Rahner

[Doug Mounce]

I've returned to the Introductory Interpretation of Spirit in the World where Rahner considers, "The Article in the Context of the Summa Theologiae".  Three statements lay a foundation for this work, but I find them all to be useful positions for any conversation.

". . . the question about man stands in the context of questions about created being."

Of course, Thomas probably wouldn't have used the word "evolved", but what does that term imply to you?  Some say it must mean there is a creator, while an Aristoterlian interpretation might be that we are `created for some purpose'.  The apple seed is "created", for example, to become an apple tree.

"The question, What is man?, refers first of all, therefore, to the essence of the "soul"."  

I think that soul-belief (Seelenglaube in German) is of utmost concern for most people most of the time. 

"The essence of man is not completely itself until he acts."  

Activity here refers to intelligence about the material world, about knowing itself, and about knowing the beyond.  The second and third depend on the first, hence the general context of his account is: "(1) it must be dealing with intellectual knowledge, because for Thomas the theologian this is the point of insertion for a theological event; (2) it must be dealing with knowledge of the world as the fundamental human knowledge; and the possibility of such knowledge must be grasped; (3) in and through the knowledge of world there must open us the possibility of an access to a "beyond the world.""

Happy Sunday!

[Hugh Williams]

Doug,

I too still find Rahner worth the effort …

But admittedly he is (in SiW) for me ‘a hard nut to crack’ even at a 'turtle pace' ...

… and we are not getting much help, and so are left to our own efforts more or less.

I agree with what you say below, especially this emphasis on ‘man’ and the question of ‘man’.

As much as Rahner considers Thomas’ metaphysics of being, he has this anthropological concern always, it seems to me.

And so Rahner in SiW, as I read him in his ‘Introductory Interpretation’ is trying to lay the groundwork for his foundational question in the next chapter. Here I’m providing some gloss on SiW, pp. 22-29 …

 Rahner says that working out the question is the first and most difficult work of the philosopher. For it is only the question that opens up the realm within which the truth is even sought. The question belongs so intrinsically to the philosophical event that on its formulation depends essentially whether the truth, perhaps found, is recognized as such.

 

What is being considered and explained here, somewhat tentatively, is the intrinsic possibility of intellectual knowledge as the place for a theological event, and therefore first of all as a universal and necessary knowledge that reaches beyond individual things and beyond the world altogether.

 

But then Rahner asks – does not that exclude … the thesis that knowledge of individual things of the world is the abiding realm within which human metaphysics remains permanently? If so, the foundation of intellectual knowledge in the sensible experience of the world is then regarded as an initial impulse presupposed but not as a sustaining basis making it possible always and in every instance, i.e., the foundation on which intellectual knowledge permanently rests.

 

For instance, Rahner considers how if we were to understand the concept of intelligible species in a purely formal and tentative way as the actualization of intellectual knowledge as such … its material essence and its function vary depending on whether this knowledge is complete in itself or only in turning to sense experience.

 

Then Rahner asserts that at the basis of the Thomistic metaphysics of knowledge lies the view that the act which is the primary foundation of all knowledge is to be understood as intuition – as an immediate grasping of what is to be known in its own real and present self.

 

… then Rahner in an extensive and wide-ranging and even free-wheeling footnote says that intuition for Thomas is present only when being in its real self is apprehended through its being identical with what apprehends. Rahner observes in anticipation of what is to follow that man as spirit has an intuition according to Thomas and it is that of sensibility as the power of spirit in the world, and it is not an independent intellective intuition which leaves the basis of the imagination. So when we discuss the relationship of abstraction and judgment to intuition (it is) by intuition only that the imagination can be understood. And so in the essentially one human knowing whose sensible and spiritual elements cannot be discussed in complete separation from each other because the one is real knowledge only in and through the other, abstraction and judgment are the intrinsic, constitutive elements for the fact that the imagination realizes itself as a power springing from the human spirit and remaining in it: as objective intuition of the world in which the world as object able to be set off and seen beyond is already transcended in the excessus towards being as such in accordance with the fundamental characteristic of Thomas’ knowing.

