(7) Lonergan: No Guru/Lonergan Studies: No Camp

Lonergan—No Guru. Lonergan Studies—No Camp

As Lonergan well knew, his body of work is not about “Lonergan’s theory;” neither is it an invitation to join a philosophical or theological guru camp. Nor is the pedagogy I present an invitation to do so. In empirical science and in philosophy, there are no kings. There is only publicly presented evidence, our prior questions, and the anticipation of new insights for our increased understanding.

Thus, this pedagogical method is about theory and about transcendental method the theory, but only as a means to a more important end. That end is your personal understanding, valuation, and critical judgment, and your intimacy with critical philosophical reflection--regardless of the conceptual order of the theory, of who developed it, or of the camp or “school of thought” you work through to develop it.

Also, I hope you will forgive Lonergan his pre-feminist references to the generic “he-him.” However, Lonergan makes this point exceptionally clear in the following passage from Insight, A Study of Human Understanding:


. . . while the reasonableness of each scientist is a consequence of the reasonableness of all, the philosopher’s reasonableness is grounded on a personal commitment and on personal knowledge. For the issues in philosophy cannot be settled by looking up a handbook, by appealing to a set of experiments performed so painstakingly by so-and-so, by referring to a masterful presentation of overwhelming evidence in some famous work. Philosophic evidence is within the philosopher himself. It is his own inability to avoid experience, to renounce intelligence in inquiry, to desert reasonableness in reflection. It is his own detached, disinterested desire to know. It is his own advertence to the polymorphism of his own consciousness. It is his own insight into the manner in which insights accumulate in mathematics, in the empirical sciences, in the myriad instances of common sense. It is his own grasp of the dialectical unfolding of his own desire to know in its conflict with other desires that provides the key to his own philosophic development and reveals his own potentialities to adopt the stand of any of the traditional or of the new philosophic schools. Philosophy is the flowering of the individual’s rational consciousness in its coming to know and take possession of itself. To that event, its traditional schools, its treatises, and its history are but contributions; and without that event they are stripped of real significance. (1958, p. 429; 2000, p. 453-54)


Thus, we must be appreciative of Lonergan's contributions to many fields of study, and we must admire the man Lonergan for his mind. However, we then must turn with an intense interest to our own (female or male) as he rightly wishes us to do. Also, though we can agree with Lonergan about the intensely personal aspects of the philosophical journey, with him, the present work assumes that such a process can have a good beginning in theoretical procedures, and in the context of a well-lit classroom in collaboration with others.

Further, theoretical understanding with technical-conceptual terms, and the development of what Lonergan calls theoretical consciousness, are valuable in their own right; and such development in your own mind is essential for our project of a full understanding of transcendental method and for your conscious and critical embrace of your own order of mind that self-appropriation is. With Lonergan, the present work endeavors to help you develop both for yourself. However, understanding Lonergan’s theory is only one educational tool for, and one conceptualization of, consciousness, self-understanding, self-valuing, and self-knowledge.

The structure and activities of your own mind, then, is not the theory, and it certainly is not “Lonergan’s theory.” Consciousness is human understanding-in-act, in you, and in history. That act is going on now as you read this work; that act is going on in all human beings as I write and as you read; and that act is central to human history in the making. Thus, the theory we will use for our study is only a variable expression of what is constant, invariable, and universal to that ogoing act-of-understanding.

Moreover, rather than being a “guru,” Lonergan happens to have developed an adequate, but not end-all, theory that encompasses a call to self-understanding through a critical and personal verification. His focus, then, is on your own self-understanding-knowledge, and not on the theory. Our focus, on the other hand, is on the pedagogy to bring the self-appropriation about in you.

That being said, as with many philosophical treatises, Lonergan’s writings are long, complex, and difficult for most readers. In the present work, however, I focus on one specific aspect of philosophical self-knowledge. Here, I strive for as much brevity as possible without corrupting the process; for a common clarity; and for as much ease as possible for you to recover the essential distinctions and insights for a good self-corrective and new beginning. All can be done hopefully without doing disservice to Lonergan’s work, or to the historical import or long-term dimensions and requirements of the project of gaining reflective self-knowledge as a personal as well as a cultural enterprise.

Again, you should know that, to firmly set a new contemplative foundation for the rest of your life based on a thorough self-examination, you will need to do more than report Lonergan’s theory or perform a few exercises, even if such reporting and performance are done well. Thus, this project is in your own, and not Lonergan’s, camp. In this regard, I also hope to inspire you and your students, if you are a teacher, to recognize and develop the potential philosopher residing in yourself and in all of us.

Finally, we find transcendental method when we enter the interior functions of our own minds with the critical exigency of those functions at the helm. And so, again as a theory, transcendental method regards the trans-cultural—the conscious structure and dynamism of all persons regardless of culture, gender, religious affiliation, history, etc. As such, when drawn from and applied-back to its data, transcendental method has no less of the staid explanatory power of Einstein’s E=MC2, and perhaps it has even more. It does so because, first, the data and laboratory for verification are always with us; and second, this knowledge speaks to how any knowledge continues to be knowledge, including E=MC2.

If so, then the theory and its surrounding literature call for the same kind of critical regard, until such time as the theory is proven wrong, or until such time as new theories help to reveal more of our mind and its processes. Thus, though E=MC2 and transcendental method were developed by persons, what is thought important is first the theory and then the scientist or philosopher who developed it.

NOTE to Blog Readers: Go to "older posts" to continue with this Preface