conversion to the phantasm

[Doug Mounce]

Here's a bit in the beginning of Chapter Four from Spirit in the World that is pretty-much how I think about phantasm.  I might have different ideas about conversion, sense knowledge, and presence to one's self, but much more thinking is needed before I can essay about what I think this means!!

"The phantasm cannot be considered a "thing." It is the keyword
designating sense knowledge as such. When, therefore,
it is asserted in the proposition about the conversion to the
phantasm that human intellectual knowledge takes place essentially
in a turning to the phantasm, this says that intellectual
knowledge is possible only with a simultaneous realization of
sense knowledge.

. . .

"Hence conversion to the phantasm does not mean intellectual
knowledge "accompanied by phantasms" (which after all are
not things, but a content of the one, human consciousness to
which thought also belongs) , but is the term designating the
fact that sense intuition and intellectual thought are united in
the one human knowledge. It is for this reason that in the preceding
sections the conversion did nqt show itself to be a
process following the complete return ( and hence the abstraction),
but an essential moment in it. Being-present-to-oneself
and abstraction are intrinsically and essentially a knowing-something-
of-another, and therefore are already themselves a conversion
to the phantasm."

~/

https://staff.washington.edu/mounce/

[jaraymaker]

Reading the below leads me to think that Rahner is closer to the Kantian position from which Lonergan distanced himself by focusing on the process of coming to insights. Like Kant and Husserl, Rahner focuses on intuition,

 

John

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[Hugh Williams]

On the contrary ...

I see Rahner as very close, even closer than Lonergan, to

the position of Thomas (at least as Gilson was reading him) on knowledge and its origins,

Kant really has little or nothing to do with it other than being somewhat of an obstacle in one's various efforts of trying to

communicate what actually is going on in this discussion/debate to the many moderns remaining under the thrall of his critique

 ...

and so to reiterate my own recollections as to where we left off almost a year ago

I've attached my last relatively brief exposition, prior to considering Rahner, on the whole topic while summarizing the problematic and its suggested consequences below -

Lonergan at one point in his corpus asks - ‘what is at stake in all of this?’ And he says it is an issue of fact – does our intellectual knowledge include a direct apprehension or intuition of actual existence or not?

If it does, a judgment of existence is a recognition of what we already know. Thus, it is not through true judgment that we reach a knowledge of existence, but through our knowledge of existence that we reach true judgment.

And in Lonergan’s account, we first reach the unconditioned and secondly we make a true judgment of existence, and thirdly, only in and through true judgment do we come to know actual and concrete existence. It is only through the actuality of truth that we know the actuality of being. And truth is reached not by intuiting actual, concrete existence, but by a reflective grasp of the unconditioned.

This is the issue for Lonergan, and here he says it is a momentous issue with consequences for one’s whole philosophical attitude, and it is a decisive issue in the judgment of Lonergan’s text Insight.

However, Lonergan then says something quite noteworthy, that attention to the (philosophical) consequences can obscure the stark simplicity of the issue – What are the facts? Is there or is there not a human intellectual intuition of concrete actual existence (esse)?

Hugh

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[jaraymaker]

Hi all,

 

Discussion on intuition among major thinkers of the last two or three centuries can be inferred, e. .g by this reference to Schleiermacher (taken from Method, Journal of Lonergan Studies, vol. 16, no. 1, p. 37 ff.):

 

"True science is complete intuition" (quoted from Crouter's Introduction , 1799:61,-62, in which Crouter makes the realignment clearer by substituting 'intuition" for Oman's 'vision' as the English rendering of Anschauung; see 1799:62, n. 99, and 1821:39.

 

As to our present discussion, I will leave it to others to assess Gilson and Rahner on this topic. But I do call your attention to Insight, CWL 3 beginning on p. 362 "Contrast with Kantian Analysis".  The editors of the CWL 3 version call attention in note "g" on p. 365. That note g (see  p, 796) quotes Lonergan who,states, in part, that "the reflective process of checking, of verifying.... is far more complicated and far more versatile than Kantian analysis.... Indeed, as we have shown at length, there is a single formula that covers the immediate ground of all our judgments" (he refers to the vitually unconditioned.)" He then notes that "The Kantian analytic is "seriously incomplete." The problem is that "each judgment rests on an infinite regress of prosyllogisms." It also involves in utter ruin the Kantian dialectic (including "a transcendental illusion")....It has a purely regulative function in our knowing. On our showing, the unconditdioned is prior and constitutive: to affirm a fact is to affirm an unconditioned."   

 

John

sections the conversion did not show itself to be a

process following the complete return ( and hence the abstraction),
but an essential moment in it. Being-present-to-oneself
and abstraction are intrinsically and essentially a knowing-something-
of-another, and therefore are already themselves a conversion
to the phantasm."

~/

https://staff.washington.edu/mounce/

 

--

[Doug Mounce]

I think the most important feature that Lonergan and Rahner share is something like a foundational interest in what Thomas means by intelligence.  In that regard, I believe both are reacting to the Cajetan tradition, but how they interpret Thomas is still more important than how they distance themselves from Kant when investigating the phantasm.

Patrick J. Burke, for example, says that Rahner took as his basis Summa Theologiae I, q. 84, a. 7, maintaining that this article reveals the basic structure of St. Thomas' epistemology.  The foundation of knowing is to be understood as intuition, Rahner says, but man in the world has no intellectual intuition. Man's only intuition is sensible intuition, and such sensible intuition is not capable of objectifying knowledge (Spirit in the World, Sheed and Ward, 1968, p. 38).

One of the interesting differences might be the relation of insight to intuition where, for Lonergan, insight would require intelligence at the second level but necessarily reflects on experience.   Insight is a kind (act) of understanding, but can it also be a kind (act) of experience?  I don't know enough about what Rahner says regarding intellectual intuition, but it may overlap with insight.

PS - all the references I've read thus far tend to put Lonergan and Rahner together when Gilson is in the mix. 

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[Hugh Williams]

Doug et al,

If we were to seriously pursue (turtle paced) this line of inquiry here

which as Rahner says is 'a confrontation with the core of the Thomistic metaphysics of knowledge',

I'd like the permission or blessing from John and the List-serve-group.

Rahner's 'Spirit in the World', in my view, is one of those very rare texts (much like Insight) that is responsible for certain epochal changes

in thinking, at least in Catholic circles and perhaps beyond, and it carries this out by way of a deep, intensive, and constructively critical reading of 

of certain key passages from Thomas Aquinas' Summa.

On the basis of my own reading so far, I'm very reluctant or very hesitant to endorse the view that Rahner holds that 'intuition cannot provide objective knowledge'

or that man in the world has 'no intellectual intuition'. 

(I would suggest that in human knowledge there is both what we might with some difficulty call sensible and intellectual intuition, the challenge is to adequately give account for this ...)

At this stage I'm working (hovering over) slowly through pp.156-158 and there Rahner provides a sort of 'summing up' in preparation for an intensive treatment of esse, 

... here I'm tentatively seeing textual evidence for this cautionary posture on my part.

His treatment of 'intuition' and 'abstraction' give me great pause in speaking of human intelligence and intellect ...

I guess, again, I'm proposing a (turtle-paced) reading of Rahner's 'Spirit in the World', or at least certain key sections of it,

(much like we did for Verbum ... a very rare and fruitful experience for me)

and for this, on this Lonergan-List Serve, I'd want some feedback that this would be agreeable

for at least a few of us to seriously pursue on a time limited basis through what is likely to be, for at least some of us, a long and difficult winter ...

thanks for stirring things up ...😮

Hugh

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[Hugh Williams]

Doug and John et al,

If a few of us were to read Rahner together here (in a time and text limited manner), I need to begin with an apology and retraction of at least some of what I said below about Kant’s relevance for Rahner. It was too dismissive and at best an overstatement born out of considerable ignorance ...

As Francis Fiorenza writes in the introduction to my own text of ‘Spirit in the World’ (p.xliii) Rahner can be read as wrestling with Kant’s question ‘how is metaphysics possible if all knowledge is necessarily referred to sensible intuition?’ Fiorenza says Rahner’s answer lies in a transcendental understanding of being. Fiorenza tries to gives us, at the end of his introduction, some sense of what this way of understanding is … and I won’t go into it here. But for now, I’d say that this question and the related concern is not at all exclusive to Kant.

Also, John, back on Nov.27, introduced Rahner by telling us that we cannot understand Rahner’s approach to theology without some grasp of this question of being. This for Rahner necessarily means coming to grips with Thomas’ metaphysics of knowledge (as we all well know - no easy task ...) of which the central technical term is esse which is firmly grounded in our bodily experience … in our uniquely ‘human being in the world’.

Now, to repeat here again, my ‘over-reach’, at this point, is in the claim that this approach to theology is relevant to John and Pierre’s work on political-economy (which I understand as deeply related to our bodily existence together for better or worse ….), and this, as some have argued, was Lonergan’s most significant insight though, as John often says, it remains largely unrecognized …

I believe there is an implicit reference, as slight as it may be ..., to this ‘application’ or ‘implementation’ or ‘relevance’ in aspects of both Johannes Metz’s and Francis Fiorenza’s respective introductions for the reader to this outstanding philosophical-theological text and its continuing theoretical and practical relevance for our times …

Hugh

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[jaraymaker]

Hugh,

 

I'm glad to see you reflecting on very complex historical, psychological and metaphysical questions. Rahner published his Geist in Welt in 1957, four years before the opening of the Vatican II Council. Much, much has happened since on practically all fronts of human existence and the many threats humans and the planet are now facing. On p. xxxi, Fiorenza in his introducion writes that the "Kantian problematic at the root of Spirit in the World provides a basis for the evaltuation of criticism of Rahner's philosopy. He also points out the "wholly unacceptable" attitude underlying the Anglo-Saxon reaction to German thought "because of its idealistic position."

 

For serious Catholic and Protestant theologians and philosophers, these issues won't go away; they must be addressed. On this site, we are and have been interested in Lonergan's own approach to such complexities. NOT an easy task, which is, I suppose, one of the reasons that that demanding task is just "too demanding" for a forum such as ours! To repeat, I'm glad that at least our site has not altogether given up in addressing complexities haunting modernity and threatening the world.  All too many young people in the West respond by turning to drugs. This is quite a generalization on my part, but said issues cannot be ignored in what can  be called the would-be, should-be "ENCOMPASSING"  role of Christian thinkers today. How E: G., African Christian thinkers are responding with their own traditional approach to such complexities that has helped Christianity thrive on that continent is an example worth studying in depth. Genuine spirituality and even a "dose" of mysticism are also needed in the West in adequately addressing such the endeavor to LIVE THE GOOD NEWS of the gospel today. Pope Francis has been phenomenal in his response to our problems,  

 

John       

[Doug Mounce]

Dear All,

My apologies as well for jumping-ahead with general statements about intuition and intellect.  I was quoting Patrick J. Burke from Conceptual Thought in Karl Rahner using his citation from p. 38, Spirit in the World, but it wasn't a direct quote and I haven't verified the context.  The quoted text is:

"There lies at the basis of the Thomistic metaphysics of knowledge, 

as in every metaphysics of knowledge, the view that the act which is 

the primary foundation of ali knowing is to be understood as intuition, as an 

immediate grasping of what is known in its own real and present self." (page 25)

Of course, this suggests some comparison with how Lonergan uses "knowing", and, of course, I notice an assumed self to which the self is present to.  In any case, I believe there is value in studying this relation of soul and body in the way Lonergan says, in MiT, that reflecting on level operations and outcomes is useful (and one Lonergan scholar notes how reflecting on the experience of experience seems necessarily to be different from love reflecting on judgment, judgment on interpretation, and interpretation on experience). 

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

~/

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[Hugh Williams]

John et al,

Am I correct to sense that this, in a way, is your 'blessing' for a few of us to try and seriously consider Rahner's text in a 'turtle paced time limited manner'?

This day, Christmas day, is a 'pivot day' for many of us, that is -  a day upon which the year revolves ...

You say much below -

you reference, rightly, in my view, how such undertakings, as I've been proposing are 'just too demanding for a forum such as ours'.

And yet I have a significant record of what transpired out of the reading and 'virtual seminar' discussions surrounding Lonergan's Verbum ... which in my humble view is nothing less than amazing

for such 'a forum' and largely due to your own generous spirit, and the outstanding scholarship of participants such as Gerard O Reilly, the probing questions of Doug Mounce, the incisive interventions of the List's several 'Davids', and so on  ...

a small but mighty group who over this medium from around the world did in fact on occasion rise to heights in focusing on 'such complexities' for a time of concerted effort ... and I'm sure it did bear fruit for some of us,

albeit fleeting and episodic ... and yet perhaps in some unknown ways did get into a scholarly discourse and record somewhere.

and yet I also agree such 'seminar efforts' come nowhere near to dealing adequately or effectively with 'the many threats we and our planet now face' ...

......

but then you speak quietly of 'genuine spirituality and even a "dose' of mysticism' as also needed in the West in adequately addressing this endeavor to 'live the good news' ...

... for me both Rahner and Lonergan are at the end of my personal Canon ... I find depths in their respective texts that are enough to end my days with ...

and they fit with, what I hold with you, to be the seminal ecclesial event for our time - Vatican II ... and yes much has happened, is happening since, and there are 'these issues' that 'won't go away'

one of them being this 'question of being' and this strange notion of esse that Rahner at pp.156-158 dwells upon arguably in a manner not found in Lonergan ...

and yet both have there 'mystical moments' ... I especially found this in Lonergan in MiT only in footnotes where he references W. Johnston's 'the cloud of unknowing'

where this notion of 'being as esse' is expressed in terms of a very practical spirituality, perhaps relevant for at least some of us in these times ...