Interestingly, at this point Rahner feels the need to tell us of the controversy or controversies that come with the serious reading of Thomas as to what the essence of an interpretation of a philosophical text is. He poses this involved question – does one simply relate Thomas’ different descriptions of the essence of finite knowledge, giving them equal weight, leaving any final vision of the essence to the reader, or should the reader be the interpreter who achieves the vision which brings everything together into one and so submits in his interpretation what he was able to understand as the central conception in the Thomistic conception of knowledge: metaphysics on the basis of the imagination?

 

But then Rahner asks another question – in what sense can the experience of the world be the foundation for a metaphysical knowledge which reaches beyond the world? He clarifies his question this way – is this intellectual knowledge understood as metaphysical knowledge closed in upon itself, based upon itself as its own possibility, possessing its own content independent of sense experience as in the species question, which as such has a metaphysical intuition as its foundation? Or is it a knowledge remaining permanently on the basis of the imagination as the only foundation which makes it possible, thus devoid of any metaphysical intuition by which it could be its own foundation?

If one affirms this second conception of human knowledge as the only real one, says Rahner, then one must show how metaphysics on the basis of the imagination is possible. Thus this question of the conversion to the phantasm is about the possibility of metaphysics based on intuition which takes place within the horizon of space and time.

Then Rahner says something interesting and relevant to our discussion of ‘advances’ in philosophical thinking, that Thomas finds no solution for this in Aristotle and yet he follows Aristotle in his metaphysics appropriating as his own that the soul does not know anything without the phantasm. This is no benign insight or viewpoint for its draws Thomas into the depths of Aristotle’s metaphysics down to its ‘starting point’.

 

Clearly, in my own reading of Rahner, we are seeing here early indications of what Francis Caponi in his “Karl Rahner and the Metaphysics of Participation” in the Thomist 67 (2003) calls Rahner’s metaphysics of participation. This is a view that sees creatures resembling God not by sharing a form or some specific or generic type but analogously because God exists by nature whereas other things created partake existence by participation. Existence is what all creatures share and it is by way of causal participation that Thomas understands the analogical relationship between divine existence and creaturely existence.

Now, it is also clear to me that with Rahner and his metaphysics, one is only going deeper into the metaphysics of being as esse. This is unlike Lonergan who goes only so far and no further, and so I, at times, feel this breach between Lonergan’s turn to the subject and this concern for the question of being (as esse) in the Thomistic tradition.

And yet, there has been ongoing work done since Lonergan and Rahner that goes a long way to bridging this seeming divide, so it seems to me.

One very good example, in my opinion, is the work of Kenneth Schmitz, see his paper “Enriching the Copula” in his The Texture of Being, pp.94-96. Here he shows how such ‘advance’ can occur in our consideration of common place questions of judgment. For when our language and the world it is always involved with calls “is” and “is not” into service for our judgments, there also can be, either explicitly or implicitly, some degree of onto-existential philosophical considerations at play.

However, Schmitz shows, and this should be of interest to Lonerganians, that there is some need to overcome the brute immediacy of the copula that involves distinguishing esse of the copula proper from the esse of the being in which the judgment terminates. The former is a mental construct or being of reason distinct from a real being. The reduction of such a distinction is not simply the disengagement of mental from real thing, and the separation of two modes of being or esse, rather it is a freedom or liberation allowing reflection to study the being of the copula and to unfold its capacity to bring meaning to truth, which as I read him has been a major concern of Lonergan.

However, this self-realization of thought is a very peculiar (and even strange) opening out onto the thing. It is both an advance of thought and a troubling trial to determine the objectivity of thought. The copula takes it sense from the being which in being brought to judgment by thought, provides the norm for that judgment. This is the paradox of objectivity that the judger judging is brought to judgment by the necessity of submitting his judgment to the terms of the one being judged. Thus, the thing that utters no word determines the deciding word or settles the appropriate range of words that can be spoken within the terms of one’s language.

The meaning intended by “thing”, Schmitz further argues, must be broadened and lightened of a restrictive sense of solidity. This is also so for terms that designate the focus of judgment - “entity” and “being”. These terms need not exclusively designate a subsistent being but may mean only that ultimate and decisive situation that is resolved by the judgment into terms of being and non-being. Thus, a judgment may terminate in anything – in “Hamlet” as an imaginary person or as a natural thing. It may terminate in a well-formed idea as in a “good thing”, or in a present purpose as a “thing of some difficulty”. Schmitz acknowledges that language and examples tend to favor affirmative judgments that terminate in real things – trees and tables, but not always. It may refer to loss. Negative judgments can terminate truthfully in situations of non-existence where the full onto-existential intention is privative.

