David W. Aiken, "Bernard Lonergan's Critique of Reductionism: A Call to Intellectual Conversion. Christian Scholars Review 233-251.
Aiken states that the operation of judgment is more than the conclusion of a syllogism. He writes, "As an activity of the concretely existing subject that heads beyond affirmation to commitment, judging entails a certain measure of accountability for how the relevant evidence has been sifted and weighed" (238). Rational judgment is not simply applying rules to particular circumstances, but is the practice of practical reason; it is "a function of that intellectual 'phronesis' which results from acquired expertise within a given field" (238).
In the action of judging, the human subject completes the circle of knowing. However, this temporary place does not continue continually. Aiken asserts, "The human mind is restless because our wondering knows no limits; indeed, it is totally unrestricted, aiming to understand nothing less than everything about everything" (238-39). Our questioning might be unlimited, but the human subject is not, and so "there will always be something further to understand as long as we continue to wonder, and thereby to fulfill a central aspect of our vocation as humans" (239).
In the inquiring subject, his inquiry does not end with judgment because further inquiry is needed to determine what his response should be to this acquired knowledge. Aiken writes, "This new line of questioning opens up another and higher operational field - that of responsible agency - which, in turn," provides additional opportunities for self-knowledge. Aiken asserts, "If first-order questions - What is it? Why is it? How is it? - prompt intelligent understanding of what might be the case, and reflective questions - Is it so? Are there good reasons for affirming it? - give rise to rational judgments of fact, then questions for deliberation - Is it worthwhile? Is it the responsible thing to do? - head for evaluation, decision, and action. Just as understanding includes the data to be understood and critical reflection includes properly formulated insights, so responsible agency assimilates factual knowledge to ethical praxis" (239). It is at this fourth operational level, that the "full subject emerges as an attentive, intelligent, reasonable, and responsible agent participating in the ongoing historical drama of progress, decline, and redemption" (239). Progress is the dynamic outworking of the unrestricted desire for knowledge; decline is the different types of biases that hinders the desire to know; redemption is the healing of tendency for declines through biases. Aiken states that humans are always operating on this fourth level.
Responsible agency allows us to consider the cognitional process has working from "below upwards" and "above downwards." Aiken describes both processes: "The first rendering yields a developmental account of the subject according to which successively higher functions unfold as the operative range of primordial wondering expands; according to this perspective, higher meanings and more specialized functions arise as lower-order potencies are fulfilled. The second rendering regards the subject as situated within overlapping historical, cultural, and social contexts and animated by ethico-religious concerns, thus interpreting these lower-order potencies from the vantage of fulfillment at higher and more specialized levels of functioning" (239-40). From the second view we pay attention to data, ask questions, acquire understanding, "and make decisions primarily within a context of prior experiences, questions, insights, judgments, and valuations--including those beliefs we have come to accept" on the "basis on the reliable testimony" of others and beliefs we have inherited from our own culture (240). Aiken thinks that our historicity makes knowing a "distinctively human enterprise," in which we feel like it is an "ethical mandate" to live responsible lives through being attentive, intelligent, reasonable, and responsible. He thinks living this way is "a matter of conscience" (240).
This is where Lonergan's "theistic orientation" of the search for self-understanding becomes clear. Aiken asserts, "Since the highest operational field comports the ultimate direction, meaning, and value of our existence, it is also the site where the human drive toward self-transcendence finds or forfeits its authenticity. But insofar as this dynamism intends nothing short of inexhaustible being, truth, and value, it reaches out not only horizontally toward the human other with whom we cooperate but also vertically to the transcendent" (240). Lonergan believes it is God's own self-understanding that grounds our own unrestricted desire to know all that is. The human subject is open "to encountering a Being of unlimited intelligence and generosity," and this God by his initiative through grace helps us to overcome "bias, indifference, and self-deception, through primordial wondering, toward a disposition to love without limits and conditions" (240). It is at this fourth level of "human consciousness the eros of human inquiry encounters divine agape and discovers therein the gentle power which elicits and fulfills our multiple capacities for self-transcendence" (240).
Friday, March 29, 2019
Wednesday, March 27, 2019
Lonergan's Critique of Reductionism Part II
David W. Aiken, "Bernard Lonergan's Critique of Reductionism: A Call to Intellectual Conversion. Christian Scholars Review 233-251.
Toward a Holistic Account of the Subject
Lonergan states that reductionism is a "campaign against the flight from understanding" (235). This is a term used by Lonergan to describe one of the ways people avoid insight. It is part of Lonergan's project of explaining intellectual conversion, and "thereby serves to underscore how truncated views of the human subject undermine our capacity for authentic self-understanding" (235). Lonergan seeks to make people aware of the conditions for self-understanding.
Aiken asserts, "As intentional, human intelligence is directed toward being, truth, and value--indeed, toward anything of actual or potential significance--but because intentional operations are by their very nature conscious operations, one can be aware of them and reflexively grasp their significance, singly and in relation to one another" (235-236). Lonergan says these are conscious operations, but people can do these operations without being aware of them. Aiken adds, "These operations and their situating fields of conscious activity form a flexible, dynamic, and indeed normative pattern, the rudiments of which are always and already operating in all our distinctively human projects" (236). These are operations that are done when people seek to understand their experiences. Lonergan thinks knowing requires three elements: experiencing, understanding, and judging. Aiken states that Lonergan's "cognitional theory (as elaborated in Insight ) and his intentionality analysis (as set forth in Method in Theology) are designed to identify this pattern, to encourage his readers to appropriate it," and to avoid the flight from understanding (236).
Lonergan describes the flight from understanding: "No problem is at once more delicate and more profound, more practical and perhaps more pressing. How, indeed, is a mind to become conscious of its own bias when that bias springs from a communal flight from understanding and is supported by the whole texture of civilization? . . . How can human intelligence begin to deal with the unintelligible yet objective situations which the flight from understanding creates and expands and sustains? At least we make a beginning by asking what precisely it is to understand, what are the dynamics of the flow of consciousness that favors insight, what are the interferences that favor oversight, and what, finally, do the answers to such questions imply for the guidance of human thought and action?" (Insight, 9).
Lonergan's cognition theory states that people have a "penchant for raising questions" (236). This agrees with Aristotle's idea that everyone desires to know. He also says that wonder is the beginning of philosophy. We wonder about things, so we ask question to acquire understanding. Lonergan believes that questions leads to the different levels of knowing. Asking questions is natural to us since we ask questions from the time we are able to talk.
We can accept these ideas with simple self-reflection. We have experiences of asking question for the purpose of understanding. We have experience of reflecting on what we understand to determine if it is true.
Our questions are a quest for understanding. Aiken asks, "Where does intelligent questioning lead? What is intended in our wondering about the nature of things?" (237). How does our asking anticipate an answer? What "kinds of conscious operations" does our questions enable? Lonergan thinks because "we wonder about the what, how, and why of our experiences shows that we are always and already embarked on a quest for understanding" (237). Understanding is more than just knowing how to solve a problem. It is more than simply following directions. It includes insight. Aiken states, "To gain insight is precisely to catch on, to get the point, to see the light, to understand for oneself" (237). Insights mainly come through asking intelligent questions and being motivated by a "spirit of inquiry." Indeed, what makes "insight an act of intelligence is that it grasps an intelligible pattern, a potentially significant correlation in the data" (237). It is like an inspector examining the clues of a crime scene and getting an insight how the pieces fit together.
Getting an insight is not the same thing as knowing. Lonergan thinks knowing includes experiences, understanding, and judging. You need all three to have knowing. Aiken suggests "our native wondering is not satisfied with just any bright idea, but invites us to consider whether the potentially significant pattern in question has been identified accurately, formulated adequately, expressed clearly, combined appropriately with other insights, and confirmed by sufficient evidence" (237).
The "process of confirmation" begins another level of the cognitional process: "critical reflection" (237). Aiken explains, "Just as questioning the data prompts intelligent understanding, so questioning the veracity of what one has understood heads for an act of judgment whereby, if all goes well, factual truth is affirmed" (237). This reveals our existence as a subject. Our natural desire to know is more than simple understanding, but it is a movement to judgment, to a declaration if it is true or not. It is questioning if the evidence is sufficient for a judgment on its veracity. Aiken thinks that we are both "truth-seekers" and "meaning-makers" (238).
"The activity of weighing evidence leads to another kind of insight," a reflective judgment whether more questions are needed to be answered before making a judgment or if our questions have been answered sufficiently by the evidence. When we have adequately answered our question, Aiken says we have "come to term." He explains what he means by coming to term: "An intelligible correlation has been intelligently grasped and clearly defined. This formulated insight (or cluster of insights) has subsequently been framed as a hypothesis expressing some specifiable evidential connection between certain conditions and a factual state of affairs representing their fulfillment. Now let us suppose that the relevant data are sufficient to establish that these conditions have indeed been fulfilled. One then is fully warranted in affirming the intelligibility under consideration is in fact the case, for it has now acquired the status of being 'virtually unconditioned,' which means that it has passed from the potentiality of pure thought to the actuality of objective existence. By thus judging the matter to be so, one takes a stand with some degree of epistemic confidence (from probability to certainty). Since the act of judgment draws upon, and sums up, the entire repertoire of cognitional activity, Lonergan regards it as the 'full increment in knowledge' (238)."
Toward a Holistic Account of the Subject
Lonergan states that reductionism is a "campaign against the flight from understanding" (235). This is a term used by Lonergan to describe one of the ways people avoid insight. It is part of Lonergan's project of explaining intellectual conversion, and "thereby serves to underscore how truncated views of the human subject undermine our capacity for authentic self-understanding" (235). Lonergan seeks to make people aware of the conditions for self-understanding.
Aiken asserts, "As intentional, human intelligence is directed toward being, truth, and value--indeed, toward anything of actual or potential significance--but because intentional operations are by their very nature conscious operations, one can be aware of them and reflexively grasp their significance, singly and in relation to one another" (235-236). Lonergan says these are conscious operations, but people can do these operations without being aware of them. Aiken adds, "These operations and their situating fields of conscious activity form a flexible, dynamic, and indeed normative pattern, the rudiments of which are always and already operating in all our distinctively human projects" (236). These are operations that are done when people seek to understand their experiences. Lonergan thinks knowing requires three elements: experiencing, understanding, and judging. Aiken states that Lonergan's "cognitional theory (as elaborated in Insight ) and his intentionality analysis (as set forth in Method in Theology) are designed to identify this pattern, to encourage his readers to appropriate it," and to avoid the flight from understanding (236).
Lonergan describes the flight from understanding: "No problem is at once more delicate and more profound, more practical and perhaps more pressing. How, indeed, is a mind to become conscious of its own bias when that bias springs from a communal flight from understanding and is supported by the whole texture of civilization? . . . How can human intelligence begin to deal with the unintelligible yet objective situations which the flight from understanding creates and expands and sustains? At least we make a beginning by asking what precisely it is to understand, what are the dynamics of the flow of consciousness that favors insight, what are the interferences that favor oversight, and what, finally, do the answers to such questions imply for the guidance of human thought and action?" (Insight, 9).
Lonergan's cognition theory states that people have a "penchant for raising questions" (236). This agrees with Aristotle's idea that everyone desires to know. He also says that wonder is the beginning of philosophy. We wonder about things, so we ask question to acquire understanding. Lonergan believes that questions leads to the different levels of knowing. Asking questions is natural to us since we ask questions from the time we are able to talk.
We can accept these ideas with simple self-reflection. We have experiences of asking question for the purpose of understanding. We have experience of reflecting on what we understand to determine if it is true.
Our questions are a quest for understanding. Aiken asks, "Where does intelligent questioning lead? What is intended in our wondering about the nature of things?" (237). How does our asking anticipate an answer? What "kinds of conscious operations" does our questions enable? Lonergan thinks because "we wonder about the what, how, and why of our experiences shows that we are always and already embarked on a quest for understanding" (237). Understanding is more than just knowing how to solve a problem. It is more than simply following directions. It includes insight. Aiken states, "To gain insight is precisely to catch on, to get the point, to see the light, to understand for oneself" (237). Insights mainly come through asking intelligent questions and being motivated by a "spirit of inquiry." Indeed, what makes "insight an act of intelligence is that it grasps an intelligible pattern, a potentially significant correlation in the data" (237). It is like an inspector examining the clues of a crime scene and getting an insight how the pieces fit together.
