Intelligibility (philosophy)
Intelligible (Latin intelligibilis " understandable ", " visible " from intelligere " see " ) is an adjective of philosophical jargon. Articles are referred to as intelligible, which can be detected only through the mind or intellect, as they are not accessible to sensory perception. The property to be detectable only in this way, ie intelligibility. The totality of the intelligible objects is called " the intelligible " or " the intelligible world ". In philosophical systems, such objects attribute is independent of the sensible particulars existence in the sense of the Platonic doctrine of ideas, the intelligible world is seen as an objective, the physical world ontologically superior reality.
Antiquity and Middle Ages
The term first appears in Greek philosophy. From the Greek noun nous ( "mind", "reason ", " intellect ", Latin intellectus ) is the adjective noetos ( " noetic " ) is derived, which is latin reproduced with intelligible. " Noetic " or " intelligible " means " (only ) intellectually recognizable ", "( only ) accessible to the intellect ", "from a purely spiritual nature ", " sensuous, ".
The pre-Socratic philosophers Parmenides (6th - 5th century BC) was the belief that there is a Animistic relationship between being and thinking. He said that thinking is sensing the existence, outside of which is nothing. Everything Conceivable must be, otherwise it could not be thought, and all that exists is accessible by nature thinking, because thinking as encountering of beings is itself something existing, and therefore it was open to the entire world of beings. Thus, in the philosophy of Parmenides, the being on as such necessarily intelligibility.
Plato reached into his theory of ideas on the reasoning of Parmenides and introduced the concept of the intelligible (to noētón ) in the philosophical terminology. He distinguished between the immutable being of ideas ( archetypes ) and the region of the changeable, of what's coming and disappearing, which he equated with the world of individual objects of sense. In the individual objects that are perceived as such by means of the senses, he saw images of the eternal ideas. Accordingly, the existence of a sensory object based on its participation in the being of the idea, which is mapped by this object. The idea is indeed present as a prototype in the image, but they can be detected as an intelligible entity in its independent existence only for the thinking mind. The fact that the intelligible world is accessible to thought, arises from the fact that it is the same instance that gives the knowable Being and the visibility and the knower, the capacity for knowledge. This instance is for Plato the idea of good. Knower and Recognized due to their common origin of similar nature.
A different conception of the intelligible represented Plato's pupil Aristotle, who rejected an independent existence of ideas and therefore the relationship between knower and the known otherwise certain when his teacher ( without recourse to transcendence ). After his apprenticeship has everything that exists on an intelligible form ( noētón eidos ), which represents a detectable for the thinking principle. Thinking detected that exists in the sense objects intelligible General by the thinking mind soul ( psyche noētikḗ ) to the object it turns to equalize. The Spirit ( Nous ) and the spiritual soul is the option under all things; by this possibility (potency ) in relation to a particular thing in reality (Act ) is converted to the knowledge of this thing accomplished. This is the basis intelligibility of things.
In the ontology of neo-Platonism, the Platonic doctrine was emphasized and expanded by the hierarchical structure of the whole of reality. The main aspect was the sharp distinction between the intelligible and the sensible area. Plotinus, the founder of Neo-Platonism, took the Nous as absolute, transcendent, supra-individual instance. For him, the Nous was an objective reality that exists independently of an individual being the thinking world of thought to which the individual thinking individuals have access. The objective of this reality facing individual does not produce "own" thoughts, but it thinks by taking its content through its participation in the realm of the spirit. Thinking as recognizing noetic content is that the contents of thought are recognized in their existence in and of itself as Platonic ideas. This is not a discursive reasoning meant, but an immediate intellectual grasp of what is thought. What is thought is neither a product of the thinking subject somewhat from the objective universal Nous Produced and this therefore subordinate. Rather, it is found nowhere else than in the Nous itself, in the world of thought that enters the thinker. The objects of thought are the contents of the Nous, which consists of nothing more than the totality of the intelligible.
In addition to the sensible matter took Plotinus as Aristotle also an intelligible matter, because he assumed that the purely spiritual things, which are not connected with any physical matter, require a material substratum. The different shapes of the contents of the Nous of Plotinus presuppose that there is something molded out of a forming instance. This is a molded all forms common intelligible matter. It comes just as the physical not in an unformed state before, but is in contrast to her - as all that is spiritual - not subject to change.
The late antique church father Augustine shared the conviction of the Platonists, that the intelligible is to give preference prior to the sensible. He reached the Neoplatonic concept of " intelligible world " on. To this world he counted alongside God and its aspects ( including " intelligible beauty " ) the spiritual part of creation. Among the intelligible things he emphasized the formal principles contained in God's wisdom ( rationes ) of the visible objects. As Plotinus took Augustine, that the intelligible world is formed from intelligible matter.
In the early 6th century philosopher Boethius of the intelligibility between the ( intelligible ) and the " Intellektiblen " ( intellectibile ) differed. To the latter he counted the divine and all intangible nature, bringing the theology is concerned, intelligible to the work done by thinking abstractions which are the subject of mathematics.
In the medieval metaphysics, which was first characterized primarily by Neoplatonic and Aristotelian ideas of increasingly later, the concept of the intelligible played an important role, especially in the era of scholasticism. It focused in particular on the intelligible species ( " intelligible form ") that obtained by abstraction mental representation of the general nature of a perceived thing according to the intelligible being ( as opposed to the individual peculiarities of the individual senses the object and its mental correlate, the phantasm ). The intelligible species was an issue of epistemological investigations still in the 16th century.
Modern Times
Immanuel Kant used the term " intelligible world ". The contents of this world, the intelligible objects, it is bordered by the "intellectual" knowable from:
Intelligible objects ( " noumena " ) are thus, for Kant, those that have no relation to the sensuous intuition. They would - if at all - only a non-sensible " intellectual intuition " accessible. Such a man is but fails in Kant's opinion, because it necessarily requires sensible intuition for knowledge. The " per se " unknowable, for theoretical reason unreachable objects are intelligible to humans only relevant insofar as practical reason she needed as mental tools for their activity. Thus Kant wrong the original meaning of " intelligible " ( " visible " ) into its opposite; with him is the " intelligible " the unknowable.