I believe these ‘advances’ in the thinking around ‘being’ and judgment is highly relevant for understanding this notion of ‘relation’ and its proper ontological status …

With some apologies for the length of this note … but I believe (tentatively) we may be on to something …

 Hugh

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Lonergan_L" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to lonergan_l+...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/lonergan_l/CALaFOMtL4gTOkKrQvf9vUu9M%2BkzCrvFiOftSknTSfvySU%3DUe4w%40mail.gmail.com.

[Doug Mounce]

Hugh,

I am hopefully reading Rahner.  The theological event, our soul, and the relation of experience to intelligence naturally is of great interest. Recall from our slow-read of The Subject how Lonergan says that a neglect of the subject is the metaphysical account of the soul, because the soul can be studied by the same methods we use to study plants, animals, and humans.  Earlier, in Insight: Preface to a Discussion, Lonergan only argues for the primacy of cognition where the soul understands itself with interdependent ontological and cognitional procedures.  Theology, therefore, can benefit from dynamic knowing the same as other disciplines.

The focus on cognition and a theory of knowledge naturally tends toward Aristotle, and Lonergan doesn't mention Plato or Augustine in Preface. Rather, he says that Aristotle affirms matter and form as ontological causes supported by cognitional reasons of sense and insight into phantasm.  Almost any reference to phantasm deserves further investigation.  

I've recently been enjoying Ron Nash's lectures on philosophy at biblicaltraining.org, for example, and he uses a circle to illustrate what Plato meant about forms, which obviously recalls how Lonergan uses that figure.  The difference might relate to what Rahner interprets in the next section about our possessing "immaterial, universal, and necessary knowledge."  (The footnote states that this is not meant in the sense of the theory of knowledge.)

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/lonergan_l/4b2bc3a3-4e56-4eb7-b80d-8bf372384d04%40nbnet.nb.ca.

[jaraymaker]

 

Doug,

 

reading the exchange between yourself and Hugh led me to google and I found a reference to this book and other publications which do help shed some light on the topic presently being discussed here.

Knowing God, Knowing Emptiness: An Epistemological Exploration of Bernard Lonergan, Karl Rahner and Nagarjuna by John, N. C. Robinson

Knowing God, Knowing Emptiness examines the viability of the epistemology proposed by Bernard Lonergan in his seminal work Insight, particularly with regard to its possible application in the field of interreligious dialogue. This enquiry is prompted by an awareness of the epistemological questions raised by the various dialogues taking place between different religions, and it is in light of this that Lonergan's claim to comprehensiveness in his epistemology is examined. The method adopted is that of a dialectical experiment in which Lonergan's epistemology could be tested. Lonergan claims in Insight that as his epistemology is both based on, and corresponds directly to, the structure of human cognition, it is therefore intrinsic to all instances of thought. Accordingly, he claims, it is ideally placed to mutually relate any combination of differing positions. This work seeks to test this claim by applying Lonergan's epistemological categories to Karl Rahner's Foundations of Christian Faith, and Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. Having critically reconstructed Lonergan's position as articulated in Insight, the book does the same for both of the texts selected and then parses them on the basis of the terms laid out by Lonergan in his epistemological system. It examines whether the thought contained in these two works could be fruitfully related on the basis of Lonergan's epistemology, and what, if any, are the implications for the field of interreligious dialogue. These implications are considered both in terms of the theology of religions, and of the more recently developed comparative theology, typified by the approach taken by thinkers such as Francis X. Clooney and others. The book concludes by considering what, if any, are the possible developments that could result from the result of the attempted dialectic." END quoting the review.

I am surprised that the discussion above stops at "dialectic" instead of invoking Foundations and the other functional specialties treated in MiT. 

