further discussion and dialectic on personal authenticity and communal praxis
Hugh Williams
David et al,
This note and line of discussion with you below seems to me to be particularly on point for some possible further Lonergan-list discussion … perhaps over the fall and winter ???
John is intrigued, as I am, about this ψ_ transformation function you introduce …
I believe trying to clarify the similarities and differences between the notion of (authentic) praxis that can be introduced from the Marxist side and your ‘ψ_ transformation’ could be quite rich.
There have been several references to Lonergan’s treatment in Insight of ‘common sense and science’(Insight-pp.196-269). This could serve as a substantial textual basis for any further discussion.
I’m sensing that the notion of ‘praxis’ may have a stronger social dimension than the ‘ψ_ transformation’ function which seems to me to emphasize, at least in the first instance, the individual subjective dimension of consciousness. You do say that personal authenticity and communal praxis belong together, each dependent on the other for their full realization.
Perhaps this is one way to articulate the dialectical issue – just how is this ‘together’ and ‘interdependence’ to be understood in the Lonerganian and Marxist traditions and then how is it to be actually realized/implemented? From the Marxist side what then is this ‘coincidence of changing historical circumstances and human activity’ that is said to effect personal change associated with what is called revolutionary praxis?
Hugh
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Subject: |
Re: [lonergan_l] on praxis |
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Date: |
Tue, 2 Sep 2025 22:28:14 +0000 (UTC) |
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From: |
'David Bibby' via Lonergan_L <loner...@googlegroups.com> |
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Reply-To: |
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To: |
Dear Hugh,
I appreciate your way of naming the move “from personal authenticity to collective-communal authenticity.” In Lonergan’s terms, I’d nuance it slightly: the communal never displaces the personal but is always grounded in it. Authentic community arises only through the authenticity of its subjects; in ψ_language, ψ_subject grounds ψ_community.
On the Marxist side, your emphasis on praxis is indeed crucial, but here Lonergan’s cautions are worth recalling. In Insight, in the section on Culture and Reversal (2008, pp. 261–263), he notes that “the dramatic subject, as practical, originates and develops capital and technology, the economy and the state. By his intelligence he progresses, and by his bias he declines.” The root danger is not simply external structures but practicality itself:
“To justify its existence, it had to become more and more practical, more and more a factor within the technological, economic, political process, more and more a tool that served palpably useful ends.… Clearly, by becoming practical, culture renounces its one essential function, and by that renunciation condemns practicality to ruin.”
So while Marx looked forward to a classless society, the deeper challenge is that practical intelligence is not going away. To complement the “revolutionary praxis,” we must also counteract the “short-term practicality” of common sense. This is where the ψ_framework offers a mediation:
- ψ_transformation (breakthrough): the personal act of insight/conversion that grounds authentic praxis.
- ψ_terminology (envelopment): the mediation through common language that allows conversion to extend communally.
- ψ_integration (confinement): the safeguard that keeps both personal and communal praxis from falling back into bias or short-term practicality.
In this way, the ψ_framework helps us see how personal authenticity and communal praxis belong together, each dependent on the other for their full realization.
Best wishes,
David
On Tuesday 2 September 2025 at 17:27:53 BST, Hugh Williams <hwil...@nbnet.nb.ca> wrote:
David et al,
As we explore this crucial move in Lonergan's thought and in the AIRR(2023) text from personal authenticity to collective-communal authenticity, I would like to add that ...
I believe the notion of praxis is key, at least from the Marxist side, for moving towards the higher viewpoint Lonergan hoped for, and that also would constitute the desired synthesis for the liberal-marxist dialectic. Praxis in the Marxist tradition, as I understand it, is the free activity through which we create and change our historical world and ourselves. It is an activity believed to be unique to us and it is given primacy over theory because theoretical contradictions are often considered only to be resolvable through practical activity and through revolutionary activity in particular (after which theory may come to give some account ...).
There is this coincidence of changing historical circumstances and human activity as personal change that in Marxism is conceived and understood as revolutionary practice. Even the mysteries of religion that might lead theory and theoreticians towards mysticism are said to find their rational resolution in this human praxis and in the comprehension of (and reflection upon) this praxis.