Hugh

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[jaraymaker]

Hugh,

 

your retrospective below on the merits of our site are right on, I believe. For one thing, our site has been instrumental in the fashioning of the book Pierre and I just published. Here is what I just discovered at this link referring to an Amazon site description of our book. Here is the link and what it says--(so thanks to participants here): 

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=raymaker+whalon&sca_esv=593550280&source=hp&ei=tD6JZYf_MYLosAeM86u4CA&iflsig=AO6bgOgAAAAAZYlMxEvFKZMiJAnM4g7zscfwUwyZygH4&ved=0ahUKEwiHqcqIl6qDAxUCNOwKHYz5CocQ4dUDCAw&uact=5&oq=raymaker+whalon&gs_lp=Egdnd3Mtd2l6Ig9yYXltYWtlciB3aGFsb24yBRAhGKABMgUQIRigATIFECEYoAFIulJQpRFYy0pwAngAkAEAmAHJAaABqAyqAQYxMC40LjG4AQPIAQD4AQGoAgDCAgsQLhiABBjHARjRA8ICBRAAGIAEwgIFEC4YgATCAgoQABiABBhGGPsBwgIIEC4YgAQY1ALCAg0QLhiABBjHARjRAxgKwgIOEC4YgAQYxwEYrwEYjgXCAgQQABgewgIGEAAYHhgKwgIGEAAYFhgewgIHECEYoAEYCg&sclient=gws-wiz

 

In a major development of the wide-ranging philosophy of Bernard Lonergan, authors John Raymaker and

Pierre Whalon argue for a new economics responsive to the social and environmental crises of the twenty-first century. Extending Lonergan's major innovations in philosophy and linking them to his lifelong work in macroeconomics, Raymaker and Whalon elucidate Lonergan's implicit aim of applying ethics to economic processes. At the heart of their argument lies the necessity of societal economic and environmental "conversion," or "movement from one world of meaning to another," to complement the series of individual conversions Lonergan identified as integral to the processes of cognition in his best-known work, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding.Taking a holistic view of Lonergan's lifework, within which his great philosophical studies Insight and Method in Theology are "sandwiched" between his two volumes on economics, Raymaker and Whalon examine the ways Lonergan's thought exposes the inherent flaws of the dominant economic theories and practices that have guided policies around the globe to the detriment of human flourishing and the destruction of the environment. At the same time, they show how Lonergan's generalized empirical method, in combination with his work on economics, points to an economically sound, socially transformative, and environmentally healing way forward.

John

[Hugh Williams]

John, Doug et al,

This, then, in this lull between Christmas and the New Years, is my effort to articulate a philosophical problematic that just might challenge/inspire at least a few participants to read together (turtle paced) over the next few months a short section from Rahner’s ‘Spirit in the World’. The accompanying  attachment is again, for those interested, a relatively brief expansion on my own treatment of the problematic imperfectly worked out in dialectic with a few others on this site over the past two years or so …

And so here goes - did not Lonergan, like Kant, present a fundamental challenge with his question in his paper to the ACPA in 1958 – ‘Is there or is there not a human intellectual intuition of concrete actual existence?’

Kant put his question to his colleagues in his ‘Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics’ (my gloss) can anyone articulate a single necessary self-evident metaphysical principle? And if no one can then Kant's own project of a critical metaphysics of cognition, well underway, will be vindicated.

Is not Lonergan with his question laying down the philosophical gauntlet in a very similar singular manner?

And if so, does not Rahner, in a way, take up the challenge in his ‘Spirit in the World’ (pp.156-162) where he clarifies esse as the fundamental principle of metaphysics that in effect meets Kant’s challenge, and then, at least, indirectly perhaps also answers Lonergan’s question in the affirmative (though perhaps altering or developing the sense of this notion of ‘intellectual intuition’)?

I do acknowledge that as John pointed out - such undertakings are 'too demanding for a forum such as this' (and certainly for me, too) but this is what great philosophy and its aspirants do, is it not? ... and in this Kant and Rahner (and now Lonergan) are interconnected as Fiorenza clearly stated in his introduction to Rahner's 'Spirit in the World'. ( ... perhaps all we 'lesser lights' can do is attempt on occasion to reach up to the mind of these greats ...)

hoping all is well in and for the New Year ...

Hugh

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[Doug Mounce]

Dear All, Happy MLK Day!

I didn't recognize the connection with Kant that you'all understood as Fiorenza presents it in his Introduction to Spirit.  As usual, I appreciate the inspiration to study further.

The guiding question, Fiorenza says, is: "How is metaphysics possible when all human knowledge is necessarily referred to sensible intuition?"  Maréchal, as Fiorenza says, understands how a logical synthesis of sensible experience ignores the affirmation in judgment.  Lonergan also critiques Kant as failing to understand how judgment has an unconditional character.  In this regard, Fiorenza characterizes Lonergan as a Neo-Kantian.  

This may not be the forum to investigate that claim, but I found an interesting article by Tracy that comments on it.* 

*https://www.jstor.org/stable/1201553?seq=1

Tracy apparently got a preview of MiT in 1970 and wrote this article because, "Much has been rumored and much more, I suspect, will 

be rumored about Bernard Lonergan's work in progress, Method in Theology."  The footnote comments on how L's "methodologism" 

might be interpreted as neo-Kantian.

~/

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[jaraymaker]

Doug,

 

As regards the very complex themes of Kant and Marechal and Lonergan's stance etc, I would call your attention to Jeannette Martin's 1978 dissertation at Marquette Univ., a resume of which I include below.

 

I was at Marquette Univ. at the same time that Jeannette was there. The Tracy article also throws light on the complex scholarly connections-interpretations of Kant, Marechal, Lonergan and Tracy as to knowledge. spirituality and mysticism--all of which Lonergan managed to integrate for 20th century audiences. In some ways, the book Pierre and I just published "indirectly" touches on some of those issues in the face of the predations of modern technically-guided economies and the policies of northern countries versus the southern hemisphere.....

 

John 

 

 

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.

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[Hugh Williams]

John, 

Can you point to those sections of your book that relate to this issue -

which can so easily elude us

and so I'll put the issue most basically - is metaphysics (theology) possible (as a knowledge of anything real)?

Hugh

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[jaraymaker]

Hugh,

 

I give you below most of the passages with page numbers were we treat  spirituality (and related topics) as you requested:

 

p. 28 in the section The Roles of Faith

 54  "   in the paragraph at the very beginning of the page:.  "they distinguish", 4 references.   

63  In Section "Towards discerning both paragraphs, including metanoia

64 at the very top, referring to samadhi etc  

112 in par. beginning "pessimism...."

204  first full par.

234 Under 8th FS

241  first par. in Appendix B

 

In footnotes 49, 50, 51 p. 17

        "             53 p, 18 (in a rather abstract way)

                       78, p. 28

                      123   , p. 45

                       127     p.  46

                         145    p, 54

there are a few others in the footnotes that you can dig up, if you choose,

 

John

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[Doug Mounce]

Just to pick-up the conversation here on how Lonergan differs from Maréchal, I think we generally agree that both recognize a problem with Kant's theory of knowledge in how much logic can explain at the level of judgment.  Fiorenza's Introduction makes a sharper distinction with Heidegger's polemic claim that knowledge is primarily located in the intuition and not in the judgment, but is that a preliminary view on the possibility of knowing something real?

Fiorenza goes-on to describe how Kant modifies his original position by using synthetic and analytic categories to include a type of judgment that goes beyond logic while maintaining the analytic logic in true statements.  I find it interesting that these categories became important at the end of Isaac Newton's life when the analytic was beginning to replace synthetic explanations in physics.  In any case, Lonergan uses similar categories in Insight when he discusses Method in Metaphysics and the transition from analytic propositions to analytic principles through a concrete judgment of fact, as well as when he refers to two radically distinct types of knowing in polymorphic consciousness. 

Lonergan's emphasis on the dynamic pattern in the affirmation of knowledge tends toward what Fiorenza says about Heidegger's insights concerning the circular structure of human knowledge (retorsional argument to follow).  I'm interested to learn if Rahner uses any of the top-down and bottom-up terminology that might be related to these categorical descriptions in explanation.

PS - one of Kierkegaard's aphorisms is about an escapee from the local asylum.  As the patient approaches town he sees a tavern on the outskirts.  Fearing recognition, he picks up a rock and puts it in his pocket, then, with every step as the rock bounces on his leg, he repeats the phrase, `the earth is round, the earth is round' anticipating that by making only true statements his sanity will not be questioned.  What do you think happens when he enters the tavern?

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[jaraymaker]

Doug, I draw a blank atout " Kierkegaard's aphorism about an escapee from the local asylum." Could you specify where Kierkegaard uses that metaphor and how that might apply to Rahner and Esse?

 

John

Am 23.01.2024 01:57:52 W. Europe Standard Time schrieb doug....@gmail.com:

 

"Kierkegaard's aphorisms about an escapee from the local asylum."

[jaraymaker]

Hi, we seem to live in the New Age that led to quests for new forms of "spirituality." I ask this in view of  what if just read in this NYtimes article:

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/22/health/dana-farber-cancer-studies-retractions.html

 

It now seems that the use  of AI enables scholars and reporters to locate, identify faulty data that seem to question the integrity and accuracy of so-called scientific articles and the data they invoke--leading to the need to "retract" etc.

 

So four pertinent questions are how might "AI findings" 1) help or hinder human progress?; 2 justify Lonergan's "pre-AI" argumentations as to human knowledge and reality? 3) identify the LIMITS of AI itself which AI proponents seem to ignore? 4) contrast genuine spirituality and mysticism (including Kierkegaard's existential quest) as opposed to some "far-out" New Age 1980-quests as well as its recognition of the valid insights of some Eastern spiritual quests? As to the latter, Zen has proved to be a potential helpful bridge. (MUCH to "sort out" in the light of e. g. Lonergan's faith-belief distinction!)

 

PS One definition of the "New Age" on the NET is:

 

The New Age Movement is the collective term for those eclectic belief-based movements that preached the coming of a New Age in spirituality. The New Age movement developed in the West in the 1980s and included every spiritual and religious movement from crystals to meditation, from UFO theories to 'Earth myths'.

 

John

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Betreff: [lonergan_l] as to Rahner on ESSE and Kierkegaard?

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[Doug Mounce]

Thanks for asking John - this was meant to illustrate that you need more than logic in this world.

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[Hugh Williams]

Doug, John, Pierre et al,

I'm not sure I get the full sense of Doug's Kierkegaard 'parable' but I like it ...

especially when placed in the present American context.

there just is something quite rich about these elements of  - an 'escapee' from a 'local asylum'

and his resorting, almost desperately, to the making of what he took to be 'true statements'

in order to give the semblance of 'sanity' ...

... on Rahner and Lonergan (and the mystery of 'esse') there is something quite serious at issue, it seems to me ...

Rahner was noticeably critical of Lonergan's MiT, or of aspects of it ...

of course it also has to do with some well recognized themes covered here on this Lonergan-List over the past years.

(I'm thinking it even harkens back to St. Thomas treatment or commentary on Boethius' De Trinitate as to the structure of thought and science

as essentially composed of natural science, mathematics, and metaphysics ...)

In my own digging about I found a two part essay by Fr. Paul Surlis in Irish Theological Quarterly Vols 38,39 (1971)

on Rahner and Lonergan. It is a careful effort to sort out the nature of this tension between these two

major Catholic theologians of our own times more or less ...

(one curious way, Surlis reports, that  Rahner characterized the tension was that between an anglo-saxon and continental-european approach to reality)

The issues between them though very much worth inquiring into, are not easy to fathom and yet Surlis gives a fascinating and thorough account from back in 1971  

and yet it appears to me that the 'work' of this 'comparison and contrast' continues on today in several quarters ...

and dare I say there is some relevance for the recent text of John and Pierre's ...

Hugh

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[Hugh Williams]

Doug et al,

Kant does ask a very basic question for philosophy – what is metaphysics? And his answer which was quite revolutionary has impacted our modern sense of what knowledge itself is. Early Christian thinkers gradually through Greek philosophy came to consider metaphysics as the ‘science of being as being'. Yes, Kant was very aware of how this field of inquiry, often said to be the highest, was subject to considerable controversy and seemed always in need of resuscitation or the revisiting/revival of its questions and inquiries. Kant asked most provocatively - is this even possible ... really ... and I'm quite sure by implication - is it even worthwhile?

 Now, as I read the reaction to this problem posed by Kant, there have been basically two approaches to this question: (1) One is followed by Kant himself that is concerned with an a priori criteria for cognitional possibility which intends to serve as a firm foundation for any fundamental thinking going forward, and to the extent Lonergan follows this approach, it is understandable that one might see him in the Kantian camp. The (2) approach, as I understand it, basically follows after Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas and urges that the so-called possible always be defined in terms of what is actual. This second approach pays very close attention to his history and historical explanation at least in philosophy rather than trying to start all over again.

 But still Kant’s question as to how one is one to proceed with so-called metaphysical inquiry in this traditional sense given the pluralism among metaphysical systems offered philosophically was unsettling for many thinkers in his day. I believe that it is because of the challenges of this question by Kant, that the approach of Lonergan becomes highly appealing in its efforts to establish the criterial conditions of cognition as a foundation for possibility in thinking and indeed in human experience itself.