Getting an insight is not the same thing as knowing. Lonergan thinks knowing includes experiences, understanding, and judging. You need all three to have knowing. Aiken suggests "our native wondering is not satisfied with just any bright idea, but invites us to consider whether the potentially significant pattern in question has been identified accurately, formulated adequately, expressed clearly, combined appropriately with other insights, and confirmed by sufficient evidence" (237).
The "process of confirmation" begins another level of the cognitional process: "critical reflection" (237). Aiken explains, "Just as questioning the data prompts intelligent understanding, so questioning the veracity of what one has understood heads for an act of judgment whereby, if all goes well, factual truth is affirmed" (237). This reveals our existence as a subject. Our natural desire to know is more than simple understanding, but it is a movement to judgment, to a declaration if it is true or not. It is questioning if the evidence is sufficient for a judgment on its veracity. Aiken thinks that we are both "truth-seekers" and "meaning-makers" (238).
"The activity of weighing evidence leads to another kind of insight," a reflective judgment whether more questions are needed to be answered before making a judgment or if our questions have been answered sufficiently by the evidence. When we have adequately answered our question, Aiken says we have "come to term." He explains what he means by coming to term: "An intelligible correlation has been intelligently grasped and clearly defined. This formulated insight (or cluster of insights) has subsequently been framed as a hypothesis expressing some specifiable evidential connection between certain conditions and a factual state of affairs representing their fulfillment. Now let us suppose that the relevant data are sufficient to establish that these conditions have indeed been fulfilled. One then is fully warranted in affirming the intelligibility under consideration is in fact the case, for it has now acquired the status of being 'virtually unconditioned,' which means that it has passed from the potentiality of pure thought to the actuality of objective existence. By thus judging the matter to be so, one takes a stand with some degree of epistemic confidence (from probability to certainty). Since the act of judgment draws upon, and sums up, the entire repertoire of cognitional activity, Lonergan regards it as the 'full increment in knowledge' (238)."
Tuesday, March 26, 2019
Lonergan's Critique of Reductionism Part I
David W. Aiken, "Bernard Lonergan's Critique of Reductionism: A Call to Intellectual Conversion. Christian Scholars Review 233-251.
Aiken calls reductionism an ideology that modern scholars are susceptible. He states that Lonergan is a major critic of reductionism. He is surprised that Lonergan is not better known.
In his article he explores Lonergan's critique of reductionism in two major works of Lonergan: Insight and Method in Theology. He states that Lonergan's "full-orbed account of cognitional dynamics prefigures a holistic view of the subject as situated in an unfolding world-order chracterized by 'sublation' rather than 'reduction' (233)." He thinks that Lonergan's goal is not to "simply refute an ideology, but instead to provide an incentive to resist one of the most pervasive intellectual vices of our age" (233-234). Lonergan's proposal calls for an intellectual conversion--a total "reorienting of how we conduct ourselves as thoughtful inquirers" (234). The author begins his essay by explaining what he means by reductionism.
He does not call into question the scientific method or explaining the whole by its parts. He says this works fine in "first-order scientific investigations;" it becomes a problem when applied to "second-order methodological considerations, or to normative questions of being, truth, and value" (234). He thinks "promoting reductive strategies of explanation legitimately employed by the empirical sciences to the status of metaphysical postulates inevitably results in an unwarranted exclusion of relevant data (such as intentionality and finality) when investigating the ontological constitution of persons, historical processes, and the world as 'mediated by meaning' (234)." The idea that "higher-order realities" can always be explained by lower-order causes is part of what he means by reductionism.
Physicalism is an example of reductionist thinking, "according to which reality is normatively conceived to be whatever the physical sciences currently regard as fundamental particles, forces, or processes; everything else-including the physicalist as conscious agent-is at most virtually real" (234). This view should not be confused with first-order scientific thinking; instead, it is a "metaphysical theory" since its assertions go beyond the scientific method.
Scientism is another form of reductionist thinking. It is closely related to physicalism. Scientism "counts as objectively true all and only those beliefs warranted by well-accredited scientific methods; and for this reason more ultimate issues of meaning and value must be decided largely on the basis of taste and temperament, since there is (presumably) no rigorous method for adjudicating them" (234). Because it restricts "the conditions under which beliefs are legitimated," scientism can be seen as "methodical imperialism." Sicentism, however, is caught in a dilemma because its own "epistemic priorities, as value-laden, exceed the scope of scientific confirmation," and so it would depend on taste and sentiment itself.
Another form of reductionism is anthropological reductionism, which attempts "to explain persons exclusively and exhaustively by appeal to non-personal processes, events, and mechanisms" (235). It seeks to explain the complexity of the whole by its parts or by "aspects taken to be more primitive" (235). Like physicalism and scientism, anthropological reductionism "is often accorded empirical-scientific status, even though its theories tend to be normative, speculative, and indeed metaphysical in nature" (235).
Aiken calls reductionism an ideology that modern scholars are susceptible. He states that Lonergan is a major critic of reductionism. He is surprised that Lonergan is not better known.
In his article he explores Lonergan's critique of reductionism in two major works of Lonergan: Insight and Method in Theology. He states that Lonergan's "full-orbed account of cognitional dynamics prefigures a holistic view of the subject as situated in an unfolding world-order chracterized by 'sublation' rather than 'reduction' (233)." He thinks that Lonergan's goal is not to "simply refute an ideology, but instead to provide an incentive to resist one of the most pervasive intellectual vices of our age" (233-234). Lonergan's proposal calls for an intellectual conversion--a total "reorienting of how we conduct ourselves as thoughtful inquirers" (234). The author begins his essay by explaining what he means by reductionism.
He does not call into question the scientific method or explaining the whole by its parts. He says this works fine in "first-order scientific investigations;" it becomes a problem when applied to "second-order methodological considerations, or to normative questions of being, truth, and value" (234). He thinks "promoting reductive strategies of explanation legitimately employed by the empirical sciences to the status of metaphysical postulates inevitably results in an unwarranted exclusion of relevant data (such as intentionality and finality) when investigating the ontological constitution of persons, historical processes, and the world as 'mediated by meaning' (234)." The idea that "higher-order realities" can always be explained by lower-order causes is part of what he means by reductionism.
Physicalism is an example of reductionist thinking, "according to which reality is normatively conceived to be whatever the physical sciences currently regard as fundamental particles, forces, or processes; everything else-including the physicalist as conscious agent-is at most virtually real" (234). This view should not be confused with first-order scientific thinking; instead, it is a "metaphysical theory" since its assertions go beyond the scientific method.
Scientism is another form of reductionist thinking. It is closely related to physicalism. Scientism "counts as objectively true all and only those beliefs warranted by well-accredited scientific methods; and for this reason more ultimate issues of meaning and value must be decided largely on the basis of taste and temperament, since there is (presumably) no rigorous method for adjudicating them" (234). Because it restricts "the conditions under which beliefs are legitimated," scientism can be seen as "methodical imperialism." Sicentism, however, is caught in a dilemma because its own "epistemic priorities, as value-laden, exceed the scope of scientific confirmation," and so it would depend on taste and sentiment itself.
Another form of reductionism is anthropological reductionism, which attempts "to explain persons exclusively and exhaustively by appeal to non-personal processes, events, and mechanisms" (235). It seeks to explain the complexity of the whole by its parts or by "aspects taken to be more primitive" (235). Like physicalism and scientism, anthropological reductionism "is often accorded empirical-scientific status, even though its theories tend to be normative, speculative, and indeed metaphysical in nature" (235).
Bernard Lonergan on Self-transcendence Part 5
Lonergan, Bernard J. F. Philosophical and Theological Papers, 1965-1980.
5 Religious Self-transcendence
Individual persons have the capability for self-transcendence through questions of intelligence, questions of reflection and questions of deliberation. Having the ability to achieve self-transcendence and actually doing it is not the same. Lonergan argues that the ability to achieve self-transcendence is helped by falling in love. "Then one's being becomes being-in-love" (325). There are many causes for its occurrence, but once it occurs, it becomes predominant. Lonergan writes, "It becomes the first principle. From it flow one's desires and fears, one's joys and sorrows, one's discernment of values, one's decisions and deeds" (325).
There are different kinds of loves. There is the love between husband and wife, parent and child, love between friends, and love for God. Lonergan states, "There is the love of intimacy, of husband and wife, of parents and children. There is the love of one's fellow men with its fruit in the achievement of human welfare. There is the love of God with one's whole heart and whole soul, with all one's mind and all one's strength (Deuteronomy 6:4-5; Mark 12:29-30). It is God's love flooding our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us (Romans 5: 5)" (325).
Lonergan is speaking in relation to the Christian experience, but it has "parallels" in other religions. Lonergan asserts, "religious love is the basic fulfillment of our conscious intentionality, of our questions for intelligence, for reflection, for deliberation" (326). It produces a deep joy that can remain despite the troubles of this life. It brings a peace that "the world cannot give." The fulfillment motivates a love for one's neighbor that seeks to bring God's kingdom to this world. "on the other hand," Lonergan writes, "the absence of that fulfillment opens the way to the trivialization of human life stemming fom the ruthless exercise of power, to despair about human welfare springing from the conviction that the universe is absurd" (326).
Lonergan states that religious experiences are ambiguous. What is important is how we live. The Bible teaches that we know them by their fruits. He asserts, "What really reveals the man or woman is not inner experience but outward deed" (326).
Lonergan thinks that the person who wants to know if they love God should not look within through introspection. Instead, he should consider his actions. Professor Maslow though that most people are not aware of their "peak experiences."
Lonergan writes, "Now being in love with God, if not a peak experience, at least is a peak state, indeed a peak dynamic state. Further, it will be marked by its unrestricted character. It is with one's whole heart and whole soul, and all one's mind and all one's strength. Hence, while all love is self-surrender, being in love with God is being in love without limits or qualifications or conditions or reservations. Just as unrestricted questioning is our capacity for self-transcendence, so being in love in an unrestricted fashion is the proper fulfillment of that capacity" (326).
This fulfillment is not caused by own actions, but is a gift from God. Instead of it coming from our knowing and choosing, "it dismantles and abolishes the horizon in which our knowing and choosing went on, and it constructs a new horizon in which the love of God transvalues our values and the eyes of that love transform our knowing" (326).
Even though it is not a result of our knowing and choosing, "it is a dynamic state of love, joy, peace that manifests itself in acts of kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness, and self-control (Gal. 5:22)" (326-327).
Lonergan distinguishes between consciousness and knowing. He asserts, "To say this dynamic state is conscious is not to say that it is known. For consciousness is just experience, while human knowing is a compound of experiencing, understanding, and judging" (327).
Since the conscious state is not known, it "is an experience of mystery" (327). Since it is an experience of being in love, Lonergan states that the mystery is both "fascinating" and "attractive," and "by it one is possessed" (327). Since it is an "unmeasured love, the mystery is otherworldly; it evokes awe; in certain psychic contexts it can evoke terror" (327). The gift of God's love is similar to Rudolf Otto's view of the holy, his mysterium et tremendum. It also is similar to Paul Tillich's "being grasped by ultimate concern" (327). In addition, it is similar to St Ignatius Loyola's "consolation without a cause," a consolation that has "content but is woithout an apprehended object" (327).
Lonergan says he has been talking about religious experience, but he must not "overlook the religious word. By the word is meany any expression of religious meaning or value" (327). It can be carried by different things: "intersubjectivity, or art, or symbol, or language, or the portrayed lives or deeds or achievements of individuals or groups" (327). It is usually carried by all these modes, but it is through language the "meaning is most fully articulated, the spoken and written word are of special importance in the development and clarification of religion" (327).
"By its word," Lonergan asserts, "religion enters the world mediated by meaning and regulated by value. It enters the world with its deepest meaning and its highest value. It sets itself in a context with other meanings and other values. Within that context it comes to understand itself, to relate itself to the object of ultimate concern, and to draw on the power of that relationship to pursue the objectives of proximate concern all the more fairly and all the more efficaciously" (327). Before it "enters the world mediated by meaning," religion existed as the inner word that speaks within our heart through God's loves which flows within us. This inner word is not the word mediated by meaning, but the word in immediate experience, "to the unmediated experience of the mystery of love and awe" (328). The word that is spoken "outwardly" is "historically conditioned: its meaning depends on the human context in which it is uttered" and these contexts change from "place to place and from one generation to another" (328).
