Beards on Rahner
Doug Mounce
Hugh Williams
Doug et al,
You do good work and your speculations always draw me in (or is it out?) ...
nonetheless I wonder from what you outline/present below if Rahner and Lonergan are each, at least at times, dealing with a different problematic, ... perhaps even a different problematic in Thomas
is guiding each of them in different directions -
Rahner in his 'introductory interpretation' of STI, Q84,a7
(SiW: pp.15-17) does say that Thomas Summa is first
concerned with human intellectual knowing. So in this we might say
Rahner and Lonergan are concerned with the same problematic. But
then Rahner says that the schema Thomas sets out for this question
of human knowing and its object, and
which he wishes to follow, is in terms of the corporeal
(material), the knowing soul itself (intellectual), and of
spiritual realities beyond the soul.
(Thomas has added in his exposition on 'Boethius on the
Trinity'(2, q 5-6) that in our pursuit of our own education
we must consider each object pursued ... so that we
try for such certainty as the object of inquiry
itself allows ...)
Rahner further says early on in his text that there is a depth to this schema or systematic in Thomas where if knowledge of the corporeal is the first proper object of specifically human knowledge then these three areas are not separate regions of human knowledge equally accessible. Rather, as he puts it, knowledge of the knowing subject and of the Absolute depend upon knowledge of the essence of material things. The very possibility of knowledge of the subject and of the Absolute must be understood from that of our knowledge of this material-sensible world. Thus Thomas treatment of corporeal knowledge (knowledge based in bodily experience) assumes a decisive role for his problematic and in determining/clarifying the Thomistic theory of any and all human knowing.
Thus, in my view, if the above is an early clue to Rahner's problematic, ... it is in pursuit of how there can be theological and metaphysical knowledge of God in human knowledge that is so grounded in this bodily existence in the world.
I realize that Lonergan has a fascination with mathematics
(which Thomas, it seems, assigns to the second area of reflection
upon the the soul, or of the 'intellectual') but this doesn't lead
to, or is not a good lead for the existential metaphysics of esse
but rather, with and after Plato, ... leads towards a
'metaphysics' of essence. Important as this may be in the
general scheme of things, especially for any consideration of the
complexities of reflective thought, it is as Aristotle argued not
a proper approach for the problematic of 'being as being'
which Rahner in following Thomas as he does, has set out for
himself in this dense and complicated text SiW. For me the unusual
existential problematic in Rahner is much closer to that of 'being
as being', the proper object and concern of theology/metaphysics.
Rahner early-on lays out his three guidelines for his problematic and its interpretation of Thomas - 1) he is concerned with intellectual knowledge as the point of insertion (occasion?) for a theological event, 2) he also wants to deal with knowledge of the material world and its possibility as fundamental, and 3) he wants to clarify how it is that in and through this (bodily) knowledge of the world there is an opening towards that which is 'beyond this world'.
Its not that there aren't philosophical problems in Rahner's SiW, for I suspect or sense that there are (perhaps more on that later) ... but I have to respect his problematic, to the extent I understand it, and how it leads him to confront the 'question and mystery of being (as esse?)' in the unique manner that he does ...
Hugh
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Hugh Williams
Doug et al,
please allow me a brief addendum to the post below in an attempt to overcome the inescapable obscurity readers, if there are any,
may feel regarding my references below to a 'problematic'
and 'object' expressed as 'being as being' ... in
Rahner's SiW ...
and so I recycle the recent email from April 16/24 on Heidegger's influence on Rahner which I'll boil down further in this manner ...
Rahner is under Heidegger's influence, certainly not the only influence but a significant one.
And Heidegger in his formative years was under the influence of Husserl who introduced phenomenology to philosophy and the question
of human consciousness with the fundamental distinction of its physical and mental phenomena.
Heidegger came to criticize Husserl's project as a phenomenology
too half-hearted, for in claiming to be examining consciousness
it was
employing notions such as 'subject', 'object', 'act',
'content', all of which were not pure discoveries in
consciousness but notions
of philosophical discourse that had a history in the world for which Descartes, for one, was pivotal for their modern expression.
Thus Heidegger renews the question of Being as more fundamental than that of consciousness which nevertheless did mean a renewed reflection of/on the human being ... Dasein ....
