The dialectical theorem in "Insight"

 Needed: a correction of my understanding of the dialectical theorem in Insight.

Dialectic is not the concrete unfolding of linked but opposed principles of change, but rather it is APPLICABLE to such.

Dialectic distinguishes between the purely intellectual element and the interference of human sensibility and nerves (see INCW 269). This distinction is applied to the concrete unfolding...

The correction arose in the process of actually trying to understand how the theorem yields dramatic, individual, group and general bias. 

Dramatic bias: the linked but opposed principles of change are consciousness and its neural basis. Dialectic identifies the intellectual element and distinguishes it from human sensibility and nerves. it asks what happens when an insight is unwanted: how the pertinent images are suppressed, not consciously but preconsciously...

and so on.

Doing theology and learning theology

I've been trying to reformulate the following from 24 FSDB 04.11.2023 EN, Appendix 7: The program of studies: specific formation of the salesian priest:

A simple theoretical exposition of the tenets of Christian faith will not suffice. There must be a balance between two approaches in theological formation: knowledge leading to a relational experience of God in Christ and the need for propositional knowledge of Christ. In other words, theological education has to integrate faith as kerygma, koinonia, diakonia, martyria and leitourgia, keeping in mind that “the whole tradition of the Church cannot be reduced to the mechanical transmission of inert objects, since it is carried by a living subject and knows a development.”  

A serious hermeneutics of the tradition of the Church and “the current trends of contemporary culture” (VG 72.3) is called for. Among the issues of relevance are certainly the existential peripheries, poverty and migration, the digitalized world, new views about marriage, family and gender, the ecological crisis, the plurality of religions and the range of religious attitudes from extreme fundamentalism to the increasing number of those without religious affiliation or else are simply indifferent to all forms of religion.

The original problem arose from the attempt to translate "the need for propositional knowledge of Christ" into Italian. One does not easily say "conoscenza proposizionale" in Italian, says Silvio Roggia. Cloe Taddei-Ferretti suggested "conoscenza di Cristo attraverso proposizioni". 

Perhaps I just need to reformulate the two paragraphs.

I have been dipping into Lonergan, first to find how "propositional truth" has been translated into Italian, and then asking myself: how would Lonergan talk about the teaching / learning of theology? 

I've dipped into "Christ as Subject: A Reply" (CWL 4:153-184); "The Dehellenization of Dogma" (13:11-30); "Questionnaire on Philosophy: Response" 17:352-383); "The Response of the Jesuit as Priest and Apostle in the Modern World" (13:140ff). Also a bit into Method in Theology (CWL 14).

Reading "The Response of the Jesuit as Priest and Apostle in the Modern World" (CWL 13:140ff), I am struck by the structure of the text: (1) Authenticity, (2) The Spirit, (3) The Word, (4) Sending.

I had never noticed the two missions there, in sections 2 and 3: the Spirit and the Word.

And then the Church, in section 3. "The gift of the Spirit can be everywhere at once, but the challenge of the Word radiates to the ends of the earth only through human mediation." (CWL 13:148)

See "Questionnaire on Philosophy: Response" (CWL 17:358): In the Christian religion as lived but not yet thematized there may be distinguished three moments: (1) the ontic present of God's love flooding our hearts through the Holy Spirit he has given us; (2) the objective past in which God's revelation of his love to us through Christ Jesus has been mediated down the ages by the ongoing Christian community; (3) the eschatological consummation and, on the way, the command and the duty to preach the gospel to every class in every culture. 

Doing theology = mediating between a cultural matrix and the significance and role of a religion in that matrix. (CWL 14:3)

Teaching or learning theology: what is it? I guess it is moving from the Christian religion as lived, and as lived with a largely symbolic thematization (scripture, catechism, doctrine) to a properly theological thematization. "A Christian theology thematizes the Christian religion on the level of the times in which the theology is composed." (17:358)

That thematization, for an ordinary student of theology in the first cycle, would involve thematizing his own lived experience (the gift of God's love, the presence of the Holy Spirit in his life), in interaction with the objective past and present mediation by the Christian community of the revelation of God's love in Jesus. 

