderborn 2000, pp. 241–248; Andrea Colli: Intellectus agens as abditum mentis . In: Theologie und Philosophie 86, 2011, pp. 360–371, here: 367–370.
  10. ^ Matthias Laarmann: Deus, primum cognitum , Münster 1999, pp. 328-330.
  11. ↑ Johannes Picardi von Lichtenberg: Quaestiones , Quaestio 22: Utrum imago trinitatis sit in anima vel secundum actus vel secundum potentiam , ed. by Burkhard Mojsisch: Meister Eckhart , Hamburg 1983, pp. 147–161.
  12. ↑ See also Alessandra Beccarisi: Johannes Picardi von Lichtenberg, Dietrich von Freiberg and Meister Eckhart: A Debate in Germany around 1308 . In: Andreas Speer, David Wirmer (eds.): 1308. A topography of historical simultaneity , Berlin 2010, pp. 516–537, here: 518–526.
  13. ^ Documents from Andreas Speer: Abditum mentis . In: Alessandra Beccarisi et al. (Ed.): Per perscrutationem philosophicam , Hamburg 2008, pp. 447–474, here: p. 460 note 45.
  14. ↑ Meister Eckhart, Sermon 101, The German Works , Vol. 4/1, ed. by Georg Steer, Stuttgart 2003, p. 343 f. See Karl Heinz Witte: Meister Eckhart: Leben aus dem Grund des Lebens , Freiburg / Munich 2013, p. 347 f. For the Middle High German translations of abditum mentis, see Susanne Köbele: Bilder der Untapped Truth , Tübingen / Basel 1993, p. 176 and note 459, p. 190 f.
  15. ^ Saskia Wendel: Affective and incarnated , Regensburg 2002, p. 189 f.
  16. ↑ Ferdinand Vetter (Ed.): Tauler's sermons , Dublin / Zurich 1968, p. 101, line 30.
  17. ↑ Ferdinand Vetter (Ed.): Tauler's sermons , Dublin / Zurich 1968, p. 101, lines 28–31.
  18. ↑ Loris Sturlese: Tauler in context. In: Contributions to the history of German language and literature 109, 1987, pp. 390–426, here: 404 f., 422–424.
  19. ↑ Ferdinand Vetter (Ed.): Tauler's sermons , Dublin / Zurich 1968, p. 357 lines 15 – p. 358 line 14. Cf. Louise Gnädinger: Johannes Taulers Lebenswelt und mystischeehre , Munich 1993, p. 141, note 45, p. 242–245; Paul Wyser: The soul reason in Tauler's sermons . In: Living Middle Ages. Festgabe for Wolfgang Stammler , Freiburg (Switzerland) 1958, pp. 204–311, here: 227–232 (= Paul Wyser: Taulers Terminologie vom Seelengrund . In: Werner Beierwaltes (Ed.): Platonism in der Philosophie des Mittelalters , Darmstadt 1969 , Pp. 381-409, here: 393-398).
  20. ^ Berthold von Moosburg, Expositio super elementationem theologicam Procli 188E, 193E.
  21. ↑ See Giovanni Di Napoli: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola e la problematica dottrinale del suo tempo , Rome 1965, pp. 386–393.
This article was added to the list of articles worth reading on June 13, 2015 in this version .