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."
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