5 Religious Self-transcendence
Individual persons have the capability for self-transcendence through questions of intelligence, questions of reflection and questions of deliberation. Having the ability to achieve self-transcendence and actually doing it is not the same. Lonergan argues that the ability to achieve self-transcendence is helped by falling in love. "Then one's being becomes being-in-love" (325). There are many causes for its occurrence, but once it occurs, it becomes predominant. Lonergan writes, "It becomes the first principle. From it flow one's desires and fears, one's joys and sorrows, one's discernment of values, one's decisions and deeds" (325).
There are different kinds of loves. There is the love between husband and wife, parent and child, love between friends, and love for God. Lonergan states, "There is the love of intimacy, of husband and wife, of parents and children. There is the love of one's fellow men with its fruit in the achievement of human welfare. There is the love of God with one's whole heart and whole soul, with all one's mind and all one's strength (Deuteronomy 6:4-5; Mark 12:29-30). It is God's love flooding our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us (Romans 5: 5)" (325).
Lonergan is speaking in relation to the Christian experience, but it has "parallels" in other religions. Lonergan asserts, "religious love is the basic fulfillment of our conscious intentionality, of our questions for intelligence, for reflection, for deliberation" (326). It produces a deep joy that can remain despite the troubles of this life. It brings a peace that "the world cannot give." The fulfillment motivates a love for one's neighbor that seeks to bring God's kingdom to this world. "on the other hand," Lonergan writes, "the absence of that fulfillment opens the way to the trivialization of human life stemming fom the ruthless exercise of power, to despair about human welfare springing from the conviction that the universe is absurd" (326).
Lonergan states that religious experiences are ambiguous. What is important is how we live. The Bible teaches that we know them by their fruits. He asserts, "What really reveals the man or woman is not inner experience but outward deed" (326).
Lonergan thinks that the person who wants to know if they love God should not look within through introspection. Instead, he should consider his actions. Professor Maslow though that most people are not aware of their "peak experiences."
Lonergan writes, "Now being in love with God, if not a peak experience, at least is a peak state, indeed a peak dynamic state. Further, it will be marked by its unrestricted character. It is with one's whole heart and whole soul, and all one's mind and all one's strength. Hence, while all love is self-surrender, being in love with God is being in love without limits or qualifications or conditions or reservations. Just as unrestricted questioning is our capacity for self-transcendence, so being in love in an unrestricted fashion is the proper fulfillment of that capacity" (326).
This fulfillment is not caused by own actions, but is a gift from God. Instead of it coming from our knowing and choosing, "it dismantles and abolishes the horizon in which our knowing and choosing went on, and it constructs a new horizon in which the love of God transvalues our values and the eyes of that love transform our knowing" (326).
Even though it is not a result of our knowing and choosing, "it is a dynamic state of love, joy, peace that manifests itself in acts of kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness, and self-control (Gal. 5:22)" (326-327).
Lonergan distinguishes between consciousness and knowing. He asserts, "To say this dynamic state is conscious is not to say that it is known. For consciousness is just experience, while human knowing is a compound of experiencing, understanding, and judging" (327).
Since the conscious state is not known, it "is an experience of mystery" (327). Since it is an experience of being in love, Lonergan states that the mystery is both "fascinating" and "attractive," and "by it one is possessed" (327). Since it is an "unmeasured love, the mystery is otherworldly; it evokes awe; in certain psychic contexts it can evoke terror" (327). The gift of God's love is similar to Rudolf Otto's view of the holy, his mysterium et tremendum. It also is similar to Paul Tillich's "being grasped by ultimate concern" (327). In addition, it is similar to St Ignatius Loyola's "consolation without a cause," a consolation that has "content but is woithout an apprehended object" (327).
Lonergan says he has been talking about religious experience, but he must not "overlook the religious word. By the word is meany any expression of religious meaning or value" (327). It can be carried by different things: "intersubjectivity, or art, or symbol, or language, or the portrayed lives or deeds or achievements of individuals or groups" (327). It is usually carried by all these modes, but it is through language the "meaning is most fully articulated, the spoken and written word are of special importance in the development and clarification of religion" (327).
"By its word," Lonergan asserts, "religion enters the world mediated by meaning and regulated by value. It enters the world with its deepest meaning and its highest value. It sets itself in a context with other meanings and other values. Within that context it comes to understand itself, to relate itself to the object of ultimate concern, and to draw on the power of that relationship to pursue the objectives of proximate concern all the more fairly and all the more efficaciously" (327). Before it "enters the world mediated by meaning," religion existed as the inner word that speaks within our heart through God's loves which flows within us. This inner word is not the word mediated by meaning, but the word in immediate experience, "to the unmediated experience of the mystery of love and awe" (328). The word that is spoken "outwardly" is "historically conditioned: its meaning depends on the human context in which it is uttered" and these contexts change from "place to place and from one generation to another" (328).
Thursday, March 21, 2019
Bernard Lonergan on Self-transcendence Part 4
Lonergan, Bernard J. F. Philosophical and Theological Papers, 1965-1980.
4 Moral Self-transcendence
Lonergan makes several points about morals. He introduces it with a picture. There are two benches near to each in a park. One bench has three Russian soldiers and they are looking ahead, avoiding looking at two Czech civilians, a young man and woman. The Czechs, in contrast, look right at the Russian soldiers.He draws this picture from a book, Towards Deep Subjectivity. This picture illustrates "ethical space." Lonergan states, "It sets forth in the objective world the subjective reality of two moral judgments: the moral judgment of the Czechs whose gaze amounts to the question, What right have you to be here? and the moral acquiescence of the Russians who do not care to look the Czechs in the eye" (323).
First, morality is known by people. We both praise and blame behavior. We praise what we consider right and blame what we consider bad.
Second, "good and evil bear witness to each other" (323). The look of the Czechs blame the Russians for what they consider wrong. The Russians refusal to look at the Czechs "transmits the blame from their helpless selves to their powerful and exacting masters" (323).
Third, people tend to avoid accepting blame. They tend to pass it along to other people.
Fourth, Lonergan says is "pretense." One's action is not without fault, but one points to a greater good, to particular circumstances, to the actions of their "better's, to the "hypocrisy" of others, to the dangers they were facing. One openly says that one is not a "saint." Or one says that it is because of life's necessity. Because of the sinfulness of others, we cannot be pure.
Fifth, there is "ideology." To some, it is just a system of thought. "But properly it denotes systematic rationalization, that is, a system of thought worked out to defend, justify, legitimate an iniquitous style of living, of economic arrangements, of political government, of any of the organized forms of human activity" (323). So for Marxists capitalism is an ideology. For capitalists, communism is an ideology. Lonergan asserts, "So in its proper meaning the term ideology includes a moral judgment of reprobation both of the system of thought that one opposes and of the system of action that the system of thought would legitimate" (323).
Sixth, there is "impotence." When one becomes an adult it is funny how kids blames each other for mistakes. Lonergan states that it is harder "to obtain accurate information, to understand lengthy and minute analyses, to follow protracted chains of reasoning, to come to appreciate or see through the claims of clusters of nations armed with thermonuclear bombs" (324).
But the "impotence" on the world stage is "coupled in each of us with impotence" on the small stage of our lives. Moral action requires "sound judgment" and a "good will." We are not born with these things. They must be developed in us. This requires hard work and time. We need sound judgment to know what is the right thing to do and a good will to implement it. Lonergan asks like Aristotle, "But if sound judgment is a prerequisite for acquiring sound judgment, how are we ever to acquire it? If good will is a prerequisite for acquiring good will, how are we ever to acquire good will?" (324)
Does this mean that it is impossible to develop morally? That one must have virtue to acquire virtue. Is it a circle we can not escape. There is an alternative way to look at it. We escape the "vicious" circle by moral self-transcendence.
Questions of intelligence "promote our being from a world of sense impressions, images, feelings into a world of intelligence, discovery, endless vistas" (324). Questions of reflection "promote our being from a world of sense and intelligence to the rationality of a world in which one discerns clearly and efficiently between fact and fiction, astronomy and astrology, chemistry and alchemy, history and legend, philosophy and myth, science and ideology" (324). There are two kinds of questions of deliberation: There are self-serving questions which only cares about how it effects me. In contrast, there are questions that ask "what is worth while, what is truly and not merely apparently good" (324).
It is only the latter question that leads to moral self-transcendence. Lonergan writes, "But when one's basic questions for deliberation regard not satisfactions but values - the vital values of health and skill, the social values that secure the vital values of the group, the cultural values that make worth while social goals and the satisfaction of vital needs - then moral self-transcendence has begun" (324-325). When one no longer needs to be motivated by fear or desires; one has become a moral actor, "a genuine person whose words and deeds inspire and invite those who know him or her to aspire themselves to moral self-transcendence, to become themselves genuine persons" (325).
4 Moral Self-transcendence
Lonergan makes several points about morals. He introduces it with a picture. There are two benches near to each in a park. One bench has three Russian soldiers and they are looking ahead, avoiding looking at two Czech civilians, a young man and woman. The Czechs, in contrast, look right at the Russian soldiers.He draws this picture from a book, Towards Deep Subjectivity. This picture illustrates "ethical space." Lonergan states, "It sets forth in the objective world the subjective reality of two moral judgments: the moral judgment of the Czechs whose gaze amounts to the question, What right have you to be here? and the moral acquiescence of the Russians who do not care to look the Czechs in the eye" (323).
First, morality is known by people. We both praise and blame behavior. We praise what we consider right and blame what we consider bad.
Second, "good and evil bear witness to each other" (323). The look of the Czechs blame the Russians for what they consider wrong. The Russians refusal to look at the Czechs "transmits the blame from their helpless selves to their powerful and exacting masters" (323).
Third, people tend to avoid accepting blame. They tend to pass it along to other people.
Fourth, Lonergan says is "pretense." One's action is not without fault, but one points to a greater good, to particular circumstances, to the actions of their "better's, to the "hypocrisy" of others, to the dangers they were facing. One openly says that one is not a "saint." Or one says that it is because of life's necessity. Because of the sinfulness of others, we cannot be pure.
Fifth, there is "ideology." To some, it is just a system of thought. "But properly it denotes systematic rationalization, that is, a system of thought worked out to defend, justify, legitimate an iniquitous style of living, of economic arrangements, of political government, of any of the organized forms of human activity" (323). So for Marxists capitalism is an ideology. For capitalists, communism is an ideology. Lonergan asserts, "So in its proper meaning the term ideology includes a moral judgment of reprobation both of the system of thought that one opposes and of the system of action that the system of thought would legitimate" (323).
Sixth, there is "impotence." When one becomes an adult it is funny how kids blames each other for mistakes. Lonergan states that it is harder "to obtain accurate information, to understand lengthy and minute analyses, to follow protracted chains of reasoning, to come to appreciate or see through the claims of clusters of nations armed with thermonuclear bombs" (324).
But the "impotence" on the world stage is "coupled in each of us with impotence" on the small stage of our lives. Moral action requires "sound judgment" and a "good will." We are not born with these things. They must be developed in us. This requires hard work and time. We need sound judgment to know what is the right thing to do and a good will to implement it. Lonergan asks like Aristotle, "But if sound judgment is a prerequisite for acquiring sound judgment, how are we ever to acquire it? If good will is a prerequisite for acquiring good will, how are we ever to acquire good will?" (324)
Does this mean that it is impossible to develop morally? That one must have virtue to acquire virtue. Is it a circle we can not escape. There is an alternative way to look at it. We escape the "vicious" circle by moral self-transcendence.
Questions of intelligence "promote our being from a world of sense impressions, images, feelings into a world of intelligence, discovery, endless vistas" (324). Questions of reflection "promote our being from a world of sense and intelligence to the rationality of a world in which one discerns clearly and efficiently between fact and fiction, astronomy and astrology, chemistry and alchemy, history and legend, philosophy and myth, science and ideology" (324). There are two kinds of questions of deliberation: There are self-serving questions which only cares about how it effects me. In contrast, there are questions that ask "what is worth while, what is truly and not merely apparently good" (324).
It is only the latter question that leads to moral self-transcendence. Lonergan writes, "But when one's basic questions for deliberation regard not satisfactions but values - the vital values of health and skill, the social values that secure the vital values of the group, the cultural values that make worth while social goals and the satisfaction of vital needs - then moral self-transcendence has begun" (324-325). When one no longer needs to be motivated by fear or desires; one has become a moral actor, "a genuine person whose words and deeds inspire and invite those who know him or her to aspire themselves to moral self-transcendence, to become themselves genuine persons" (325).