As to foundations, mysticism is a foundation for spirituality as stressed by Lonergan's MiT and other works. The Stanford Encyclopedia  at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nagarjuna/    is helpful her I quote: 

"There is unanimous agreement that Nāgārjuna (ca 150–250 CE) is the most important Buddhist philosopher after the historical Buddha himself and one of the most original and influential thinkers in the history of Indian philosophy. His philosophy of the “middle way” (madhyamaka) based around the central notion of “emptiness” (śūnyatā) influenced the Indian philosophical debate for a thousand years after his death; with the spread of Buddhism to Tibet, China, Japan and other Asian countries the writings of Nāgārjuna became an indispensable point of reference for their own philosophical inquiries. A specific reading of Nāgārjuna’s thought, called Prāsaṅgika-Madhyamaka, became the official philosophical position of Tibetan Buddhism which regards it as the pinnacle of philosophical sophistication up to the present day...."

  John

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/lonergan_l/CALaFOMv4ynRgyYDDdz37bYwtvoxzY_xmiPYippAnUb-PZYqJow%40mail.gmail.com.

[Charles Tackney]

Greetings;

By way of follow-up, happy to report a Workshop schedule is being proofed and will be available end of week. 

Best,

Charlie

[Hugh Williams]

Doug,

This is for me a very intriguing post from you ... but I'm going to need extra help, for this is where my 'turtle pace' comes in.

There are striking flashes of insight in your 'reading' and in your posts and I'd like to try and get some grip on them as best I can.

So, I read you saying something like this in your brief post below (correct me where I go astray, especially in the bracketed parts...) -

... the relation of experience and intelligence is of great interest.

The (traditional) account of the soul has involved a neglect of the human subject (by treating the soul like other groups of objects).

In Lonergan's paper 'Insight: Preface to a Discussion', he is only arguing for the primacy of cognition where the soul is understanding itself.

Lonergan uses the 'circle' to illustrate the meaning of 'form' in Plato, and the difference (with Aristotle?) and perhaps regarding mathematics more generally

may relate to the nature of our interpretation of 'immaterial, universal, and necessary' knowledge as found in Rahner where Rahner says in a fn that such a discussion "is not meant as a theory of knowledge".

I'm following you up until the final line in brackets below and underlined above ... for I would have thought that this discussion is very much about the nature of human knowledge and its basis. 

So, I'd appeal to you to say more on this, if you could, and to provide the fn and page reference from Rahner so I can try to keep up with you as best I can ...

and avoid unnecessary misunderstanding ...

thanks again

Hugh

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/lonergan_l/CALaFOMv4ynRgyYDDdz37bYwtvoxzY_xmiPYippAnUb-PZYqJow%40mail.gmail.com.

[Doug Mounce]

Thanks John,

I recall two places where Lonergan refers to a mystery, although he doesn't use that word.  One is the natural desire to see God, and the other from Philosophy of God and Theology.  How does mystery appear in your booK? 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/lonergan_l/1377570658.5757256.1717009633288%40mail.yahoo.com.

[Doug Mounce]

Hugh, thanks for asking,

Knowledge obviously is central to Rahner's work as it derives from Aquinas.  One difference with Lonergan might be that Rahner's investigation is not focused on a theory of cognition, but they both seem to start with intelligence. 

The particular reference is on page 18 of my copy, second paragraph in the page beginning with II. THE TITLE OF THE ARTICLE. 

"In fact, in the first Article a prior option has already been decided
before Thomas proceeds to raise any thematic questions:
man is in possession of an "immaterial, universal, and necessary
knowledge." This is the first great starting point which Thomas
posits along with every great philosophy from that of the Greeks
until Hegel:(1) absolute knowledge is a reality in man; it is true:

the form of the thing known is in the intellect universally, immaterially,
and immutably.
"Thus the decisive point of The first Article of Question 84 is
not to give as yet a metaphysical critique of knowledge, but
rather of the known, and it is only supposed to open the way
for posing the real question about the intrinsic possibility of a
metaphysical knowledge of the world."

"(1) For a "critical" justification of this starting point to the extent that
such a justification was intended and is present in Thomas, see J.
Marechal, Le point de depart de la metaphysique, V: "Le Thomisme

devant la philosophic critique" (Louvain, 1926), pp. 38-53. Citations
which follow are always from this first edition. (Second edition:
Brussels, 1949.)
"When the question of the possibility and limits of metaphysics is
mentioned again and agam in the course of the work, it is not meant in
the sense of the theory of knowledge, where it is an investigation which
precedes metaphysics, but in the sense of a question which is intrinsic to
metaphysics itself, in fact, coincides with it."

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/lonergan_l/a21c023e-483e-4a9c-af82-27c88cd74061%40nbnet.nb.ca.