 The philosophical problem, however, is that this removes metaphysics from its traditional and eminent role as first philosophy replacing it with something else, in this case a form of epistemology.

 The best response to this compelling Kantian project has been, as I read it, simply that a philosophy based upon first principles (metaphysics) does not seek at all an actual foundation for being and thought as Kant conceives it to be. Admittedly, this Kantian project became a particularly modern preoccupation beginning in the 16^th C in reaction to science’s highly successful search for the simple elements underlying our common material world.

 However, what distinguishes the human being as a metaphysical creature or inquirer, so to speak, is our capacity to fit in with things, to covenant with them. The knower is disposed towards the known by taking on the character of the thing known. This co-response attains to the truth by bringing entity and intellect to the same level of a shared symmetry of thing and intellect. Expressed truth does come about through the combination and separation of concepts in judgment. But nevertheless, such propositional truth is not the original truth of the metaphysical/ontological relationship set forth most basically. Metaphysically, knowledge of things does not precede the attainment of truth, it instead follows upon the conformity of intellect to the being of the thing. Knowledge is the effect of truth and not its cause. Truth is first and foremost an ontological relationship; it is a relationship between entities, between knower and known. It is not first and foremost a cognitive relation nor a relation merely within the knower, or the relation between knower and representation. It is not primarily an epistemological relation.

 There is with the human being and his/her intellect, a distinctive sort of entity who can come into association with other beings and do so in such a way as to enter into an ontological relation that releases the intelligibility of things and their value. Out of such an entity there arises this transcendental relation of the true and the good.

 This excursus is relevant to our consideration of Rahner and Lonergan who both may be called transcendental Thomists, rightly or wrongly, ... because I have this growing sense that there are some very deep differences having to do with their respective understandings of and approaches to metaphysics and human knowledge (and methodology) … and thus, yes, in their very different reactions to Kant’s project … (In this note, as Doug may recognize, I’m very much under the influence of Kenneth Schmitz’s important essay  “Metaphysics: Radical, Comprehensive, Determinate Discourse” from his The Texture of Being, pp.3-20 …)

Hugh

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[jaraymaker]

HUGH, As to your statement, "then Kant's own project will be vindicated...", one can find on the Internet MANY papers and references discussomg the issue, for example, the following:

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=bernard+lonergan+Karl+Rahner+being+esse+Kant&sca_esv=601961117&source=hp&ei=K8u0Zda4C4mRxc8Pm_ey2Ao&iflsig=ANes7DEAAAAAZbTZO0oEb3FkfFtZvo75bQ7USbs2dtlG&ved=0ahUKEwiW-u6In_2DAxWJSPEDHZu7DKsQ4dUDCA8&uact=5&oq=bernard+lonergan+Karl+Rahner+being+esse+Kant&gs_lp=Egdnd3Mtd2l6IixiZXJuYXJkIGxvbmVyZ2FuIEthcmwgUmFobmVyIGJlaW5nIGVzc2UgS2FudDIFECEYoAEyBRAhGKABSJ3AAlAAWIStAnABeACQAQCYAZIEoAGUMKoBDDkuMzEuMi4xLjEuMbgBA8gBAPgBAcICBRAuGIAEwgIFEAAYgATCAgsQLhiABBjHARjRA8ICCxAuGIAEGMcBGK8BwgIIEC4YgAQY1ALCAgcQLhiABBgKwgIHECEYChigAcICBBAhGBXCAggQABiABBiiBA&sclient=gws-wiz

It is a PDF file, so I cannot quote from it here, but although the author is not a Lonerganian, it does suggest thant one cannot simply or incontrovertibly claim that "Kant project has been vindicated." It has given rise to unending types of debates, which I believe CWL 3, pp. 362-366 gives its own interpretation NOT based on Kantian premises,  John

Kant put his question to his colleagues in his ‘Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics’ (my gloss) can anyone articulate a single necessary self-evident metaphysical principle? And if no one can then Kant's own project of a critical metaphysics of cognition, well underway, will be vindicated.

Is not Lonergan with his question laying down the philosophical gauntlet in a very similar singular manner?

And if so, does not Rahner, in a way, take up the challenge in his ‘Spirit in the World’ (pp.156-162) where he clarifies esse as the fundamental principle of metaphysics that in effect meets Kant’s challenge, and then, at least, indirectly perhaps also answers Lonergan’s question in the affirmative (though perhaps altering or developing the sense of this notion of ‘intellectual intuition’)?

[jaraymaker]

 

Specifically, in the link below I wanted to point to Caponi's article--John

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[Hugh Williams]

John et al.

Rahner on Esse in Spirit in the World is almost impenetrable for me but I'm drawn back to it again and again

for there is something striking in relation to this Kantian problematic 

that Kenneth Schmitz, for one, has finally helped me to articulate and it is this (my gloss) -

There are thinkers like Kant who have expressed dismay and discouragement 

over what has been called the polymorphic tendencies of human consciousness and it’s philosophies. 

Nevertheless, there always has been deep in the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition a realistic antidote for such discouragement. 

Kenneth Schmitz says it lies in the realization that our human knowing needs most fundamentally an other for its completion 

much more than it needs systematization. 

Indeed, reflective systematization is entirely secondary or somewhat derivative of what is most fundamental …

Hugh

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[Doug Mounce]

Dear All,

I must admit, I did not recognize Schmitz in Hugh's post until he revealed it, but to the inquirer in covenant with what is queried we might add what Lonergan says about inquiry itself.  in any case, I hope we have occasion to reflect on the true and the good as we study Rahner's work.  One of the links in John's google search led me to A. Beards' article on the difference between Rahner and Lonergan.  I always enjoy Beards' analytic expertise, and in comparing the two he says that Coreth was influenced by Rahner, which should give us another key into the differences.  I haven't read it all, but he may be laying his arguments on top of the retorsional principle which I've wanted to take up again in this discussion as it deals with foundations.  Hope everyone has a blessed Sunday; a day of rest (and healing).

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[Hugh Williams]

John et al,

John below, in this unwieldy exchange, speaks of my reference to 'the vindication of Kant's project' ...

just to be clear - I have grave reservations about Kant's project (much like Gilson did).

My point was an effort to get clarity on a difficult issue that Kant raised in his day - especially in his ‘Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics’ 

where he challenged his readers to articulate a single necessary self-evident metaphysical principle.

And if no one can meet the challenge, then he claims that his own project of a critical metaphysics of cognition, well underway, is vindicated.

I went on to suggest that Lonergan at one point did, or tried, something similar when he asks in 1958 – 

‘Is there or is there not a human intellectual intuition of concrete actual existence?’

Now sure ... there can be a simple and even simplistic answer of 'yes' or 'no', but any elaboration (and elaboration is needed especially as to the sense of the three key terms - intellectual, intuition and metaphysics) will be very difficult and complex philosophically

and yet, ... let me put it bluntly, as with Kant who is quite clear on this - depending on the answer, to some degree at least lies the fate of philosophy (indeed, has in fact affected the fate of much philosophy) as to whether it becomes primarily a form of psychology or it retains some capacity for speaking of things 'metaphysical' as Aristotle and St. Thomas meant that term .....

And so, I went on to suggest that a good part of the significance of Rahner, at least in this exchange, is how in my view, he in fact is taking up this challenge in his ‘Spirit in the World’ (especially at pp.156-162). This is seen especially where he clarifies, or attempts to clarify esse as the fundamental principle of metaphysics that in effect meets Kant’s challenge, and then, at least indirectly perhaps, also answers Lonergan’s analogous question in the affirmative (though perhaps altering and/or developing the sense of this notion of ‘intellectual intuition’).

If my suggestion has any merit, then this also sets out a significant difference between Rahner and Lonergan, as Lonergan himself outlines when presenting the implications of one's answer to his own 'Kant-like question' posed in 1958 ...

So ... rests my best effort to present and clarify 'the problem' (of Kant?) for this 'winter session' .....

Hugh

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[Peter Cosmo Cassar Torreggiani]

Thank you all for this thread. 

Peter

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[Doug Mounce]

John, did you mean Caponi's KARL RAHNER AND THE METAPHYSICS OF PARTICIPATION, 2003?

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[jaraymaker]

Doug,

Caponi may have written several articles on the subject, one is:

"Esse as the Target of Judgment in Rahner and Aquinas"

• J. Knasas
• Published 5 April 2017
• Philosophy
• The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review

Another is the one you point to: his"  KARL RAHNER AND THE METAPHYSICS OF PARTICIPATION, 2003."

 

If I find another one, I'll let you know,

 

John

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[Doug Mounce]

uh, that's by Knasas, right?  More polemic than Caponi, but was there anything in particular we should notice?  

Beards, for example, is also critical based on the retorsion argument that, he says, Rahner doesn't analytically follow throughout.  I've always wondered how Beards completely accepts that argument as a principle which I consider more as a (very good!) tautology similar to Lonergan's reducto ad absurdum observation.  In any case, I share Peter's gratitude for this study.

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[Doug Mounce]

Hugh, et al,

Understanding the a priori features of our universe is a challenge.  The study can also be useful, as the history of thermodynamics shows.

Lonergan is explicit with Insight that there is no philosophic intuition of a deeper reality, as metaphysical essence, and he maintains, with Metaphysics As Horizon, that the only intuition we enjoy is sensitive.  Everyone can at least rely on our dynamic knowing, which proves itself in retorsion.  What then can be said about such a unity of consciousness?

Lonergan does imply, in the Halifax lectures, that a pre-given feature occurs in the past and present ordering of empirical presentations, but it's not obvious that the distinction is really "given" in some feature of the data.  With Insight, presentations are the "merely given" raw materials on which intelligence operates.  Throughout Insight these references to intuition show that knowledge is not simply taking-a-look.  With Metaphysics As Horizon, he considers a universal Anschauung as the one means by which our cognitional operations are immediately related to objects.[MAH p311]  Still, Anschauung only is sensitive and Kant, he says, makes too much of it.  Gilson, in principle, sees no contradiction with an immediate perception of the real because the whole is prior to the parts; still, Gilson asks questions, Lonergan says.  Coreth would agree that the whole precedes the parts, but our performance in asking questions is the principle that resolves a contradiction with perception as reality.

We can at least depend on questioning.  Metaphysics is latent in the inquirer.  Folks in this group might recall Adrial's "incontrovertible" understanding.  Beards also sees no possible challenge to the retorsional argument.  Michael Baur has an interesting comparison with Fichte who maintains that there must be something larger than ourselves because the activity of being aware is unrevisable, and our awareness implies something larger than ourselves.  Fichte, Bauer says, can reject the myth of the given, while at the same time acknowledging that direct realism is correct insofar as the self “is an act, and absolutely nothing more; we should not even call it an active something [ein Thätiges]” (SK I, 440, First Introduction).  As Fichte explains it, “To posit oneself and to be are, as applied to the self, perfectly identical” (SK I, 98).

In any case, there is a unity of consciousness that Heidegger might describe as the circular structure of cognition, possibly similar to Lonergan's emphasis on completing the circle.  "One might go further," for example, "and argue that, were the unity of consciousness not given, then it would have to be postulated."  (Insight, The unity as given, pp. 324-25)  For me, Lonergan's dynamic knowing of subject operations and object outcomes is a natural deconstruction to describe this reality where the two poles are absolutely combined in any reasonable explanation. While the methods that result in knowledge (science) are not prescribed, facts always will include experience, understanding and judgment.  Lonergan believes that Rahner shows how this operates in a social and historical development that opens us to theology.  "For latent in the performance of the incarnate inquirer not only is there a metaphysics that reveals the objective pole of the total horizon but also there is the method of performing which, thematized and made explicit, reveals the subjective pole in its full and proper stature."  In addition, Lonergan is in agreement with Rahner that philosophy of God and the functional specialty of systematics, while distinct, should not be separate.

Does the unity of consciousness imply any supra-natural awareness of existence?  What is the nature of our acting that might reveal this?  How does movement between the levels of scientific method inform our perception of reality?  Examples of particular cases might help.  For now, Lonergan's references to Rahner are enough to keep me reading.

regards, Doug

[Hugh Williams]

Doug et al,

This is very good and tries to give a difficult discussion some focus ...

However, I'm going to stop, turtle paced, at your first paragraph here below -

Lonergan is explicit with Insight that there is no philosophic intuition of a deeper reality, as metaphysical essence, and he maintains, with Metaphysics As Horizon, that the only intuition we enjoy is sensitive.  Everyone can at least rely on our dynamic knowing, which proves itself in retorsion.  What then can be said about such a unity of consciousness?

here we'll head off into much misunderstanding and communication at cross purposes unless we stop and try to clarify the problem and question. 

As I understand it, what we are wrestling with after Kant and Lonergan's questions - which Lonergan puts most simply as - "Is there or is there not a human intellectual intuition of concrete human existence?"; and Kant in a much earlier version poses (analogously, I'm arguing) - 'can anyone articulate a single necessary self-evident metaphysical principle?'.

Now to Lonergan's credit, I believe he poses the question in a less restrictive way from Kant who sets out the question in his appendix to his 'Prolegomena...' after his architectonic cognitional structure is already pretty much in place and so he doesn't (or can't) leave much room to maneuver about. 

I'd first point out that Lonergan is asking about 'a human intellectual intuition of concrete actual existence'. For those after Gilson, who says he is following Thomas on this, this is not at all about the intuition of a metaphysical essence but rather concerns our knowledge of esse which is only grasped in existential judgment, and thus strictly defies conceptualization or representation, and yet has great intellectual and metaphysical significance.  

