Tuesday, December 18, 2018

Meaning and Authenticity

Braman, Brian J. Meaning and Authenticity: Bernard Lonergan and Charles Taylor on the Drama of Authentic Human Existence. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008.

Braman acknowledges that the quest for authenticity began among the new left in the 1960s. However, Bramas asserts, "This quest for authentic human existence does not, however, just spring up with the radical left of the 1960s" (3). It has roots in the 18th century with Rousseau and John Locke. The jargon of "self-fulfillment, self-actualization, self-realization, and authenticity is now common linguistic currency in contemporary culture" (4). It does have its critics: Christopher Lasch speaks of the quest for authenticity as another form of narcissism. Other critics are Alan Bloom, Robert Bellah and Theodor Adorno. Braman accepts the criticisms of these authors, but in "spite of the ongoing criticism, however, the idea of human authenticity persists" (6). Like the argument of Charles Taylor in A Secular Age, Braman argues for a middle position between "uncritical acceptance" and "wholesale condemnation of the idea of authenticity" (6). Braman sets out to just this in his book, Meaning and Authenticity by putting two Canadian thinkers in Conversation, the Jesuit philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan and the Catholic philosopher and public intellectual, Charles Taylor.

Before beginning this conversation, he introduces the topic of authenticity by discussing some of Heidegger's key ideas in chapter one. Although Rousseau and Herder are influential in the history of "self-determining freedom," Braman thinks that Martin Heiddegger is the "most instrumental in making this question of human authenticity prominent within and without philosophical circles" (4). For Heidegger, authenticity has to do with one's historicity and one's being-to death. This chapter provides detailed descriptions of key terms used by Heidegger: dasein, care, thrownness, everydayness, fallenness, guilt, etc. Braman appreciates Heiddegger's ideas, but he believes it falls short: "in the end, Heidegger's position closes off the possibility of transcendence and leaves death as the only horizon" (73). Both Taylor and Lonergan will argue for the transcendence that Braman thinks is important.

Chapters two and three provide Taylor's and Lonergan's accounts of authenticity. Taylor gives us a "genealogical rehabilitation of what is best and viable in modernity's approach to human authenticity" (7). Taylor seeks to discover the moral sources of the self. Taylor emphasizes the "facticity" of our lives and that one's "identity is always constructed linguistically, socially, and historically" (34). We are engaged agents which means that we "find ourselves (individually as well as culturally) within a lived background of past judgments" (37). Heidegger's view of authenticity related it to the horizon of death, Taylor's account relates it to the life of fullness. Taylor's account relates authenticity to higher goods, constitutive goods, and hyper goods. Taylor even talks about how nature and art can act as an epiphany and  be considered a moral source. Taylor asserts, "The central nature of epiphany is not just one's praxis, but also the intimate transactions that take place between one's self and one's world" (45).

Chapter three covers Bernard Lonergan's hermeneutical and existential account of authenticity. Authenticity for Lonergan is "self-transcendence, and self-transcendence involves intellectual, moral, and religious conversion. This path to authenticity is not just for the elite, but for everyone. This conversion is not a one-time experience, but continues life-long. Lonergan states, "Authenticity is a lifelong commitment, both individually and culturally, to the imperatives to be attentive, reasonable, intelligent, and responsible" (48).

Chapter four compares Taylor's account of authenticity with Lonergan's account. Braman compares the two through exploring three themes: art, cognitional theory, and the human good. Braman thinks the two share much in common: "Lonergan and Taylor have shown that human existence and human understanding are historically dynamic and complex relationship between the person and culture. Both stress the historicity of the human subject, and both dismantle Cartesian certitude and the Kantian transcendental ego. Lonergan and Taylor have de-centered the subject by showing to what degree our self-understanding is conditioned from above downwards by the facticity of human existence. Both have articulated, in response to postmodernism's critique of what Heidegger called 'humanism,' how indeed the person is not truncated, neglected, or immanentist, but existential, and each has done so from a particular but complementary viewpoint" (74). Braman definitely appreciates both thinkers, but Lonergan's view is probably more like his own because in the last part of the chapter is a sectioned called: "Lonergan Beyond Taylor" (95). The author successfully shows the how bot Taylor and Lonergan have provided ways to retrieve authenticity in an acceptable way. He does think that Lonergan's account might add certain depth to Taylor's account with his concept of self-transcendence.

Braman has shown that the quest for authenticity can be retrieved in a way that is not narcissistic. He has also shown how Taylor and Lonergan"s ideas on authenticity is complementary. The introduction to the book by reviewing key ideas of Heidegger is helpful to those not familiar, and Heidegger was an important author since both Taylor and Lonergan have been influenced by Heidderger and interact with his in their own ideas. The book is readable and makes these philosophers understandable to the non-specialist.

Source: Book review by Randall S. Rosenberg

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