There is no "individual experience" hermetically sealed from the experience of others in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions, so lived experience includes one's own experience in interaction with that of others. Theology will help one to access one's own experience and enlarge "that of others" to include "the tradition" as well as "the current trends of contemporary culture." (see the Ratio text above)

Reading: Francis, "Ad theologiam provendam" (2023). (See the blog entry of 10.11.2023)

Formulation:

The study of theology in preparation for the Salesian priesthood cannot be a question of merely studying abstract formulae and schemes of the past with no effort to connect them to one's own experience of faith and to the places and times in which one is living. 

The study of theology involves appropriating the faith as lived in the past and in the present in order to deepen one's own faith, and to serve God's people, especially the young. Formation in mission involves also, therefore, theologizing in mission: the young to whom we are sent and our mission to them must enter into our study and our reflection: "For you I study", just as it enters into our prayer. Theology, apostolic experiences, prayer, all must flow together. 

A serious hermeneutics of Scripture, tradition and “the current trends of contemporary culture” (VG 72.3) is called for. Among the issues of relevance are certainly the existential peripheries, poverty and migration, the digitalized world, new views about marriage, family and gender, the ecological crisis, the plurality of religions and the range of religious attitudes from extreme fundamentalism to the increasing number of those without religious affiliation or else are simply indifferent to all forms of religion.

From Mark T. Miller, 11.11.2023:

Wow, I can't think of something that has all of those things.  I'm still looking though. Here's two good ones I've found so far in Method, 1973 red edition, p. 278:

It may be objected that nihil amatum nisi praecognitum. But while that is true of other human love, it need not be true of the love with which God floods our hearts through the Holy Spirit he has given us (Rom. 5, 5). That grace could be the finding that grounds our seeking God through natural reason and through positive religion. It could be the touchstone by which we judge whether it is really God that natural reason reaches⁵ or positive religion preaches. It could be the grace that God offers all men, that underpins what is good in the religions of mankind, that explains how those that never heard the gospel can be saved. It could be what enables the simple faithful to pray to their heavenly Father in secret even though their religious apprehen­sions are faulty. Finally, it is in such grace that can be found the theological justification of Catholic dialogue with all Christians, with non-Christians, and even with atheists who may love God in their hearts while not knowing him with their heads.

Here's a longer one from Method 326-27:

There are two ways in which the unity of the faith may be conceived. On classicist assumptions there is just one culture. That one culture is not attained by the simple faithful, the people, the natives, the barbarians. None the less, career is always open to talent. One enters upon such a career by diligent study of the ancient Latin and Greek authors. One pursues such a career by learning Scholastic philosophy and theology. One aims at high office by becoming proficient in canon law. One succeeds by winning the approbation and favor of the right personages. Within this set-up the unity of faith is a matter of everyone subscribing to the correct formulae.

Such classicism, however , was never more than the shabby shell of Catholicism. The real root and ground of unity is being in love with God—the fact that God’s love has flooded our inmost hearts through the Holy Spirit he has given us (Rom. 5, 5). The acceptance of this gift both constitutes religious conversion and leads to moral and even intellectual conversion.

Further, religious conversion, if it is Christian, is not just a state of mind and heart. Essential to it is an intersubjective, interpersonal component. Besides the gift of the Spirit within, there is the outward encounter with Christian witness. That witness testifies that of old in many ways God has spoken to us through the prophets but in this latest age through his Son (Heb. I, 1.2).

Thirdly, the function of church doctrines lies within the func­tion of Christian witness. For the witness is to the mysteries revealed by God and, for Catholics, infallibly declared by the church. The meaning of such declarations lies beyond the vicissitudes of human historical process. But the contexts, within which such meaning is grasped, and so the manner, in which such meaning is expressed, vary both with cultural differences and with the measure in which human consciousness is differentiated.

Fred Lawrence for the Ratio

I thought of reading Fred Lawrence for the Ratio, thinking of his brilliant phrases: the self that is only eschatologically itself; the divine reversal of the habitual recoil of the self into massive possessiveness; the subject that is not completely master of itself (the authenticity of the subject or lack of it cannot ever be brought completely into the foreground - our course is in the night, our control only rough and approximate)... (see my new file, LAWRENCE anthropology notes, for now in the Revision of the Ratio folder...)

Lawrence / Lonergan's anthropology is complex. is that complexity missing in the Ratio? Given that Lawrence's complexity only reflects the complexity of life and a world in which grace is offered, accepted or rejected, in a multitude of subjects, societies, cultures over time and space, perhaps not. But how to introduce it? 

One obvious element: Lawrence insists on the three conversions, and not only on moral and religious conversion. 