Hugh
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Doug Mounce
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jaraymaker
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jaraymaker
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PIERRE WHALON
[1] Ibid., 184. It may surprise some that Lonergan thought well of the then-young (1977) liberation theologies.
[2] Ibid., 195. He also qualifies this knowledge as that “by which people live their lives… of which Newman wrote in the Grammar of Assent, Polanyi in his Personal Knowledge, Gadamer in his Truth and Method.”
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PIERRE WHALON
“Theology as praxis” in A Third Collection, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan 16, ed. R. Doran & J. Dadosky, (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2017), 177-193.
Pierre
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Doug Mounce
Charles Tackney
jaraymaker
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Charles Tackney
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Hugh Williams
Dear Listers all,
I apologize for not being able to contribute on Beards but I know nothing about him or his work ...
and yet I've carried these reflections around with me having to do with my continuing efforts to take Rahner's text seriously and certain earlier posts having to do with Rahner, Lonergan, and to a lesser extent Heidegger, especially as to his influence in Rahner, ... and then I end with my good friend Gilson, who I believe to be of continuing relevance to the extent anyone should pause over this question of being, reintroduced by Heidegger and definitely taken up by Rahner in a sustained manner in his Spirit in the World.
------
Any philosopher who takes the question of being seriously is going to run into trouble trying to explain himself/herself ... this applies to Rahner no less than Lonergan who, in my view, (perhaps because of the difficulty of such ontological/metaphysical discourse in the scholastic tradition) strategically shifts his attention to being as some sort of ultimate achievement of the subject’s operations clarified through a careful and rigorous cognitional and intentionality analysis. Lonergan’s primary concern, it seems to me, is not the known or what we know, which he takes in so many respects to be constantly changing, but instead the activity of knowing itself based upon a recurrent structure that he argues can be investigated in a series of strategically chosen instances.
Rahner, in Spirit in the World, in some considerable contrast, and under the influence of Heidegger no doubt, stays with the fundamental question of being, and in certain important sections of his text (pp.156-162) is willing to tackle the question of being as esse which I spent some time trying to bring to our attention in an email to the list back on February 9. Here I understood Rahner as attempting to show esse as somehow identical with what he was calling the in-itself, … and he suggests tentatively, at this point in his text, that there is a knowledge of esse always and already realized that is given antecedent to the affirmative synthesis realized in reflective thought.
It was at this point I suggested that this might be construed as an affirmative response by Rahner to Lonergan’s pointed question of 1958 (that really was aimed at Gilson, who during this period I suspect he felt he had to finally confront head-on).
But as I try and read and work with Rahner’s difficult text, I can almost hear Gerard O’Reilly cautioning me to not be quite so presumptuous or impatient. And as yet I do admit, I have yet to get a firm grip on Rahner’s problematic around this question of ‘being’, where in his section on ‘The Foundation’ (pp.57-77) for his inquiry, where he turns to Thomas’ metaphysics of knowledge for guidance arguing that ST I, Qs 84-86 provides the core of this metaphysics and yet it is linked to the whole Thomas’ profound ontology which he admits to be nearly unfathomable, or at least beyond the scope of his present efforts.
In this section on ‘The Foundation’ he concedes that for Thomas metaphysics must hold its own principles in question and in the ensuing controversy must try to defend them. Paradoxically this is how metaphysics maintains itself. Rahner at this point gives what I’d dare to call a Marechalian account for the ‘foundation’ for his metaphysical question and inquiry into being which I do not find altogether convincing or persuasive. And yet there are intriguing insights or lures to go further with Rahner’s text as he, in his own way, tries to work through this controversy surrounding fundamental metaphysical principles that Thomas has at least hinted as being of the very nature of metaphysics.
There is says Rahner (p.61) a unity in duality in his proposed beginning for metaphysics. He says we have in Thomas’ ST I Q.84, a.7 a basis in something already and always presupposed that we are bodily in the world as we question what and who we are. And so, as a guide to our inquiry we are given the knowledge of a fixed relationship between knowing and known because of their source in, what he calls, a single ground. At this point, Rahner states his question thus – ‘how can knowing and known as posited in STI, Q.84, a.7 be shown as objectively identical, mutually clarifying, and justifying of each other?’
