[Lonergan_l] John's Dream
Phil McShane
what is needed. Catherine ended her previous note with "let us make this a
good year". Indeed, yes, and I dream with John of the decade ahead to a 2020
vision! Catherine identifies signs of the times, of shiftings for the good.
The issue of implementation [or of the eighth specialty] is effective
meaning, the unity and beauty of efficiency "for the most part" [add Topics
in Education, 160, line 16]. Our discussions are scattered and random. Might
we ask, this January, how focus might be achieved, in Skipperland, in
Lonergan studies? Lonergan's focus was to change history for the better, and
he attended especially to the terrible lag of his "school", the Thomism of
the Jesuits. John draws attention to the stuff on pages 286-87 of Method as,
yes, what Lonergan pointed that school to. Lonerganism has not faced that
challenge. One sub-focus that we might air, discomfortingly, is how we are
inviting - or not - the next generations to face the challenge, to climb
into the world of serious understanding, encouraging thus the emergence [see
MIT 350-1] of an elite that is at the level of the times.
Phil
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Catherine B. King
I am thinking (speculating, that is), that some evidence exists that the
strangle-hold--that positivism has had on our thinkers and doers in the
sciences and professions--is slowly breaking down. We could read Voegelin on
this. And I think many of it's forefronters are in the fields of psychology
and education where they have the needs of their patients and students so
loud, so regular, and so close at hand.
But that means: For the movement of mind that takes us into interiority in a
critical way (via Lonergan's work and others'), and that has been described
as a "gulf," is going to be easier to broach in a dialogue with what can be
referred to as post-positivist thought--many in my experience are tepid and
shy, but more amenable to interior explorations now--it seems.
The issue, of course, will be whether it's "in a critical way." As St.
Nicholas reminds us often, it's oh-so-easy to discount the import of theory
and theoretical consciousness on human living in our
post-scientific-revolutionary times, where so much of what came from that
revolution is so pleasantly assumed by all.
The overlapping problems, then, will be those of collapse--of theory (and
its disappearance) into commonsense and mythical consciousness, and of
pseudo-narrow religious consciousness into hard-won secularity and the
legitimate distinctions of the sciences. Let us then just replace the
insights of Einstein, Lonergan, etc., with those of Joyce, Larkin, Emerson,
and Shakespeare (you choose), and replace the rule of law, habeas corpus,
human rights, etc., with Biblical sayings. That'll work, ...uh ... except:
Which Bible?
Again, just speculating here,
Catherine