Autor[ Liddy, Richard M
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Transforming Light By Msgr. Richard Liddy Seton Hall Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem. From the shadows and images into the truth 1 Table of Contents Transforming Light ....................................................................................................... 1 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 6 Part One: The Way to Intellectual Conversion ........................................................... 10 Chapter One Beginnings ....................................................................................... 11 Chapter Two John Henry Newman ........................................................................ 12 1. 'The Form of Mathematical Inference' ............................................................ 15 2. 'The Syllogism' ............................................................................................... 16 3. 'True Judgment and Science' ......................................................................... 17 4. Lonergan's Early Nominalism ......................................................................... 24 5. Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 29 Chapter Three Stewards Plato ............................................................................... 30 1. A Theory of Intellect ........................................................................................ 30 2. A Critique of Culture ....................................................................................... 36 Chapter Four Augustine's Cassiciacum Dialogues ................................................ 38 1. An Intelligible Account of Conversion ............................................................. 38 2. Conversion from Corporeal Thinking .............................................................. 41 3. Refutation of Skepticism ................................................................................. 44 4. Faith and Understanding ................................................................................ 48 5. Veritas: From Truths to the Truth .................................................................... 51 5. Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 56 Chapter Five Growing Conviction .......................................................................... 58 1. 'An Intelligible Account of My Convictions' ...................................................... 59 2. 'An Analytic Concept of History' ...................................................................... 66 Chapter Six Thomistic Influences .......................................................................... 71 1. Peter Hoenen ................................................................................................. 71 2. The Keeler Review ......................................................................................... 75 3. Joseph Marechal ............................................................................................ 79 Chapter Seven Lonergan's Intellectual Conversion ............................................... 82 1. The Letter of 1935 .......................................................................................... 83 2. Bernard Leeming's Course on the Incarnate Word ........................................ 88 Part Two: Early Expressions of Intellectual Conversion............................................. 93 Chapter Eight Grace and Freedom in Saint Thomas ............................................. 93 1. The Theorem of the Supernatural .................................................................. 95 2. The Transcendence of Imaginative Thinking .................................................. 99 Chapter Nine Verbum: Word and Idea in Saint Thomas ...................................... 102 1. The Appeal to Interiority ............................................................................... 102 2. Understanding Understanding ...................................................................... 103 3. Understanding Judgment ............................................................................. 106 4. Our 'Native Tendency to Extroversion' .......................................................... 108 Part Three: 'Radical Intellectual Conversion ............................................................ 111 Chapter Ten A Growing Focus on Scientific Method ............................................ 112 1. 'The Form of Inference' ................................................................................ 116 2. 'Finality, Love, Marriage' ............................................................................... 117 3. 'An Essay in Circulation Analysis' ................................................................. 119 4. 'Thought and Reality' .................................................................................... 120 2 5. 'A Not on Geometrical Possibility' ................................................................. 121 Chapter Eleven Intelligence and Reality' ............................................................. 123 1. Experience, Understanding, and Judgment ................................................. 124 2. Implicitly Defined .......................................................................................... 126 3. Classical and Statistical Empirical Methods ................................................. 127 4. 'Radical Intellectual Conversion' ................................................................... 129 5. Objective Knowledge of Being ..................................................................... 133 6. Conversion from Confrontationism ............................................................... 134 7. Conversion from Mechanistic Science ......................................................... 135 8. Philosophy and Radical Intellectual Conversion ........................................... 136 Chapter Twelve Insight and Intellectual Conversion ............................................ 137 1. Resolving 'A Psychological Problem' ............................................................ 139 2. The 'Already out There Now Real' ................................................................ 141 3. Consciousness not an 'Inner Look' ............................................................... 144 4. The Self-Affirmation of the Knower ............................................................... 146 5. Metaphysics and Intellectual Conversion ..................................................... 149 6. 'A Specifically Philosophic Conversion'......................................................... 151 Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 152 1. Intellectural, Moral, and Religious Conversion ............................................. 152 2. Intellectual Conversion and the Human Situation ......................................... 157 3. A Personal Experience ................................................................................. 159 SELECTED DATES ................................................................................................. 164 3 PREFACE In many of his later writings Bernard Lonergan speaks of what he calls the "startling" event of intellectual conversion. Virtually all of Lonergan's writings point to the nature and implications of this foundational event. Lonergan indi- cated that he himself experienced this radical event while studying in Rome in the mid-1930's. What is intellectual conversion? This book will try to answer this question by focussing on this event in Loner- gan's early life. It traces the early influences on his work and the stages of his developing thought up to 1935-1936. It highlights what we know of this major event in his thinking at that time. In addition, it sets out the developing expres- sion of his intellectual conversion in his writings during the late 1930's and the 1940's. It brings Lonergan's early story up to the clearest expression of the meaning of intellectual conversion in his major work, Insight: An Essay on Hu- man Understanding, written between 1949 and 1953. Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following who have allowed me to reprint selected passages from Bernard Lonergan's writings: The trustees of the Lonergan Research Institute, Toronto, Canada, for permis- sion to quote from Lonergan's unpublished writings. The University of Toronto Press for permission to quote fromThe Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan: Insight(Volume 3); Collection (Volume 4); and Understanding and Being (Volume 5); and also Method in Theology. The Thomas More Institute, Montreal, Canada, for permission to quote from Caring About Meaning. The Westminster/John Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky, for permission to quote from A Second Collection. I would also like to express my gratitude to the many benefactors who have helped me and encouraged me in this work. In the first place, I want to thank all my friends and family who have trusted that in some way these several years of study and research in a seemingly esoteric project were worthwhile. I 4 would like to thank the recent Archbishops of Newark under whom I have served who have allowed me to continue my own studies in and around other pastoral assignments: the Archbishop Emeritus, Peter L. Gerety and my present Archbishop,