(8) What the Book Is

What the Book Is

Thus, I mean to help you clarify a new and good beginning to your lifelong journey--the course that is for us all, “in the night;” and to assist you in your journey towards more reflective and self-cultured thought, speech, conversation, work, leisure, and living. The self-appropriation we speak of here, including its fully critical component, is central to that journey.

Further, because of Lonergan’s contribution to the project of philosophy, the general structure and dynamism of the human mind are no longer as impenetrable and mysterious to us as we once thought they were.

Another premise to this work, then, is a great faith in the meaning and mystery of what is already given to all of us, and that we can find it by paying attention to our experience of mind in the same way we pay attention to anything. That is, because of good theory development, conceptual formation, and pedagogical procedures, we can now know something about ourselves that we never knew before, by understanding for ourselves what Lonergan discovered and gave theory to. Nevertheless, the questions surrounding Lonergan’s discovery, our interest, and the apparently infinite intentions of that interest, in fact, remain as mysterious as they ever were.

The present work, then, provides a good beginning. After some initial preparation, the chapters set out in step-by-step detail the conditions for you to discover your own personal, spontaneous, dynamic experience-to-knowledge structure. From the field of guided self-reflection, you will move from your personal experience; to self-reflection on that experience; to theoretical hypothesis; to experimentation, applying that theory for your self-understanding, and critical verification; and to personal self-recognition—self-knowledge. Thus, we will draw our evidence from the details of your own and others’ life, thought, and language; and we will relate that evidence to a specified cognitional theory—transcendental method. The work aims at your coming into personal possession of objective evidence for knowing precise aspects of your mind’s structure and its general operations. Thus, the objective-theoretical in you comes together with the personal-intimate in you through theory and guided self-reflection.

Furthermore, I have attempted to write in prose that I hope is readable for teachers and students new to philosophy, but that will not put theoreticians or Lonergan scholars to sleep. If you are already familiar enough with Lonergan’s work to have understood what he means by transcendental method and self-appropriation, then I suggest the chapters on uniqueness, self-presence and language, knowledge and pedagogical method, and the last chapters on reflections, implications, and applications will be of most interest to you.

Embedded in these chapters is a beginning plan for what I call foundational review of all study fields. So the text can also be read with field unification in mind. In any case, I hope to help you move with clarity from Lonergan’s theoretical and methodological ship to our common and perhaps less-differentiated, shore. I hope to help you journey-out from, and make the return journey to, your own intimate shore. This was Lonergan’s intention; and so it is also mine.