 

Lonergan's new notion of habit (1959)

[The new notion is found, it would seem, only in a little known archival text. I think it is a very significant notion.

To clarify it, I would need to clarify: (1) the shift from faculty psychology to the flow of consciousness (TE 1959) or intentionality analysis, (2) the new psychological analysis of development and the way it is different from the metaphysical analysis found in ch. 15 of Insight, (3) the new notion of the human good, in contrast to the cosmic or intellectual account of ch. 18 of Insight.]

HM 109-110:

De systemate et historia (Fall 1959) notes that the upper blade must be related to all philosophies as mathematics is to all hypotheses and theories of physics. A system of this type can be constructed in several ways: (1) as Hegelian dialectic, (2) as something initially potential, to be perfected and determined through research, (3) as a conceptual potency, (4) as a potency of some other type, such as operational. 

This operational potency is probably related to the notion of operational habit found in the archival text 'De circulo operationum.' The latter is to be distinguished from the 'operative habit' of the scholastics insofar as operative habits reside in some single and determinate potency, whereas operational habits can reside in several potencies at once: for instance, art involves the whole person, body and soul. Further, operational habits need not be restricted to a single mind, for science is an explicitly conscious operational habit, and it is so extensive that it cannot be contained in a single mind.

Now if operational potency is the same as operational habit, then we can say that the universal viewpoint defined in this way transcends the restriction both to some single faculty and to a single mind. But perhaps we should be careful.... 

HM 111:

The philosophy of education lectures of 1959 begin to speak about a shift from faculty psychology to the flow of consciousness. 

This is matched by a new, psychological analysis of development in contrast to the metaphysical analysis of chapter 15 of Insight and by a human account of the good in contrast to the cosmic or intellectual account of chapter 18 of Insight.

The new analysis of development, formulated with help from Piaget, leads to a significant new notion of habit that, in contrast to the scholastic one, is confined neither to some single faculty nor to a single mind. [Coelho, Hermeneutics and Method 111.]

Basil Xavier, Ethnophilosophy

 

basilxavier@gmail.com

Dear Fr Ivo Coelho,

New year Wishes from Fr Dr BASIL XAVIER, SJ

I've met you in some of our ACPR meetings but you may not remember me.

Just to introduce myself, I'm a Jesuit priest for Madurai Province, teaching philosophy at both UG and PG levels in Arul Anandar College, Madurai since 1998. (Kindly see my Short CV in the attached file)

Now I'm interested in a Post Doctoral Fellowship on Lonergan in Lonergan Institute,  Boston College, USA. I know you are  the only Indian Expert on Lonergan. My Ph.D is on Ethnophilosophy or Folk philosophy or Dalit Philosophy.

Kindly see the attached files for my recently published two books.

Will you suggest to me some possible topics connecting Lonergan and Ethnophilosophy? You also talk about the transcultural aspect of Lonergan's philosophy in your book.

I'll be grateful to you. I know you must be very busy now. Will you spend a few minutes for me dear Ivo? 

I'll be happy if you reply as soon as possible as the deadline is Jan 15, 2021. Please Fr..

Love,

BASIL SJ

Dear Basil,

thank you for your mail and your inquiry. 

I respond very briefly in the midst of other things.

The one thing that comes to me is: as part of the DATA of theology, Lonergan sees also the lived experience of people - the experience of the recognized saints and mystics, but also of ordinary people. I think that could be a fruitful line of inquiry. the one who has opened up this topic, if I am not mistaken, is Robert Doran. He, but also Fred Lawrence, are very sensitive to the political social economic aspects of life and of theology. 

You might find something in Method in Theology, ch. 11: Foundations, section 7: special theological categories. On CWL 14:272 he speaks of deriving categories from religious interiority, not only individual but also as community and history, and keep in mind the fourth set of categories, which anticipate that in the data we can expect to find not only authenticity but also many manifestations of unauthenticity, and the fifth set which moves on the assumption that God has intervened in this history ("progress, decline, redemption").

