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

 

Subject:	Re: [lonergan_l] on praxis
Date:	Tue, 2 Sep 2025 22:28:14 +0000 (UTC)
From:	'David Bibby' via Lonergan_L <loner...@googlegroups.com>
Reply-To:	loner...@googlegroups.com
To:	loner...@googlegroups.com <loner...@googlegroups.com>

 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]

Dear Hugh.

Thanks for your interest, and for pursuing this rich line of questioning.

There is certainly a resonance here between Marx and Lonergan, though with a difference of emphasis. For Marx, praxis is the unity of theory and practise, "the free activity through which we create and change our historical world and ourselves." Individuals do not first change and then go on to change history; rather, in the act of transforming oppressive social structures, they themselves are transformed. Praxis, then, has an inbuilt social dimension: it is the collective activity of a class or a people struggling for liberation, not just private effort.

For Lonergan, the sequence runs the other way. Authentic change begins with the subject – intellectual, moral, and religious conversion. In ψ_language, we might put it this way:

• 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.

So while ψ_transformation may appear at first more personal than praxis, it already points to its communal completion.

There is, then, a dialectical interdependence. From the Marxist side: praxis insists that unless social structures change, individuals cannot become truly free or authentic. (Circumstances shape consciousness.) From the Lonerganian side: unless individuals undergo conversion, social praxis will relapse into bias, ideology, and shortsighted practicality. (Consciousness shapes circumstances.) Each side is incomplete without the other.

To your specific question about revoluntionary praxis and the "coincidence of changing historical circumstances and human activity": for Marx, the "coincidence" is the revolutionary act itself – the oppressed transform the structures that oppress them, and thereby become transformed in the process. For Lonergan, something similar holds, but the coincidence must be deepened. Transformation of circumstances is only authentic when it arises from the transformation of the subject. Otherwise, it risks reproducing decline in new forms. In ψ_terms: the coincidence is between ψ_transformation (conversion of the subject) + ψ_terminology (shared language for communal mediation) + ψ_integration (communal praxis and its safeguards).

Practically, this means: begin with personal authenticity (intellectual, moral, religious conversion); translate it into communal praxis (collaboration, social action); and safeguard the cycle (institutions, education, culture) against bias and relapse. 

I hope this helps to clarify the complementarity you are pointing towards.

Kind regards,

David

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[Doug Mounce]

I would expect at some point to see reference to Hegel as Morelli built his career on Lonergan's illustration of Hegel as a half-way house to his critical realism.

https://lonerganresource.com/media/pdf/contributors/Mark%20Morelli,%20Meeting%20Hegel%20Halfway.pdf

"Marx was right in feeling that the Hegelian dialectic needed to be adjusted,
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"

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.

"Elsewhere, at CWL3:
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, below you write "Elsewhere, at  CWL 3.§ I could not find the  text ending "opposition superceded" on p. 398. John

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[Doug Mounce]

Hi John,

You can find those words in the pdf from the link - the first quote is from Lonergan and the second is Morelli who only references CWL 3.§ as where Lonergan "alludes" to the toppling of Hegel.  Let me know if you can't open the link and I'll send you Morelli's paper. 

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[Pierre Whalon]

If memory serves, L read Hegel before Aquinas. 

Pierre

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