Wednesday, March 20, 2019
Bernard Lonergan on Self-Transcendence Part 3
Lonergan, Bernard J. F. Philosophical and Theological Papers, 1965-1980.
3 Intellectual Self-transcendence
Lonergan thinks language is connected with intellectual self-transcendence. It is concerned with the movement from non-speaking to speaking. Basically, before children acquire language their "meaning is confined to a world of immediacy, to a world no bigger than the nursery" (319). In the first two years, the baby learns a lot but their attention is "directed to present objects" (319). But with acquiring language, the world of the child expands. Lonergan writes, "For words denote not only what is present but also what is absent, not only what is near but also what is far, not only the past but also the future, not only the factual but also the possible, the ideal, the ought-to-be for which we keep on striving though we never attain. So we come to live, not as the infant in a world of immediate experience, but in a far vaster world that is brought to us through the memories of other men, through the common sense of the community, through the pages of literature, through the labors of scholars, through the investigations of scientists, through the experience of saints, through the meditations of philosophers and theologians" (320).
"This larger world mediated through meaning" is beyond one's immediate experience. It is not even the sum of all the immediate experiences of the world. For meaning goes beyond immediate experience. Lonergan asserts, "What is meant is not only experienced but also somehow understood and, commonly, also affirmed. It is this addition of understanding and judgment that makes possible the larger world mediated by meaning, that gives it its structure and unity . . . It is this larger world mediated by meaning that we refer to when we speak of the real world, and in it we live out our lives" (320). Lonergan goes on to say that this world mediated by meaning is "insecure, because meaning is insecure, since besides truth there is error, besides fact there is fiction, besides honesty there is deceit, besides science, there is myth" (320).
We have been contrasting the immediate world with the world mediated by meaning. It is the same person that lives in both worlds. He lived in one as an infant, and he lives in another one now that he is an adult. When one becomes an adult, one still lives in the immediate world, but he also lives in the world mediated by meaning. Lonergan states that the child when he becomes an adult gets a second identity. Lonergan writes, "there is a difference between the world as apprehended by the infant and the world apprehended by the adult. For the latter apprehension includes the endless multitude of things which the infant did not know" (321).
In addition, the apprehension of the adult is different from the child. The child's world is limited to the senses. But the world of the adult includes the senses but "adds" to the senses "both what is grasped by intelligence and what is affirmed or denied by judgment" (321).
Finally, just as the "relevant cognitional operations differ, so too the criteria of objectivity differ" (321). For the world of immediacy, what is given in experience is enough. The criteria is the sense experience. But the world "mediated by meaning" the criteria is only part of the criteria and not sufficient. Both the criteria of intelligence and the criteria of judgment are also needed.
Lonergan thinks many people are not aware of the cognitional processes. Lonergan writes, "Only too easily people can drift from infancy through childhood and a long educational process only to practice adult cognitional procedures with no clear notion of what they are doing" (321). They are aware of their sense experience, but nothing further. The cognitional process is like a "black box" to them. They do not know what goes on between input and output.
Lonergan states that self-transcendence "is taking possession of one's own mind. It is a matter of attending to each of its many operations, of identifying them, of comparing them, of distinguishing them, naming them, relating them to one another, grasping the dynamic structure of their emergence and development, and so coming to clarify the workings of the mind in mathematics, in science, in common sense, in history, in philosophy" (321-322).
Lonergan thinks it is similar to Carl Rogers Client-Centered therapy. Lonergan states, "People have feelings that are distorting their lives, feelings they experience, feelings however they have yet to identify, compare, distinguish, name, relate to their occasions, to their causes, to their consequences" (322).
Loergan states that what "is true of the neurotic and his feelings can be true of the normal man or woman and their insights" (322). He thinks insights are a common occurrence. They occur regularly to the intelligent and less frequent to those not so intelligent. Lonergan thinks that most of the intelligent do not know what an insight is or how frequent they occur.
To have insight requires effort. That was the purpose of his book, Insight. It provides exercises for the reader to understand what occurs in their own cognitional process.
3 Intellectual Self-transcendence
Lonergan thinks language is connected with intellectual self-transcendence. It is concerned with the movement from non-speaking to speaking. Basically, before children acquire language their "meaning is confined to a world of immediacy, to a world no bigger than the nursery" (319). In the first two years, the baby learns a lot but their attention is "directed to present objects" (319). But with acquiring language, the world of the child expands. Lonergan writes, "For words denote not only what is present but also what is absent, not only what is near but also what is far, not only the past but also the future, not only the factual but also the possible, the ideal, the ought-to-be for which we keep on striving though we never attain. So we come to live, not as the infant in a world of immediate experience, but in a far vaster world that is brought to us through the memories of other men, through the common sense of the community, through the pages of literature, through the labors of scholars, through the investigations of scientists, through the experience of saints, through the meditations of philosophers and theologians" (320).
"This larger world mediated through meaning" is beyond one's immediate experience. It is not even the sum of all the immediate experiences of the world. For meaning goes beyond immediate experience. Lonergan asserts, "What is meant is not only experienced but also somehow understood and, commonly, also affirmed. It is this addition of understanding and judgment that makes possible the larger world mediated by meaning, that gives it its structure and unity . . . It is this larger world mediated by meaning that we refer to when we speak of the real world, and in it we live out our lives" (320). Lonergan goes on to say that this world mediated by meaning is "insecure, because meaning is insecure, since besides truth there is error, besides fact there is fiction, besides honesty there is deceit, besides science, there is myth" (320).
We have been contrasting the immediate world with the world mediated by meaning. It is the same person that lives in both worlds. He lived in one as an infant, and he lives in another one now that he is an adult. When one becomes an adult, one still lives in the immediate world, but he also lives in the world mediated by meaning. Lonergan states that the child when he becomes an adult gets a second identity. Lonergan writes, "there is a difference between the world as apprehended by the infant and the world apprehended by the adult. For the latter apprehension includes the endless multitude of things which the infant did not know" (321).
In addition, the apprehension of the adult is different from the child. The child's world is limited to the senses. But the world of the adult includes the senses but "adds" to the senses "both what is grasped by intelligence and what is affirmed or denied by judgment" (321).
Finally, just as the "relevant cognitional operations differ, so too the criteria of objectivity differ" (321). For the world of immediacy, what is given in experience is enough. The criteria is the sense experience. But the world "mediated by meaning" the criteria is only part of the criteria and not sufficient. Both the criteria of intelligence and the criteria of judgment are also needed.
Lonergan thinks many people are not aware of the cognitional processes. Lonergan writes, "Only too easily people can drift from infancy through childhood and a long educational process only to practice adult cognitional procedures with no clear notion of what they are doing" (321). They are aware of their sense experience, but nothing further. The cognitional process is like a "black box" to them. They do not know what goes on between input and output.
Lonergan states that self-transcendence "is taking possession of one's own mind. It is a matter of attending to each of its many operations, of identifying them, of comparing them, of distinguishing them, naming them, relating them to one another, grasping the dynamic structure of their emergence and development, and so coming to clarify the workings of the mind in mathematics, in science, in common sense, in history, in philosophy" (321-322).
Lonergan thinks it is similar to Carl Rogers Client-Centered therapy. Lonergan states, "People have feelings that are distorting their lives, feelings they experience, feelings however they have yet to identify, compare, distinguish, name, relate to their occasions, to their causes, to their consequences" (322).
Loergan states that what "is true of the neurotic and his feelings can be true of the normal man or woman and their insights" (322). He thinks insights are a common occurrence. They occur regularly to the intelligent and less frequent to those not so intelligent. Lonergan thinks that most of the intelligent do not know what an insight is or how frequent they occur.
To have insight requires effort. That was the purpose of his book, Insight. It provides exercises for the reader to understand what occurs in their own cognitional process.
Monday, March 18, 2019
Bernard Lonergan on Self-transcendence Part 2
Lonergan, Bernard J. F. Philosophical and Theological Papers, 1965-1980.
2 Self-Transcendence
It is in the "autonomous human subject that self-transcendence occurs" (316). Lonergan sees the process in six stages: dreamless sleep, dreaming, waking, inquiring, reflecting, and deliberating. Later, he will add being-in-love for a seventh stage. The first six are sufficient to talk about intellectual and moral conversion.
In the first stage of "dreamless sleep," the individual is a "substance without being a subject" (316). It is when we are dreaming that consciousness occurs. Lonergan thinks at this stage the dreamer "is an intending subject" (316). He thinks "an enormously richer self-transcendence emerges when one awakes" (316). When one awake, one experiences a variety through one's senses: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. In addition, "we feel pleasure and pain, desire and fear, joy and sorrow, and in such feelings there seem to reside the mass and momentum in our lives" (316). We make all kinds of movements. These sensations, desires, and feelings are limited to our immediate experience. There is a larger world beyond immediate experience. Lonergan writes, "Imagination wants to fill out and round off the picture. Language makes questions possible. Intelligence makes them fascinating" (317). So we had why, what, when, and how questions. Our answers helps us to formulate concepts and generalizations. From memory and tradition and belief we acquire "the tales of travelers, the stories of clans or nations, the exploits of heroes, the treasures of literature, the discoveries of science, the reflections of philosophers, and the meditations of holy men" (317). Our world from immediate experience is very small compared to our world of mediated experience. This world is "based largely on belief" (317).
Though the external world is the same, people construct different pictures of it. This is through differences in cultures and levels of development. This diversity manifest a "further dimension of self-transcendence." Not only are there questions for intelligence--what and why and how--there are also questions for reflection--Is it so? Do we know it for certain or is it only probable? We are saying that something does not appears to be so, but actually is so. Lonergan asserts, When we affirm that something really and truly is so, we are making the claim that we have got beyond ourselves in some absolute fashion, somehow have got hold of something that is independent of ourselves, somehow have reached beyond, transcended ourselves" (317).
We have been looking at the dimension of knowledge, but there is also the dimension of action. Besides questions of intelligence, questions for reflection, there are questions of deliberations. Lonergan writes, "Beyond the pleasures we enjoy and the pains we dread, there are the values to which we may respond with our whole being. On the topmost level of human consciousness, the subject deliberates, evaluates, decides, controls and acts" (318). The subject is both "practical and existential: practical inasmuch as he is concerned with concrete courses of action; existential as inasmuch as control includes self-control, and the possibility of self-control involves responsibility for the effects of one's actions on others and more basically on oneself" (318).
One's self-control can proceed from different motivations. It can proceed from selfishness, in which evaluating, deliberating, choosing is controlled by what will result in only one's advantage. There is no concern for how it will affect others. On the other hand, it can be motivated by values: "with the vital values of health and strength; with the social values enshrined in family and custom, society and education, the state and the law, the economy and technology, the church or sect; with the cultural values of religion and art, language and literature, science, philosophy, history, theology, with the achieved personal value of one dedicated to realizing values in himself and promoting their realization in others" (318).
If one's actions, goals, and achievements are a result of one's values, "in that measure self-transcendence is effected in the field of action" (318). One has gone "beyond mere selfishness." One can work with others for the common good.
The four modes of Self-transcendence we have discussed are inter-connected: "Experiencing is presupposed and complemented by inquiry and understanding. Experiencing and understanding are presupposed and complemented by reflecting and judging. Experiencing, understanding, and judging are presupposed and complemented by deliberating and deciding" (318). The four levels are "interdependent" and the "later levels sublates" those that went before them. The later levels do not get rid of the earlier levels, but "preserves them, perfects them, and extends their relevance and significance" (319).
Lonergan thinks that human authenticity "is a matter of following the built-in law of the human spirit" (319). Because we can experience, we must pay attention. "Because we can understand, we should inquire." Because we can actualize values in the world, we must deliberate. Lonergan insists, "In the measure that we follow these precepts, in the measure we fulfill these conditions of being human persons, we also achieve self-transcendence, both in the field of knowledge and in the field of action" (319).
2 Self-Transcendence
It is in the "autonomous human subject that self-transcendence occurs" (316). Lonergan sees the process in six stages: dreamless sleep, dreaming, waking, inquiring, reflecting, and deliberating. Later, he will add being-in-love for a seventh stage. The first six are sufficient to talk about intellectual and moral conversion.