I guess you could read the whole of MT, in the sense that it champions a dialectical method of doing theology, a method that is "open to all comers", each one working from his own standpoint, with the differing viewpoints meeting in the functional specialty dialectic. in that sense, Lonergan sees method not as an individual affair but as done in team, group, community, and in fact with as much diversity as possible... within the church, but also within the larger society with differing religious, moral, intellectual standpoints, but also cultural, social, historical, psychological, and ethnic differences.

you might find helpful also the whole discussion of the biases, fundamentally in Insight: individual, group and general bias. the discussion on group and general bias, with the shorter and longer cycles of decline, is most interesting, it was a fundamental part of Lonergan's philosophy of history, and I think in the background were Hegel and Marx (see esp. group bias). General bias is, I think, peculiarly Lonergan's take on things; it would apply very much to the area of ecology, because it is the tendency of all human beings, moving by practicality and sometimes by greed, to take the short term rather than the long term view, to concentrate on the here and now to the disregard of the larger picture. 

I hope that might stimulate you!

wishes for your work. you could consult Fred Lawrence himself, or else Doran, or both.

Ivo

Ryliskyte, Ligita

Ryliskyte, Ligita. Cur Deus Cruciatus?: Lonergan’s Law of the Cross and the Transpositions of “Justice over Power.” PhD Thesis. Boston College, 2020. The basic question of this dissertation is, “Why a crucified God?” The history of this question is traced through strategically chosen increments in Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, and Lonergan. Each contributes in some important way to the development of a tradition that focuses on the choice of divine love and wisdom to answer evil through the justice of the cross rather than by coercion. In light of these earlier transpositions and Lonergan’s own development, this dissertation examines the meaning and justice of the cross, as epitomized in Lonergan’s Law of the Cross, and re-contextualizes this law in relation to our collective responsibility in and for history. This teleological re-reading of Lonergan’s soteriology brings to the forefront that a fitting remedy to the problem of a dis-ordered love is a re-ordering and (re-)ordered love, not coercive power. According to Lonergan’s Law of the Cross, the intrinsic intelligibility of redemption is the transformation of evil into good by love. This love, caritas ordinata et ordinans, is understood by analogy with the antecedent offer of diffusive friendship and by analogy with sacramental penance. The restoration of right order through the cross is fitting because, if the laws of nature and history are not suspended, retaliation would only multiply the objective surd. The constructive part of this dissertation further specifies ontological conditions for the fittingness of the cross by bringing the lex crucis into dialogue with Lonergan’s general theory of historical process. In continuity with the emerging world order (as subject to classical, statistical, dialectical, and genetic laws), the cross manifests an orderly communication of divine friendship to sinners. Correspondingly, the justice of the cross regards, not retributive justice, but the possibility of justice among sinners. This possibility, it is argued, is inaugurated by Christ’s transformation of suffering into the means of a new finality in history, the probabilities of which are decisively shifted in the cross event and concretely realized through the emergent agape network, the higher integration of the human good of order through the whole Christ, head and members, by the power of the Holy Spirit. The justice of the cross, then, is an emergent agapic justice which proceeds from the dynamic state of being in love with God as its principle and is realized in a dialectic unification of all things in Christ, constituting the “cruciform” transformation of human September 2020 5 (inter-) subjectivity and the recovery of human progress as ordered to the eschatologically definitive reign of God. Ryliskyte, Ligita. “Conversion: Falling into Friendship Like No Other.” Theological Studies, 81/2 (2020) 370-93. In the context of contemporary vicissitudes, this article examines how Lonergan’s grasp of the meaning of redemption illuminates our understanding of Christian conversion. Lonergan’s Law of the Cross implies that the effectiveness of Christian conversion hinges on one’s antecedent willingness to undertake suffering for the sake of the transformation of evil into good. His analogies for Christ’s salvific work with the sacrament of reconciliation and with friendship further clarify the christomorphic, penitential, and community-building character of conversion, which proceeds from the total, transformative, and diffusive falling into friendship with God.

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

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.

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.

Development of doctrine and differentiation of consciousness

"The possibility of a development in doctrine arises whenever there occurs a new differentiation of consciousness, for with every differentiation of consciousness the same object becomes apprehended in a different and a more adequate fashion." (Lonergan, [PGT] CWL 17:210) 

Community as primordial

"The traditional view was the product of trinitarian and christological problems as these were conceived within the systematic differentiation of consciousness as originated by Aristotle and transposed to Christian soil by Thomas Aquinas. The contemporary view comes out of genetic biology and psychology. From the 'we' of the parents comes the symbiosis of mother and child. From the 'we' of the parents and the symbiosis of mother and child comes the 'we' of the family. Within the 'we' of the family emerges the 'I' of the child. In other words the person is not the primordial fact. What is primordial is community. It is within the community, and through the intersubjective relations that are the life of community, that there arises the differentiation of the individual person." (Lonergan, [PGT] CWL 17:210-211) 

Conversation with Fred Lawrence

Sunday, August 25, 2013

Conversation with Fred Lawrence on the return journey from Galilee.

