Lonergan Workshop, Vol. 8
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LONERGAN WORKSHOP Volume 8 LONERGAN WORKSHOP Volume 8 edited by Fred Lawrence Copyright © 1990 Boston College ISSN 0148-2009 Scholars Press Atlanta, Georgia Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 11 Editor's Note Once again Patrick Byrne leads off this journal devoted to Lonergan's Insight thirty years after its publication in 1957. Pat's wide-ranging article demonstrates the normative continuity of the history of the idea of nature from Aristotle down to contemporary science. Complementary to Pat's piece is one of the very clearest contributions Joseph Flanagan, SJ, has ever made to this journal, on chapters 1-5, commonly deemed the most difficult in Insight. For over a decade now Joe has been teaching a year-long course on Insight to graduate students in philosophy and theology at Boston College, and here we readers reap the benefits of pedagogical learn ing which he been building up over the years. Sebastian Moore, OSB, a perennial contributor to the journal, is involved here with two articles. The first is in collaboration with recently graduated doctoral student, Glenn 'Chip' Hughes, who has completed a dissertation on Eric Voegelin. Unsurprisingly, their piece focuses on the centrality of the role of judgment to the process of the critique of culture, and the need to critique the overwhelming neglect of judgment in Western culture. Taking off from Saul Friedlander's reflections of Kitsch, Sebastian and Chip cast new and extremely helpful light on the operation of judgment. The other article, in which Sebastian articulates his most explanatory psychology of soteriology to date, is a rich harvest of ideas long in the making. Hugo Meynell's piece relating Lonergan's achievement to an intellectualist reading of Plato is especially timely both for the way it begins to move Plato out of a conceptualist framework of interpre tation into an intellectualist one; and for the way it anchors Lonergan in that Platonic tradition at a time when reactions to the concept ualist tradition of philosophy of the deconstructionist type present themselves in radically historicist modes as the only alternatives to the poverty of conceptualism. The openness and comprehensiveness of the intellectualist tradition as expressed by Lonergan in Insight are brought out in the iii Editor's Note articles by Kenneth Melchin and Quentin Quesnell. Although devoted to the treatment of ethics in Insight, Melchin's piece has the special merit of contextualizing the approach of chapter 18 within the sweep of Lonergan's generalized empirical method, his philosophy of science, and his idea of emergent probability. This brief and clear account gives readers a taste of what they can find more abundantly in Ken's fine book, History, Ethics, and Emergent Probability (1987, Lanham, MD: University Press of America,). Quentin Quesnell's piece on the notorious chapter 19 of Insight may also be related to a book on Lonergan's philosophy of God he has been working on sporadically for a number of years. With the clarity of the masterful teacher Quentin is, his piece lays bare the workings of the chapter in such a way that brings out its lasting value, no matter how much "the moving viewpoint" moved on after Insight. Those who search the table of contents of Lonergan Workshop in hopes of seeing Michael Vertin's name will be doubly pleased here. Many of these who have had the experience of reading texts in the "Philosophy of ... " ever so wide a range of fields with Mike will have the opportunity here to see spelled out at length and in some detail the "upper blade" that Lonergan has given him, as well as to get the thrill of what it means to try to think issues through to the end, albeit heuristically. In time, perhaps, there may be decon structionists aplenty to pick at the rifts and discontinuities in Lonergan's thought. If and when they emerge, however, they will have to contend with Mike Verlin's reconstruction, as it appears in his second article, of the way the basic questions concerning know ing, objectivity, and reality fit together in Lonergan's oeuvre. He shows what it means to get beyond Lonergan's statements to his meanings by performing that job ad oculos here. The last pair of articles are by the odd couple, Hamish Swanston and Frederick E. Crowe, SJ. Hamish is a newcomer to Lonergan's work. He has done an extraordinary job of accepting our invitation to read Insight for the first time and to tell the Workshop what he got out of it. He manages to give a rare sense of the literary and dramatic aspects of Lonergan's background, and of the some times conversational, sometimes discursive qualities of Insight. His piece is a delight to read as well as illuminating for people at any stage of expertise. Fred