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Going Beyond Essentialism: Bernard J.F. Lonergan an Atypical Neo

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Going Beyond Essentialism: Bernard J.F. Lonergan an Atypical Neo “The New Alliance: IISF ISTITUTO ITALIANO PER GLI STUDI FILOSOFICI the Role of the Italian Institute for Philosophical Studies” Ten years after the publication of La Nouvelle Alliance, I can say that a rapprochement between physical sciences and the humanities has been facilitated thanks also to the Italian Institute for Philosophical Studies. The Italian lnstitute for Philosophical Studies is an example of such rapprochement in the name of humanism. The Institute, in fact, studies the traditional problems of philosophy as well as the classical problems of science. In this sense, the Neapolitan Institute plays a very important role in Europe. Let me express a few words of admiration for Avv. Gerardo Marotta. I would like to say how impressed I am by the breadth of his work: seminars, publications, conferences, whose mere enumeration occupies volumes of thick books. It is also the variety of subjects that is so extraordinary: from history and philology to physics and mathematics. Thanks to your enthusiasm, and GOING BEYOND ESSENTIALISM: your generosity, dear Avv. Marotta, the Institute has set an example of what humanism BERNARD J.F. LONERGAN can be today. Your Institute does no longer belong to Italy alone. It is also an intellectual treasure of Europe as a whole. AN ATYPICAL NEO-SCHOLASTIC In the current process of rapprochement of natural sciences and the humanities, I believe Europe has a very special role to play. When I travel the world, whether to the edited by United States or to Japan, I see much interest in science, although in science too often CLOE TADDEI-FERRETTI viewed as a technological, economic, or even military instrument. I believe, instead, that what still distinguishes Europe is its philosophical interest in science, which remains very much alive today. In this sense, institutions such as the Italian Institute for Philosophical Studies sustain what I believe is a fundamental element. If we consider the work of great physicists such as Mach, Boltzmann, Einstein and Planck, we see that their scientific path was underpinned by philosophical visions and that at the height of their scientificc reation was the union of science and philosophy and the arts themselves. Today, we clearly live in an age of transition fraught with grave dangers. But it remains undeniable that our century has witnessed a new form of society made possible by science, a form of organization that gives Man more responsibility and more independence than BERNARD J.F. LONERGAN GOING BEYOND ESSENTIALISM: any other previous society. Let me express a utopia, a hope: that scientific advances enable AN ATYPICAL NEO-SCHOLASTIC us to envision a society in which the price of civilization is lower, where more people can accomplish themselves. We live in a form of proto-history: how many of us can accomplish themselves, demonstrate their talent? A handful. We still live in a form of organization dominated by economic pressures and technological needs. Science can play a decisive role in advancing towards a more human society. ILYA PRIGOGINE (Nobel Prize for Chemistry) NELLA SEDE DELL’ISTITUTO CLOE TADDEI-FERRETTI NAPOLI MMXI Atti di Convegni e Seminari 09 ISTITUTO ITALIANO PEr gLI STUDI fILOSOfICI gOINg BEYOND ESSENTIALISM: BErNArD J. f. LONErgAN, AN ATYPICAL NEO-SCHOLASTIC edited by Cloe Taddei-ferretti NELLA SEDE DELL’ISTITUTO NAPOLI MMXII Stampato nel mese di febbraio MMXII Arti grafiche Cecom Bracigliano (Sa) © Istituto Italiano per gli Studi filosofici Palazzo Serra di Cassano Via Monte di Dio 14, Napoli www.iisf.it ISBN 978-88-89946-30-5 CONTENT Presentation of the Volume Saturnino Muratore 9 Opening Address: The Istituto Italiano per gli Studi filosofici and the Thought of Bernard Lonergan Gerardo Marotta 17 Magisterial Lecture: The Value of the Thought of Bernard Lonergan Today Carlo Maria Cardinal Martini 21 The Abiding Significance of the Ethics ofInsight Robert M. Doran 25 Lonergan’s Sublation of Integral Hermeneutics Frederick G. Lawrence 39 Intentionality, Constitutive Dimension of Knowledge in Bernard Lonergan Rosanna Finamore 57 Lonergan’s Philosophy of the Natural Sciences and Christian faith in Insight Patrick H. Byrne 81 Consciousness According to Bernard Lonergan and its Elusiveness William Mathews 101 The Self of Critical realism Elizabeth A. Murray 123 Bernard Lonergan on Analogy Matthew C. Ogilvie 139 The Concept of Transcendental in Kant and Lonergan Giovanni B. Sala 147 Bernard Lonergan and the Philosophy of Being Saturnino Muratore 175 5 The flight from Insight Hugo A. Meynell 183 Intersubjectivity in the Thought of Bernard Lonergan and in Cognitive Science Cloe Taddei-Ferretti 191 Bernard Lonergan’s Universal Viewpoint and Its Transcultural Possibilities