FL suggested a paper on the Trinity. I could not follow all of what he said, but this seems to be it: most people begin with persons and go on to the three relations which are persons. They tend to forget the relations of origin – which are two. These are the intelligible emanations. This would not be so bad if it were not for the fact that this governs most of what follows. “The hypothesis [which one?] governs most of what follows.” Lonergan: about the most blessed Trinity: 4 relations, 3 persons, 2 emanations, 1 God, no understanding. Notional ?? something.

This probably in connection with my remark that Ratzinger and Augustine / Thomas / Lonergan are asking different questions.

Augustine: the first person to come up with an analogy that is properly spiritual.

Remarks on Al Ghazali: he respects reason, but also knows that one has to go beyond reason. Meaning? [not supernatural but] that beyond reason there is love, the love of God.

About Heidegger. Leo Strauss, being a Jew, said that H was the greatest philosopher of the 20^th century. Hannah Arendt and Hans Jonas found a way of forgiving and reconciling with H: he did not know what he was doing.

H was ambitious as a young man. he was small of stature, but he could, already when young, wrap people around his little finger. He was the bright young thing as a Catholic seminarian, chosen for ?? by his bishop.

He told Engelbert Krebs: the system of Catholicism is something I cannot accept. But I do not stop being Christian.

1919: the reading of Augustine. He found all his key BT concepts in Augustine. The next year: Aristotle. He said he found many things of Augustine in Arisottle, minus the Christian context. So he found a way of pulling Augustine out of his Christian context. That was BT.

Later he rejected the transcendentalism of BT: Dasein was too much the centre. Man is more receptive than at the centre. That is one of the reasons why he was unable to apologize for his Nazi involvement.

Why did he go with the Nazis? Because he had ambitions. One of them being that of being Plato’s philosopher king. He hoped that by joining a political wagon, he might be able to transform German education. In 3 months he was disillusioned. He went to a meeting of top German educationalists, and found that they wanted something completely different from what he wanted.

And John of St Thomas / Deeley. Representationalist. Mirroring. They do not know the activity of questioning and insight on the two levels. They place all their weight, the weight of objectivity, on the representation, and they do it by trying to reduce all the subjective side. That is why the phenomenologists reject them: they neglect the intentionality side of things.

Euphuia, discernment, and Aquinas' Plato-Aristotle option regarding knowing as identity

This has to do with the question, how did Aquinas know he had to choose Aristotle's theorem of knowing as identity over Plato's theorem of knowing as confrontation. (See also my Wisdom Epistemology article somewhere...). Pat Bryne, in his International Lonergan Workshop Jerusalem contribution, has something very useful on the point, in fact, he sheds great light on the matter, when he notes that for Aristotle, dialectic alone was not enough; something called EUPHUIA was needed, which can perhaps be translated as discernment. 

Question to Pat Byrne:

when Thomas makes a choice between Plato and Aristotle, between knowledge as confrontation and knowledge as identity, is he exercising euphuia? if he is, then your paper is casting wonderful light on what has been a little question for me for several years...

Pat Byrne's reply, 4 april 2015:

     As for Thomas’s choice between Plato and Aristotle, between knowledge as confrontation and knowledge as identity, that is a question beyond my expertise, but it sounds right. Strictly speaking, what Aristotle means by euphoria should be preceded by a meticulous dialectical analysis. That would mean that Aquinas himself should have done something like the questions and answers put to both Plato and Aristotle as sources of great acumen, come to the options of what confrontation vs. identity imply, and then chosen knowing by identity on the basis of the inner light (of both the unrestricted desire and faith). I don’t know how much Plato he actually read. In Verbum Lonergan is contrasting Aristotle’s knowing by identity with a Platonic knowing by confrontation, but he does not actually offer texts to show that Aquinas himself actually did that. Aquinas seems to have gotten the great insight from his careful reading of Aristotle’s De Anima. Whether Aquinas also saw that this posed a dialectical choice against Plato, I am not sure.
        Be that as it may, at some point Aquinas himself no doubt realized he had to abandon knowing as confrontation, because of the options it leads to, and that itself certainly would have been an exercise of euphuia.
        This was a great question. I never thought of applying it in this way. When I heard C.D.C. Reeve explain this, the lights went on for me also — a problem in Aristotle’s dialectics that has been also bothering me for years, and something I never found explained satisfactorily by any other Aristotle scholar.