And finally, I’ll leave those few readers who might be following this exchange on Rahner with these words of advice for approaching metaphysics from Etienne Gilson in his Being and Some Philosophers (pp.202-203), which Lonergan himself in his 1950 review for Theological Studies said was a very important text that anyone who wishes to seriously consider the question of being must come to terms with …
“The most serious mistake made by the various metaphysics of essence is their failure to realize the nature of essence. They simply forget that essence always is the essence of some being. The concept which expresses an essence cannot be used as a complete expression of the corresponding being, because there is, in the object of every concept, something that escapes and transcends its essence. In other words, the actual object of a concept always contains more than its abstract definition. What it contains over and above its formal definition is its act of existing, and because such acts transcend both essence and representation, they can be reached only by means of judgment. The proper function of judgment is to say existence, and this is why judgment is a type of cognition distinct from, and superior to, pure and simple abstract conceptualization.
Yet it should not be forgotten that, in concrete experience, essence itself is the setting apart of a portion of concrete reality. The primary error of the metaphysics of essence is to mistake that part for its whole and to speculate about essences as though they were the whole of both reality and intelligibility. In point of fact, essences should never be conceived as final objects of intellectual knowledge, because their very nature is engaged in the concreteness of actual being. Abstracted from being, they claim to be reintegrated being. In other words, the proper end of intellectual abstraction is not to posit essences in the mind as pure and self-sufficient presentations. Even when we abstract essences, we do not do so with a view to knowing essences, but with a view to knowing the very beings to which they belong, and this is why, if philosophical knowledge is not to remain abstract speculation, but to be real knowledge, it must use judgment to restore essences to actual being.”
thanks
Hugh
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Pierre Whalon
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Hugh Williams
Pierre et al,
One can say at this point in the 'discussion' that there certainly is some ambiguity ... at least in 'our' treatment of the topic.
I'm focused on Rahner's SiW ch.1 'The Foundation' where he concedes both ambiguity and paradox.
As I understand it and as I've suggested below Lonergan too considered these difficulties in metaphysics and I believe this is what propelled him in the direction in which he excelled - toward the cognitional and intentionality analysis of 'Insight'.
Others have taken a different tact such as Rahner (and Gilson).
This difference is not necessarily opposed though one might think so given the pointedness of Lonergan's
1958 paper to the ACPA and his so-called 'question of fact' re. esse.
Both Lonergan and Rahner turn to Aquinas to aide them in their
respective investigations. And on this fundamental question of being
and truth, St. Thomas relies greatly on Aristotle (Rahner
bids us to see - Metaphysics III, lecture 1 -
https://isidore.co/aquinas/english/Metaphysics3.htm) As his own
approach begins to develop or unfold, Rahner makes this reference
in his Ch. 1 ... which clearly and somewhat strikingly has Thomas
laying out the difficulties and challenges of this fundamental
question and doing so for the sake of the ongoing inquiry, and not
as any reason for its philosophical abandonment.
So for a time, turtle-paced, I expect to work with Rahner's ch1
'The Foundation', for as Thomas says following Aristotle - 'it is
both worth the while and the effort' ... for philosophical
knots must become acquainted with if there be any chance of
overcoming them.
Thomas writes after Aristotle -
"... a difficulty about some subject is related to the mind as a physical knot is to the body, and manifests the same effect. For insofar as the mind is puzzled about some subject, it experiences something similar to those who are tightly bound. Just as one whose feet are tied cannot move forward on an earthly road, in a similar way one who is puzzled, and whose mind is bound, as it were, cannot move forward on the road of speculative knowledge. Therefore, just as one who wishes to loosen a physical knot must first of all inspect the knot and the way in which it is tied, in a similar way one who wants to solve a problem must first survey all the difficulties and reasons for them."
Can we editorialize, for a brief moment, and say that the problem
(knot) in summary, for both Rahner and Lonergan (and Gilson ...
and even the enigmatic Heidegger, perhaps), is whether
there is any real basis for first philosophy or theology? ...
and if so how it might be expressed and articulated?
