Fred Lawrence on "Lonergan on Authenticity"

Frederick Lawrence	7 Jun 2020, 02:22 (1 day ago)
to me

Dear Ivo,

I just finished reading your paper, "Lonergan on Authnticity." I must say, it is superb in every respect, especially the comparison and contrast between 'genuineness' and 'authenticity,' and then your way of showing how the latter sublates the former.

I also appreciated very much your careful tracing of the step-by-step evolution of his thought on authenticity through the different texts cited, proving once again that "concepts have dates.." 

Then the way you used the elements underlying authenticity toclarify the relationship between philosophy and theology.

Penultimately, as regards functional specialization, with respect to the varying role of conversion in the first phase while hearing the Word may be done in the context of faith, it is also completely valid to consider it as data to be supplied by the different modes of research, and then interpreted, integrated on the level of history, and discussed dialectically (rather than apologetically or eristically), and raised not simply by way of moving from the descriptive to the explanatory plane but through horizon-analysis to the criteria related variously to the intellectual, moral and religious conversions, and on into the direct discourse of foundations, doctrines, systematics, and communications.. I loved the underscoring of dialectic and foundations as the core of theology. 

Finally: initially, the comparison between unauthentic and authentic objectivities via the world of immediacy and the world mediated by meaning, and concluding with the reference to 'spiritual exercises' capped off by that lovely quotation.

Perhaps, the part concerning the prelude to what you had to say regarding theology ought to be an appendix to the Accompaniment document. but I suppose it is too late for that.

Providentially/ coincidentally, this morning we received from Frank Braio, part  of the closest of his associates as I suppose you are, too, the news that Phil McShane is struggling with the consequences of stage 4 cancer. It made me feel that I was honoring what he stands for while reading your paper.

As you must have already thought, Pentacostal fire has taken on a whole new meaning in the U.S. during this past week.

In Him, 

Fred & Sue

Human beings and authenticity

I am still struggling to get my paper for Boston in shape. Yesterday I began a completely fresh draft, a fresh approach, a genetic or developmental approach to the notion of person, subject and consciousness.

This morning I was dipping into The Triune God: Systematics (earlier De Deo Trino II, now CWL 12), and came across some wonderful passages, e.g. the sustained comparison of temporal and eternal subjects. Lonergan speaks of the two phases of a temporal subject, goes on to note that the transition to the second phase is under the influence of other subjects, then points out that there are three ways in which this transition can be made: by understanding, by means of a true word (revelation!), and by love. Then he lists obstacles to such achievement of authenticity (he is not quite using this word here, he uses the word 'genuine' as in Insight). I have not read all this carefully as yet, but I am sure there is consideration of the role of friendship, both its positive role and its possibly negative role as an obstacle to authenticity.

Then Lonergan goes on to marvellously construct an analogous conception of the eternal subjects....