In the first stage of "dreamless sleep," the individual is a "substance without being a subject" (316). It is when we are dreaming that consciousness occurs. Lonergan thinks at this stage the dreamer "is an intending subject" (316). He thinks "an enormously richer self-transcendence emerges when one awakes" (316). When one awake, one experiences a variety through one's senses: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. In addition, "we feel pleasure and pain, desire and fear, joy and sorrow, and in such feelings there seem to reside the mass and momentum in our lives" (316). We make all kinds of movements. These sensations, desires, and feelings are limited to our immediate experience. There is a larger world beyond immediate experience. Lonergan writes, "Imagination wants to fill out and round off the picture. Language makes questions possible. Intelligence makes them fascinating" (317). So we had why, what, when, and how questions. Our answers helps us to formulate concepts and generalizations. From memory and tradition and belief we acquire "the tales of travelers, the stories of clans or nations, the exploits of heroes, the treasures of literature, the discoveries of science, the reflections of philosophers, and the meditations of holy men" (317). Our world from immediate experience is very small compared to our world of mediated experience. This world is "based largely on belief" (317).
Though the external world is the same, people construct different pictures of it. This is through differences in cultures and levels of development. This diversity manifest a "further dimension of self-transcendence." Not only are there questions for intelligence--what and why and how--there are also questions for reflection--Is it so? Do we know it for certain or is it only probable? We are saying that something does not appears to be so, but actually is so. Lonergan asserts, When we affirm that something really and truly is so, we are making the claim that we have got beyond ourselves in some absolute fashion, somehow have got hold of something that is independent of ourselves, somehow have reached beyond, transcended ourselves" (317).
We have been looking at the dimension of knowledge, but there is also the dimension of action. Besides questions of intelligence, questions for reflection, there are questions of deliberations. Lonergan writes, "Beyond the pleasures we enjoy and the pains we dread, there are the values to which we may respond with our whole being. On the topmost level of human consciousness, the subject deliberates, evaluates, decides, controls and acts" (318). The subject is both "practical and existential: practical inasmuch as he is concerned with concrete courses of action; existential as inasmuch as control includes self-control, and the possibility of self-control involves responsibility for the effects of one's actions on others and more basically on oneself" (318).
One's self-control can proceed from different motivations. It can proceed from selfishness, in which evaluating, deliberating, choosing is controlled by what will result in only one's advantage. There is no concern for how it will affect others. On the other hand, it can be motivated by values: "with the vital values of health and strength; with the social values enshrined in family and custom, society and education, the state and the law, the economy and technology, the church or sect; with the cultural values of religion and art, language and literature, science, philosophy, history, theology, with the achieved personal value of one dedicated to realizing values in himself and promoting their realization in others" (318).
If one's actions, goals, and achievements are a result of one's values, "in that measure self-transcendence is effected in the field of action" (318). One has gone "beyond mere selfishness." One can work with others for the common good.
The four modes of Self-transcendence we have discussed are inter-connected: "Experiencing is presupposed and complemented by inquiry and understanding. Experiencing and understanding are presupposed and complemented by reflecting and judging. Experiencing, understanding, and judging are presupposed and complemented by deliberating and deciding" (318). The four levels are "interdependent" and the "later levels sublates" those that went before them. The later levels do not get rid of the earlier levels, but "preserves them, perfects them, and extends their relevance and significance" (319).
Lonergan thinks that human authenticity "is a matter of following the built-in law of the human spirit" (319). Because we can experience, we must pay attention. "Because we can understand, we should inquire." Because we can actualize values in the world, we must deliberate. Lonergan insists, "In the measure that we follow these precepts, in the measure we fulfill these conditions of being human persons, we also achieve self-transcendence, both in the field of knowledge and in the field of action" (319).
Friday, March 15, 2019
Bernard Lonergan's Lecture on Self-Transcendence Part 1
Lonergan, Bernard J. F. Philosophical and Theological Papers, 1965-1980.
In this lecture Bernard Lonergan discusses five topics: the self, self-transcendence, intellectual self-transcendence, moral self-transcendence, and religious self-transcendence.
1 The Self
To speak of the self is to speak about what is private and intimate. It is also personal. It is not personal in the "individual sense" (314). It is "a becoming aware, a growth in self-consciousness, a heightening of one's self-appropriation" because others also experience the self in its unfolding.
Lonergan distinguishes between substance and subject. when one is asleep one is a substance and "only potentially a subject." One must dream to be a subject. The one who dreams is only a subject minimally. "One is more a subject when one is awake, still more when one is actively intelligent, still more when one is actively reasonable, still more in one's deliberations and decisions when one is actively responsible and free" (314).
The human substance is always the same whether sleeping or awake, a child or adult, normal or insane, "sober or drunk," intelligent or dumb, a good person or an evil person. Concerning substance, "these changes are accidental. But they are not accidental to the subject, for the subject is not an abstraction; he or she is a concrete reality, a being in the luminous of being" (314). Lonergan is speaking of the problem of permanence and change. Both a constant human nature and change are real.
Lonergan writes, "The being of the subject is becoming. One becomes oneself" (314). Lonergan seems to be saying that we are a potential self and that we become a self through our choices. We are born a subject, but we become ourselves through the use of reason, understanding, judging, choosing, and living the truth. "The subject has more and more to do with his own becoming" (315). A child resents when an adult does for them what they can do for themselves. People become themselves through human development. They develop through increasing what they can do for themselves, "that one decides for oneself, that one finds out for oneself" (315). People are growing up by doing more and more for themselves.
Lonergan states there comes a time when the "increasing autonomy subject ... finds out for himself that it is up to himself to decide what to make of himself" (315). It seems at first that the person's choosing and doing for themselves have to do with objects. "But on reflection it appears that deeds, decisions, discoveries affect the subject more deeply than they affect the objects with which they are concerned. They accumulate as dispositions and habits of the subject; they determine him or her; they make him or her what they are and what they are to be" (315). Our choices and actions affect not only objects, but ourselves too.
Early on the self makes itself; later on its choosing is "open-eyed, deliberate." Lonergan contrasts this with the drifter. It is the opposite of the "open-eyed" choosing. Lonergan writes, The drifter has not yet found himself; he has not yet discovered his own deed, and so is content with what everyone is doing; he has not yet discovered his own will, and so he is content to choose what everyone else is choosing; he has not yet discovered a mind of his own, and so he is content to think and to say what everyone else is thinking and saying; and the others too are apt to be drifters, each of them doing and choosing and thinking and saying what others happen to to be doing and choosing and thinking and saying" (315). It seems Lonergan is saying that the drifter does not have a self.
He is not saying that the autonomous self knows himself well. They cannot predict the future and are not in control of it. They are limited. They cannot control how the environment and outside influences "work on us." They cannot grasp their "unconscious and preconscious mechanisms." Their path is in the "night;" their control is only partial; they have to "believe and trust, to risk and dare" (315.
The historicity of our lives are "never transcended." Deciding what one is to become is not necessarily implementing it. What we decide today does not "predetermine the free choice of tomorrow," or months from now. What we accomplish "is always precarious: it can slip, fall, shatter. What is to be achieved can be ever expanding, deepening. To meet one challenge is to effect a development that reveals a further and graver challenge" (315-316). We do have freedom to make choices, but not everything is in our control. The world around us and people's actions affect us.
In this lecture Bernard Lonergan discusses five topics: the self, self-transcendence, intellectual self-transcendence, moral self-transcendence, and religious self-transcendence.
1 The Self
To speak of the self is to speak about what is private and intimate. It is also personal. It is not personal in the "individual sense" (314). It is "a becoming aware, a growth in self-consciousness, a heightening of one's self-appropriation" because others also experience the self in its unfolding.
Lonergan distinguishes between substance and subject. when one is asleep one is a substance and "only potentially a subject." One must dream to be a subject. The one who dreams is only a subject minimally. "One is more a subject when one is awake, still more when one is actively intelligent, still more when one is actively reasonable, still more in one's deliberations and decisions when one is actively responsible and free" (314).
The human substance is always the same whether sleeping or awake, a child or adult, normal or insane, "sober or drunk," intelligent or dumb, a good person or an evil person. Concerning substance, "these changes are accidental. But they are not accidental to the subject, for the subject is not an abstraction; he or she is a concrete reality, a being in the luminous of being" (314). Lonergan is speaking of the problem of permanence and change. Both a constant human nature and change are real.
Lonergan writes, "The being of the subject is becoming. One becomes oneself" (314). Lonergan seems to be saying that we are a potential self and that we become a self through our choices. We are born a subject, but we become ourselves through the use of reason, understanding, judging, choosing, and living the truth. "The subject has more and more to do with his own becoming" (315). A child resents when an adult does for them what they can do for themselves. People become themselves through human development. They develop through increasing what they can do for themselves, "that one decides for oneself, that one finds out for oneself" (315). People are growing up by doing more and more for themselves.
Lonergan states there comes a time when the "increasing autonomy subject ... finds out for himself that it is up to himself to decide what to make of himself" (315). It seems at first that the person's choosing and doing for themselves have to do with objects. "But on reflection it appears that deeds, decisions, discoveries affect the subject more deeply than they affect the objects with which they are concerned. They accumulate as dispositions and habits of the subject; they determine him or her; they make him or her what they are and what they are to be" (315). Our choices and actions affect not only objects, but ourselves too.
Early on the self makes itself; later on its choosing is "open-eyed, deliberate." Lonergan contrasts this with the drifter. It is the opposite of the "open-eyed" choosing. Lonergan writes, The drifter has not yet found himself; he has not yet discovered his own deed, and so is content with what everyone is doing; he has not yet discovered his own will, and so he is content to choose what everyone else is choosing; he has not yet discovered a mind of his own, and so he is content to think and to say what everyone else is thinking and saying; and the others too are apt to be drifters, each of them doing and choosing and thinking and saying what others happen to to be doing and choosing and thinking and saying" (315). It seems Lonergan is saying that the drifter does not have a self.
He is not saying that the autonomous self knows himself well. They cannot predict the future and are not in control of it. They are limited. They cannot control how the environment and outside influences "work on us." They cannot grasp their "unconscious and preconscious mechanisms." Their path is in the "night;" their control is only partial; they have to "believe and trust, to risk and dare" (315.
The historicity of our lives are "never transcended." Deciding what one is to become is not necessarily implementing it. What we decide today does not "predetermine the free choice of tomorrow," or months from now. What we accomplish "is always precarious: it can slip, fall, shatter. What is to be achieved can be ever expanding, deepening. To meet one challenge is to effect a development that reveals a further and graver challenge" (315-316). We do have freedom to make choices, but not everything is in our control. The world around us and people's actions affect us.
Thursday, March 14, 2019
Bernard Lonergan on Self-Transcendence Part 4
Braman, Brian J. "Bernard Lonergan On Being Yourself" in Meaning and Authenticity: Bernard Lonergan and Charles Taylor on the Drama of Human Existence. University of Toronto Press, 2008.
"Finally, one commits oneself to a moral way of life because it is 'existentially' grasped as the valuable thing to do" (67). What causes moral conversion. To know the right thing to do does not necessarily mean doing the right thing. Lonergan thinks that we "possess the capacity for moral self-transcendence, it only remains a possibility until we fall into love" (67). It is through becoming in love that we become a "being-in-love ... It is the first principle. From it flow one's desires and fears, one's joys and sorrows, one's discernment of values, one's decisions and deeds" (67). Being-in-love causes a new understanding of values. Our decisions and choices is not obsessed with one's own person. Instead, being-in-love is caring about the other.
Lonergan thinks that when we fall in love "then life begins anew. A new principle takes over and, as long as it lasts, we are lifted above ourselves and carried along as parts within an ever more intimate yet ever more liberating dynamic whole" (67). Lonergan thinks there are different kinds of being-in-love. "There is the intimate love between husband and wife, love of children, love of one's country, and love for our neighbor" (67-68). These different kinds of love "manifests itself in the care, concern, and welfare that is exhibited towards the objects of love" (68). Our lives are reorganizes around our loves. There exists another kind of love which drives our other loves. It is "unrestricted being-in-love." Just like our other forms of love manifests values we did not recognize, "so also being in love with the divine ground is the fulfillment of moral conversion that brings 'deep joy and profound peace. Our love reveals to us values we had not appreciated, values of prayer and worship, or repentance and belief' (68)." Being in love with the divine ground makes us aware "whom we are ultimately responsible and to whom we ultimately respond in self-transcending love" (68).