Self-Knowledge, and Understanding

I am continuing here the point I was pushing in the previous chapter: the remoteness of serious understanding, and the problem, raised in the chapter on dialectic, of taking an honest stand about your stand regarding it. The honesty relates to the struggle towards genuineness, and it is sadly amusing to bring together two statements of Lonergan, one about the historian “at pains not to conceal his tracks,” the other talking about the self who “keeps matters some entirely to oneself, and refuses even to face others.”135 The “outer rind of the persona” 136 may well be eager to take a stand on the importance of understanding’s “bloody entrance,”137 but some hidden layer rejects this and, oddly, that hidden rejection can be quite manifest in that self’s attitude towards the effort to seriously understand, even going to the extreme of a certain stand about the inevitability of C.P.Snow’s two culture, a stand that fits nicely with “the substitution of pseudometaphysical myth-making for scientific inquiry.”138 So, one talks of feelings with disdain for chemistry.  

Such an exclusion of serious understanding is presently supported by the dominant traditions of contemplation, which are anaphatic. The new systematics, on the other hand, is to be increasingly kataphatic. Systematic searchings, in a later maturity, will, as a “Language of the Heart”, “as central feature of the world of sense, intimate its finality, its yearning for God.”139 (Philip McShane, http://www.philipmcshane.ca/method-02.pdf p. 77) 

The Salesian titanothore?

“But we are not there yet. And for society to progress towards that or any other goal it 78 140For a New Political Economy, 20. must fulfil one condition. It cannot be a titanothore, a beast with a three-ton body and a ten-ounce brain. It must direct its attention .... to the overhead product of cultural implements. It must glory in its deepening, in the pure deepening that adds to aggregate leisure, to liberate many entirely and all increasingly to the field of cultural activities .... It must lift its eyes more and more to the more general and more difficult fields of speculation, for it is from them that it has to derive the delicate compound of unity and freedom in which alone progress can be born, struggle, and win through.” [n.140: Lonergan, For a New Political Economy, 20.] [P. McShane,http://www.philipmcshane.ca/method-02.pdf, "Systematics."]

I am jotting this down, this fantastic comment from Lonergan, because it has all to do with my / our being Salesian at this moment in history. Is there or is there not place for the 'intellectual,' the theoretical, the mind? True, I have been emphasizing the Way of the Heart, which is what we miss. I have been saying that we have shored up enough the Way of the Mind. And that is true, but only in a sense: we have the structures, and by now the average provincial does not think twice about having to set aside persons for 2 or 3 years for a master's degree or a doctoral degree in philosophy or theology and sometimes salesianity and spirituality. But: as a congregation, do we really think, reflect, and allow intelligence under faith to guide us? Is there a place for the graced mind in our being and acting? Are we running the risk of being a beast with a three-ton body and a ten-ounce brain?

The bridge that does not exist

If I affirm an object, it exists.

if i affirm myself, i exist.

what i am doing here is: affirming an object as real, as being; affirming a subject as real, as being. 

if i can make the further judgment that the object is not the subject, i have objectivity. 

of course, i could specify further: in what way is the object not the subject? there is the objectivity of "2 + 2 = 4", of mathematical entities; there is the objectivity of a thought, or a dream; there is the objectivity of a snake that enters a goa house... of a new planet that someone claims to have discovered... 

Descartes assumed that he knew the self in an apodictic way. he assumed also that he did not know any object in an apodictic way. hence his problem, the problem which we call the bridge.

he did not bother to engage in a detailed study of what was happening when he was knowing. 

not that there is no difference between affirming the self and affirming an object that is not the self. there is a difference. but - and here is where each one has to get clear for himself - it is possible to know objects, and we do it a thousand times. 

here you could in an idle moment read my notes on Heidegger (hermeneutics). Here you could reflect on Wittgenstein's unique handling of the problem. 

one of Descartes' problems was his mathematical training: he expected, wrongly, mathematical certitude for everything. Even Rorty says that: Descartes was like the undisciplined child who does not know when to stop asking questions. (And Rorty, surprisingly, quotes Gilson quoting Descartes!) (I have this in my Rorty article.) 

do we have mathematical certitude w.r.t. the reality of the self? not exactly. but to deny the self is to engage in a performative contradiction. (you can deny the self. the conradicition is not logical. it is performative: beween saying and performance, or reality, if you wish.) 

do we have mathematical certitude w.r.t. objects like a cat and a mat and a tree and a dog and ohther subjects? no. do we need such certitude? no. do we have the self kind of certitude in these cases? no. but we do come to the point where to ask furhter questions would be plain foolish (even Rorty!). "the spade hits rock" Wittgenstein says. Absence of further relevant questions, L says. physical certitude, perhaps the Thomists would say... 