Gilson writes in his very important CH 6 "Knowledge and Existence" in his 'Being and Some Philosophers' p. 213

"Such a notion of being and of the metaphysics it involves has been already conceived, and this as early as the thirteenth century, but it would be interesting to know how many philosophers have paid attention to it. Speaking of his own contemporaries, a certain Bernardus Lombardi, who was teaching in Paris about 1327, did not hesitate to say: "There are two ways of speaking: the first is that of the Doctor Saint Thomas, who asserts that, in all beings short of God, essence differs from existence; the second is that of the other Parisian masters who unanimously maintain the opposite." We need not trust Bernardus Lombardi implicitly, and his statement may well have been an overstatement, but it is a fact that a notion of being such as that of Saint Thomas is a rare thing to meet in the history of metaphysics. Yet, unless it be thus conceived what is left of being is little more than its empty shell. Why should philosophers use such an empty shell for their first principle of human knowledge? Any particular aspect of being is then bound to look preferable because, be it even abstract quantity, it corresponds at least to some "thing"."

So, I reiterate my argument from email of Dec. 27/23 as it pertains to Rahner's relationship to Lonergan, ... that I do believe Rahner takes up this challenge directly in that, despite its density and difficulty in Spirit in the World (pp.156-162), we have what we can imagine as a direct response to both Lonergan and Kant's question/challenge, where Rahner attempts to come to grips, albeit tentatively, with this fundamental difference between essence and existence in Thomas' own ontology and its extraordinary and important treatment of being as esse ...

Furthermore, I've found nothing that compares to Rahner's effort in Lonergan. What we do have is Lonergan's acknowledgement in the early parts of Verbum of the 'critical problem' in knowledge and that Thomas, he suggests, has another way of approaching it that arguably avoids it ... but Lonergan, as near as I can tell, never expounds on this or on its metaphysical implications.

Hugh

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[Doug Mounce]

Hugh, no problem, an intellectual intuition would be different from the "merely given" data that was the ponit of the  first paragraph in that essay.  The differences with Gilson and Coreth are open to further study, and I appreciate the Gilson quote in that regard.  What did you think of Fichte's emphasis on being as act? 

Doug

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[jaraymaker]

Hi all,

Comparing Lonergan with Gilson has been a long thread on this site. Please see the PS below  going back to  over FIVE years ago.

 

Here I would like to point out one key, initial passage in "Metaphysics as Horizon" which is our present focus.

 

On p. 211 of that article published in Collection, Lonergan maintains with Gilson a common, fundamental diffference from Kant as to our ability to know more than mere phenomena. "One must not think that Gilson attempts to reffute Kant by appealing to a fact that Kant overlooked. Gilson's realism is dogmatic."  Gilson advocates "the blunt reaffirmation of the dogmatic realism whose validity was denied by Kant's critifque." Gilson's dogmatism "is that the whole is prior to the parts, and so incapable of being assembled by starting from some part and step by step adding on the others." Lonergan points to the many. "bristling" difficulties of doing so. But Lonergan insists on the prior need to address epistemological questions before tackliing metaphysics. 

 

On the same page 211,  Lonergan writes, "Gilson does not believe metaphysicians should attepmt to do psychology. He asserst a GENERAL OSMOSIS between sense and undertanind, but leaves it to psychologies to work out the details." Gilson indicates the area in which the perceptual judgment is to found, but he makes no effort to survey, explore and work out a detailed report." But Lonergan adds, Gilson's "givenness" is vague."

 

I will leave it  to that for now, but Lonergan has much more to say in the article as Fred Crowe points out in his very detailed account of Lonergan's intellectual trajectory in his Introduction to Collection. I sign off for now, while including in the PS some of the arguments that were made on this site in 2008 as to this issue, John

 

PS   from: pmcs...@shaw.ca
to hwil...@nbnet.nb.ca
Cc: jaray...@aol.com, james...@itesm.mx, loner...@googlegroups.com, 
Betreff: Re: Lonergan "straddling, reconciling several worlds"; is that, ironically, its Achilles' heel?

Hugh,

best keep this brief. I am not against a “sustained ‘comparison’ of Lonergan and Gilson.” But that sustained comparison is to be contextualized, not by focusing on the lower sciences, but by focusing on the problem of the treatise on the mystical body (Insight,763-4 poses it) that is heuristically solved by the meaning of Comparison on page 250 of Method: A standard model of a genetic sequencing of the ongoing efforts to thematized deliberations on the body of Christ and history's constitution over the millennia.  You have little idea of what that means, no more than the Lonergan school who are quite reluctant to, as you say, “get down to work” “if interpretation is to be scientific” (Insight, 587) - and note that the science is now 8-fold, sublating the early meaning of that paragraph 60910 - and effect the ongoing emergence of growing forms of the body of Christ that will bring forth the “micro-autonomy” (Wealth of Self, chapter 10: sublating the context of Insight 498 regarding habitat and universe) that will constitute humanity’s pilgimage at its pilgrim best. That pilgrim best is to be had so so slowly by “effective intervention etc” (Phenomenology and Logic, 306), by people stepping away - in Gaiac repentance (Insight, 722) - in inner character (Method, 356, meshed with Magna Moralia, paragraph 1:  pointed to best in the end of the fifth essay of Divyadaan 2019(1)) from the present state of sick good will in the midst of axial madness, “where people who can do the most harm are doing it and people who could do the most good are not.” (CWL 18, 307).

That, I would claim, is a pretty - indeed pretty - incomprehensible paragraph to the present generation of global thinkers, Lonerganesque or not: so [1] yes, Hugh, “... either get down to work or leave the job of rescuing children and climate and care to a later generation that may emerge in emergent probability” and [2] no, Hugh: my NO to John’s conference topics remains firm. “Some third way, then, must be found, even though it is difficult and laborious.” (Method, 4).

Phil

    

On Dec 30, 2018, at 3:55 AM, Hugh Williams <hwil...@nbnet.nb.ca> wrote:

Phil et al,

 

I’m responding to Phil’s reprimand of sorts which says below, if I boil it down, -

... either get down to work or leave the job of rescuing children and climate and care to a later generation that may emerge in emergent probability

 

... in other words I’m hearing ‘get with the program or get out of the way’ ...

 

Frankly I was not surprised, for even through the ‘ether’ of this medium I could feel Phil’s impatience, especially at any sustained ‘comparison’

of Lonergan and Gilson (with an eye of course towards reconciliation).

 

Is it at all possible ‘we’ are dealing with, or encountering a version of an old and new problem from the history of philosophy of ‘the one and the many’

and doing so, if we be honest, in Lonergan’s project itself, or in ‘our’ diverse efforts to properly understand this project, efforts ‘that’ might be denoted by the category of the ‘ultimate’ as ‘our gathering the many together into one that inescapably becomes in turn one among many’ ...

... and so because of this ongoing inter-play our only ‘sure way’ of preceding, it is argued, is methodological based upon the ‘invariable’ cognitional structure and operations of our minds?

 

Now this protean structure of ultimacy in its formality in this context will lose its intelligibility, in my humble view, unless it is given sensible content. Phil tends to go especially, at least in an analogous way, towards the physical sciences for grounding content. I in turn go to the Christian Church and its mission in the world (a world primarily mediated by more or less serious ‘common sense’ that nevertheless is not at all, at least in principle, closed off from speculative and theoretical effort.

 

In sum, I would hope John’s proposal for the conference might be given more consideration ...

... or let me ask more fundamentally ‘what’ is the/this ‘process’ by which the agenda is to be developed and set?

 

Hugh

 

From: jaray...@aol.com

Sent: Sunday, December 30, 2018 4:37 AM

To: pmcs...@shaw.ca

Cc: james...@itesm.mx ; hwil...@nbnet.nb.ca ; loner...@googlegroups.com ; tjcq...@gmail.com ; rohen...@hotmail.com ; will...@stedwards.edu ; mrjs...@gmail.com ; codo...@riverview.nsw.edu.au ; frank...@optonline.net

Subject: Lonergan "straddling, reconciling several worlds"; is that, ironically, its Achilles' heel?

 

 

Phil,

 

Yes, the present discussion has been focusing on key issues. What you say below is worth

much reflection. Rather, than try now to reflect in depth and respond to your proposal for July,

2019, I'll here quote in the PS James' essay which stresses COLLABORATION giving his own

twist to the matter.

 

For example, James says that he is convinced that IF BLs "leading ideas are to be recycled and
bear fruit, it will be through direct discourse and linguistic feedback which, to a
certain extent, were beyond his horizon. He did not manage to leap-frog over
“axial talk of a long tradition of fragmentation and truncation.” ENd quote. (BIG claim

which I cannot here evaltuate).

 

James does go into "AXIAL TALK" which has been one of your "babies".

Perhaps you and James could elaborate a bit. In the meantime, the Xi's, Erdogan's,

Trump's and Putin's of this world have relegated ethics to an inconsequential role.

With them there is no "ethics" so that the world is in DIRE DANGER,

 

John

 

PS James Duffy, “Ethics as Functional Collaboration”
Journal of Macrodynamic Analysis 7 (2012): 123-150.

 

Introduction

 

In most human endeavors collaboration is spontaneously taken to be a
sensible and good thing to do, not unlike drinking more water and eating
more fruit and vegetables. Whether building a new secondary school or
flying a 747, it is more efficient to divide up the various tasks than it is
for someone to build or fly solo. But while collaborating is commonly
experienced, that does not mean the dynamics of collaborating
efficiently are easily understood.

Function is likewise a common experience that is not so easily
understood. It is not so difficult to identify, for example, when the
refrigerator is not functioning well. Nor is it difficult to identify what to
do in such instances: we call a mechanic, the one who knows how to get
it functioning again. However, if we consider recurrence schemes of
dysfunctioning local high schools or local economies, things are not so
simple. Whom do we call? How do we move from “something is amiss”
to “what we ought to do is …”?

 

The thesis of the essay is that Bernard Lonergan discovered a way
to collaborate efficiently and that whatever small steps we might take to
foster such collaboration are good steps leading to adventure.1.....

 

Footnote 1 This essay is written with Lonergan enthusiasts in mind, but I do not
believe that being such an enthusiast is a sine qua non for gleaning something
from the essay, and, in fact it might be a stumbling block. Like Kierkegaard
and a host of others, Lonergan had no intention or desire to found a school, but
rather to “help people experience themselves understanding, advert to the
experience, distinguish it from other experiences, name and identify it, and
recognize it when it occurred. Enthusiasts are called to non-discipleship

and self-appropriation, if not the “five-finger exercises” in the first eight chapters

of the book Insight, then simpler exercises. Much depends upon the luck you had

in secondary and high school. In any case, while I am immensely indebted

to the print Lonergan
left behind, I am also convinced that if his leading ideas are to be recycled and
bear fruit, it will be through direct discourse and linguistic feedback which, to a
certain extent, were beyond his horizon. He did not manage to leap-frog over
“axial talk of a long tradition of fragmentation and truncation.” Philip McShane,

“The Meaning of Credit,” 21 Divyadaan: Journal of Philosophy and
Education (2010), 163-182, at 169. The dreaded point here is that Lonergan is
really not the point; the point is how I meet, greet, bind, and guard my
significant other and my significant self in the darkness of history. END footnote 1

 

A spirit or mood of anticipating adventure should be present in our efforts to figure
out what to do with local high schools and local economies. But to a
large extent such a mood is absent in what is being published and
professed in both areas, and in just about every area in between. Why
this is so and what we should do about it is a principal concern of this
essay.

In the first part I begin with two stories that exemplify collaboration
as actually experienced. In the second part I recover some of Aristotle’s
claims in the Nicomachean Ethics in order to counter the attitude that
considers ethics to be a matter of common sense, and to distinguish
between “pure ethics” and “ethics as ‘x’.” Ethics as “x” is oriented to the
concrete good, which is a history that includes the future. I maintain that
traditional field and subject divisions do not promote future-leaning,
adventure-anticipating “What next?” questions, and therefore have little
to do with the concrete good. I also claim that debates about “first
philosophy” that do not consider the problem of figuring out how to
collaborate within and across disciplines are not really going anywhere.

In the third part I draw upon an analogy of planning a family vacation to
claim that functional collaboration would be a convenient way to
proceed. In the epilogue I propose that foundational listening and
speaking will be a part of the convenient way.

 

I. Collaboration
A. Family Vacations

When I was a young boy, growing up in Southern California in the
1970s, family vacations meant packing up the station wagon or a
Winnebago motor home, and driving to the Sierra Nevada Mountains in
California for a week or two of fishing, horseback riding, singing around
the campfire, hiking, skipping stones, etc. Naturally a mood, an ethos, of
aspiration and anticipating adventure emerged some days before the
departure date.

Since there were nine of us involved, getting out the door and on the
road was quite a task, but as might be expected, the chores were divided
up and each did his or her little part to expedite the departure. Besides
packing clothes, food, and camping gear, there was the task of older
siblings helping out the younger ones to be sure things like underwear
and warm sweaters were not forgotten. Besides packing food for the
road, there were individual needs of ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise.
There were a myriad of other considerations—packing books, games,
and cards, both for the drive and for the destination; negotiating spots in
McShane, “The Meaning of Credit,” 21 Divyadaan: Journal of Philosophy and
Education (2010), 163-182, at 169. The dreaded point here is that Lonergan is
really not the point; the point is how I meet, greet, bind, and guard my
significant other and my significant self in the darkness of history.......

