(10) CONTEMPLATION--Reflection & Self-Reflection

Contemplation--Reflection and Self-Reflection

I also hope to help you develop the potential contemplative philosopher residing in you. It is never too late to become more thoughtful and reflective; and if some of us have avoided developing a reflective life, all of us carry the potential for that development within us throughout our lives. Of course, again, it is difficult to fix a car while driving it; however, that is what the philosophical project requires of us; for in order to have insights about insight, or to know about knowing, we must catch ourselves and others in the act of these very processes. Also, we must continue to drive the car--to raise questions, to have insights, and to come to know, to speak, and to act daily and in a timely way.

However, somewhere in the deeper reaches of your spirit, I think you already know that the underlying meaning in your thought, speech, and acts, is too important to be avoided by your own intelligent reflection; for what we take for granted is often that which, in reflection, reveals itself to be most important to us.

Further, reflection and self-reflection are given to us and, in some sense, develop spontaneously. However, a conscious emphasis enhances and qualifies. As such, building a contemplative life, especially in a culture that fails to encourage it, will not happen on its own. Rather, it happens because we decide to take up a given tradition, and-or if we consciously decide to make reflective thought the centerpiece of our lives. Thus, contemplation is not a “learning style” that is good for other people but not for me. Rather, regardless of learning styles, contemplation is a self-authoring and maturing aspect of any developing human being; a definitive foundation for anything we can call human wisdom; and essential for those of us who live in an increasingly varied, highly nuanced, and complex world. These days, that means everyone.

Reflection can also be about endless avenues and dimensions of meaning about your everyday practical problems, or in your own self, in others, and in things in and out of the world. For instance, as someone with a modicum of reflection already, you commonly ask in any situation: What is going on here? What do your inner feelings “tell” you about that? Why? Can you articulate, and should you act on those feelings? What are your options? And, on what basis should you choose and act or not act?

Of course such reflections are common and important to your life. However, in the present work, we will focus on specific aspects of that common experience of reflection; and the chapters will take you through a guided series of moments of critical-theoretical self-reflection and self-recognition. Thus, our narrative will take up the given potential of your own and everyone else’s reflective and self-reflective practices about everyday events--events that have been occurring over a lifetime and for centuries of other lifetimes. On the other hand, in the present work, we also will bring a critical-theoretical awareness to those practices and, further, discover and self-verify their fount.

In a passage in Insight, A Study of Human Understanding, Bernard Lonergan speaks of reflection in the context of what he calls the general bias of common sense[3]:


A traditional view credits children of seven years of age with the attainment of an elementary reasonableness. The law regards as a minor anyone under twenty-one years of age. Experts in the field of public entertainment address themselves to a mental age of about twelve years. Still more modest is the scientific attitude that places man’s attainment of knowledge in an indefinitely removed future. Nor is personal experience apt to be reassuring. If everyone has some acquaintance with the spirit of inquiry and reflection, few think of making it the effective centre of their lives; and of that few, still fewer make sufficient progress to be able to withstand other attractions and persevere in their high purpose. (1958, p. 225; 2000, pp. 250-51) (my emphases)


My years on both sides of the desk in the classroom support Lonergan’s remark that many today have little understanding of their own capacities for reflection and self-reflection.[4] Consequently, many languish and fail to develop these habits in their lives. Indeed, and intentionally or not, many cultural forces often lead us towards diminishing or curtailing such practices; and when such forces enter formal education in a systematic way, we can hear the death knell of any sustained cultural transcendence we might otherwise experience.

Of course, our mind-ful practices are based on a fundamental understanding that we do not already know everything there is to know, and are not yet as wise as we can be, or would like to be.

However, it remains that you and I can come to understand such potential in ourselves; and we can choose to invite its happening, and to deepen our approach to life through developing such habits in ourselves and perhaps inspiring them in others, especially if we are teachers by profession. Also, if we are to survive at all in the writ-large world, the more complex and dangerous our common world becomes, the more we must take up reflection and self-reflection as a central part of our common education. Thus, in the present work, I call you to recognize and develop your own contemplative capacities and hope this book helps you to realize those capacities in a critical way.