[jaraymaker]

Doug, 

in both the Pierre book and the book I've just started with Sebastien Nknoa, we speak of spirituality, mysticism, and the Spirit rather than "mystery." E.g. we refer to Nagarjuna who was an outstanding mystic,    John

[Hugh Williams]

Doug et al,

This is excellent in the sense that you have focused in on a specific text that we can and should (turtle paced)

spend some more time with.

1) We have the deep and complex issue of human knowledge and its (subjective and objective) basis.

2) We have the historical thinking through which this complex problematic is mediated and here I'd call attention, at least to Marechal's influence and behind him

the influence of the great Kant on both Marechal's and Rahner's project.

3) We have Rahner's own text wherein he is trying to sort out his own approach to this problem which may or may not have some basis in Thomas' text.

And so to this I'd add the full scope of Rahner's rich paragraph that you quote from below -

"For it is said that the 'what' of the individual thing known is in the thing and in the intellect in different ways. But this means that the knower has set himself over against the known and has already risen to a critique of the object : a definite metaphysical mode is predicated of the material object when it is said that its form, hence its being and its intelligible content, is 'other' in the material being than in the intellectual knower. With that it is necessarily given that individual material things are measured (in our knowing/knowledge) by a standard which is not intrinsic to themselves and yet does measure them, since knowing not only possesses them consciously, but distinguishes in its judgment their metaphysical mode of being from others."

Now for Rahner to speak of 'things' in our knowledge being 'measured by a standard (in this there are echoes of Lonergan in Verbum ...) which is not intrinsic to themselves' is problematic for me (from what I'd call a Gilsonian realist perspective). 

I worry it is giving certain intermediaries (and thus 'thought and thinking' in our knowing things of the world a certain fundamental primacy that is not warranted, and is a source of considerable controversy in Thomism or the interpretation of Thomas. 

For example, if my sense of this is near correct, we are moving in and around the issue as to why Gilson was so mistrustful and impatient, at least for a time, of and with the entire 'critical project' (the critique of knowledge), that was for him -  Thomism itself becoming so preoccupied with the Kantian critique of knowledge and its epistemological conundrums that he had felt Thomas himself avoided as a matter of principle. 

The debate was quite bitter for a time ... I believe it has settled down considerably, but it flares up now and again. However, the point for us here if we could spend some time with it, is that we are seeing signs of its influence in Rahner who, in the end, I believe is truly trying to deal with it on his own terms ... and the question for me, as it was for my reading of Lonergan, at least, in Verbum, is how does he fare?

very good work Doug ...

Hugh

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/lonergan_l/CALaFOMsD_ZxOBGUKMv7Km%2BeMoo-kwVEOMeKS8WER7YXSheYkTg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Doug Mounce]

While we await further comment on this section, I recall Lonergan's understanding in Verbum that we naturally know principles founded upon our knowledge of ens.  Aquinas' stock examples, Lonergan says, are the principle of noncontradiction, and of the whole being greater than the part.  I don't think those are principles, in the way I define that term, but Nash also believes that we are born with an innate understanding about things like circularity and equality (I have some issue with this as well).  Nash doesn't, however, mean that our implicit knowledge is completely explicit, but this is why he considers himself to be a Platonist and I am more and more inclined to Plato's ideal (albeit in the mind of God as Augustine advances that understanding) than to Aristotle.  Is it fair to add a 0) item on this list, a "zeroeth" law about a prior option that  we possess an "immaterial, universal, and necessary knowledge"?

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/lonergan_l/87146b63-6d55-4c5c-aad5-4687d0bb152c%40nbnet.nb.ca.

[Hugh Williams]

Doug et al,

I do find this a remarkable exchange perhaps analogous, at least at moments, to an actual seminar where there is considerable back and forth in the spirit of good will.

As for your question – “Is it fair to add a 0) item on the list, a “zeroeth” law about a prior option that we possess an “immaterial, universal, and necessary knowledge”?

I’m unsure about ‘possession’ but as for ‘participation’, which comes from the Platonic tradition, that is another matter and is taken quite seriously by many of the thinkers that are guiding me in this difficult discourse.