Liberal philosophers have tended to interpret the world; the crucial point now is to change it. Society cannot be changed by reformers who simply understand and elucidate its needs but only by the revolutionary praxis of the people whose interest coincides with that of society as a whole (i.e. the proletariat). This (or any of these acts) will be an act of society understanding itself, in which the subject changes the object (society) by the very act of understanding.
Hugh
David Bibby
- ψ_transformation = the breakthrough of conversion.
- ψ_terminology = the envelopment that allows personal conversion to become communal mediation.
- ψ_integration = the confinement that sustains community against relapse into bias.
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Doug Mounce
but he was content to turn it upside down. What it needed, I should say, was
to be turned inside out. Instead of endeavoring to insert movement within
logic, the relatively static operations of logic had to be inserted within the
ever-‐ongoing context of methodical operations.7"
eds. Robert C. Croken and Robert M. Doran [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004], p. 36
[Hereafter CWL17]. What Marx actually said, in Kapital, was that Hegel’s idealism left his dialectic
standing on its head, and that it must be turned right side up again if we are to discover the rational
kernel in the mystical shell.
398, Lonergan alludes to the “toppling” of Hegelianism into the left-‐wing factualness of Marx and the
right-‐wing factualness of Kierkegaard. For every dispute about Hegel, it seems, if one can find textual
evidence for one reading, one can also find textual evidence for its opposite. Some say he's really this,
and others say he's really that. But, it seems that he's always really both. This, I have argued in this
essay, is a function of his halfwayness, rooted in excessively determinate negation of the Order of
Logic. He negates the staticity, emptiness, and isolation of the categories by Understanding's logic of
abstract identity, but he doesn't negate the conceptual field itself. He doesn't peel the obscuring
dynamic field of conceptual content off of the field of operations and set it aside. Accordingly, he has
no choice but to locate the source of dynamism in the conceptual field through which the operational
field is indeed discerned, but only darkly. From this move, I believe, the intractable controversies
naturally follow. Lonergan, on the other hand, performs a thoroughgoing "conceptual negation." He
negates the staticity, emptiness, and isolation of categories, and then peels off the conceptual field
with its punctuated dynamics, sets it aside, and locates the source of dynamism in the fluid dynamics
of the operational field. With this move, I believe, the tension of Hegel’s speculative propositions can
be relieved and the interpretative opposition superseded."
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John Raymaker
Doug Mounce
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Pierre Whalon
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Hugh Williams
Doug, John et al,
I've been holding this extraordinary post (response) from Doug below close at hand for a while.
But not having these Lonergan texts any where near at hand, I'd first ask for clarification on who said what below.
Is it correct to assume that this is Morelli on Lonergan (on Hegel)?
... that being said, this could be a theme for some discussion over the 'winter' and beyond.
I've been challenging 'the list' because of my reading of John's and Pierre's recent AIRR text
to consider a renewal or reconsideration of the 'christian- marxist' dialogue.
David Bibby (see way below) responded briefly though substantively.
And then we 'paused' perhaps for an assortment of reasons.
With this September post of Doug's below, and without trying to unpack it here, the centrality of the Hegelian-Marxist philosophical tradition to
any meaningful christian-socialist dialogue must again be duly noted.
... my own work of late also bids me to take special note of two phrases Doug relays below -
this desire to 'discover the rational kernel in the mystical shell'
(Doug - is this Morelli on Hegel?) and then there is the claim that
Lonergan 'locates the source of dynamism in the fluid dynamics of the operational field'
thereby relieving the tensions and superseding the oppositions in Hegel ...
... perhaps Doug (or anyone listening in) might say more on what he/she thinks is at stake in these claims, especially for any christian-(hegelian)marxist dialogue ...
or lets be more precise for the sake of this 'list-serve'... for any engagement between Lonergan and the Hegelian-Marxist tradition of thought.
AIRR's, for me at least, 'troubled' treatment of the so-called labor theory of value got me thinking about all of this ...
and yes this was to set 'sail' upon a vast ocean of thought and thinking ...
but perhaps this list or some on this list might be able to help with navigation/orientation ???
Doug, at least, gives us a beginning by saying or pointing out that there have been important Lonerganians who tried to navigate these vast 'waters'
with Lonergan ...