In any collaborative endeavor, action, operation, and cooperation are not mindless,

but rather are answers to
questions that spontaneously occur: “What are some possibilities?”
“What’s the plan?” “Should I try for publication?” “Should we occupy
Wall Street?” “What do we really want?” “What do we do next?” In the
family vacation scenario the answer to the “What do we want?” question
was: “We want to get out the door and on the road as soon as possible
because the mountains (or waves) are calling our names.”   END quoting James

 

Am 30.12.2018 02:07:45 Mitteleuropäische Zeit schrieb pmcs...@shaw.ca:

 

John et al,

            Best begin with John’s final hope. “I would hope that this discussion could be, will be pursued e. g. at the July, 2019 conference and in other venues since I dare say it has been focusing on critical issues. Indeed, the "Grounds" of Functional Specialization MiT, 133, and the two phases point the way.”

            My answer, curiously perhaps, is NO.  I wish to enlarge on this NO, since it is enlightening in regard to the transition to the second page of Method(1972).  There is to be a departure from the “bolder spirits” line 10, p. 3, Method) like Aristotle, who invented the three-layered poise before nature. How much of that poise hovered over Insight? A difficult question, especially as the second volume intended by Lonergan was left unwritten.  But let me symbolize the shift of a possible second volume by considering a shift of the illustration on the first page of Insight from crown-weighing to screw-divising.  That shift brings to the fore the problematic meaning of “deliberation,” presently thought of, perhaps, in terms of opinions like that of Aristotle, Nemesius, Damascene, Thomas, Lonergan (I point to Insight chapter 18, to avoid the complications of CWL 1), and a spread in-between, especially in the modern periods. Later metascience will have those thinkers and that spread juggled into a genetic sequence enlightening in the heuristics of “understanding the object” (Method, 156).  It will also reveal the weakness of metaphysics as presently mused over academically.

            Deliberation: imagine a volume titled Insight which focused on Archimedes’ Screw and its ilk all the way to robotics, the organic chemistry of vertical farming, etc etc and beyond, in the careful Gaiac structurings  of the habitats infolded in universes (See Insight, 498) of the later Positive Anthropocene.  How long of a pause did that give you? I am edging you discomforting into deliberating about deliberating.

            Deliberating about the July conference is the difficult task of a Screw-up of Cultural waters, cultural watchers, cultural whatters. By May, perhaps, with the help of serious imaginative engineers of the Field (Phenomenology and Logic, 199), we could arrive at a structured spiral that would be “a resolute and effective intervention in this historical process”(ibid, 306).  But we will not be putting old wine in new bottles. 

Phil

On Dec 29, 2018, at 9:56 AM, jaray...@aol.com wrote:

Phil,

 

we could go on and on lamenting that "group-thinking" has not turned into a needed, viable form of "group-conversion" whereby the personally "converted" find ways to collaboratively implement L's method. It seems that James Duffy anticipated such in his thesis in 2012:

 

Ethics as Functional Collaboration - Memorial University Libraries ...

https://journals.library.mun.ca/ojs/index.php/jmda/article/download/363/235

 

1.  

by J Duffy - ‎2012

The thesis of the essay is that Bernard Lonergan discovered a way to collaborate efficiently and that whatever small steps we might take to foster such... END quote (I could not access the rest of the message).

 

Yes, I agree we need to collaborativey take the possible, necessary small steps. You yourself say you are no longer in the mainstream of Lonergan leadership (you DO have your following!) but the further question is there ANY effective Lonergan leadership--except in disconnected venues, each "doing their thing"???

 

Our present reflection here is, I believe, helpful. John the Baptist was a voice crying in the desert. The world is now full of deserts and misunderstandings. Politics are so polarized.

 

Lonergan's theological works are so profound--so are his philosophical reflections. So, with you and James, we are considering,(we need to consider--as we are now doing) how best "discover a way to collaborate efficiently..." (Thank you, James).

 

In a way, we are now informally considering the TWO aspects of GEM's "Achilles' heel" both within and without "Lonergan circles." Scholarship, in general, is haunted with premises L refuted. Too many, if not most Lonerganians specialize and cannot relate their specialization to the overall issues--which is what I think you are saying and I fully agree.

 

I would hope that this discussion could be, will be pursued e. g. at the July, 2019 conference and in other vernues since I dare say it has been focusing on critical issues. Indeed, the "Grounds" of Functional Specialization MiT, 133, and the two phases point the way,

 

John

 

Am 29.12.2018 17:41:17 Mitteleuropäische Zeit schrieb pmcs...@shaw.ca:

John:

I have no problem with group “conversion” but the word does not fit into my present efforts regarding OPA. I follow Lonergan in Insight, who mentions collaboration over thirty times in ten pages at the end of Insight, but not mentioning conversion. Grouping occurs through con-verting. The students of Lonergan are conned into a version of the  old style group-thinking around a shrunken Lonergan. Neither you nor I are effectively converted to FS. I return to my old thesis of Method in Theology; Revisions and Implementations, chapter one. The "grounds of th division” (recall Method, 133 ff) are to be, not the usual conversions, but the break forward of history towards collaboration: in that sense history is to be the mother, Lonergan later perhaps recognized as foster-father of the break forward, and the effective step towards real intellection is to be rooted in the cycling of honesty through dialectic [again, think of lines 18-33 of Method 250: a closed enterprise to all the Lonergan students].

But enough.

Phil

On Dec 29, 2018, at 2:19 AM, Jaray...@aol.com wrote:

Thanks, Phil, for your brief but TELLINGLY challenging remarks. All of us here are laborers in the field of trying to implement Lonergan's method and you consistently point us to some key messages as you do below.

 

Personally, as you know, I have tried to "implement" his method e. g. as to how his method could be helpful, even crucially helpful in dealing with the climate crises or in trying to "empower his method" even amng those of a secularist, atheist, Islamic or Buddhist persuasion. James points to his own efforts in Latin Ameica and in the States. With Godefroid Mombula I've written on Bringing Bernard Lonergan down to Earth and into our Hearts and Communities.

 

None of us can cover all the bases so we need one another's work. We need to find ways to coordinate the work being done by GEM exponents in sometimes "isolated" ways, in the classroom, in various well-known or "obscure" journals etc.

 

So, YES, implementation and coordination are needed.  The best way to implement, in my view, is to stress complementarities in one another's work rather than differences. Otherwise one just remains stuck in endless disputes which lead to NO implementation. That's why yesterday I called for "group conversion," or at least seriously examining both the possibilities, relevance and difficulties of a "GEM group conversion" or some such.

 

In your message, Phil, you do not address that issue. At issue is the very notion of the conversions which presumably Lonerganians have undergone. In a way, it comes down to coordinating the efforts of persons who have been intellectually, morally, religious converted with the required psychological equilibrium needed to do so.

 

So far we seem stuck in various impasses. Is the notion of group conversion a viable one, and if so does it not need serious examination? You, James, Bill and most if not all of us here are explicity aware of the difficulties of teaching Lonergan, of the need and difficulties of overcoming "Lonerganism" and of the irony that presumably converted Lonerganians have not yet been able to get on "the same sheet of music" (of course, with all the give and take that is needed among converted adults).

 

To make a long story short, is the notion of "group conversion" among Lonerganian exponents" a valid one? If so, what steps could be taken toward its realization? We have to start somewhere. Perhaps, considering the merits or "illusion" of the above suggestion is worth a try of some sort. Lonerganians presumably realize that the world faces immense problems, including ethical ones and the need to effectively communicate in a very much divided, unjust, militarized world.

 

We could help make a difference, but first we have to get our "house" in order. Or we can just ignore the real issues and the presumed ability that converted people will act in converted ways not only individually but in the ethically effective ways BL points to in the passages you often cite as you do below. As you know, I've suggested, the need for an International GEM Asso. (IGEMA) as one potential instrument for coordinating a Lonerganian group-conversion PROCESS. One step at a time, "to turn Bernie's book around...."

 

We have yet to hear from most recipients of these email-messages. In my opinion, their informed opinion COULD help "make a CRUCIAL difference," rather than throwing in the towel,

 

John

And yet, ... let me put it bluntly, as with Kant who is quite clear on this - depending on the answer, to some degree at least lies the fate of philosophy (indeed, has in fact affected the fate of much philosophy) as to whether it becomes primarily a form of psychology or it retains some capacity for speaking of things 'metaphysical' as Aristotle and St. Thomas meant that term .....

And so, I went on to suggest that a good part of the significance of Rahner, at least in this exchange, is how in my view, he in fact is taking up this challenge in his ‘Spirit in the World’ (especially at pp.156-162). This is seen especially where he clarifies, or attempts to clarify esse as the fundamental principle of metaphysics that in effect meets Kant’s challenge, and then, at least indirectly perhaps, also answers Lonergan’s analogous question in the affirmative (though perhaps altering and/or developing the sense of this notion of ‘intellectual intuition’).

If my suggestion has any merit, then this also sets out a significant difference between Rahner and Lonergan, as Lonergan himself outlines when presenting the implications of one's answer to his own 'Kant-like question' posed in 1958 ...

So ... rests my best effort to present and clarify 'the problem' (of Kant?) for this 'winter session' .....

Hugh

--

[Hugh Williams]

John et al,

I don't know if we are 'off to the races' on this one or not ...

but let me say this ...

the exchange from 2018 with Phil does have a touch of the

'idealism - realism' tension in it if I recall correctly ...

( the conference referenced never came to be ...)

and as for Lonergan and Gilson there is much that is significant in their differences

not the least this Lonerganian insistence on this 'prior need to address 

epistemological questions before tackling metaphysics' which, in my view, is a thoroughly Kantian stance ...

(nor do I now think Rahner would ever make such a claim ...)

read Gilson's final chapter from his 'Being and Some Philosophers' (Lonergan himself at one time advised in earnest the reading of the whole text ...)

and one will see that Gilson's argument is much more than dogmatism and his account has more detail and depth to it

than is credited below ...

Hugh

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[Hugh Williams]

Doug et al,

I'm assuming you are referring to your sentence below -

 As Fichte explains it, “To posit oneself and to be are, as applied to the self, perfectly identical” (SK I, 98).

'Turtle paced and like a dog on a bone' 

(a much humbler dog on a bone 😳 because I reiterated the question from my email of Dec. 27/24 incorrectly. The correct question in the original from Lonergan in 1958 is - 'is there or is there not a human intellectual intuition of concrete actual existence?' and it is not a question about an 'intuition of concrete human existence').

Thus my response (knowing little or nothing about Fichte) is that 'on the surface and by itself' it does not seem to answer Lonergan's question ... how could it possibly do so if you were responding to my misrepresentation of Lonergan's original question. (Again, my apologies ...)

But if by good fortune you were drawing upon Fichte to help us with the original question intended from 1958, it bears repeating - 'is there or is there not a human intellectual intuition of concrete actual existence?' 

then I'd have to say I don't think it rises to the challenge ... for I take the question to be most about our knowledge of the existence of other things and is not a question of the self's existence. This is about (after Kant) the philosophically terrifying 'thing in itself' - do we or do we not have some intellectual intuition of its existence? Common sense simply would answer in the affirmative, I expect ... but philosophy answering in the affirmative would assume a considerable metaphysical outlook.

Gilson puts it in his inimitable way (after St. Thomas) -

"The confusion or divorce of essence and existence are two errors equally fatal to philosophy. A true metaphysics of being alone can reconcile history with objective knowledge, existence with essence and time with eternity. It provides the only ground on which philosophy can ask the question to which religion is the answer. No less fond of concepts than that of Hegel, no less related to the man than that of Kirkegaard, such a metaphysics is neither a system nor the self-expression of a solitary existence. It is before anything else, wisdom, and it aims to insure the progressive adequation of human knowledge to actually existing being. A never-ending task indeed, yet not a fruitless one. For, if "to be" escapes all abstract representation, it can be included in all concepts, and this is achieved through the judgment of existence, the always available response of an existent endowed with intellectual knowledge to other acts of existing. (Being and Some Philosophers, p.215)"

So again my response to Lonergan with the aide of Gilson - is that such an intellectual intuition is the natural and immediate response of any existent endowed with intellectual knowledge to the acts of existing of others ...

again with some apologies

Hugh

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[Doug Mounce]

Hugh, et al,

I think that's still fine.  I don't quite get the distinction, so I may be misinterpreting the question, but in the most general way I was researching what might be a priori.

I don't plan to make much of Fichte.  His idea, as far as I understand, is to consider how awareness might first recognize an "other" by understanding how a finite nature of self implies a larger whole, and I thought Bauer's comparison with Lonergan on a critique of the immediacy was interesting in that regard.  We might want to remember how Lonergan describes his differences with Gilson and Coreth in terms of a whole and the parts. 

In the short term, I hoped for some conversation about the two references to Lonergan by Fiorenza in the Introduction to Spirit in the World; one where Lonergan is described as neo-Kantian, and the other that Lonergan rejects phenomenology and existentialism as merely descriptive and a purified empiricism (a critique in Insight applied to Husserl prior to 1913 and not applicable to Heidegger, Fiorenza says).  I was further encouraged by Lonergan's reference to Rahner in Metaphysics as Horizon about how progress opens us to theology, and a much-later reference to him in Philosophy of God and Theology about how philosophy and theology, while distinct, should not be separate. 

PS - I at least agree with Gilson that "to be" escapes all abstract representation.  The relation to "all concepts" might suggest further investigation. 

