LONERGAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER Newsletter 42/2 May 2021
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LONERGAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER Newsletter 42/2 May 2021 Publications McNelis, Sean. “The Eight Enduring Challenges in Housing Studies - on Explanations, an Integrated Comprehensive Heuristic and Implementation: Some Comments on Mark Stephen’s article'.” Housing, Theory and Society, vol. 37, no. 5 (2020): 578-583, doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/14036096.2020.1816571. This article draws on Lonergan’s functional specialties, conceived as eight enduring challenges, to comment on a feature article in Housing, Theory and Society by a UK housing researcher, Mark Stephens, “How housing systems are changing and why: a critique of Kemeny’s theory of housing regimes.” The comment distinguishes three types of linked explanations – an explanatory definition of a housing system; an historical explanation of how a housing system develops; and a critical explanation that critiques the use and abuse of power. It argues that these distinctions are necessary if we are develop an adequate understanding of how housing systems work. The comment then expands on first type of explanation as one which seeks to develop an integrated comprehensive heuristic and notes that the theory of housing-welfare regimes focuses on one particular technological aspect (tenure) of the housing system. Finally, in response to Mark Stephen’s note that “one of the most enduring challenges in housing studies” is to understand “how housing systems function and change”, the comment concludes by summarily expanding this single challenge into eight enduring challenges in housing studies by distinguishing different stages in both research and implementation. Morelli, Mark D. Hegel Inside Out: Essays on Lonergan’s Debt to Hegel. Sherman Oaks, CA: Encanto Editions, 2020. Ogbonnaya, Joseph and Gerard Whelan, ed. Intellect, Affect, and God. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2021. The wealth of reflection of the contributing authors of this volume—often relatively young— confirms that the influence of Lonergan's thought continues to expand in the areas of philosophy, theology, and the social sciences. It also reveals how Robert M. Doran has expanded on the thought of Lonergan on issues such as psychic conversion and the four-point hypothesis and that these developments are being widely received in diverse interdisciplinary areas including systematic theology, interreligious dialogue, priestly formation, ecology, scriptural hermeneutics, world Christianity, theopolitics, sociology, etc., This collection of essays is relevant not only to Lonergan scholars but to all who are curious about the relevance of Lonergan and Doran studies to contemporary issues. Contributing authors include: Brian Bajzek, Jeremy Blackwood, Lucas Briola, Anne M. Carpenter, John P. Cush, John D. Dadosky, Darren J.Dias, Gregory P. Floyd, Joseph K. Gordon, Jonathan Heaps, Ryan Hemmer, Christopher Krall, Cecille MedinaMaldonado, Joseph C. Mudd, Jacob M. Mudge, Cyril Orji, Gordon Rixon, Josephat John Rugaiganisa, Eugene R. Schlesinger, Andrew T. Vink, Jaime Vidal Zuñiga Oko, Dariusz. “Objectivity as the Fruit of Authentic Subjectivity.” The Person and the Challenges: The Journal of Theology, Education, Canon Law and Social Studies, 11/2 (2020): 123-43. An important and recurring problems of philosophy is the “critical problem”— the problem of bridge between the human mind and the world, the external reality. It is the question of relations between the subject and the object. A solution for this problem is offered by Bernard Lonergan SJ (1904–1984), one of the most important Catholic English-speaking thinkers of the twentieth 2 Lonergan Studies Newsletter 42/2 century. It would be difficult to point to someone who influenced the American Catholic philosophy and theology from the inside out more than he did: He connects the traditions of Thomism and Augustinianism to classical and modern philosophy, German idealism and English Empiricism. At the heart of his thinking is the theory of the human mind. With the help of transcendental and phenomenological methods, Lonergan demonstrates that the mental structure of human consciousness consists of five levels: the empirical level, the intellectual level, the rational level, the responsible level and the level of being in love, which together create a cumulative process that leads to knowledge and decision. A key point here is the act of understanding—the insight—which always has a creative moment, especially on the intellectual and rational levels, as an effect of the subject’s work. The correct understanding of this moment enables a mediation between the empirical, rational and idealistic understanding of the knowledge process. Correct action on all levels, faithfulness to the nature of the subject, leads to truth – according to Lonergan’s apt maxim: objectivity is the fruit of the authentic subjectivity. Streeter, Carla Mae and Susan Talve. Avoiding the Sin of Certitude: A Rabbi and a Theologian in Feminine Interfaith Conversations from Disputation to Dialogue. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2020. "Avoiding the Sin of Certitude" is a series of dialogues between a progressive rabbi ordained in the Reform Tradition and a Roman Catholic theologian. Both women are deeply committed to interfaith work and social justice. Dissertations Berger, Christopher Dan. Method in Legitimation: Exploring Lonergan’s Political Thought. Ph.D. Thesis. Boston College, 2021. This dissertation gives an expanded reading and interpretation of the work of Bernard Lonergan in political theory around the question of political legitimation: What does it mean for a governing entity to exercise coercive power legitimately? To answer this question from Lonergan’s thought requires that we do several things: understand the historical context in which we find ourselves (Chapters 1-2), understand what Lonergan means by authenticity Lonergan on Paul Ricoeur's (Chapter 3), and how that relates to legitimate critical method: authority, which is an authentically operating matrix of authentic individuals participating in authentic "Acknowledge the insight of communities governed by and utilizing authentic the critic of religion, and pin institutions and institutional sub-communities it down exactly. Discover the (Chapters 4-6). We conclude with a method for oversight that makes him a evaluating governmental legitimacy that expands critic of religion. Use his on Lonergan’s approach. The history of the insight for the purification of conversation concerning political legitimation is religion and use his oversight capacious, complex, confused, and contradictory, and I for a renewal of its vitality do not propose to recount it here in full. But despite so and power. much already said, Lonergan brings to the table CWL 17, 280 something new and distinct from the previous publications. What is new is his philosophical focus, emphasizing method over concrete content or legislative procedure, which leads to an account of legitimation as authenticity. What matters is how individuals, communities, and institutions, including governments, are operating, not what particular form they take. Granting that his account of legitimation as authenticity is unique, why do we need authenticity to make sense of legitimate political authority? What does it add to the myriad other available accounts of legitimation we already have? Available accounts of legitimation meander through the shoals of history, and it is usually only through trial and error that a navigable passage connecting power to legitimate June 2021 3 authority is found. In brief, what Lonergan’s thought provides is a way to navigate over the shoals of history so that no matter what new features may form beneath the waves, legitimate authority will always be possible and recognizable. We begin with an extensive but partial mapping of those shoals and pointing to some of the major shipwrecks of previous theories, the better to distinguish Lonergan’s view of legitimation as rooted in authenticity of individual, community, and institution in subsequent chapters. This will also give us examples for practical evaluation to show how Lonergan’s method might work in action. Lonergan is not a cultural relativist, but he does claim that his understanding of legitimacy will be applicable in all times and for all peoples and that, by extension, for governments is always possible, no matter what form it takes. He gives a retrospective method for evaluating the legitimacy of leadership in the progress or decline of a culture, a nation, a civilization, a people. “Inquiry into the legitimacy of authority or authorities is complex, lengthy, tedious, and often inconclusive” (Bernard Lonergan, “Dialectic of Authority,” in A Third Collection, ed. Robert Doran and John Dadosky, 2nd ed., University of Toronto Press, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan vol. 16, 2017, page 6). But “[t]he fruit of authenticity is progress” and “[t]he fruit of unauthenticity is decline”, and the meat of this work is to spell out in detail the authentic operations of individuals, communities, and institutions (and institutional sub- communities). (Lonergan, “Dialectic of Authority”, 6, 7) These are what produce the progress or decline. We conclude by supplementing Lonergan’s method with an approach that concurrently evaluates the operations of individuals, communities, and institutions and their sub-communities to see whether they are operating unauthentically (because evidence of unauthenticity is easier to recognize than authenticity in concurrent evaluations) and so, likely to produce either progress