So, I for one, would like to hear of your findings in your reading of Jonathan Heaps' work especially as it may help us in this matter ...
thanks
Hugh
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jaraymaker
Hugh Williams
John et al,
I pick up on two items – John's brief reference below to ambiguity and to Aristotle …
We are of the view that Rahner’s reference relayed in an earlier post to Thomas’ commentary on Boethius where the order of the sciences is discussed is highly relevant for appreciating a work such as ‘Spirit in the World’.
We cannot help but try to reintroduce here some sense of ‘speculative knowledge’ in approaching a text like Rahner’s.
Here the distinction from the practical is quite relevant. If we focus only on Aristotle, who is so consequential in the history of philosophy, and on the scholastics that followed him closely, we gradually come to recognize that they understood theology and metaphysics as a speculative science concerned primarily with being as true in contrast to the practical and its concern for being as good.
However, there is in our intellectual culture a misapprehension and even mistrust of speculation as somehow having to do with lowly conjecture, guesswork, and opinion, even idle opinion … But in Aristotle’s sense, as I understand him, speculative knowing is related to the hard work of ‘looking and seeing what is there to be seen’ (Lonerganians may well have to reconsider the perhaps oversimplistic denigration of ‘knowledge as taking a good look’ that one hears mentioned now and again).
Speculation then is way of knowing with 'no axe to grind’ says Gerard Smith. It is a knowing concerned with first principle. Now it is said, again following Aristotle, that we must eventually and gradually come to a first principle that is so consequential for our inquiries, indeed, for our intelligence, otherwise our starting point or point of departure is not really the starting point but is instead derived from some other beginning that remains hidden…
This then is why I’m proposing to take a close ‘turtle-paced’ look at Rahner’s Ch 1 ‘The Foundation’ which I do take to be richly ambiguous and that also remains problematic, in my view … but in a way that is ‘worthwhile’ considering closely, assuming one has some appreciation for the speculative inquiry that is metaphysics …
thanks again
Hugh
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PIERRE WHALON
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Hugh Williams
Pierre,
You make a very good point ...
I would add, however, that we are among metaphors here as to
'looking and seeing' in relation to the metaphysics of
knowledge and there is bound to be a certain looseness in
language ...
The issue as I see it, and I believe it will manifest itself in
Rahner's Ch.1 'The Foundation' from his SiW, is in an
overly zealous (perhaps even one-sided) turn to the subject's
reflective thought, as a point of departure, to the neglect of the real object or objects.
This at least will be my hypothesis re. Rahner's chapter one ... though there is much going on, and I get some sense of Rahner trying to balance things out
between 'reflective thought' and our 'bodily existence in the
world among real things' ...
This is why below I recall Aristotle's and Thomas' ordering of the sciences and of theology as a higher level speculative inquiry
and yet still as a type of 'looking and seeing what is there to be seen'. The 'looking' aspect should not be short changed, nor the eyeball,
for these 'metaphors' tell of our bodies in the corporeal world among many sensible things where the apprehension of being as being, evidently so difficult to clarify,
has to do (and even begins) with an important operative union, even interpenetration, of sensibility and intellect.
so it seems to me
thanks
Hugh
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Doug Mounce
Charles Tackney
jaraymaker
Greetings:Just a brief follow-up. I have received a registration invite for the 2024 Workshop with promise of a presentation schedule soon, but have seen no social media or BC Lonergan Center info on this being held.Nor any info on a presentation schedule, let alone any accept/reject on Abstract submission.Still standing by, actually sitting down at the moment....Any news out there?Best,Charlie
On Fri, May 10, 2024 at 8:40 AM Charles Tackney <ctt...@gmail.com> wrote:Morning John et al.:Thanks. Query out, will let you know. Pretty sure end April was listed for accept/reject decisions on submissions.Best,Charlie
On Fri, May 10, 2024 at 5:10 AM 'jaraymaker' via Lonergan_L <loner...@googlegroups.com> wrote:Charlie, good question. I googled and the nearest INFO on the 2024 workshop was this email address that can be contacted: bclon...@gmail.comIf you pursue the reference and get an answer please let us know,John
Am 09.05.2024 22:12:07 W. Europe Daylight Time schrieb ctt...@gmail.com:Greetings:A long overdue greet from Copenhagen. Anyone know if any news is out about the BC Lonergan Workshop?Best,Charlie
.