Ivo Coelho 215 Lonergan, the Development of Doctrine and the reception of Ecumenical Consensus Catherine E. Clifford 243 Economic Paradigms and the Thought of Bernard Lonergan Howard Richards 259 Lonergan, freedom, and the foundations of feminism Paulette Kidder 273 Closing Address: The Significance of Bernard Lonergan for Academic Studies Adolfo Russo 281 reminiscences and Impressions about the first Italian Translation of Insight of Bernard Lonergan Carla Miggiano-di Scipio 285 ‘‘One Cannot Transpose What One Does Not Know’’: Outline of a Proposed Course in fundamental Theology Gerard Whelan 295 Quest for Meaning, and religious Indifference: The foundational Theology of Lonergan Giuseppe Guglielmi 303 Observations on Lonergan’s Contribution to the Philosophy of Time and Space Ermenegildo Caccese 311 free Will According to B. Lonergan and B. Libet Edoardo Cibelli 321 Conscious Intentionality as foundation for a Transdisciplinary Science Jim Morin 331 Concert Drummond Petrie, Cello 339 6 Appendix: Lonergan and Music Cloe Taddei-Ferretti 341 Contributors 343 Index of Names 353 7 PrESENTATION Of THE VOLUME Saturnino Muratore Seminario Permanente di Epistemologia, Istituto di Filosofia, Pontificia Facoltà Teologica dell’Italia Meridionale, Sezione San Luigi, Naples, Italy On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the first publication of Insight by the Canadian Jesuit Bernard J. f. Lonergan (1957), and to present the new critical Italian version of this monumental volume published in the year of that anniversary (2007)1 under the High Patronage of Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, emerit Archbishop of Milan, two events have been organized in Naples, Italy, which have to be considered as completing each other. The first one has been the presentation of the new Italian edition of Insight at the Pontifical Theological faculty of Southern Italy, Section Saint Louis, Naples, (17 December2 2007). The second one has been the International Workshop “Going Beyond Essentialism: Bernard J. F. Lonergan, an Atypical Neo-Scholastic” at the Italian Institute for Philosophical Studies, Naples, (13-15 May 2008); the International Workshop was promoted by the same Institute, presided by the Advocate gerardo Marotta, and by the Permanent Seminar of Epistemology, directed by myself in the Pontifical Theological faculty of Southern Italy, Section Saint Louis. The very title of the International Workshop refers to the different way of interpreting Thomas Aquinas by Lonergan compared to the essentialistic reading carried out by Scholasticism and Neo-Scholasticism: a way which holds in mind the strong meaning of the term “being” and the predominance of what is existing over what is possible. In his major work Lonergan exploited some of his previous researches on the thought of Thomas Aquinas and materials gathered by him in order to treat the theme of the method of theology, according to his original idea, in view of the 1 B.J.f. Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, F.e. Crowe and r.M. Doran, eds., CWL 3, University of Toronto Press, Toronto 1992 (19571); Italian edition Insight: Uno studio del comprendere umano, S. Muratore and N. Spaccapelo, eds., Città Nuova, roma 2007. 2 Bernard Lonergan was born on December 17th, 1904. 9 attempt, which by that time could not be postponed any longer, to renew the framework of Catholic theology, updating it and bringing it up to the challenges of the contemporary cultural context. A quite decisive factor had been his encounter with Thomas. In fact, Lonergan had quickly matured his conviction of a persistent and widespread “conceptualist” misunderstanding of the thought of Thomas Aquinas, since the Aquinian doctrine became commonly interpreted in Scotistic key, giving the priority to the concept rather than to the intelligere. But Lonergan was also convinced that to confront oneself effectively with contemporery philosophical problems it was not sufficient to simply recall Aquinas: in fact, in the new context created by modern philosophy and science, one could no longer take for granted the metaphysical framework of the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition. Insight was born just as an attempt to transpose the fundamental philosophical insights of Aquinas into the contemporary context. By turning upside down the traditional formulation of philosophical Scholasticism,3 Lonergan moved on ahead to give privilege to the critical demand and methodological control with respect to the reference frame of metaphysical theory. All that was obtained thanks to a radical process of self-appropriation by the subject, a self-appropriation of what later Lonergan will call «the basic pattern of conscious and intentional operations»,4 which the volume Insight aims to stimulate and guide in its fundamental articulations. The ultimate base of reference for the philosophical
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