PSS - academia.edu recently re-sent Pierre's article on a world mediated by meaning - still a good read

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?pli=1#inbox/FMfcgzGwJvjrqLBKbzLmDDQrpmhrrWJF

\~/

https://staff.washington.edu/mounce/

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[Hugh Williams]

Doug et al,

I think it is time for me to attempt (imperfectly and with many flaws) to render by way of my own gloss, Rahner's treatment of esse in his Spirit in the World (The Continuum Publishing Company edition, 1994, pp. 156-162). Part of the difficulty, apart from the intensely plaguing difficulties of the topic itself, is that we are dealing with layers of translation (Latin, German, English). This edition is translated by William Dych SJ …

My gloss ...

So Rahner finally comes to the point in his text where, he says, an understanding of esse (in Thomas) is needed. And he says right ‘off the bat’ that esse is first of all the expression of what is meant by the in-itself from the viewpoint of the in-itself. Rahner tentatively is trying to give us what Thomas says about this esse – what it is in its own self, and then to do so more precisely and systematically in the following section of his text. This effort on his part is tentative because he has no intention of covering the whole of Thomas’ ontology, nor is it possible for him to do so. Yet he is trying to provide a summation of his investigation so far, so that its connection with what follows is as clear as possible.

Rahner then provides this summation in two propositions:

a) human knowledge’s first object as that upon which all others are based is the other of the world apprehended in-itself through sensibility. This is the knowing of esse as the real and only being in-itself given concretely in sensibility as a concrete limited self. This means that esse is always linked to being as ens apprehended in sensibility without which there is no knowledge possible of what esse means.

Yet Rahner says (and here I can sense Kant’s influence) that even so the question remains ‘how is this being known as real by thought, i.e., as objective.’ This is not an accomplishment of sensibility, abstraction, we are told by Rahner, is needed which in the next section he will consider and attempt to reveal this abstraction of esse and its understanding. This then is Rahner’s first proposition.

b) His second proposition is that if our knowing is objective in the knowing of this other in differentiation from the knowing subject then it knows this esse as being in-itself of the definite other objectively only in so far as esse is given in sensibility as limited, is apprehended as unlimited in-itself in a preapprehension attaining to esse as such.

But at this particular point, Rahner asks ‘’what is esse?’ If it is understood as identical with the in-itself, Rahner says we can say tentatively that there is a knowledge of esse always and already realized that is given antecedent to the affirmative synthesis realized in thought.

[Here I must interject with my question – is this not the intellectual intuition of being as ‘act of existence’ asked about by Lonergan in 1958? And reiterated in my email of Dec 27 … ?]

This, then, Rahner says, is another way of describing the in-itself intended in judgment. Esse then means to be actual or real.

Rahner then asks why can esse as the synthesis encountered as already realized antecedent to the affirmative synthesis be identified with esse as to-be-real?

What is in-itself seems to occur in two fundamentally different kinds independent of each other – 1) that which provides the ideal basis for the validity of propositions of eternal truths, and 2) as real existence (whatever that term means precisely …)

Both kinds, says Rahner, seem to present an ‘in-itself’ which is always already realized antecedent to the affirmative synthesis to be accomplished intellectually and which is related to these kinds as an in-itself.

Rahner says that Thomas does not know these two kinds, for Thomas esse as to be real is the only fundamental in-itself, and anything is in-itself only in so far as it expresses to-be-real. Thus, a judgment which attains to an in-itself attains to esse. Esse is therefore not one of the ways in which an already realized synthesis is given antecedent to the synthesis to be achieved by affirmation but is itself (in Thomas) the only in-itself.

(In a fn. Rahner states that in Boethius de Trinitate, Thomas is here and in other texts saying that the esse of the copula in a proposition is also grounded in the esse of the thing.)

And finally, Rahner says esse is not a genus but appears as intrinsically variable, not statically definable, but oscillating between nothing and infinity …

Rahner says that the preceding discussion is to serve as an indication that St. Thomas identifies the in-itself to which the affirmative synthesis attains, and which as a whole the pre-apprehension apprehends in abstraction (as separation) with what he calls esse. This esse-concept is now to be developed so that the pre-apprehension which attains to esse can be further clarified …     

Now, as excruciatingly difficult as this text of Rahner’s is, I believe it is evidence of a significant difference in the treatment of being and esse  … so much so that I’d say Rahner is reading Thomas quite differently from Lonergan, and does much more to explore Thomas’ metaphysical ontology of esse and the in-itself of the real. This I believe is in large part because Lonergan is, in fact, much more under the influence of Kant, and let me also say, with Kenneth Schmitz, that this is not necessarily a bad thing ... but it does mean that Lonergan’s project does in fact follow Kant much more closely than Rahner in the sense that Lonergan is much more concerned with the objects of consciousness determined by what is understood to be the limits and structure of human cognition. This does not have to be interpreted as necessarily the complete and total deconstruction of nature and the status of things but rather as an important effort in the history of philosophy, in the face of the fact and power of modern science, to pose the fundamental epistemological question about the nature and scope of thought and rationality.

It must however be admitted that this transition from the things of nature to the objects of consciousness has paved the way for their reduction to appearances. Yet undeniably there is an accompanying autonomy acquired by reason and by which reason obtains some advantage over what was alleged to be the heteronomy of the human mind to things. With the Kantian abandonment of what gradually came to be considered as, arguably, the untenable notion of the thing in-itself, critical reason’s horizon opened up to the insertion of experienced content in the constitution of empirical objectivity under the dominating social imaginary of modern science.

So, at this point, and because of this intense philosophical concern in Rahner for esse and the in-itself, it seems to me Rahner intends for his theology to remain much closer to the scholastic tradition and St. Thomas, than does Lonergan. And their respective relationships with Kant are also central to both, and yet are significantly different … 

and, yet again, this bears upon how I’m imagining their respective answers to the two questions posed by Lonergan and Kant respectively in my Dec. 27 email …

With some apologies for the length

of this meditation …

thanks for providing the occasion to get this in the discourse

Hugh                                                              

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[Hugh Williams]

Doug, John, et al,

John below draws on some recent history (2018-19 ??) in an email exchange from this list, involving myself, John, and Phil McShane. Phil was fixed on trying to get Lonerganians of the ‘schools’, so to speak, to take seriously Lonergan’s important work in economics and political-economy.

I had always been up-front about my coming to Lonergan’s economics through metaphysics … existential metaphysics as presented by Etienne Gilson in particular. This of course was a very strange ‘brew’.

But be that as it may, I’ve been involved in a comparison of Lonergan and Gilson for some time, and now it is extended to Rahner.

This work of comparison was usually an irritation for Phil, … and he considered it an unnecessary distraction and complication for his own education project. (And yet there were aspects that intrigued him because he knew this intellectual issue went deep in Lonergan and perhaps even with himself …)

So I persistently held that one’s understanding of what metaphysics is can be very different. I believe that Lonergan’s and Gilson’s views of metaphysics are significantly different; and it seems that given my recent gloss on Rahner’s treatment of esse in St. Thomas Aquinas (Spirit in the World pp.156-162), that there are significant differences between Rahner and Lonergan as well. This I would contend has implications for one’s understanding of intelligibility and intuition. It also has to do with the degree to which one’s own thinking comes under the influence of Kant the great modernizer in the history of philosophy …

Now before one can sort out the full implications of this difference one needs to get some grip on the nature of the actual difference.

And given the ‘plaguing' difficulties and complexities of the issue, I nevertheless hold that our best effort to do that on this Lonergan-list, was when a few of us took up a small but highly relevant text written by Robert Henle, Method in Metaphysics (Marquette University, 1980) but originally published in 1951, based upon a lecture given in 1950 in honor of St. Thomas Aquinas at the meeting of The Aristotelian Society of Marquette University.

So, I offer/recycle again my own gloss on a section of Henle’s text where he explains an understanding of metaphysics that perhaps gives the best account of why an affirmative answer to Lonergan’s pointed question of 1958 – “Is there or is there not a human intellectual intuition of concrete actual existence?” has considerable validity still today …

I would add that Henle’s exposition rendered by my recycled gloss below also can assist one in attempting to penetrate/fathom Rahner’s own difficult treatment of esse that I also tried to render by way of a gloss in an email (see below) from Feb 9/24 ….

Now, Henle in my view answers this question this way (my gloss ‘Method in Metaphysics’ pp.44-58) –

‘Intelligibility … appears in two orders, that of form or essence (which Lonergan in my assessment upgrades to the act of understanding) and that of esse, the act of existence. Our intellectual knowledge is not limited to that of conceptualization and is fully apprehended only in existential judgment. So, in Thomistic existential metaphysics the most basic insight and intelligibility is that of esse – the act of existence. This is not to ignore the importance of the order of essence and its contemplation of the complex structure of being, but all its efforts to understand are carried on in the light of this act – esse.

The experiential moment of this metaphysics is therefore the moment of vital contact with reality in direct existential judgment. This is the moment of composure (my own term) between mind and real being. The primary necessities and insights of metaphysics are not deduced from concepts nor added by a priori forms in the mind but are already contained in the existential judgments we make. Possession of this knowledge in judgments is not to be a metaphysician or to possess a metaphysics, i.e., to possess the intelligibilities of the phantasm in their pure intelligibility and depth.

So, we ask by what process can this knowledge move from direct understanding to full explicit possession? The means of this movement is reflection upon what is seen in the object. Reflection is exercised on the knowledge expressed in the judgment not as a mental being or psychological act or form of knowledge. It is exercised for two purposes: 1) to direct and focus contemplation of the reality itself with which the judgment is in living contact, 2) to order the intelligibilities of the judgment and understand them in their purity. The first is a deepening insight, an enriching of the mind with reality, and the second lifts the knowledge to the level of consciously possessed intelligibility, i.e., to the level of philosophical science - metaphysics.

…..

This discussion that Henle’s text has led some of us through, has been an inquiry into the origins of metaphysics from sense experience. This is about an existing, valid, and realistic metaphysics of being and its act – esse. In this discussion the central question is – ‘what is the privileged experiential moment (and this relates closely to Lonergan’s pointed question from 1958), and then by what method is metaphysics derived from this experiential moment?’ This privileged experiential moment of metaphysics lies in the experience from which arise the concrete existential judgments which everyone makes and from this experience metaphysics is derived from induction through intellectual insight into phantasm, and through a purifying reflection.

The experiential moment is privileged in that metaphysics keeps in view the intelligibility of esse while other sciences (such as economics) attend by either direct or indirect means to quidditative intelligibilities and at the most only presuppose existence treating it as a brute fact and not as an intelligibility. The concrete and realistic character of metaphysics is evident as its insights and principles are found directly in reality. It is at the highest level of philosophical science and is so validly, because it deals not only with quidditative and formal intelligibilities but with the intelligibility of the most intimate and ultimate of acts – esse, in the light of which it and it alone considers all things.’

with some apologies for the length of this post

Hugh

 

Subject:	Re: [lonergan_l] a response to Kant's and Lonergan's "challenges"
Date:	Tue, 6 Feb 2024 09:29:03 -0400
From:	Hugh Williams <hwil...@nbnet.nb.ca>
Reply-To:	loner...@googlegroups.com
To:	loner...@googlegroups.com

On 2024-02-09 2:53 p.m., Hugh Williams wrote:

Doug et al,

I think it is time for me to attempt (imperfectly and with many flaws) to render by way of my own gloss, Rahner's treatment of esse in his Spirit in the World (The Continuum Publishing Company edition, 1994, pp. 156-162). Part of the difficulty, apart from the intensely plaguing difficulties of the topic itself, is that we are dealing with layers of translation (Latin, German, English). This edition is translated by William Dych SJ …

[jaraymaker]

Hugh, you touch on deep issues--also invoking economics in the process. Pierre and I address such issues in our book.  Below is an abstract of  one chapter of an other book to be found on the Internet. It explores Aquinas’s thought on esse, and it gives details on how, for Aquinas, esse is the act of all acts. The abstract is to be found at this link,

https://academic.oup.com/book/2307/chapter-abstract/142442408?redirectedFrom=fulltext

The link addresses "Aquinas' Way to God: the Proof in De Ente and Essentia."

I quote the resume of one chapter of the book:

This chapter explores Aquinas’s thought on esse, and in particular details how, for Aquinas, esse is the act of all acts. Accordingly, this chapter shows how Aquinas advanced the metaphysical discussion about actuality beyond that of his predecessors. In particular, it is shown how, having introduced esse as a metaphysical principle, Aquinas, in accord with Aristotle, can conceive of things as composites of act and potency, whilst at the same time maintaining, in accord with more Platonic ways of thinking, that things that exist participate in the esse that they have. The chapter then turns to a treatment of contemporary analytic accounts of existence. It is argued that none of them can offer illumination of Thomist esse. 

END quote.

As to the very complex problematic of the notion of esse in Aquinas and how it might throw light on the differences between Gilson and Lonergan (on  this particular subject), your reference to Henle is "interesting and relevant." In retrospect as to what we've discussed here for the last few years, I again reiterate Lonergan's insistence on treating epistemology (including the Kantian revolution) before metaphysics. His insistence is at the center of his Insight achievement.

 

Pierre and I are waiting for some in-depth reviews of our book which "ventures" in very abbreviated fashion into some of the above problematics. Pierre and I make our own "revolutionary" claim that GEM-FS needs to stress the need for TWO  MORE conversions or "turnarounds" to bring the understanding of Lonergan's achievement "up to snuff" (make it relevant) in addressing the huge problematics humanity is facing.