Hugh Williams
Doug
et al,
Doug’s good research and interpretation of Beards, Wilson, and Rahner (with always Lonergan in the background) is stimulating and provocative. Admittedly it is difficult to keep up with in parts.
There is however a line of inquiry in his post of May 15/24 ‘Beards on Rahner’ where he tells us of Beards' preference for retortion and his resistance to the notion of implicit knowledge. There is the claim that in fact we know nothing unless we have some critical control over the known. Then Doug moves to tell us, according to Beards, that it is Lonergan’s psychological facts that best designate our intellectual, rational, and responsible activities. This is the preferred evidence.
Beards, it seems, is then even prepared to claim under the context of a certain philosophy of mathematics and its noetic, that the ‘circle’ (Insight, pp.31-37) can exist in spirit with our explanatory understanding without reference to any particular material circle.
I’m sensing the emergence of, perhaps, a very old unresolved argument between the followers of Plato and of Aristotle which concerns the fundamental relationship between knowledge and being, and the interrelated questions of ‘what is knowledge?’ and ‘what is being?’.
And I’m also sensing again how Lonergan, at least at times, seems much closer to the Platonic position than to that of Aristotle. I say that because Lonergan’s foremost concern is not only the ‘essence’ of the ‘circle’, i.e., attaining insight into the circle as circle, but rather to attain insight into ‘our’ insight into the ‘circle’s’ essence. (Insight, p.32)
Let me try and explain my concern this way – we may acknowledge that mathematical truth regarding the ‘circle’ does not wholly depend upon existents to be known as it is known; but we do recognize with Aristotle a dependence somewhat upon existents for it to be as it is known, or in order to be as it is.
I acknowledge this as a strained and tricky distinction for one to grasp but it is metaphysically crucial, it seems to me (and here I am closely following Gerard Smith, see his very important Natural Theology(1957), pp.38-40). So again … the knowledge of circle does not depend upon existents in order to be known as it is known. The circle is not known as this circle as a condition of being known as circle. This mathematical concept can be known apart from knowing singular or common sensible matter, but … and here is the ‘rub’, as so known it exists only in knowledge and not in things.
Is this then not an essentialist noetic where essence, the universal, the intelligible, the possible, the necessary … are all known upon the occasion of our bodily/corporeal experience and not known because of this experience, which in my view would be the Aristotelian viewpoint?
And in another stretch … this I believe to be related, albeit by a long and tedious route, to the theological question of what grounds our theology – is it solely the cognitive structure of our knowing minds, or is it the metaphysical structure of the being we know. This I sense is what both Lonergan and Rahner are struggling to inquire into and to articulate, as did Plato and Aristotle before them.
Hugh
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Hugh Williams
Doug et al,
I’ve asked below, especially in reference to Lonergan’s treatment in Insight (pp.31-37) of the ‘definition of the circle’ - Is this then not an essentialist noetic where essence, the universal, the intelligible, the possible, the necessary … are all known upon the occasion of our bodily/corporeal experience and not known because of this experience, which in my view would be the Aristotelian viewpoint?
This is perhaps a very difficult yet fundamental distinction, it seems to me, that warrants some further elaboration. I’m trying to introduce this distinction between two fundamental positions on ‘knowledge and being’ – between what I’m calling, with Gerard Smith and Etienne Gilson, an essentialist and existentialist noetic.[1]
The difference is that existentialism holds that beings and the agent intellect cause our knowledge of beings, whereas essentialism holds that ‘being’ ‘causes’ our knowledge, but here is the rub again, that ‘being’ is essence-being, which according to the existentialists is not being at all, nor is that knowledge, knowledge of real being in the sense that this is not knowledge of things as they are but rather of things only as they are known in thought. And this issue boils down to whether one holds to the presupposition that that which exists is an essence. And this is closely related to whether one holds to our knowledge being of that which exists or can exist.
Smith contends that if one holds to being as essence, one will assume what he calls the troublesome aporias of essentialism (which I suspect is partly what is going on in Robert Wilson’s reflections on the anomalies in the relations between theoretical/defining and experimental/measuring physicists … but that will have to be another story for another time …).