Hugh
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Doug Mounce
problem, we must also grant him this unusual conception of the
"real." What Hegel wanted was a reality made up of essences
both concrete and yet knowable through concepts. If the "abstract"
is the non-contradictory, then the "concrete" can be
nothing else than the contradictory. And here again philosophy
recapitulates history of philosophy. For, if philosophy began with
Parmenides, it continued with Heraclitus. And they have both
been right, for they have been two contradictory moments of the
same dialectical becoming."
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Hugh Williams
Doug,
see below at 'HW'
Hugh
Thank you for asking Hugh, the first quote is from Lonergan and contains his oft-quoted overall opinion that Marx failed to turn Hegel "inside out". The second quote contains Morelli's central thesis that Hegel is a "halfway house" for Lonergan.
Of course, I prefer my recent essay on what Gilson has to say about Hegel, but I don't think I used the phrase, "rational kernel in the mystical shell".
HW: you have below written this passage -
"7 Philosophical and Theological Papers 1965-‐1980, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, Vol. 17,
eds. Robert C. Croken and Robert M. Doran [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004], p. 36
[Hereafter CWL17]. What Marx actually said, in Kapital, was that Hegel’s idealism left his dialectic
standing on its head, and that it must be turned right side up again if we are to discover the rational
kernel in the mystical shell."
I'm not attributing this phrase to you ... it is just that I wanted to clarify who it was from ... and now
I realize it is from Lonergan ....
good stuff !!!
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Doug Mounce
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Hugh Williams
Doug et al,
Your email below from Sept 10 deserves more careful comment.
(... which I only dare offer because we worked through certain substantial
sections of Rahner together ... so this perhaps can be seen as a preparation for Hegel,
in the sense that Rahner definitely can be read as trying to reconcile the best of the medievals, as in Thomas Aquinas,
with the moderns, all under the influence more or less of Hegel)
And if I misinterpret you here, please correct me ...
you expect (even anticipate) Hegel to enter our conversations.
And so you offer an abbreviated perspective on Lonergan (and Morelli) on Hegel.
'According to Lonergan, Hegelian dialectic needs to be turned inside out -
we are not so much to give logic a dynamism as to insert
logic into our human methodological operations.
For Marx, as Lonergan (Morelli) sees it, Hegel's idealism left his dialectic upside down.
Instead, the dialectic has to be turned right side up so as to properly discover reason and rationality at work.
Hegel locates the source of dynamism in the conceptual field through which the human operational field is darkly discerned.
This leads to intractable intellectual controversies. Lonergan, in contrast, performs a conceptual negation and instead locates
the source of dynamism in the fluid dynamics of the human operational field.'
Commentary:
My question/concern would be this - is there a (onesided) personalist-voluntarism in this characterization of Lonergan, that would be highly suspect
for the Hegelian-Marxist ? And I believe David Bibby's email from Sept 10 below also shows this similar tendency to give priority to personal conversion
over structural changes in any effective praxis that might help us move from personal to communal authenticity. Again, I believe Hegel-Marx would see a onesidedness in our philosophy
that is yet to be overcome ...
Hugh
Charles Tackney
Charles Tackney
Doug Mounce
philosophy possible? In other words, while contemporary
existentialism seemingly carries Kirkegaard's own message, does
it not actually betray it? The only thing a true existentialist
should do is to become silent, in order the better to be, for, indeed,
one ceases to be as soon as one begins talking about it.
not only at Hegel, but at professors of philosophy in general.
The universe which they teach is not the one whence they draw
salaries for teaching it. Old Socrates had no philosophy, he was
it, but the professors are not their own philosophies, they just
are comical, two-in-one, twofold beings: "On the one hand, an
eery being that lives in the realm of pure abstraction, and, on the
other, the sometimes sad figure of a professor, who is set aside
by that abstract being, as one puts a walking stick in a corner."[ref obscured]
Yet, and this is perhaps the main point in Kirkegaard's own argumentation,
they themselves have no right to do so, because,
willy-nilly, these thinkers do themselves exist. However abstract
his own thinking may be, the abstract thinker actually is. Hegel
himself must have felt it, or else he would not have raised so
vigorous a protest against abstract philosophical thinking. Yet,
Hegel's own "concreteness" still remains pure abstraction. The
German philosopher had seen a decisive token of the metaphysical
genius which permeated his mother tongue in the fact that the
same German verb aufhehen (to sublate) indifferently means
"to suppress" or "to preserve." And this indeed had done wonders
in Hegel's own philosophy, in which contradictories could always
be both suppressed and saved by merely "sublating" them. But
this in no way solves our own problem, nor that of Hegel. Abstract
contradiction is none the less abstract for having been
"sublated." If you turn actual existence into a problem of logic,
you certainly will logicize existence, but you will not existentialize
logic. What you will then have will be, precisely, logic such as
Hegel himself understood it, namely, a perpetual overcoming of
abstract contradictions. And indeed nothing is easier to achieve.