 

In conclusion, I'll note 1) that Pierre and I are both based in "far-away" Europe--for me this site has been important in stimulating my own reflections in some of the books I've written over the past 20 years; 2) I regret that although our "Skipper site" has had a history of addressing many relevant problematics into which Lonergan delved, we have lost the active participation of many. There are "lurkers"; how many I do not know,

John 

.

[Pierre Whalon]

I second what John says. Any lurkers out there?

Pierre

Envoyé depuis la toute nouvelle application AOL pour iOS

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[Doug Mounce]

I think I've read his blog before - the bearded thomist

~/

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[Hugh Williams]

John,

You write - "I again reiterate Lonergan's insistence on treating epistemology (including the Kantian revolution) before metaphysics."

I thought 'we' had established that Lonergan eventually softened his position in this post-Insight, though many of his progeny seemed to want to maintain a hard-line on this question.

So, as a matter of strategy for a particular project, perhaps I could agree ...

but as a matter of philosophical principle, it remains very problematic, it seems to me, ... certainly within the 'Aristotelian-Thomistic' tradition.

We simply cannot, in Aristotle's terms, account for 'act' by 'potency' (or actuality by possibility), which giving epistemology primacy as a matter of principle in effect would do.

Eventually the proper compositeness of being is undermined leading to considerable philosophical difficulties ...

Hugh

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[jaraymaker]

Doug,

 

this has become a long, complicated thread or discussion here. I'm reminded of the traditional apologetic discussion in fundamental Christian theology of the need for a first cause--God..

 

I just googled and found on the "related" issue of a possible existence of multiple universes or "multiverse" as follows.

 

"The multiverse is the hypothetical set of all universes. Together, these universes are presumed to comprise everything that exists: the entirety of space, time, matter, energy, information, and the physical laws and constants that describe them." End quote

 

Could you specify how "the bearded thomist" addresses or is relevant to the present discussion?

 

John

[Doug Mounce]

John, Gaven Kerr is the author of the paper you recommended and the "bearded thomist" blogger.  His blog hasn't been active since 2020. 

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[jaraymaker]

Doug. OK-thanks. I see that Gaven Kerr has drawn thousands of people to his U-tube presentations!!! Not bad. People are still searching for basic answers!

 

John:

 

[Hugh Williams]

John et al,

Please allow me to elaborate more 'pastorally' why I think 'Lonergan's insistence on treating epistemology ... before metaphysics' can be seriously problematic'.

(I also should reiterate that I believe that post-Insight Lonergan tempered his position somewhat perhaps because of engagement with certain knowledgeable and wise Thomists ...)

My own reservations come from my own experience in what at one time was called 'community development' along with my my close study of Etienne Gilson and his reading of St. Thomas Aquinas. 

And this issue, though not central to a paper published in the Lonergan Review (Spring 2010),

was nevertheless very much at play, especially if one attends to the footnotes of the paper. See - https://www.academia.edu/115062128/New_Hope_and_Vigor_to_Local_Life

In the paper, jointly authored with my good friend Peter DeMarsh (now deceased), who had a background in economics, we raised, in our view, a very important question, originally formulated by Kenneth Schmitz (The Recovery of Wonder) that is both theoretical and methodological.

In granting epistemology primacy over metaphysics, one inescapably gives the question 'how do you know?' primacy over the question 'what has your experience been?'. And this latter question also asks implicitly 'what do you know?'.

To set up this epistemological primacy philosophically and as a matter of principle, is seriously problematic both theoretically and methodologically, for it contains the modern hubris that sees our reason as somehow, in principle, assuming a total control over our relationship with the things of the world, and then serving as the arbiter of the conditions under which things are to be considered.

This simply is not, first and foremost, the way our being in the world works - it is a modern (disembodied) illusion and can without due care contribute to unfortunate and even tragic consequences, which our paper tries to articulate especially in its footnotes. It is somewhat surprising that the Lonergan Review published it ... but they did ...

(Again see Peter DeMarsh and Hugh William, New Hope and Vigor to Local Life in "The Lonergan Review: Vol II, No1, Spring 2010, see especially p.275.)

Hugh

(See  https://www.academia.edu/115062128/New_Hope_and_Vigor_to_Local_Life)

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[jaraymaker]

Hugh,

 

we're dealing with two different interpretations of this problematic; it seems the two won't mesh.

 

John

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[Hugh Williams]

John,

I think I know how you feel ...

but as I mentioned, I thought Lonergan, at one point, post-Insight, was making some gesture towards a 'reconciliation'

(albeit, hard to accomplish) in both Verbum p.105 and in Understanding and Being pp.177-178.

This is where the issue of the hermeneutic circle and its 'completion' is held up to be very important,

and so ... perhaps retreating into 'incommensurate discourses' remains only an academic luxury.

The Church's synodal process is the only high level undertaking I know of that comes close to employing

some deliberate methodology in the hopes of completing such a circle. 

And I find it very interesting that the employment of experts where technical epistemological considerations might come into play 

in the service of the question 'how do you know?', though important at some point,

are quite secondary to the 'listening and sharing' moments, which in my estimation and experience are dominated by the more phenomenological ad hominem

which does have an intimacy with the existential metaphysics I repeatedly speak of ...

I do think Lonergan had some sense of this as well ...

Hugh

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[Doug Mounce]

Hugh, et al,

This comes at a timely moment when I was thinking about why I'm studying Rahner.  I've only finished the Introduction, and just-started on the Article in the Context of the Summa Theologicae.

Rahner makes an interesting distinction about his study of Thomas as philosophy and not just history.  The way he describes the difference makes "history" sound-like "chronology", which was more typical in his day, but all modern historians know about methodology and how interpretation works.

Another point he makes is to say that this won't be an explicit address to Kant or Heidegger.  The "scholastic" reader who takes exception to some Kantian-sounding expressions should know this is not a critique of knowledge but the metaphysics of knowledge,  ". . . therefore, as opposed to Kant, there is always question of a noetic hylomorphism , to which there corresponds an ontological hylomorphism in the objects, in the sense of a thoroughgoing determination of knowing by being." - what do you think of that?

Finally, he takes the approach to consider one section of Thomas as the center out of which he understands spirit - a power which reaches out beyond the world and knows the metaphysical.  "World is the name of the reality which is accessible to the immediate experience of man."  Spirit in the world, therefore, is expressed in the doctrine of the conversion of the intellect to the phantasm. 

To get started, the context for the Article regards created being where the question, `What is man?', refers first of all to the essence of the "soul".  Phantasm has been of great interest to me since reading Lonergan's Verbum, and, of course, soul belief since reading Rank.

~/

https://staff.washington.edu/mounce/

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[Hugh Williams]

John et al,

I made reference below (Feb.18/24) to an earlier draft of a paper I wrote with Peter DeMarsh that appears in The Lonergan Review (Spring 2010).

There are also many other excellent papers, and one worth special mention upon the recent publication of John and Pierre's book,

... it is a very short paper by William J Zanardi entitled "Obstacles to a Basic Expansion" -

https://www.pdcnet.org/lonerganreview/content/lonerganreview_2010_0002_0001_0121_0129https://www.pdcnet.org/lonerganreview/content/lonerganreview_2010_0002_0001_0121_0129

Again, this good paper also appears in the same issue of The Lonergan Review. And again, it is a very short (pp.121-128) 

but it is a very succinct presentation in very general terms of the real world challenges Lonergan's economic theory faces.

In fact the whole special issue of The Lonergan Review (Spring 2010) which concentrates on Lonergan's economic thought and its various implications is well worth reading. 

Hugh

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[jaraymaker]

Yes, indeed, Hugh, addressing CWL 15, 21 and integrating these with Insight & MTI and the views of major economists IS a challeng!. Pierre and I are grateful to Cyril Orji's evaluation and promotion of our work, but it's not easy to convince general audiences!!!  As some readers of our book have noted, it's rather demanding.

 

I did read Zanardi's fine paper when it first came out,     John

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[Hugh Williams]

Doug, John et al,

I'm taking some effort to recycle by way of the email post below and the attached paper from Lonergan provided by the good Gerald O'Collins some time back

to give those who are interested in considering/pursuing this problem actually posed, or re-posed by Lonergan (and originally, in his own way, by Kant) the crucial context for such further consideration. (And again, in my view, it bears upon Rahner's own complex efforts in his 'Spirit in the World'.)

I believe that this attached Lonergan paper from 1958 to the ACPA is pivotal for getting some grip on this problem - at least as far as clarifying Lonergan's effort to articulate his own complex position and remaining question. It has, as he says, considerable implications and consequences.

Yet even still, there are aspects in the latter pages of this important Lonergan paper that possess, in my view, some ambiguity that warrants citing ...

Lonergan writes (p.150)

"... how does one know that the judgment, This exists, is true? Here one is asking, not for an ontological cause, but for a cognitional reason. The only possible answer is that, prior to the judgment, there occurs a grasp of the unconditioned. For only the unconditioned can ground the objectivity of truth, its absolute character, its independence of the viewpoints, attitudes, orientation of the judging subject.

... in what does this grasp of the unconditioned consist? ..."

Now, Lonergan attempts to answer this.

But we also can ask here - what does he mean by saying this 'grasp of the unconditioned' is the only ground for 'the objectivity of truth' in its 'absolute character' ...?

and why does he seem to insist that the effort to answer such a question does not have to do with 'an ontological cause' but only with 'cognitional reason'?

Lonergan's effort to answer this question as to 'what does this grasp of the unconditioned consist?' by saying 'it is a grasp of a virtually unconditioned, of an unconditioned that has conditions which, however, in fact are fulfilled' ...  arguably remains unsatisfactory and, in my view, requires the supplementations offered by fellow Jesuits, Norris Clarke, and now Karl Rahner as he discusses,with some difficulty, this issue in his 'Spirit in the World'.

And finally, all this leads Lonergan to emphatically stress the question he leaves us with at the end of this important paper -

'Is there or is there not a human, intellectual intuition of concrete actual existence?'

Hugh

On 2023-12-27 4:51 p.m., Hugh Williams wrote:

John, Doug et al,

This, then, in this lull between Christmas and the New Years, is my effort to articulate a philosophical problematic that just might challenge/inspire at least a few participants to read together (turtle paced) over the next few months a short section from Rahner’s ‘Spirit in the World’. The accompanying  attachment is again, for those interested, a relatively brief expansion on my own treatment of the problematic imperfectly worked out in dialectic with a few others on this site over the past two years or so …

And so here goes - did not Lonergan, like Kant, present a fundamental challenge with his question in his paper to the ACPA in 1958 – ‘Is there or is there not a human intellectual intuition of concrete actual existence?’

Kant put his question to his colleagues in his ‘Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics’ (my gloss) can anyone articulate a single necessary self-evident metaphysical principle? And if no one can then Kant's own project of a critical metaphysics of cognition, well underway, will be vindicated.

Is not Lonergan with his question laying down the philosophical gauntlet in a very similar singular manner?

And if so, does not Rahner, in a way, take up the challenge in his ‘Spirit in the World’ (pp.156-162) where he clarifies esse as the fundamental principle of metaphysics that in effect meets Kant’s challenge, and then, at least, indirectly perhaps also answers Lonergan’s question in the affirmative (though perhaps altering or developing the sense of this notion of ‘intellectual intuition’)?

I do acknowledge that as John pointed out - such undertakings are 'too demanding for a forum such as this' (and certainly for me, too) but this is what great philosophy and its aspirants do, is it not? ... and in this Kant and Rahner (and now Lonergan) are interconnected as Fiorenza clearly stated in his introduction to Rahner's 'Spirit in the World'. ( ... perhaps all we 'lesser lights' can do is attempt on occasion to reach up to the mind of these greats ...)

hoping all is well in and for the New Year ...

Hugh

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[Hugh Williams]

Forgive me but the important Lonergan paper was provided by Gerard O'Reilly and not Gerald O'Collins ...

my humble apologies

Hugh

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[Doug Mounce]

Hugh, et al,

Just a note to say I am reading these posts.  Of course, I miss the days when dynamic conversations among diverse participants ranged far and wide, but I am inspired to continue this particular study of Rahner.

I assume the virtually unconditioned uniquely is a Lonergan idea.  He significantly contributes to our understanding of knowledge by distinguishing the intelligent activity that yields ideas or meaning from the verification (or falsification!) process that results in products of knowledge or fact, but this idea that something happens in the movement between these levels, where the mind turns to concepts of the absolute, really is quite unique.  It has overtones of Platonic idealism, as well as an implied recognition of ontological foundations.  I don't know why, for example, this particular insight couldn't conceivably occur between experience and intelligence, but the best we have is Sala's exposition that this is the ground of judgment.  Maybe I'm just not entirely sure what Lonergan wanted to do.

There's the organizing of methods for theology, for example, where at least three levels are recognized in the description and explanation of knowledge.  Then there's the paper referenced here elaborating on intelligere and the notion of being with the parallel emphasis on judgment and the foundation that questioning is a fact.

"In other words, just as
existence is the act of being, so the notion of existence is the crowning
component in the notion of being. But the notion of being is our desire
to know, our drive to ask questions."

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[re...@yahoo.com]

Grasp of the virtually unconditioned is an operation, not a concept.

Judgement is a simple 'yes', adds no conceptual content else it would be Kantian. Some interpreters retain Kantian elements, Lonergan does not. It is a leap, a transposition analogous to that of direct insight. When you become certain you defend it unconditionally. "This much is true..

 If nothing else" just the facts lady. We do not see the truth or esse, we affirm it. I wish all you closet Kantians would recognize what are literally your preconceptions and go beyond them to consciousness itself.