Crowe, of course, represents the other end of IV Editor's Note the spectrum., as the person who has been toiling at Lonergan studies longer than any of the speakers at the Lonergan Workshop. As the archivist of the Lonergan Centre in Toronto and Editor-in-Chief of the Collected Works (especially of the new addition of Insight to appear in that series), Fred is in a position to tell us the genesis and ongoing context of Insight in a way that simply no one else would be able to. How central ideas emerged originally, how much Lonergan's mind changed and important ideas of Insight had to be developed and refined-these things and much more are in store for the reader of Fred's piece, once again presented with his distinctive knack of clarity and simplicity. It too is an article that will reward richly the attention of everyone from beginners to those "grey of hair and long of tooth" in the study of Lonergan's thought. I wish to acknowledge my deep indebtedness to Patrick Brown (who has moved on to get his Law degree in Washington) and to John Boyd Turner and Darin McNabb, without whom nil; and as always, to Business Editor Pat Byrne who is always striving to get us to get out things more promptly and doing whatever he can to make this possible; to Charles Hefling for regular consultation in technical matters, and who has labored to make this journal as beautiful as can be; and to Joseph Flanagan who supports us all the way. FRED LAWRENCE Boston College Chestnut Hill. MA March 1990 v CONTENTS Editor's Note 111 Insight and the Retrieval of Nature Patrick H. Byrne 1 Insight: Genesis and Ongoing Context Frederick E. Crowe, S.J. 61 Insight: Chapters 1- 5 Joseph Flanagan, S.J. 85 The Affirmation of Order: Therapy for Modernity in Bernard Lonergan's Analysis of Judgment Glenn Hughes and Sebastian Moore, O.S.B 109 Ethics in Insight Kenneth R. Melchin 135 How Right Plato Was Hugo Meynell 149 The Forming and Transforming of Ego: An Explanatory Psychology of Soteriology Sebastian Moore, O.S.B 165 On First Reading Insight Hamish Swanston 191 Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies Michael Vertin 213 Knowing, Objectivity, and Reality: Insight and Beyond Michael Vertin 249 What Kind of Proof is Insight 19? Quentin Quesnell 265 vi CONTRIBUTORS TO TInS ISSUE Patrick R Byrne HugoMeynell Department of Philosophy Dept. of Religious Studies Boston College University of Calgary Chestnut Hill, MA 02167 Calgary. Alberta T2W 1N4 CANADA Frederick E. Crowe, 8..1. Sebastian Moore, 0.8.B. Lonergan Research Institute Department of Theology 10 St. Mary Street, Suite 500 Boston College Toronto, Ontario M4Y 19P Chestnut Hill, MA 02167 CANADA Joseph Flanagan, s.J. Hamish F.G. Swanston Department of Philosophy Emeritus Professor of Theology Boston College University of Kent Chestnut Hill, MA 02167 Canterbury ENGLAND Glenn Hughes Quentin Quesnell Department of Philosophy Department of Religion Simmons College Smith College Boston, MA 02115 Northampton, MA 01063 Kenneth R. Melchin Michael Vertin Department of Theology St. Michael's College Saint Paul University 81 St. Mary Street Ottawa, Ontario Toronto, Ontario M5S 1J4 CANADA CANADA vii INSIGHT AND THE RETRIEVAL OF NATURE Patrick H. Byrne Boston College "We have so to develop the notion of natural right as to make it no less relevant to human historicity than it is to human nature. "1 INTRODUCTION On this thirtieth anniversary of Bernard Lonergan's Insight, I wish to explore but one of the many significances of that magnum opus, namely its retrieval of the notion of nature. This accom plishment, I contend, is one of great importance in meeting the contemporary cultural crisis. That ours is a time of cultural crisis is a matter of consensus; only questions of the specification, extent, origins, and hoped-for resolution of that crisis are matters of debate. In this paper I shall contend that an erosion of the normativity once provided by the notion of "nature" has played an important part in that crisis. On this point, too, there is widespread agreement. Different "conservatives" hold that this loss has been tragic, and that the older norms of "nature" must be reinstituted, although beneath such agreement lie widely diverse understandings of just what might be meant by "nature." On the other hand, various sorts of modernists and post-modernists hold that "nature" is but an ideological ruse legitimating various forms of domination, and the only crisis is that the critique of nature has not yet gone far enough. Yet their seemingly united front lies splintered 1 Bernard Lonergan, "Natural Right and Historical Mindedness," (Lonergan, 1977: 169). 1 2 Byrne into disparate proposals of the best way to complete the critique: historical myth-dispelling, class warfare, the Ubermensch, or de construction of expression into play-like patterns.