In the order of pure abstraction, everything is given together, and
there is no reason why one should choose. No room is left, there,
for any "either-or," precisely because, there, nothing exists.
In short, abstraction itself drives out actual contradiction. Thus,
Hegel overcame contradiction so easily because there is no contradiction
at all in the order of abstraction.[ref obscured] Existence and existence
alone is a necessary prerequisite for actual contradiction.
that Kirkegaard himself could not be expected to bequeath to
his successors what we would call a philosophy, but his message
was to remain for philosophy as a thorn in the flesh . "It is true
of existence as it is true of motion: they are very difficult to deal
with. If I think them, I abolish them, so that I don't think them.
It then might seem correct to say that there is something that
does not bear being thought, and this is existence. But, then, the
difficulty remains, that, since he who thinks also exists, existence
is permitted as soon as thinking itself is.""
(Paris, Gallimard, 1941)
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Doug Mounce
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Hugh Williams
Doug et al,
How could we not be led, more or less, to Hegel in all of this …
(I suspect most on this list would be more comfortable dealing with Hegel than Marx …)
You well know that I’ve been formed in Gilson, at least in my approach to the metaphysics of being. But I have to confess that our ‘work’ on Rahner challenged me greatly and I expect it is because of the influence of Hegel in Rahner’s background especially as he tries to establish his ‘foundations’ for ‘knowing and being’.
There is persisting in post-Kantian philosophy, at least in the German variety, this effort in various accounts to move from being as subject to being as other in the sense of a relevant object and non-subject. And yet there is this challenge to provide an account that avoids one principle or pole of this subject-object difference being subordinate to the other.
This is the struggle for ‘unity in duality’ and this is where Hegel in the history of philosophy looms very large, and is inescapably in the background of most modern philosophers consciously or not. Hegel has provided philosophy with an immense account, a comprehensive system, that arguably has come closest to meeting this challenge. Rahner, in my view, at least in Spirit in the World, is greatly under this influence as he tries to make his mark in catholic thought by reconciling the best of the medievals, as in Thomas, with this modern problematic.
So, it seems to me …
Hugh
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Hugh Williams
Doug et al,
on my being 'formed in Gilson's metaphysics'.
Five years ago I was getting a distinct sense of Gilson's strengths
as a Christian thinker, and of his limitations.
(see attached very short recycled paper/reflection ...)
This in part was because of the influence of Phil McShane
where Lonergan's needed advances were becoming very apparent to me.
But also one can (at least, after 'Rahner', I can now) feel the presence of Hegel and the modern problematic
(let's name it for our purposes here as 'our responsibility for the future')
very much in the background ...
Hugh
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Charles Tackney
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John Raymaker
Here are a few examples of ways in which I’ve used AI (ChatGPT) recently:
· A family member was experiencing an oddly confusing combination of physical symptoms. I asked ChatGPT what condition could present with those conditions—it came up with the same diagnosis as a doctor did a few days later.
· I’m the facilitator of a local writers group. I asked ChatGPT for some writing prompts to use during our meetings. They were all terrible.
· I was writing an article about the effects of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake on libraries in the San Francisco Bay Area. I asked ChatGPT to summarize the resulting damage to Bay Area libraries—in two seconds, it gave me an accurate accounting for each library. That would have taken me many, many hours of research to compile.
· I wanted to know the best way to clean and care for a cast iron skillet. ChatGPT immediately gave me advice.
· I frequently write letters to a family member in Italy who knows no English. My Italian is a bit rusty, so I ask ChatGPT to translate what I want to say into Italian. Because I can read Italian, I’m able to confirm that the translation is accurate. It usually is. (I’m not sure I’d trust it entirely with an unfamiliar language, but I might give it a try.)
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Doug Mounce
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