We can begin with what Thomas himself says as quoted by Rahner in his own beginning where he presents in full ST I, Q 84 a 7 (my gloss of p.11) –

‘We know the incorporeal (non-worldly) for which there are no phantasms through comparison with the sensible and corporeal world for which there are phantasms. Thus, we know what truth is by considering the thing about which we perceive a truth …

… We know God by way of excess or eminence and by way of negation or remotion.

In our present state of life, we can also know the other incorporeal (non-worldly) substances only by way of negation or comparison with the corporeal world, and so when we want to know something of this kind (non-worldly) we must turn to the phantasms of the corporeal world though there are no phantasms of the thing itself.’

Here, in my view, we have Thomas speaking of ‘remotion, comparisio, and excessus’ as it might apply to our elusive apprehension of being as esse as treated by Rahner at pp.156-162.

I tried back on Feb 9, and then again on March 21, to share, perhaps prematurely, some reflections on Rahner’s treatment of ‘esse’. I said then that these sections in Rahner strike me as significantly different, as an attempt at involved metaphysical critique, from what one might find anywhere in Lonergan on this difficult topic. This I believe likely has to do with very different notions of what metaphysics is or should be in these two important Jesuit thinkers who often are linked together rightly or wrongly.

Hugh

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/lonergan_l/CALaFOMvKT84Ym2saQoYQV2u7izNwbn%3D9Q0OvVHaBebn_2%2BdoHg%40mail.gmail.com.

[jaraymaker]

MYSTICISM AND COGNITIONAL THEORY: A PRESENTATION AND CRITIQUE OF THE WORK OF JOSEPH MARECHAL (LONERGAN, BERNARD)

JEANNETTE L MARTIN, Marquette University

Abstract

The task of mystical theology, as presented in this dissertation, is ultimately to lay the foundations for fostering the emergence of a more differentiated theology of mysticism as foundational to the whole of theology and religious practice. Such a differentiated theology of mysticism is grounded in self-transcending and self-authenticating persons whose Spirit-filled hearts of flesh transvalue all other values and ground the transformation of their conscious intentionality. As Bernard Lonergan has shown, such transformation is normative for all genuine human activity. The first three chapters present Joseph Marechal's study of the psychology of the mystics and offer a critique of his cognitional theory as it relates to his understanding of mysticism. Initially, presentation is made of Marechal's orientation to the study of mystical psychology in the empirical sciences. It is shown that the mystical experience, as a grace-filled experience, does not provide adequate data for the empirical sciences or a metaphysical analysis. Development of the cognitive, ontological categories of Marechal's analysis shows how they provide for him the conditions for the possibility of a mystical experience and mystical knowledge. In his analysis of the dynamism of the intellect, Marechal speaks of an intuitive element through which he maintains that metaphysics opens upon theology, the queen of all sciences. The inchoate intuition of his cognitive analysis is grounded in his interpretation of a more general faculty psychology. Its developmental process in the psychospiritual life of the mystic culminates in the intellectual intuition of the mystic's experience of ecstasy. It is in this intellectual intuition that the discursive and intuitive modes of knowledge reach their synthesis. In the fourth chapter this writer presupposes a knowledge of Bernard Lonergan's writings and draws upon his generalized empirical method and intentionality analysis of the subject as context for an on-going critique and corrective to Marechal's ontological categories. In conclusion, it is the impassioned subject who best exemplifies the mystical subject of Joseph Marechal's study of the psychology of the mystics and Bernard Lonergan's self-transcending and self-authenticating subject.

Recommended Citation

 

MARTIN, JEANNETTE L, "MYSTICISM AND COGNITIONAL THEORY: A PRESENTATION AND CRITIQUE OF THE WORK OF JOSEPH MARECHAL

--

[Doug Mounce]

Thanks Hugh, this has been helpful for me. No problem with further discussion about "participation" describing what we might be born with, or what others might call innate.  I guess my interest with what everyone means by "immaterial" is premature in the sense of choosing between Plato or Aristotle.  The reference below to the related term "incorporeal" returns us to Rahner's development in reference to phantasm as he asks, "Can the intellect actually know anything through the intelligible species which it possesses, without turning to the phantasm?" [Title of the Article, p18].  I don't recall that Lonergan wrote much in Verbum about knowing God by negation, but the next section in Rahner has something to say about the extent to which experience of the world can be the foundation for a metaphysical knowledge that reaches further than the world.  I'm quite a ways from pages 156!