Smith admits that there is no fully satisfactory demonstration that things are and that we know them, however there is ample evidence both that beings exist and that we know them. There is no fully satisfactory demonstration that being is not essence or that our knowledge of essence is inextricably connected with existents. However, there is considerable evidence that this is so … that there are things and that we know them in our sensible experience and that it is on this basis, we have our science. There is no evidence that being is essence or that what we know is essence, i.e., known apart from having known existents, and furthermore, according to Smith, there is both theoretical and practical trouble ahead for a philosophy and its adherents who maintain either implicitly or explicitly that being is essence.
Hugh
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Doug Mounce
as confrontation, that it is through Plato, rather than through Aristotle
or Thomas Aquinas, that he makes the specific discovery of understanding.
Thus, he says of his conversion from nominalism: 'I believed in intelligence
and I found concepts were overrated. When I found in Stewart's
Plato's Doctrine of Ideas that an idea, for Plato, was like Descartes' equation
for the circle, I was home. You get to the equation of the circle just by
understanding.""
Augustinian vision of eternal truth. Augustine had argued that we know
truth not by looking without but by looking within ourselves. Still, we all
may know the same truths, and you do not know them by looking within
me, nor I by looking within you, so that knowledge of truth is not merely a
matter of looking each within himself. Our inward glance really is directed
upward to what is above us, and it is in a vision of one eternal truth that all
knowing is indeed God, the eternal Light; but the reason why we know is
within us. It is the light of our own intellects; and by it we can know
because 'ipsum enim lumen intellectuale quod est in nobis, nihil est aliud
quam quaedam participata similitudo luminis increati.'122
certain participated likeness of the uncreated light'] Summa theologiae, l,
q. 84, a. 5 c."
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jaraymaker
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Hugh Williams
John,
this is a good bit of digging on your part ...
i'm quite sure both of Smith's major texts were first published during his lifetime.
Also Lonergan and Smith, as you say, were aware of one another's work ...
and yes there is this exchange of letters for which we have only one side of the exchange ...
Frankly, in reviewing the letter I have a hard time making sense of what Lonergan is saying ...
perhaps others can help in deciphering it ...
I'll try a little harder and see what I can come up with ...
Hugh
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Charles Tackney
I've heard that my submission has been accepted for presentation and a schedule of conference will be out early this week.
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Pierre Whalon
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Hugh Williams
John, you ask below -
"How would you evaluate what you write below with what Lonergan wrote to Smith? Lonergan in his letter to Smith writes of the "jagged line" with which Thomas Aquinas reevaluated Aristotle's metaphysics"
So, I took a little time with Lonergan's 1958 letter to fellow Jesuit Gerard Smith.
Remember this is the same year of Lonergan's 'famous' question to the ACPA which had Gilson and his followers in his critical sights.
Gerard Smith for the most part would be a follower of Gilson. This I believe is important to keep in mind.
Given that we have only half of this very interesting exchange (Lonergan's half ...) there are, nonetheless, some fascinating
clues or traces of high relevance ...
Both are at work on philosophical-theology ... asking on 'what is it about?' and 'on what is it based?' and perhaps most importantly 'on how is it to advance, if it is to advance at all?'
(Here, I'd say that both Lonergan and Smith, given what I know
of both as honest Jesuits and serious philosophers, had moments
of serious philosophical doubts about any such 'advance' ...)
The amazing thing about the exchange (especially if we had both letters, or more if there were more, is that here we get some glimpse into two serious thinkers actually 'at work'
more or less tentatively trying to work things out. What is clear from Lonergan is that he, at least at times after Insight, feels he is well 'on the way' to some important 'advance' ...
and with that feeling there is an impatience and perhaps even
a presumptuousness at play ... as in the letter with the use of
such a term as 'otiose' with regard to the distinction between
predicamental and transcendental relations, and then
again in his 'pointed' question of 1958 to the ACPA.
It is fascinating that the central issue of the letter ... seems to be this question of 'relation or relations' ... and more specifically what is their 'ontological status'?
This question, in the letter is being given a quick and intense technical examination with latin terms floating all over the place between these two Jesuit scholars.
