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).
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