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).