There are two things I grab onto in this letter:
1) what Lonergan says on the reading of Thomas - (which might be applied to the reading of Lonergan as well) (my gloss) -
interpretation by deduction from the text of Lonergan or thomas tends to be a subjective projection of one's own logical ideal on the text.
Correct interpretation has to take into account the tensions created by advance which is not always complete ... and so 'our' work is to complete the advance ...'
2) There seems to be some centering around Thomas' text De potentia, Q 7, a 11 and on the status or nature of relations in our understanding's first and second intentions
which we all well know is a complex area of inquiry fraught
with plaguing difficulties. But nonetheless here we have some
area for possible advance in this question concerning the
ontological status of relation and relations ... which if we
take to be 'what in general and for the most part' Lonergan was
onto by way of 'advance' ... could not this shed a new light on
his work and project ... and its importance ...?
perhaps more on this later ...
good work John !!!
Hugh
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jaraymaker
Hugh Williams
But John this would seem to be an appeal for the practical ... towards political-economy perhaps ...
and an appeal drawing away from the more speculative ...
just at the very moment when we may have 'boiled down' and 'hit
upon' a speculative question between
Lonergan and Smith (following Thomas) - this question of 'relation' and our knowledge of it ... what is its ontological status?
Hugh
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Peter Cosmo Cassar Torreggiani
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jaraymaker
Hugh Williams
John,
But are you satisfied with Lonergan's treatment of the topic of relation and relatedness?
The point of the letter or of my reading of it was that though Lonergan gives some sense of having the 'upper hand'
on the matter under discussion, I believe that both Jesuits has some sense of dissatisfaction and of further advance actually being needed.
This certainly was the case with Smith and likely with Gilson, though there are what often become the stubborn 'facts' of achievement such as with 'Insight'
or as in Gilson's case with his 'Being and Some Philosophers'
,
in any thinkers work, the need for creative advance or novelty
seems to remain. ... and given our post-normal situation I expect
that this is really so
on so many fronts ...
Hugh
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jaraymaker
Hugh Williams
John,
Please allow me to further comment at ‘HW’ in the body of your text below ….
Hugh
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Subject: |
[lonergan_l] Lonergan "jagged-line evaluation" of Aristotle and Aquinas |
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Date: |
Sun, 26 May 2024 07:10:38 +0000 (UTC) |
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From: |
'jaraymaker' via Lonergan_L <loner...@googlegroups.com> |
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Reply-To: |
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To: |
Hugh,
with the theme "relation" in Insight, we are dealing with a very complex relation, but yes, I am satisfied with the book's treatment of relation, relatedness and relativity. As to relation, in Chapter 11, in the third from the last par, beginning with "There are then two types of description, ...", he concludes,
"But explanation on the basis of concsciousness can escape enirely the merely suppoed, the merely postulated, the merely inferred."
HW: This theme of relation is extremely complex and yet very relevant in my view. Several philosophers since Lonergan and Smith have advanced our understanding of the issue if not yet its satisfactory resolution. In Thomistic metaphysics, Norris Clarke has done some important work because of his willingness to engage seriously with process philosophers.
He is arguing here that explanation on the basis of sense can reduce the element of hypothesis cannot eliminate it entirely. "As the saying goes, the proof of the pudding, of course, is in the eating, and I would argue that this was one of Lonergan's main goals. He sought to achieve that goal with his extremely long argumentation which sets out to avoid a relativism that does uphold viable notions of relation and relatedness in an age of relativism, In Insight, he seeks to indicate how his account is compatible with Einstein's theory of relativity. He traces the history of an alleged relativism in science going back to Galileo and Newton's extremely important roles that permitted Einstein to come up with his groundbeaking theory of relativity. So to conclude, somewhat facetiously, Lonergan has helped scientists and philosophers to jointly share the "pudding."
HW: Ah yes, proof is in the pudding … and so let me lay something out here. You have unearthed this issue in the written exchange between Lonergan and Smith where it remains highly technical and even obscure for most of us …
Nonetheless, for catholic thinkers (if I may use such a term) we have unfolding before us some ‘pudding for tasting’, if I may stretch the metaphor a bit.