For Lonergan, just like "the question of God is implicit in all our questioning, so being in love with God is the basic fulfillment of our conscious intentionality" (68). Religious conversion means to be in love with God. Lonergan believes that God's love and action precedes our love for Him. To be in love with God is to be completely committed to Him. "Just as unrestricted questioning is our capacity for self-transcendence, so being in love in an unrestricted fashion is the proper fulfillment of that capacity" (68). Religious conversion sublates both moral and intellectual conversion. Absolute being is "intended in our questioning," and absolute goodness in our choices, and being in love in an unrestricted fashion is to fall "completely" in love with God, "is the fulfillment of my unrestricted thrust to self-transcendence through intelligence and truth and responsibility, because the one that fulfills that thrust must be supreme in intelligence, truth, goodness" (68). Being in love with God is a result of God's action within us, creating us anew. Paul states that God's love has been poured into our hearts. It is a result of God's work that we are brought into a new horizon "in which the love of God will transvalue our values and the eyes of that love will transform our knowing" (68). Religious conversion brings about both fulfillment, wholeness, and fullness. The wholeness that comes as a result of God' love creates a concern and love for the other. "Without religious conversion, the originating value is not God but the person, and the terminal value is alone the human good" (69). With religious conversion, the originating value is "divine light and love, while terminal value is the whole universe" (69).
Finally, although one is conscious of religion conversion does not mean that they actually know it. Knowing includes experiencing, understanding and judging. None of these operation by itself is knowing. "As long as this conscious and dynamic state of being in love in an unrestricted fashion remains unthematized, it is an experience in mystery" (69). God's love brings fulfillment and completion to the person. Falling in love with God "is the fulfillment of what it means to be an authentic human being, and this fulfillment overflows into love of one's neighbor as oneself" (69). Being in love with God is a "collaboration and cooperation with God and others to sustain and realize the order of the universe" (69).
"Finally, one commits oneself to a moral way of life because it is 'existentially' grasped as the valuable thing to do" (67). What causes moral conversion. To know the right thing to do does not necessarily mean doing the right thing. Lonergan thinks that we "possess the capacity for moral self-transcendence, it only remains a possibility until we fall into love" (67). It is through becoming in love that we become a "being-in-love ... It is the first principle. From it flow one's desires and fears, one's joys and sorrows, one's discernment of values, one's decisions and deeds" (67). Being-in-love causes a new understanding of values. Our decisions and choices is not obsessed with one's own person. Instead, being-in-love is caring about the other.
Lonergan thinks that when we fall in love "then life begins anew. A new principle takes over and, as long as it lasts, we are lifted above ourselves and carried along as parts within an ever more intimate yet ever more liberating dynamic whole" (67). Lonergan thinks there are different kinds of being-in-love. "There is the intimate love between husband and wife, love of children, love of one's country, and love for our neighbor" (67-68). These different kinds of love "manifests itself in the care, concern, and welfare that is exhibited towards the objects of love" (68). Our lives are reorganizes around our loves. There exists another kind of love which drives our other loves. It is "unrestricted being-in-love." Just like our other forms of love manifests values we did not recognize, "so also being in love with the divine ground is the fulfillment of moral conversion that brings 'deep joy and profound peace. Our love reveals to us values we had not appreciated, values of prayer and worship, or repentance and belief' (68)." Being in love with the divine ground makes us aware "whom we are ultimately responsible and to whom we ultimately respond in self-transcending love" (68).
For Lonergan, just like "the question of God is implicit in all our questioning, so being in love with God is the basic fulfillment of our conscious intentionality" (68). Religious conversion means to be in love with God. Lonergan believes that God's love and action precedes our love for Him. To be in love with God is to be completely committed to Him. "Just as unrestricted questioning is our capacity for self-transcendence, so being in love in an unrestricted fashion is the proper fulfillment of that capacity" (68). Religious conversion sublates both moral and intellectual conversion. Absolute being is "intended in our questioning," and absolute goodness in our choices, and being in love in an unrestricted fashion is to fall "completely" in love with God, "is the fulfillment of my unrestricted thrust to self-transcendence through intelligence and truth and responsibility, because the one that fulfills that thrust must be supreme in intelligence, truth, goodness" (68). Being in love with God is a result of God's action within us, creating us anew. Paul states that God's love has been poured into our hearts. It is a result of God's work that we are brought into a new horizon "in which the love of God will transvalue our values and the eyes of that love will transform our knowing" (68). Religious conversion brings about both fulfillment, wholeness, and fullness. The wholeness that comes as a result of God' love creates a concern and love for the other. "Without religious conversion, the originating value is not God but the person, and the terminal value is alone the human good" (69). With religious conversion, the originating value is "divine light and love, while terminal value is the whole universe" (69).
Finally, although one is conscious of religion conversion does not mean that they actually know it. Knowing includes experiencing, understanding and judging. None of these operation by itself is knowing. "As long as this conscious and dynamic state of being in love in an unrestricted fashion remains unthematized, it is an experience in mystery" (69). God's love brings fulfillment and completion to the person. Falling in love with God "is the fulfillment of what it means to be an authentic human being, and this fulfillment overflows into love of one's neighbor as oneself" (69). Being in love with God is a "collaboration and cooperation with God and others to sustain and realize the order of the universe" (69).
Wednesday, March 13, 2019
Bernard Lonergan on Self-Transcendence Part 3
Braman, Brian J. "Bernard Lonergan On Being Yourself" in Meaning and Authenticity: Bernard Lonergan and Charles Taylor on the Drama of Human Existence. University of Toronto Press, 2008.
We stated in the last post that an existential gap exists between what we know and what we actually do: "To be truly reasonable demands consistency between what we know and what we do; not only must there be the willingness to accept the truth of our intellectual conversion, we must also be willing to live up to that truth" (63). There is an urgent need to reduce this gap for the purpose of authentic living. There are three ways we avoid the need for moral conversion: First, "we seek to avoid self-knowledge," which means we refuse to entertain questions about how we live. Second, we rationalize our behavior. Third, we "fall into despair." Braman states, "In moral conversion, we seek to consistently opt for the truly worthwhile, the truly good, and the truly valuable rather than what merely appears to be merely good, valuable, or worthwhile" (64). Lonergan says in moral self-transcendence "we move beyond the merely self-regarding norms and make ourselves as moral beings" (64). In moral conversion we seek to avoid the three ways to avoid moral living. Moral conversion concerns what we are choosing in our choices. It involves discussing "transcendental value."
Transcendental value is something we understand because it is intelligible. Lonergan has different steps in knowing and choosing. Choosing values are at the level of deliberation. As mention earlier, different levels are experience, understanding, judging, and now we add choosing. Braman states, "Just as the intelligible is what is intended in questions for intelligence, and truth and being in questions for reflection, it is value that is intended in questions of deliberation. 'It is by appealing to value or values that we satisfy some appetites and do not satisfy others, that we approve some systems for achieving the good of order and dissaprove of others, that we praise or blame human persons as good or evil and their actions as right and wrong' (64-65)." It is by questions of deliberation that we decide on the path we should follow and "goodness of a particular object." Lonergan thinks our response to value "both carries us to self-transcendence and selects an object for the sake of whom or of which we transcend ourselves" (65).
Braman states that the "the question of the good" and what it means to live an authentic life is associated with the "human power to evaluate one's desires." Charles Taylor thinks that our "affective life" reveals to us "a sense of what is important to us qua subject, or to put it slightly differently, of what we value, or what matters to us, in the life of the subject." Feelings manifest to us our moral situation. It shows what is significant in our situation. We try to understand what is causing our feelings. Braman writes, "It is our feelings, then, such as shame, remorse, pride, or joy that reveal to us what we value most. Lonergan, as Taylor, understands feelings as intentional responses to values" (65). It through our feelings that our values are manifested. It is through our feelings that we are connected to objects. Lonergan writes, "Because of our feelings, our desires and our fears, our hope or despair, our joys and sorrow, our enthusiasm and indignation, our esteem and contempt, our trust and distrust, our love and hatred, our tenderness and wrath, our admiration, veneration, reverence, our dread, horror, terror, we are oriented massively and dynamically in a world mediated by meaning" (65).
Lonergan divides our feelings into two categories. First, there are the objects that we find "pleasant or unpleasant, agreeable or not agreeable." Second, "there are objects of value." The objects of value Lonergan calls the "ontic value of persons, and the qualitative values that one finds in beauty, truth, and the life of virtue" (65). Lonergan divides values hierarchically: health, to social values, such as "family, custom, society, education, state, law, economy, technology, church." Next, are cultural values, such as art, religion, philosophy, literature, science, theology, etc. The final level is personal values. For Lonergan, this is the self-transcendence of the person. Braman states, "Each time the person decides for what is truly worthwhile, what is truly good versus what is apparently good, she continues to constitute herself as morally converted and hence self-transcendent" (66). Lonergan thinks of the person as originating values in his choosing: "she is an authentic person achieving self-transcendence through her good choices" (66).
The morally converted person is both an originator of value, and a person who makes "judgments of value." These judgments may be objective or subjective. The objective judgments of value are made by a self-transcendent moral person. "Merely subjective value judgments are only self-regarding." What makes the difference is the person morally converted or not. Lonergan asserts, "judgments of fact purport to state what is or is not so; judgments of value state or purport to state what is is not truly good or really better." Judgments of value is based on reflective understanding which manifests the "course of action" to be taken. The judgment of value is just the first step to moral self-transcendence. "Complete moral self-transcendence terminates in decision and the acts that follow upon those decisions" (66).
It is the intelligent subject that fulfills the condition for a "judgment of fact." It is the existential subject that fulfills the condition for "judgments of value." The existential subject knows that in "each and every situation what is at stake is not only one's identity, but one's destiny as well" (66). It is through judgement of value and actions that implement them that one not only "commits oneself to a particular course of action, but constitutes oneself as a moral being--a being capable of truly loving, and shaping not only one's destiny but the broader world in which one lives" (66-67). It is through our choices that values are "actualized." These choices actualizes two things: "a reality independent of oneself realized through one's course of action, and the being one becomes through such a course of action" (67). It is through one's action that one makes oneself "either an authentic person performing consistent acts of self-transcendence, or an inauthentic person who is mired in the abyss of his or her own egoism."
We stated in the last post that an existential gap exists between what we know and what we actually do: "To be truly reasonable demands consistency between what we know and what we do; not only must there be the willingness to accept the truth of our intellectual conversion, we must also be willing to live up to that truth" (63). There is an urgent need to reduce this gap for the purpose of authentic living. There are three ways we avoid the need for moral conversion: First, "we seek to avoid self-knowledge," which means we refuse to entertain questions about how we live. Second, we rationalize our behavior. Third, we "fall into despair." Braman states, "In moral conversion, we seek to consistently opt for the truly worthwhile, the truly good, and the truly valuable rather than what merely appears to be merely good, valuable, or worthwhile" (64). Lonergan says in moral self-transcendence "we move beyond the merely self-regarding norms and make ourselves as moral beings" (64). In moral conversion we seek to avoid the three ways to avoid moral living. Moral conversion concerns what we are choosing in our choices. It involves discussing "transcendental value."
Transcendental value is something we understand because it is intelligible. Lonergan has different steps in knowing and choosing. Choosing values are at the level of deliberation. As mention earlier, different levels are experience, understanding, judging, and now we add choosing. Braman states, "Just as the intelligible is what is intended in questions for intelligence, and truth and being in questions for reflection, it is value that is intended in questions of deliberation. 'It is by appealing to value or values that we satisfy some appetites and do not satisfy others, that we approve some systems for achieving the good of order and dissaprove of others, that we praise or blame human persons as good or evil and their actions as right and wrong' (64-65)." It is by questions of deliberation that we decide on the path we should follow and "goodness of a particular object." Lonergan thinks our response to value "both carries us to self-transcendence and selects an object for the sake of whom or of which we transcend ourselves" (65).
Braman states that the "the question of the good" and what it means to live an authentic life is associated with the "human power to evaluate one's desires." Charles Taylor thinks that our "affective life" reveals to us "a sense of what is important to us qua subject, or to put it slightly differently, of what we value, or what matters to us, in the life of the subject." Feelings manifest to us our moral situation. It shows what is significant in our situation. We try to understand what is causing our feelings. Braman writes, "It is our feelings, then, such as shame, remorse, pride, or joy that reveal to us what we value most. Lonergan, as Taylor, understands feelings as intentional responses to values" (65). It through our feelings that our values are manifested. It is through our feelings that we are connected to objects. Lonergan writes, "Because of our feelings, our desires and our fears, our hope or despair, our joys and sorrow, our enthusiasm and indignation, our esteem and contempt, our trust and distrust, our love and hatred, our tenderness and wrath, our admiration, veneration, reverence, our dread, horror, terror, we are oriented massively and dynamically in a world mediated by meaning" (65).
