Beards on Rahner

[Doug Mounce]

So, I had hoped to post a simple paragraph to introduce Beards' comparison of Lonergan and Rahner.  Alas, I find I need more room to describe three, related ideas that underlie Beards' critique.  The first is retorsion, one of Andrew's principles, that Lonergan and Rahner both use. They differ in that Lonergan proceeds with a rigorous hermeneutic while Rahner's intelligere only is unthematic knowledge.  Beards finds that Rahner is trying to establish a theory of knowledge, and, of course, he prefers Lonergan's theory.

Lonergan's two (as far as I know) written references to Rahner are complimentary, but Beards was able to confirm a verbal comment from L that Rahner doesn't understand insight.1  They at least both use retorsion, which Beards says is a hallmark of transcendental Thomism.  Beards finds that Rahner, for example, uses the classic argument known to Aquinas that the one who denies knowledge of truth ends in the self-contradictory position of claiming it to be true that nothing is true.  In addition, Rahner says that even questioning that questioning itself shows we are oriented to being as that which we would and can know.  Lonergan argues that we have a notion of being, that we intend being as what is to be known by intelligence and reason and that therefore being is the intelligible and reasonable.  Beards adds that any attempt to deny Lonergan's thesis only demonstrates its truth.  The difference is that Lonergan's notion of being is structured whereas Rahner only identifies our orientation to being. 

Lonergan's self-referential arguments for a four-leveled, or phased, cognitional and evaluative structure are convincing. "However, I do not believe that such arguments are found to be deployed in a systematic way by Rahner." Beards says. Rahner's answer to the problem of knowing the identity of the knower and known is the pre-apprehension of the Vorgriff, the implicit, pre-knowledge of being.  Following Heidegger, Rahner argues that being is not alien to human inquiry, but that knowing and being are cognate.  The difference is that Lonergan's notion of being is intelligible and reasonable whereas Rahner's knowledge is not conscious intention.  This implicit and unthematic knowledge is nonetheless presented as knowledge.  Such an identity between the knower and the known is a theory of knowledge.

Beards finds that Rahner's approach is not rigorous. By failing to follow a structured investigation of the psychological facts, Rahner, Beards believes, confuses self-presence with self-knowledge.  One judgment is not universal insight into all particulars.  If you are cooking sausages, for example, that experience doesn't tell you anything about what the Queen is up to, and the experience of cooking only matters if someone wants to know when the sausages will be ready.  You have to structure your thinking about thinking in order to conceptualize and objectify self-knowledge. Beards finds a general lack of reflective methodology in Rahner's work in this regard.  In short, Rahner is attempting a theory of knowledge, just-like Lonergan, and Beards naturally finds Lonergans effort to be superior.

Lonergan is more methodical than Rahner in following Thomas' intelligent inquiry regarding being.  Pre-apprehension of the metaphysical nature in this process only is implicit and unthematic.  In any case, they both rely on retorsion to prove that we all use intelligent inquiry.  Next-up, some comment on phantasm, that Beards calls mental imagery.  And, the difference between direct and indirect insight plays a role (recall that difference for Kant regarding analytic and synthetic judgment).

"1The comment is made in a reply to a question, in the first question period, during the

1969 Institute on Method in Theology Lonergan gave at Regis College, Toronto. Lonergan states that "Kant does not know about insight, neither does Marechal. Rahner has the same problem. They do not understand the action of intelligence". I am very grateful to Fr. Robert Doran, S.J. for his help in locating this quotation."