Ligita Ryliskyta, Cur Deus Cruciatus

Fred Lawrence - Coelho, 10.04.2020:

In accord with the season, on Wednesday afternoon, Ligita Ryliskyta, a Lithuanian medical Doctor, defended Cur Deus Cruciatus on the Law of the Cross in Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, and Lonergan--the most extraordinary dissertation I have ever been associated with! She is also a member of the Sisters of the Eucharist in Jesus, a community founded by a Lithuanian Jesuit during the Communist take-over of that country. Ligita said that the community was very courageously involved in the underground resistance at that time. Her father's family--as "enemies of the regime"--were put in a vegetable cart and driven 4,000 miles to Siberia. When they left, her father was 5 years old, and when the family survivors finally returned, he was 16.

Coelho - Lawrence, 10.04.2020:

this Lithuanian doctorate: is it really the best you have seen? or just extraordinary in some special sense? I am curious. last year I visited Lithuania, it was a glorious autumn week, I can't tell you how beautiful the country was. and then finding the old Indo-European gods there... the ones mentioned in the Vedas... 

Lawrence - Coelho, 10.04.2020:

Yes, it was by far the best ... and I've been involved in quite a few splendid ones. Her research on Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas, and the headings under which she interpreted and documented their specific contributions to the genesis of the comprehensive intelligibility that Lonergan called the Law of the Cross were just amazing. Then, after presenting her understanding of Lonergan's explanatory elucidation of his theses on redemption in DVI and the now published notes on the Redemption, which are much more expansive than the theses, she synthesized the way they stand in relation to Lonergan's tripartite philosophy of history, as well as its implications spelled out in light of emergent probability in Insight, Ch. 15 on genetic method. On top of all that, she surveyed every stream of liberation and political theology, which she took seriously, and while never selling short their various contributions, brought out how the explanatory account made possible by Lonergan could aid in strengthening each and every one of their more descriptive approaches--something she would be able to do with serene wisdom, if she felt called to do so.

Slavoj Zizek and John Milbank

·         Zizek S. - Milbank J., La mostruosità di Cristo. Paradosso o dialettica?, Transeuropa, Massa 2010 (Originale: Zizek S. - Milbank J., The Monstruosity of Christ, The Mit Press, London 2009)

·         Zizek S. - Milbank J., San Paolo reloaded. Sul futuro del cristianesimo, Transeuropa, Massa 2012

Byung-Chul Han and Lonergan on correlation

By chance, Rossano Sala. The visit to his mezzanine office. The gift of his book, L’umano possible (his PhD thesis), and Byung-Chul Han’s L’espulsione dell’Altro (the author is Korean, writes in German).

Han 10 attacks correlation: correlation means: If A, then often B. But one does not know why it is like that. Correlation is the most primitive form of knowledge, which is not even able to identify the causal relation, the relation between cause and effect. It is like that. The question about the why of things becomes superfluous. Nothing is therefore, understood. But to know is to understand. In this way the big data make thought superfluous. We entrust ourselves without hesitation to It’s like that.

The paragraph begins this way: even the greatest accumulation of information (the big data) yields a very reduced knowledge. On the basis of big data, correlations are identified. [Algorithms?]

But put this in relation to Lonergan’s take on correlation. L does not despise correlation. And he does not identify “cause” with “efficient cause.” He finds place – and here he is so unlike Heidegger, and perhaps now Han – for the knowledge that characterizes empirical science. He finds place for correlation. Empirical science is based on correlations. Pure empirical science, as opposed to technology, is not directly interested in efficient causes, it concentrates on formal cause – which is the form of the thing, the object of understanding…. Now that is a very different approach.

See Insight, CWL3:101: immanent intelligibility, formal cause. P. 62: correlations, measurements, things related to one another. 

Lonergan's great distinction, which I have not found in others, is between experiential and explanatory conjugates. Experiential conjugates: things as related to us: colours as seen, sounds as heard, etc. 

Explanatory conjugates: things as related among themselves. Here the key step is measurement. the difference between heat as felt and temperature, which is a correlation of correlations. 

When people like Han ignore this, they are indulging themselves on the level of description, however sophisticated. 

Then of course there is a difference between Aristotelian science and modern science.

Han’s notes figure Heidegger and Scheler. Baudrillard, Kant, Nietzsche. Hegel, Adorno, Blanchot. Lévinas, Sartre, Zizek, Foucault. Kafka, Orwell.

Gift

Philosophy and theology of gift: from Rossano Sala:

Zygmunt Baumann
Slavoj Zizek
Byung-Chul Han, L'espulsione dell'Altro (Milano: Nottetempo, 2017)
Sala, L'umano possibile. Esplorazioni in uscita della modernità (Roma: LAS, 2012). Publication of PhD thesis in Milan. Preface by Sequeri.

Sala speaks of the anthropology of gift that is necessary for a theology of vocation.

The problem is the Cartesian individualism underlying Western culture.

The rediscovery of the person. Person in the Trinity is total gift, relation as substance.