Lonergan Reader: Chapter 8--Self-Affirmation of the Knower Part 2

Self-Affirmation

Lonergan says the reader must affirm for himself if he is a knower. "Am I a knower? Each has to answer the question of himself. But anyone who asks it is rationally conscious. For the question is a question for reflection, a question to be met with a yes or a no" (188). Who is the I? Lonergan thinks we know what I means without "formulation." Lonergan adds, "If I has some rudimentary meaning from consciousness, then consciousness supplies the fulfillment of one element in the conditions for affirming that I am a knower. Does consciousness supply the fulfillment for the other conditions? Do I see, or am I blind? Do I hear, or am I deaf? Do I try to understand, or is the distinction between intelligence and stupidity no more applicable to me than a stone? Have I any experience of insight ...? Do I conceive, think, consider, suppose, define, formulate, or is my talking like the talking of a parrot? I reflect, for I ask whether I am a knower? Do I grasp the unconditioned, if not in other instances, then in this one? If I grasped the unconditioned, would I not be under the rational compulsion of affirming that I am a knower, and so either affirm it or else find some loophole, some weakness, some incoherence, in this account of the genesis of self-affirmation?" (189). Each person has to ask these questions for himself. Each person has to answer these questions for himself. Lonergan thinks that the "fact of the asking and the possibility of the answering are themselves the sufficient reason for the affirmative answer" (189). If the person answers that they are a knower, the answer is affirmative. If the person says he is not a knower, how does he know that if he is not a knower. So, once again the answer is affirmative.