Yahoo Mail: Search, Organize, Conquer

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[Doug Mounce]

Thanks for noticing Gerard.  Yes, a process is what I intended by saying, "the mind turns".  Don't you think the turn is to a universal based on the particular?  Your team won the game, you have no doubt, but the idea about what "winning" means is a concept maybe?  I agree that when you judge a win you add no conceptual content to the idea of what winning means. 

PS - hee hee, closet Kantians!  Even moreso, I maintain that a judgment does not always (just most-often) depend on questioning - Peter's question at the transfiguration is inappropriate, for example; experiencing the event is all that is wanted.  In any case, have a blessed weekend!  Doug

[Hugh Williams]

Doug, David et al,

I believe we are not responding to Gerard OReilly below ... But to David Oyler.

And so to David - have you spent any time with Rahner?

Under Rahner's influence we might ask - Is the move to consciousness ‘in itself’ a proper metaphysics on its own? 

Is it an adequate answer to Rahner’s question ‘what is esse?’ And are we going to answer this in terms of human consciousness alone?

Is there value in Rahner’s tentative and exploratory claim that there is a knowledge of esse always and already realized 

that is given antecedent to the affirmative synthesis realized in (reflective) thought (SW p157)? 

Or are we going to have this monumental work of Rahner’s reduced to a Lonerganian ‘counter-position’?

And finally, I would confess that there is no modern/post-modern thinker without some of Kant in his intellectual 'closet'. 

For better or worse, he simply is that important …

Hugh

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[Doug Mounce]

Oops, sorry, that is David, I believe.

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[jaraymaker]

Alle Formate und Editionen anzeigen

 

 

 

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Hi all,

as to the intricate intellectual-historical relationship between the arguments of Kant and how Lonergan dealt with them, here is a link that briefly, but brilliantly summarizes the status quaestionis by Giovanni Sala:

 

https://www.amazon.com/Lonergan-Kant-Giovanni-B-Sala/dp/148752014X

 

"Lonergan's Insight has frequently been compared with Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Giovanni B. Sala, an internationally acknowledged Kant scholar, contrasts the cognitional theory of his former teacher Lonergan with the positions of Kant that have proved so influential, and in many ways so intractable, over the past two centuries.

The first essay is one of the most influential papers ever written on Lonergan; it and the second one inquire into the notion of the a priori. The third essay presents a detailed analysis of Kantian intuitionism and contrasts it with the `knowledge as structure' position of Lonergan's critical realism. In this essay intuitionism is generalized, to allow Sala to address representatives of neoscholasticism as well. The argument with neoscholasticism continues in the fourth essay. The final paper discusses Kant's resolution of the question regarding the agreement of a priori concepts with things, and finds in Lonergan's work an alternative position on correspondence and truth. Each essay is a model of careful and thorough scholarship, and also - surprising in a book of such proportions - of clarity. Lonergan appeals several times in Insight to the device of `Clarification by Contrast.' Sala's essays show us in intricate detail how illuminating such comparisons can be."

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[Hugh Williams]

John, Doug, David et al,

 John’s reference to Sala is very relevant for me/us in that it highlights the issue of Lonergan's important work on an alternative position to Kant on correspondence and truth and I might add, the issue of to what extent it succeeds …

 With David’s recent good post, I’d suggest we are at least hovering around what Richard Rorty use to call philosophical ‘bedrock’. I say this in the sense that we are at least hovering over this distinction between the cognitional and the ontological, which in my view ultimately returns us to the question or issue of the real distinction between essence and existence.

 And so, as a matter of philosophical bedrock we again might attempt to answer Lonergan’s 1958 question ‘is there or is there not a human, intellectual intuition of concrete actual existence?’ in this manner …

As a matter of formal causality – No!; however as a matter of efficient causality – Yes! Adding that to the extent one rejects the second part of this response is not one in effect reducing existence to essence, i.e., denying the real distinction? And thus, one is restricted only to the cognitional analysis of the nature of true judgments unable (and perhaps unwilling) to consider their ontological dimension. And so, I’ve been arguing, one remains without an adequate metaphysics.

 

And so, without an adequate metaphysics - what actually remains of theology? Symbolism? Sophisticated wishful thinking?

And so, we are led to Rahner’s work, and perhaps its monumental stature because it does wrestle with the question of ‘spirit in the world’ – is it real? i.e., does it have an ontological dimension in conjunction with the undeniable cognitional intrigues it presents us with? And I’ve been arguing, albeit tentatively under the influence of Rahner, that it does appear to be real … and Rahner shows this in large part through his treatment of esse and our apprehension of this esse after the manner of Thomas …

 And when Doug writes – “a judgment does not always depend upon questioning (and reflective inquiry)” I feel we are coming close to answering Lonergan’s 1958 question similarly in that existential judgments are fundamentally the result of a causal efficacy …

towards an Easter well being ...

Hugh

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[Hugh Williams]

John, Doug, David et al,

If we speak of Kant's influence on Rahner (and Lonergan), we must say something about Heidegger's influence especially on Rahner.

Rahner studied under/with Heidegger (H) for a time. I believe his influence shows in 'Spirit in the World' in this sense -

that H insisted that it is the question of Being that is the absolutely fundamental question of both philosophy and existence itself.

(See Jean Grondin in Heidegger's Being and Time. Critical Essays (2005) pp. 15-31)

Now I would hold that Heideggerians are mistaken to suggest that no one before H has promoted such a thesis (consider for one, Gilson's important work). 

What perhaps is unique in H's consideration of the question of Being is the way H links this fundamental question to the question that the human being is or becomes for him/herself.

H rightly saw that this is a question before which both the human person and philosophy tends to flee. 

This is because it is a destabilizing question, one which tends to dissolve our certitudes.

H seemed convinced that the oblivion of this question of Being was endemic, even a type of destiny for Western culture.

He once protested that he could not find one single study that took up his question seriously and critically so as to either affirm or reject it.

There was a restless uneasiness with this question in H that is now in many quarters recognized to be religious in large part.

H wrote - 

"And who would want to deny that this entire path up to now was accompanied silently by a confrontation with Christianity - a confrontation that was not and is not a "problem" taken up at random, but the preservation of the ownmost origin - of the family house, of the homeland and of my youth - and at the same time a painful detachment from it. Only someone who was so deeply rooted in an actually lived Catholic world can suspect something of the necessities that affected the path of my questioning up to now like subterranean seismic tremors."

H rarely spoke of this fundamental aspect of his intellectual motivations publicly.

Nonetheless, having some sense of this influence of H on Rahner, perhaps, can aide one in appreciating what Rahner is doing, very much on his own terms, in 'Spirit in the World' where there is this sustained reflection on metaphysics and esse after Thomas Aquinas ....

... after writing this note above, I'm almost tempted to suggest that Rahner's 'Spirit in the World' can be read as a complex and dense Catholic Heideggerian affirmative (and momentous) response to Lonergan's 1958 question to the ACPA -

'is there or is there not a human, intellectual intuition of concrete actual existence?' 

At least we can perhaps agree that in Rahner's work and thought the oblivion for the question of Being is remedied to some degree, at least for any future Christian theology that should take Rahner's problematic seriously.

Hugh

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[Hugh Williams]

John, Doug, David et al,

As I continue my ‘wandering about’ with this problematic that I'm pinning specifically to Lonergan's 1958 question to the ACPA - 'is there or is there not a human intellectual intuition of concrete actual existence?'

I'd like to add a relatively brief clarifying note to this topic’s very long thread, and specifically to my more recent post from March 31 just below the email from April 6.

On March 31, I responded to the above question from Lonergan this way –

As a matter of formal causality – No! however, as a matter of efficient causality – Yes!

And then I attempt to link this question and its problematic to the scholastic issue of ‘the real distinction between ‘existence and essence’ and the metaphysical and epistemological problems that come with our persistent tendency in philosophy to reduce of existence to essence.

After further ponderings, I’d like to add this further ‘boiling down’ of the point of this attempted response on my part and it is this –

that as an intuition of a Concept - No! but as an intuition ‘of and in’ Judgment - Yes!

This of course raises the question of the philosophical and metaphysical status of Gilson’s important and crucial notion of existential judgment.

Furthermore, this ‘response’ also has some relation to my most recent post from April 6 where I try to make some reference to Heidegger’s role in all of this as a major influence on Rahner. Gilson also found certain deep affinities in Heidegger’s philosophy and his effort as a 'contemporary philosopher' to raise the question of Being while admitting its great difficulty and our tendency in the West to ‘flee from it’ because of its destabilizing affect on our cherished certitudes.

And yet, if we are attentive, we see this ‘question’ emerging again in our own time in the discourse of very practical people who would seem to have grave institutional responsibilities – people with ‘the World Bank’, the ‘International Monetary Fund’, ‘the World Trade Organization’, the ‘Vatican’, ‘NATO’, ‘the highest level of the US, Russian, and Chinese States’ and so on, where they are now more apt to give us this peculiar turn of phrase when referring to the status and future of ‘our present world order’ – that its now an 'existential question’ or a challenge having ‘existential proportions’.

Hasn’t John, in recent posts (especially in reference to AI) also been alluding to something similar … 

Perhaps this ‘question’ and its destabilizing affect on our certitudes is why so many academics seem to have gone silent … are they/we simply ill-equipped for this question and its problematic as Heidegger has argued? 

Now I must say that the question does in fact arise, one could quote extensively, … and yet it seems to me that an understanding of its philosophical problematic though greatly needed is for the most part absent. And yet Lonergan, in my view, does gives it a good try with his 1958 essay ‘Insight: A Preface to a Discussion’ and his very pointed and as he says, momentous question to Catholic philosophers - 'is there or is there not a human intellectual intuition of concrete actual existence?'

Hugh

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[David Bibby]

Dear Hugh,

Could I query please the second part of your response:

As a matter of formal causality – No! however, as a matter of efficient causality – Yes!

...

that as an intuition of a Concept - No! but as an intuition ‘of and in’ Judgment - Yes!

I understood efficient causality as meaning A is the efficient cause of B, but I am not clear what is causing what in the above instance.  Are we saying perhaps that an intuition of concrete existence is the cause of judgement, or that judgement is the cause of knowing an intuition?

Many thanks,

David

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[Hugh Williams]

David,

We are attempting to speak of an intellectual intuition of the act of existence in the existential judgment. There should be no doubt of the presence of such judgments in our language’s use of the copula. Metaphysics role is to clarify the conditions of their possibility which, Gilson says, has two pre-requisites – 1) that reality includes an existential act over and above essence and 2) that the human mind naturally apprehends it. Doubt of this latter pre-requisite is the consequence of a philosophical failure to grasp the cognitive power of existential judgment. Existence, in lying beyond essence and abstract conceptual representation, nevertheless does not lie beyond the scope of intellectual knowledge. For existential judgment is the most complete form of intellectual knowledge having existence as its object. This is why esse becomes a necessary prerequisite for the fullness of any ontology upon which the soundness of one's epistemology rests.

This, I take it, is the reason for Rahner’s extensive and difficult exposition on esse in Spirit in the World.

Hugh

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[jaraymaker]

Hugh, David, Doug and all

 

While trying to follow the complicated theme of Rahner, Heidegger, Gilson, Lonergan and the various distinctions they make as to the relations between esse, existence,, essence and judgment, I came across the following which points to an article that sheds some light on the subject. It appeals to Agamben as being helpful:

 

https://www.academia.edu/44770060/Ontology_and_Stupor_Heidegger_Gilson_and_Agamben

I cannot reproduce the sections of the article I deem relevant, so please download the article at the above link.  Agamben seems to have had a distinguished career, but I had not heard of him before,  John

[Hugh Williams]

John et al,

It is always interesting for me to see (at the link provided below) a young philosopher taking seriously Gilson’s continuing relevance.

But this dropping of names is secondary to the substantive issues that are being wrestled with. And here it is the question of being. Which we are told over and over by the likes of Gilson and Heidegger that this question is something we in the West flee from in our philosophy almost as a destiny.

And when we do try and face up to it – so much energy must go into sorting out the question's problematic. This, I’ve come to believe, is all that most of us can do … and in this we do a tentative and incomplete job at best. Rahner at times even describes his own efforts in ‘Spirit in the World’ in this manner. Heidegger, though he might become frustrated by philosophers ignoring this question, often admits to only being able to sort out a plaguingly troublesome problematic.

This young philosopher lays out the problematic at the end of his paper in this manner (my gloss) – 

‘this question of being as existence has to do with life. ‘To be … for the living means to live’ says Aristotle. Nietzsche echoes something similar.  There is this intimate interweaving of being and living. And this becomes the task of thought. The author goes on to suggest that it is only by ‘re-inventing life that politics can be reinvented’ … not the other way around. He then goes on to say something more pointed – that only if it is possible to delineate the contours of a form-of-life and of a common use of bodies, will politics be able to escape from its muteness and individual biography from its idiocy. Life, then, and the question of existence with which it is intertwined, are at the foreground, and politics is – and necessarily so – parenthesized.’

And I say this young philosopher too is exploring and probing this plaguingly difficult problematic of a type of metaphysics … and there are some indications that many others in philosophy, if they be honest, are doing something similar.

So Rahner as a Jesuit and Catholic philosophical-theologian is doing this as well by engaging St. Thomas Aquinas on the topic. And it seems this question posed by Lonergan concerning of ‘an intellectual intuition of concrete actual existence’ fits very well with such efforts to explore more seriously the problematic of this question of being so understood … more than this … it is, if not an invitation … a provocation, whether intentional or not.

Hugh

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[David Bibby]

Thanks Hugh.