Lonergan divides our feelings into two categories. First, there are the objects that we find "pleasant or unpleasant, agreeable or not agreeable." Second, "there are objects of value." The objects of value Lonergan calls the "ontic value of persons, and the qualitative values that one finds in beauty, truth, and the life of virtue" (65). Lonergan divides values hierarchically: health, to social values, such as "family, custom, society, education, state, law, economy, technology, church." Next, are cultural values, such as art, religion, philosophy, literature, science, theology, etc. The final level is personal values. For Lonergan, this is the self-transcendence of the person. Braman states, "Each time the person decides for what is truly worthwhile, what is truly good versus what is apparently good, she continues to constitute herself as morally converted and hence self-transcendent" (66). Lonergan thinks of the person as originating values in his choosing: "she is an authentic person achieving self-transcendence through her good choices" (66).
The morally converted person is both an originator of value, and a person who makes "judgments of value." These judgments may be objective or subjective. The objective judgments of value are made by a self-transcendent moral person. "Merely subjective value judgments are only self-regarding." What makes the difference is the person morally converted or not. Lonergan asserts, "judgments of fact purport to state what is or is not so; judgments of value state or purport to state what is is not truly good or really better." Judgments of value is based on reflective understanding which manifests the "course of action" to be taken. The judgment of value is just the first step to moral self-transcendence. "Complete moral self-transcendence terminates in decision and the acts that follow upon those decisions" (66).
It is the intelligent subject that fulfills the condition for a "judgment of fact." It is the existential subject that fulfills the condition for "judgments of value." The existential subject knows that in "each and every situation what is at stake is not only one's identity, but one's destiny as well" (66). It is through judgement of value and actions that implement them that one not only "commits oneself to a particular course of action, but constitutes oneself as a moral being--a being capable of truly loving, and shaping not only one's destiny but the broader world in which one lives" (66-67). It is through our choices that values are "actualized." These choices actualizes two things: "a reality independent of oneself realized through one's course of action, and the being one becomes through such a course of action" (67). It is through one's action that one makes oneself "either an authentic person performing consistent acts of self-transcendence, or an inauthentic person who is mired in the abyss of his or her own egoism."
Tuesday, March 12, 2019
Bernard Lonergan on Self-Transcendence Part 2
Braman, Brian J. "Bernard Lonergan On Being Yourself" in Meaning and Authenticity: Bernard Lonergan and Charles Taylor on the Drama of Human Existence. University of Toronto Press, 2008.
Lonergan states that authenticity and self-transcendence are connected, and "authentic self-transcendence" is through conversion. Lonergan sees conversion as three-fold: intellectual, moral, and religious. Lonergan sees this as one movement to achieve self-transcendence even though they are "distinct." To better understand we will look at them separately. The first one we will discuss is intellectual conversion. One could see conversion as similar to Plato's tale of turning towards the light.
Lonergan thinks of intellectual conversion as "affirming one's self as a knower" (60). Braman states: "In this moment of what Lonergan calls self-affirmation, what is grasped is the dynamic finality of the conscious subject. This dynamic finality is revealed through a primordial eros that Lonergan calls the pure unrestricted desire to know" (60). Lonergan thinks of this desire as different from other kinds of desires. "The desire to know differs from other desires not just because it has a different object but because it is a radically different kind of desire: under the sway of it reason does not seek to possess, master, or control its object" (60). Lonergan does not think of knowing as looking. Knowing includes experience, understanding, and judging. We experience to understand, we attempt to understand to judge, we judge in order to know "particular beings," we want to know particular beings to know "being in general." Braman asserts, "Intellectual conversion is the discovery of the erotic and transcendent nature of human knowing" (60). Lonergan believes our questions lead to the transcendentals, the intelligible, the true, and the good.
Braman states that in Insight (a major work by Lonergan), Lonergan presents a "phenomenological and hermeneutical account of human intentionality, such that 'consciousness itself is not a perception, but an experience, a usually tacit presence to ourselves that is concomitant to our intentional and imaginally and linguistically mediated presence to the world'." Human knowing is not just experience, or understanding, or judgement, but all three together. Human knowing is a "dynamic structure" that is "self-assembling, self-constituting. It puts itself together, one part summoning forth the next, till the whole is reached" (61). What Lonergan means is that you have experience or data and you seek to understand this data by asking questions until you get a insight or insights; once you understand what it is it leads to asking questions of is it true which leads to judging the accuracy of it; then more questions leads to evaluating is it worthwhile to know or value. Is this knowledge valuable. It is a dynamic structure that through questions is moved from stage to stage. Braman states, "To have experienced, understood, and affirmed this dynamic unity is to be self-affirmed as a knower; self-affirmation posits the fact that the 'self as affirmed is characterized by such occurrences as sensing, perceiving, imagining, inquiring, understanding, formulating, reflecting, grasping, the unconditioned and affirming' (61)." The unconditioned is when all the requirements for knowing are fulfilled. Intellectual conversion is a result of accepting the results of our self-affirmation as a knower.
The essential part of intellectual conversion is that it [pulls] "one out of the attitude that the world of sense is the criterion of reality" (61). It also goes against the idea that knowing is looking. This false view of human knowing "overlooks the important distinction between a world mediated by meaning and the world of immediacy" (61). To Charles Taylor, a world mediated by meaning means that "we are in a sense surrounded by meaning; in the words we exchange, in all the signs we deploy, in the art, music, literature we create and enjoy, in the very shape of the man-made environment most of us live in" (61). Lonergan defines the world as mediated by meaning: "Again words express not merely what we have found out for ourselves but also all we care to learn from the memories of other men, from the common sense of the community, from the pages of literature, from the labors of scholars, from the investigations of scientists, from the experience of saints, from the meditations of philosophers and the theologians" (61). In contrast, the world of immediacy is "the sum of what is heard, touched, tasted, smelt, and felt" (61). It is the world of the five senses. It sees knowing as looking. It is the world of children before they acquire language. It is the type of knowing we share with the animal kingdom. It is this "ocular vision" that creates the dualism of the "subject": "it is the subject in here trying to get out to the subjects out there" (61).
Intellectual conversion is the affirmation of the knower. We understand that the dynamic structure is to a "universe of being manifested in the unfolding of a single thrust, the eros of the human spirit" (62). Be experience in order to understand, we understand in order to judge, we judge in order to know particular beings in order to understand being in general. Being is not known through looking. "Being is known through the discursive raising and answering rational questions, and intellectual conversion is the explicit account of intentional self-transcendence" (62). The intellectually converted understands that knowing is oriented to knowing being, "to get beyond the subject, to reach what would be even if this subject happened not to exist" (62). We want to know the "whole of being."
We have seen that the object of our questioning is to know the whole of being. We want to know what is true and real. Though, the "intention of being is unrestricted, the realization of this intention is incremental" (63). We can only ask questions only "one at a time." We come to know things only gradually. Intellectual conversion comes with humility. We must face the fact of our "contingency as knowers" and to be honest with our limitations and allow the the pure unrestricted desire to know "unfold through the dynamic of the question in order to allow being to manifest itself, that is, to respond to something not in us" (63).
In regards to living the authentic life, it is not enough to know the real and the true. Authentic living is more than just knowing. "To be truly reasonable demands consistency between what we know and what we do; not only must there be a willingness to accept the truth of our intellectual conversion, we must also be willing to live up to that truth" (63). We must look at the relationship "between our knowing and doing." It calls for an integration of doing with our knowing. Be doers of the word and not hearers only. (James 1: 22 I think) Braman asserts, "This higher integration demands that what we know to be true, real, good, and valuable be translated into the choices we make and the actions we perform": 'knowing a world mediated by meaning is only a prelude to man's dealing with nature, to his interpersonal living and working with others, to his existential becoming what he is to make of himself by his own choices and deeds' (63-64). We will discuss moral conversion in part 3.
Lonergan states that authenticity and self-transcendence are connected, and "authentic self-transcendence" is through conversion. Lonergan sees conversion as three-fold: intellectual, moral, and religious. Lonergan sees this as one movement to achieve self-transcendence even though they are "distinct." To better understand we will look at them separately. The first one we will discuss is intellectual conversion. One could see conversion as similar to Plato's tale of turning towards the light.
Lonergan thinks of intellectual conversion as "affirming one's self as a knower" (60). Braman states: "In this moment of what Lonergan calls self-affirmation, what is grasped is the dynamic finality of the conscious subject. This dynamic finality is revealed through a primordial eros that Lonergan calls the pure unrestricted desire to know" (60). Lonergan thinks of this desire as different from other kinds of desires. "The desire to know differs from other desires not just because it has a different object but because it is a radically different kind of desire: under the sway of it reason does not seek to possess, master, or control its object" (60). Lonergan does not think of knowing as looking. Knowing includes experience, understanding, and judging. We experience to understand, we attempt to understand to judge, we judge in order to know "particular beings," we want to know particular beings to know "being in general." Braman asserts, "Intellectual conversion is the discovery of the erotic and transcendent nature of human knowing" (60). Lonergan believes our questions lead to the transcendentals, the intelligible, the true, and the good.
Braman states that in Insight (a major work by Lonergan), Lonergan presents a "phenomenological and hermeneutical account of human intentionality, such that 'consciousness itself is not a perception, but an experience, a usually tacit presence to ourselves that is concomitant to our intentional and imaginally and linguistically mediated presence to the world'." Human knowing is not just experience, or understanding, or judgement, but all three together. Human knowing is a "dynamic structure" that is "self-assembling, self-constituting. It puts itself together, one part summoning forth the next, till the whole is reached" (61). What Lonergan means is that you have experience or data and you seek to understand this data by asking questions until you get a insight or insights; once you understand what it is it leads to asking questions of is it true which leads to judging the accuracy of it; then more questions leads to evaluating is it worthwhile to know or value. Is this knowledge valuable. It is a dynamic structure that through questions is moved from stage to stage. Braman states, "To have experienced, understood, and affirmed this dynamic unity is to be self-affirmed as a knower; self-affirmation posits the fact that the 'self as affirmed is characterized by such occurrences as sensing, perceiving, imagining, inquiring, understanding, formulating, reflecting, grasping, the unconditioned and affirming' (61)." The unconditioned is when all the requirements for knowing are fulfilled. Intellectual conversion is a result of accepting the results of our self-affirmation as a knower.
The essential part of intellectual conversion is that it [pulls] "one out of the attitude that the world of sense is the criterion of reality" (61). It also goes against the idea that knowing is looking. This false view of human knowing "overlooks the important distinction between a world mediated by meaning and the world of immediacy" (61). To Charles Taylor, a world mediated by meaning means that "we are in a sense surrounded by meaning; in the words we exchange, in all the signs we deploy, in the art, music, literature we create and enjoy, in the very shape of the man-made environment most of us live in" (61). Lonergan defines the world as mediated by meaning: "Again words express not merely what we have found out for ourselves but also all we care to learn from the memories of other men, from the common sense of the community, from the pages of literature, from the labors of scholars, from the investigations of scientists, from the experience of saints, from the meditations of philosophers and the theologians" (61). In contrast, the world of immediacy is "the sum of what is heard, touched, tasted, smelt, and felt" (61). It is the world of the five senses. It sees knowing as looking. It is the world of children before they acquire language. It is the type of knowing we share with the animal kingdom. It is this "ocular vision" that creates the dualism of the "subject": "it is the subject in here trying to get out to the subjects out there" (61).
Intellectual conversion is the affirmation of the knower. We understand that the dynamic structure is to a "universe of being manifested in the unfolding of a single thrust, the eros of the human spirit" (62). Be experience in order to understand, we understand in order to judge, we judge in order to know particular beings in order to understand being in general. Being is not known through looking. "Being is known through the discursive raising and answering rational questions, and intellectual conversion is the explicit account of intentional self-transcendence" (62). The intellectually converted understands that knowing is oriented to knowing being, "to get beyond the subject, to reach what would be even if this subject happened not to exist" (62). We want to know the "whole of being."
We have seen that the object of our questioning is to know the whole of being. We want to know what is true and real. Though, the "intention of being is unrestricted, the realization of this intention is incremental" (63). We can only ask questions only "one at a time." We come to know things only gradually. Intellectual conversion comes with humility. We must face the fact of our "contingency as knowers" and to be honest with our limitations and allow the the pure unrestricted desire to know "unfold through the dynamic of the question in order to allow being to manifest itself, that is, to respond to something not in us" (63).