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/lonergan_l/45db39c9-47a0-4efd-acc8-303469aefa64%40nbnet.nb.ca.

[Hugh Williams]

Doug et al,

Because of John's 'unearthing' of the letter to Gerard Smith from the Appendix III of Lonergan's "The Triune God: Systematics",

I've been drawn towards a momentary digression from Rahner into Lonergan's dense discussion of 'relations' amounting to over twenty pages in English. I find it dense and difficult going.

Lonergan introduces his discussion his way -

"The theological doctrine of the real relations in God is so clear and certain that all its essential elements can be understood without understanding a more subtle investigation into the general theory of relations. But over and above the essentials, further questions almost spontaneously, it seems, tend to arise, which, unless they are dealt with, leave the inquiring mind uneasy and unsettled. For this reason we feel that it would not be otiose to add some further discussions concerning the analysis, the reality, and the divisions of relations."(p.687)

One way I read Lonergan above is as a clear expression of the troublesome nature of this question of relations for him. In his letter to Smith, we have Lonergan's expressed preference for cognitional-intentionality analysis over metaphysical critique for any treatment of this question of 'relations'. I suspect, as is the case in much of Lonergan's work, that this preference in approach is very much what is at play in his dense and even obscure discussion of 'relations' where in his letter he speaks of relation as based upon our 'mode of understanding'.

I'm quite sure Smith's approach would hold metaphysical critique to be a much more fundamental discourse in this matter of 'relations'.

The deeper issue here, I also suspect, is that these two Jesuits came to very different understandings as to what metaphysics is and/or should be about.

Kenneth Schmitz in his "The Texture of Being" in the first few chapters gives us a refreshed and strikingly updated vision of metaphysics (and of 'relation') that is far from otiose ...

Hugh

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/lonergan_l/CALaFOMsra%2B69ueT-eGhWkn7G%2BkYBMZVEWRmuEjrZcQT35OqYtQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Hugh Williams]

Doug et al,

There are times I'm unsure whether I'm 'winding up or winding down' on this matter of (rightly called) 'plaguing difficulty' ...

I believe I’m coming closer to being able to express in the spirit of reconciliation on what I’ve called Lonergan’s primary concern for the subject in intentionality analysis (epistemology) and Gilson’s primary concern for the object in metaphysical critique.

For example, Lonergan is known to say things like ‘objectivity is simply the consequence of authentic subjectivity’ (MiT, p.265) which I’m prone to misunderstand because of my limitations in grasping the fuller context of Lonergan’s meaning.

Nevertheless, I do believe there is a much deeper philosophical issue here than just that of me misapprehending such a claim’s local context, and this is why at times I’ve felt compelled to counter with something like - ‘subjectivity is best understood as the consequence of authentic objectivity’.

I think we also see in Rahner something of the depths of this issue for the Thomistic philosophical tradition in his section on ‘The Foundation’ especially at pp.75-76, fn.15, where he refers to an interlocutor of sorts who takes issue with Rahner’s efforts to establish an understanding of being as ‘being-present-to self’ where being and knowing are to be intimately linked so much so that Rahner seems to want to say that ‘knowing as the essential subjectivity of being is somehow in effect the ‘essence of an existent, of its being and its action’.

His interlocutor disagrees contending that this primacy for subjectivity is not to be established (in any proper reading of Thomas), and instead this subjectivity follows from the existent’s ‘being and action’. I’m assuming that his interlocutor in this contention against Rahner is perhaps under the influence of Gilson.   

The question of relation, especially when clearly connected to the question of knowledge, and especially the knowledge of being, brings this question of objectivity and subjectivity and their important interrelationship home to us again. And though I’ve found Lonergan’s turn to the subject prone to subjectivism, I’m perhaps beginning to see and appreciate what he was up to in his extensive epistemological project …

And it has to do with this extraordinary complexity of relations in our modern times, i.e., our relational context has become extraordinarily complex and even overwhelming in so many ways.