And by this, I mean this – that Pope Francis ‘has let the genie out of the bottle’ with his reintroduction of a ‘synodal church’. This has meant the church now has to face up to the problem of clericalism, which he has said repeatedly.
Dare I say he is unable to do this alone …
Now, his recent interview where he is quoted as speaking ‘against women being ordained to the diaconate’ is a very unfortunate turn of events in my estimation. As a Dominican friend said to me not long ago, there are instances when Francis would have been both prudent and wise to have said much less.
The issue of women’s role in the church is coming to a head in this second phase of the process, as is the issue of meaningful lay participation in the church’s decision-making structures. And neither of these challenging issues, in my view, should be pre-empted by the Pope speaking in this way …
And the conservatives are also right, in that this entire process is raising a fundamental question of ‘authority’. On what is it based, as Plato asked so long ago? … on Power or Truth?
Now your examples below of world leaders who resort to ‘power’ as their basis for ‘authority’ are perhaps quite obvious to many of us. However, it is when things become much closer to home where the real learning (or flight from learning) occurs …
And many catholics are living through this … I’d say, also, this is so in an especially heightened manner in Germany in the catholic church there …
How then does this relate to this complex and obscure metaphysical problem of ‘relation’ that arises between Lonergan and Smith.
Well as I speculate … it does so in this way – if one says one’s basis for authority rests upon ‘truth’ more so than ‘power’ then one has entered into, or moved near to metaphysics and our sticky question of the ‘relation of knowledge and being’, and one has done so either consciously or unconsciously. I say this because here, in our very own time, and in our very own ‘house’, we are confronted with the question of the truth of scriptures, and the truth of and in tradition, and in both instances we have the complex issue of ‘interpretation’, in conjunction with questions of ‘permanence and change’, ‘being and becoming’, ‘the one and the many’.
And yes, I believe that Pope Francis’ moves to reintroduce the synodal dimension of the church has brought him face to face with certain of his own philosophical/metaphysical presuppositions where he is bound to be both confused and conflicted, and so would be best advised to ponder the issue more deeply and more carefully with others ... and to do so certainly before rendering anything definite on these unsettling issues of ‘stubborn fact’ and ‘creative advance’ in this global institution with ancient roots …
As St. Augustine and Thomas Merton found solace in their quest for peace in their lives, so Lonergan enables us to find solace while enjoying the "pudding" which IS a serious challenge if one lets relativism take over as is now unfortunately the case in our very complex world. Charlatans like Hitler, Stalin, Putin and Netanyahu have exploited confused-confusing relativistic ideologies as they try to cover up the monstrosity of their lying ambitions--leaving countries in ruinous conditions--witness Ukraine and Gaza. In Lonergan, we have a needed compass that has re-evaluated "the jagged-line" that had led from Aristotle to Aquinas. What an "achievement" as David Tracy put it,
HW: Lonergan has made a significant contribution (as has Rahner). On this we can agree … and yet there are several other thinkers since Lonergan that have been working for a creative advance in this area … some of whom we’ve mentioned on this list – Kenneth Schmitz and Norris Clarke, Charles Taylor and William Desmond to name a few … the latter two in recent years, I know, have brought some of their work to bear in Rome, and I can only hope that the many learned clerics well positioned there will be open to some of the lessons, as I believe has recently happened in Germany, though it has provoked a reaction by so many bishops around the world … a reaction that I’m unsure is entirely justified …
So John, we have before us a real sensible ‘pudding in the making’ … a living illustration of this theoretical or speculative issue of ‘relation’ that is in my view, for many catholics, quite portentous.
But at least in the speculative domain, it can give us some concrete reference as to the nature of Lonergan’s contributions and its strengths and limitations …
It is as Phil might say … only when we actually confront these issues of implementation do these (much more obscure) speculative questions come alive and perhaps begin to make sense for the more practically minded …
John
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jaraymaker
Hugh Williams
John,
because of the limitations of this medium and the unfortunate likelihood of misunderstanding
that comes with it ...
if at all possible for you, can you say a little more in summary
on what you take to be my 'interpretation' in
what is said below especially in the most recent post to you ...
(for there is much said there, and I'm quite sure not all is well
said ...)
thanks
Hugh
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