In regards to living the authentic life, it is not enough to know the real and the true. Authentic living is more than just knowing. "To be truly reasonable demands consistency between what we know and what we do; not only must there be a willingness to accept the truth of our intellectual conversion, we must also be willing to live up to that truth" (63). We must look at the relationship "between our knowing and doing." It calls for an integration of doing with our knowing. Be doers of the word and not hearers only. (James 1: 22 I think) Braman asserts, "This higher integration demands that what we know to be true, real, good, and valuable be translated into the choices we make and the actions we perform": 'knowing a world mediated by meaning is only a prelude to man's dealing with nature, to his interpersonal living and working with others, to his existential becoming what he is to make of himself by his own choices and deeds' (63-64). We will discuss moral conversion in part 3.
Monday, March 11, 2019
Bernard Lonergan on Self-Transcendence Part 1
Braman, Brian J. "Bernard Lonergan On Being Yourself" in Meaning and Authenticity: Bernard Lonergan and Charles Taylor on the Drama of Human Existence. University of Toronto Press, 2008.
Brian Braman in this chapter describes the connections of authenticity, self-transcendence and conversion. Lonergan emphasized the subject and historicity. Fred Lawrence states that Lonergan accepted modern history and modern science and applied it to philosophy and theology. He also appropriated the ideas of Heidegger and Gadamer.
Lonergan thinks "authentic existence is self-transcendence, and self-transcendence involves intellectual, moral, and religious conversion" (48). Lonergan defines these terms in specific ways. For Lonergan, authenticity "is a life lived in the context of a threefold conversion" (48). This achievement of authenticity is a life-long task. The way Lonergan uses the term, "authenticity," is different from how most people use the term. He is not speaking of a self-focused pursuit. It is similar to Aristotle's view of happiness. It entails flourishing and a relationship to God. It is a life that is "intelligent, moral, and religious" (48). Lonergan's discussion of authenticity will be on how the subject actually exists in the world. He emphasizes the concrete.
Lonergan compares human existence to a drama. It "embraces all aspects of human living" and it "unfolds in time" (49). He thinks that the "being of the person and the drama that she lives is always contextualized: one's being-in-the-world" (49). His idea of being in the world is being "one's self in all of its complexities and in all of its relationships" (49). Like Heidegger, it means being "embedded in time and eventually subject to death" (49). Since our lives are contingent, we need to be concerned with what we want do do with our lives. There is a tension in living our lives. On one hand, there is a yearning for transcendence and fullness; "but on the other there is the encounter with limitation and frailty that ultimately ends in death" (49). So, there are limits on what we can do. In addition, our self is shaped by what has preceded us. Lonergan speaks of an "already constituted horizon of meanings and values that the drama of human living unfolds" (50). Lonergan thinks to move beyond our horizon requires conversion. He has his own terminology for conversion. Lonergan writes, "all human knowing [valuing and loving] occurs within a context, a horizon, a total view, an all encompassing framework ... and apart from that context it loses sense, significance, and meaning" (50).
Life as a dramatic experience is more than "just concern for the practical aspects of organized living; it is structured around the insight that we are ultimately responsible for the types of people we are hope to be" (51). Lonergan thinks that we live in a world "mediated by meaning and motivated by value" (51). He thinks there are two types of experiences: immediate and mediated. Immediate experience is what we have directly from our senses. Mediated experience is experiences that are mediated from others.
Lonergan speaks of our experiencing an "existential gap" which we seek to overcome through conversion. Because we are limited by our horizon and embedded in time, "there is a real resistance to moving beyond the familiar and accessible" (53). It is our horizon that allows us to "navigate" our life in the world. The problem comes in when "who and what we are and how we are situated in the larger drama of our lives are defined within this horizon," and then to find "ourselves in conflict with our world view, with what we value most, and our sense of self-understanding, produces a sense of dread and a real confrontation with death" (53). We find that our own world conflicts with the larger world. We reason that our horizon that gives us the ability to maneuver in the world is not working. It gives "rise to the possibility of discovering the means of moving beyond our limited position" (53). We are confronted with the challenge of expanding from our "limited horizon, which raises the question of conversion" (53). Lonergan believes it is through conversion that we broaden our horizon. It is conversion that helps us to become an "authentic person." Bramman asserts, "Conversion is a movement into a new horizon; it is a radical change in our orientation to the world, and this new orientation can reveal ever-greater depth, breadth, and wealth to the human drama" (53-54). It is through conversion that we can decide if we are "indeed living truthfully, morally, and religiously" (54).
This conversion can be thought of more broadly, then, just religious conversion. Lonergan is not necessarily talking about a tent revival conversion. Lonergan's audience is not just Christians and other religious believers. It is conversion in a general sense: "We know that conversion in the general sense is a movement to a new horizon; it not only involves a change in how we successfully live our lives, but also expands what we consider most valuable and worthwhile. This change is how we concretely live out our life is ultimately a concern for the truth in which we live our lives; it is the choices we make in self-constitution" (54). Lonergan thinks that conversion "subsumes prior horizons without abolishing them" (54). He believes that it is only through conversion that we can address the question of living authentic lives.
What does it mean to "be one's self" according to Lonergan? Braman states, "The self that Lonergan speaks of is a concrete reality that has been formed in and through the communities of which it has been a part, as well as its own decisions in terms of self-formation. For Lonergan, this self is the irredeemable element in the person from which spring the decisions and choices of the authentic person" (54-55). There are limits to what a person can become because of being embedded in human history. For Heidegger, Taylor, and Lonergan, "one becomes oneself" (55). It has to do with development. It is when one inquires, attempts to understand, and "then makes judgments concerning what is true and real," that one is an intelligent and reasonable person. It is when people began "to ask questions about what is truly worthwhile, what is actually the right way to live that one is existentially a person" (55). It is up to the person to decide what "kind of person" he will be.
Braman decribes how authenticity is "an activity." Lonergan believes there is a deep longing for fullness and "completeness" in every person. This desire for fullness can "open the person up to the question, what kind of person do I wish to be"? (56) Through our decisions we make ourselves "someone in accordance with a particular ideal or someone who dramatically diverges from this ideal" (56). We are making ourselves through our choices. We also "reveal ourselves to others" through our choices. Lonergan writes, "Freely the subject makes himself what he is; never in this life is the making finished; it is always in process, always it is a precarious achievement that can slip and fall and shatter. Concern with subjectivity ... is concern with the intimate reality of man. It is concern not with the universal truths that hold whether a man is asleep or awake, not with the interplay of natural factors and determinants, but with the perpetual novelty of self-constitution, of free choices making the chooser what he is" (56). Lonergan does not think of authenticity as an "ideal of content," but it is an "ongoing activity of conversion, the fullness of self-transcendence" (58).
Brian Braman in this chapter describes the connections of authenticity, self-transcendence and conversion. Lonergan emphasized the subject and historicity. Fred Lawrence states that Lonergan accepted modern history and modern science and applied it to philosophy and theology. He also appropriated the ideas of Heidegger and Gadamer.
Lonergan thinks "authentic existence is self-transcendence, and self-transcendence involves intellectual, moral, and religious conversion" (48). Lonergan defines these terms in specific ways. For Lonergan, authenticity "is a life lived in the context of a threefold conversion" (48). This achievement of authenticity is a life-long task. The way Lonergan uses the term, "authenticity," is different from how most people use the term. He is not speaking of a self-focused pursuit. It is similar to Aristotle's view of happiness. It entails flourishing and a relationship to God. It is a life that is "intelligent, moral, and religious" (48). Lonergan's discussion of authenticity will be on how the subject actually exists in the world. He emphasizes the concrete.
Lonergan compares human existence to a drama. It "embraces all aspects of human living" and it "unfolds in time" (49). He thinks that the "being of the person and the drama that she lives is always contextualized: one's being-in-the-world" (49). His idea of being in the world is being "one's self in all of its complexities and in all of its relationships" (49). Like Heidegger, it means being "embedded in time and eventually subject to death" (49). Since our lives are contingent, we need to be concerned with what we want do do with our lives. There is a tension in living our lives. On one hand, there is a yearning for transcendence and fullness; "but on the other there is the encounter with limitation and frailty that ultimately ends in death" (49). So, there are limits on what we can do. In addition, our self is shaped by what has preceded us. Lonergan speaks of an "already constituted horizon of meanings and values that the drama of human living unfolds" (50). Lonergan thinks to move beyond our horizon requires conversion. He has his own terminology for conversion. Lonergan writes, "all human knowing [valuing and loving] occurs within a context, a horizon, a total view, an all encompassing framework ... and apart from that context it loses sense, significance, and meaning" (50).
Life as a dramatic experience is more than "just concern for the practical aspects of organized living; it is structured around the insight that we are ultimately responsible for the types of people we are hope to be" (51). Lonergan thinks that we live in a world "mediated by meaning and motivated by value" (51). He thinks there are two types of experiences: immediate and mediated. Immediate experience is what we have directly from our senses. Mediated experience is experiences that are mediated from others.
Lonergan speaks of our experiencing an "existential gap" which we seek to overcome through conversion. Because we are limited by our horizon and embedded in time, "there is a real resistance to moving beyond the familiar and accessible" (53). It is our horizon that allows us to "navigate" our life in the world. The problem comes in when "who and what we are and how we are situated in the larger drama of our lives are defined within this horizon," and then to find "ourselves in conflict with our world view, with what we value most, and our sense of self-understanding, produces a sense of dread and a real confrontation with death" (53). We find that our own world conflicts with the larger world. We reason that our horizon that gives us the ability to maneuver in the world is not working. It gives "rise to the possibility of discovering the means of moving beyond our limited position" (53). We are confronted with the challenge of expanding from our "limited horizon, which raises the question of conversion" (53). Lonergan believes it is through conversion that we broaden our horizon. It is conversion that helps us to become an "authentic person." Bramman asserts, "Conversion is a movement into a new horizon; it is a radical change in our orientation to the world, and this new orientation can reveal ever-greater depth, breadth, and wealth to the human drama" (53-54). It is through conversion that we can decide if we are "indeed living truthfully, morally, and religiously" (54).
This conversion can be thought of more broadly, then, just religious conversion. Lonergan is not necessarily talking about a tent revival conversion. Lonergan's audience is not just Christians and other religious believers. It is conversion in a general sense: "We know that conversion in the general sense is a movement to a new horizon; it not only involves a change in how we successfully live our lives, but also expands what we consider most valuable and worthwhile. This change is how we concretely live out our life is ultimately a concern for the truth in which we live our lives; it is the choices we make in self-constitution" (54). Lonergan thinks that conversion "subsumes prior horizons without abolishing them" (54). He believes that it is only through conversion that we can address the question of living authentic lives.
What does it mean to "be one's self" according to Lonergan? Braman states, "The self that Lonergan speaks of is a concrete reality that has been formed in and through the communities of which it has been a part, as well as its own decisions in terms of self-formation. For Lonergan, this self is the irredeemable element in the person from which spring the decisions and choices of the authentic person" (54-55). There are limits to what a person can become because of being embedded in human history. For Heidegger, Taylor, and Lonergan, "one becomes oneself" (55). It has to do with development. It is when one inquires, attempts to understand, and "then makes judgments concerning what is true and real," that one is an intelligent and reasonable person. It is when people began "to ask questions about what is truly worthwhile, what is actually the right way to live that one is existentially a person" (55). It is up to the person to decide what "kind of person" he will be.
Braman decribes how authenticity is "an activity." Lonergan believes there is a deep longing for fullness and "completeness" in every person. This desire for fullness can "open the person up to the question, what kind of person do I wish to be"? (56) Through our decisions we make ourselves "someone in accordance with a particular ideal or someone who dramatically diverges from this ideal" (56). We are making ourselves through our choices. We also "reveal ourselves to others" through our choices. Lonergan writes, "Freely the subject makes himself what he is; never in this life is the making finished; it is always in process, always it is a precarious achievement that can slip and fall and shatter. Concern with subjectivity ... is concern with the intimate reality of man. It is concern not with the universal truths that hold whether a man is asleep or awake, not with the interplay of natural factors and determinants, but with the perpetual novelty of self-constitution, of free choices making the chooser what he is" (56). Lonergan does not think of authenticity as an "ideal of content," but it is an "ongoing activity of conversion, the fullness of self-transcendence" (58).
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