If you need some references:

Hermeneutics and Method, p. 26 para 2.

Verbum cwl 2, p. 98 last para.

Insight, cwl 3, p. 401 last para. the pseudo-problem of transcendence. 

Phenomenology of love

Draw together elements from Lonergan, Ratzinger, Plascencia, von Balthasar.
Love is unlimited and unrestricted by its essence (Lonergan, von Balthasar)
The word 'all' is frequently on the lips of Jesus.
Love does not recognize the language of obligation (von Balthasar)
Love seeks a response, though it does not depend on the response (Lonergan, Ratzinger, Plascencia)
"How wonderful that you are!" Love reaches the singularity; it is a combination therefore of agape and eros. It is eros that reaches the singular, that delights in this person. (Ratzinger, Plascencia)

Purely natural religion

To be added in a consideration of Lonergan's early thinking on religion:

Natural Desire to See God, 1C 88: is a state of pure nature, a world order in which no one receives grace, a concrete possibility? Lonergan talks about a religion that is natural. At 1C 90, he says that a world order without grace is a concrete possibility; but that this is not a central doctrine but only a marginal theorem. Renaissance theologians magnified this marginal theorem in Aquinas into a central doctrine: the state of pure nature.

Dis-ease

Reading Milbank on gift, the ethical, and so on, I feel quite excited, but also choked: there is so much to get into here, such complexity, so many things I have never quite entered into, not mastered at all. The ethical and what it might truly be. The ethical and the religious. The ethical and the Christian. And then so much to master also in Lonergan. The ethical certainly; but also the realm of cognitive interiority, especially the early notions of operation, perhaps in Gratia Operans. The whole area of the Latin theology. the Trinity. Essential and notional love. Causality. Meaning. 

This is one of the roots of my dis-ease with Milbank: that he has chosen to take issue with Lonergan in his book on Aquinas. So either he has misunderstood Lonergan, or he is right. Either way, the dis-ease. Or perhaps, the dis-ease is because of not having got to the bottom of this question. 

Milbank excites me like the complex of ideas brewing in the Gregorian and in Rome in the early 1990s did. A complex that excited my imagination, but which I never did get to the bottom of. A complex involving somehow Henrici, and perhaps von Balthasar, and certainly Blondel; and John Paul II; and somehow suspecting Lonergan as cognate. Action - being - the primacy of the existential - love - Trinity - unity - marriage - eschatology - feast - resurrection. There was a book there, and there is a book here. And what if all this is set into motion against the background of Sankara, for example. 

What excited me about Plascencia was the way he was able to turn upside down received notions, one of them being that of disinterested love: God's love is a love that looks for and longs for return. Don Bosco intuited that. And so our model cannot be disinterested love. Even if love does not stop being love for lack of (immediate) response. Milbank intuits these complexities well on his p. 123. 

Lonergan in India

Lonergan people in India:

• Valentine Ekka, SJ, PhD, Boston College. 
• Thomas Chacko, SVD. PhD, Dharmaram, Bangalore. 
• Thomas Naickamparambil, Through Self-Discovery to Self-Transcendence: A Study of Cognitional Self-Appropriation in B. Lonergan
• Robert Pen, SDB. PhD, Universita Pontificia Salesiana, Rome. 
• Maria Arul Anthuvan, SDB. PhD (ongoing), Universita Pontificia Salesiana, Rome. 
• A number of students who have done Master's Theses, esp. at Divyadaan, Nashik.

Lonergan events in India:

• The Fred Lawrence Confernce on Hermeneutics, Divyadaan, Nashik.
• The Conference on Economics, with Philip McShane, Divyadaan, Nashik.

Articles and books:

• See Divyadaan: Journal of Philosophy and Education
• Ivo Coelho, Hermeneutics and Method
• Robert Pen, Communication as Mutual Self-Mediation