K. Schmitz, for me, has clarified the philosophical issue of relation and knowledge by speaking of knowledge in terms of the analogy of ‘friendship’ where he says ‘that knowledge is obtained and completed only if it proceeds not on the desire to control the thing known but by a sort of friendship as benevolence concerned with the integrity of the thing within this new relationship. There is a wishing the other well and the providing the appropriate context where the other can be just as it is. This is the context of the comprehensive situation, for truth demands of knowing that it be a disclosure of the thing known in its being just as it is.’ (The Texture of Being, p.83)

And there is more to it in that in judgment in our use of the copula, especially in our own times of this modern relational/social complexity, our meaning intended by ‘thing’ must be broadened and lightened of a restrictive sense of solidity. This means that the thing in which the judgment terminates need not be static or complete – indeed, sometimes the thing being judged comes about because of the judgment … in and through the very judgment being made about it. Such a judgment does not terminate in an already finished thing. It can disclose the emergence of the thing and the thing’s dependence on the judgment itself. This is especially true of practical judgments, which often emerge with our purposes such as in the case of friendship. Thus, the analogy of friendship and knowledge, in my view, indicates the proper proportionality of an inter-subjectivity, … of what some phenomenologists have termed the ‘between’.

So when Gerard Smith in somewhat classical metaphysical terms treats with some difficulty of ‘The Transcendentals As Relations’ in his ‘The Philosophy of Being’ (pp.276-300), and he struggles to affirm the knowledge of real being as the prolongation into intentional esse of what anything in physical esse is; we’d now propose, as least tentatively, that as well there are instances in relation, such as in real friendship, where intentional esse (our acts of understanding in knowledge) can be viewed as an actual prolongation into physical esse, i.e., in the sense of an actual enhancement of this relational being of the ‘between’ among actual subjects.

Clearly (at the moment, I'm thinking ...) much more needs saying on this …

Hugh

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/lonergan_l/a3ced7c7-be0a-4234-a82d-6a446729c4ad%40nbnet.nb.ca.

[PIERRE WHALON]

Hugh,

In a famous statement, Thomas Aquinas postulated that “God is Being through essence, and all others by participation.” (Summa Theologica I.q4.ar3.ad3) It was the Platonic touch on an Aristotelian foundation. The creation has being only through a share of the divine Ens. Lonergan, Gilson, and Rahner all had different ways of understanding that. Rahner in particular was much more influenced by Heidegger’s concept of Being than the other two. On my reading Gilson was concerned about objectivity in light of Aquinas’ cross-fertilization, whereas Lonergan thought that Being was the object of human understanding, of the knowing subject. They are related perspectives, but also quite different.

Pierre

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/lonergan_l/d9b48ad1-3450-4d64-becd-010d0c64c3df%40nbnet.nb.ca.

[Hugh Williams]

Pierre et al,

My translation says "...God is essential being, whereas other things are beings by participation."

... and yes there is the effect of Greek philosophy in Thomas' thought, but there is a sign of significant difference

because of the Christian influence on his thinking 

highlighted by Gilson and many others which in very technical terms is recognized in the very different way of understanding the relation 'of passive potential to its esse.'

Thomas is said to have avoided saying essence somehow has of itself a potency to esse. 

Instead his preferred expression is always said to be that essence does not of itself have esse, for essence always is in esse, 

either its own ... or that of its cause. (See Gerard Smith, The Philosophy of Being, pp.272-273)

... and if after Rahner and Lonergan we as moderns with our own influences are most concerned with being as essence in intentional esse, 

then that intentional esse is also to be understood as caused fundamentally as the effect of the operation of a caused intellect.

This I think is what Rahner's 'debate' with C. Nink over one's point of departure in metaphysics is about ( see fn. 15 pp.75-76 in SiW) . 

It is a substantial issue of disagreement it seems to me

and I find myself speculating on to what extent this disagreement may have contributed to the rejection of Rahner's dissertation by his (scholastic) director Martin Honecker.

Hugh

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/lonergan_l/23E08418-A150-4601-8BED-6B898739C379%40aol.com.

[PIERRE WHALON]

Hi Hugh, et al.,

I recommend this essay on the question:

Pierre

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/lonergan_l/8af6df76-f47e-4de1-8703-729fdcb25f1c%40nbnet.nb.ca.

[Hugh Williams]

Pierre,

thanks so much for taking the time to share this ...

I'll take the time to read and ponder this article (turtle paced) over the next few weeks.

thanks again

and hope all is well in France ...

Hugh

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/lonergan_l/A1BD4958-2756-4384-B815-E8F4ACD7E1E3%40aol.com.