The Third Plateau

When we grew up we found the perhaps pleasant character of our days somewhat harshly interrupted by being herded to school and seated behind a desk. Whereas the challenge of life had presented itself in tying shoelaces we have before us the immense task of learning to read, learning to speak, learning to write. We are challenged to develop. Not everyone succeeds here though it seems everyone learns to talk, unless they are handicapped in some way.
We are being introduced to a cultural achievement, and the handing over may be complete or incomplete. In my case reading came suddenly but spelling took years. I found, when I was typing a letter for the bishop to sign I cared and he cared that the spelling was right.
Alongside cultural achievements which are passed on there are developments which are made. For example the making of bread and wine must originally have been discoveries, but now they are passed on, but not to everyone. One acquires the knowledge appropriate to ones task. We do not all need a taxi driver’s knowledge of London streets.
Developments can go on in the three plateaus mentioned by Lonergan, the practical, the theoretical and the transcendental.
If development is not passed on in the practical sphere then the standard of life of a people begins to decline. The matter is evident and something can be done.
If development is not passed on in the theoretical sphere, then a cultural decline is underway but it will only be noticed by those who are not caught up in it. I was lucky enough to be taught the proof of Pythagoras’ theorem. I have noticed that many Maths text books just give the theorem but not the proof – a decline I think. If though ones concern was just practical it might seem that all one needs to know is that a 3,4,5 triangle gives one a right angle.
I think from the transcendental plateau one is interested in Pythagoras’ mind set, and what made him so interested in maths, and one comes across the connection between numbers and reality, perhaps for the first time. I think some of his followers jumped off cliffs when they discovered there could be irrational numbers!
In a particular cultural decline, there is likely to be a statistical aspect. Perhaps 70 years ago, 20% of young people reached an ‘O’ Level standard in Latin. Today perhaps 2% do so. More though are studying Japanese and other languages. One would point out that though there is a decline in Latin, there is not a general decline in culture therefore. In any such decline there is likely to be a remnant, a few who still achieve the former standard.
Achievement and the passing on of the culture to a new generation occurs in the sphere of values as well as of academic disciplines. In Greek antiquity there was an island where divorce was unknown, so wise and mutually supportive were the women of the island. We find our contemporary culture moving to a situation where for an increasing number of people, marriage would seem beyond their sociological and moral capacity, especially if a wedding is seen as automatically costing a huge sum of money.
With marriage we find ourselves on the third plateau, for marriage is to do with the mystery of love touching our lives and giving us the capacity to make a commitment. Still, here is an area where one can have a decline or recovery not to do with an academic discipline but to do with an institution vital to man’s life. It is a strange fact that our pagan ancestors in Europe were remarkably faithful in marriage. Indeed Gibbon puts the decline of the Roman Empire down to the purity of the morals of the Germanic tribes. Vico, writing from Naples in the early seventeenth century accounted for this by noticing the importance of the thunder god, Zeus, Thor, Jove and thought that early man had been more interested in hunting than family life and so had lived in a permissive state but, being struck by lightening which showed the gods’ displeasure, they took their women to caves and lived in the fear of the Lord. So villages and towns and tribes developed. He thought there was an opposite movement once civilisation was attained, whereby people said, ‘Do we have to be so strict?’, and so the discipline began to unravel. We find with Vico an anticipation of Durkheim the sociologist who, writing in the 1920s, thought religion had a key role in underpinning the institutions of society. Charles Grant, Bishop of Northampton, thought that to tackle our abortion problem we needed to convert people to God. Perhaps he was thinking conversion to God also leads to conversion to one another in marriage, and family life, resulting from marriage, is the immediate protector of life in the womb.
If ancient man learned the fear of the Lord from lightening strikes how may we hope that modern man may come to the same wisdom? We learn that God sends his rain on the just and unjust and is not vindictive. It is through history that he hammers out a law of consequences. We find Vico’s point about stable living leading to village and town life echoed by Alfred Marshall the Cambridge economist who thought the strongest motive for man’s work was family life. If the collapse of family life and the motive to work leads to poverty, then the misery of the situation could lead to a new appreciation of family values. We are used to the idea that the State can ameliorate poor situations but its power to do so depends on the wealth and the willingness of the people. Problems can get too big for the State to handle. If the State is finite, the Irish potato famine reminds us that it is not always competent either.
Lonergan sees the third plateau as concerned with three conversions which at the end of his life he described as affective, moral, and intellectual. Affective conversion is to do with God, with family and with community, moving to concern for all mankind. Moral conversion is to do with concern for values rather than pleasures. Intellectual conversion is to do with the ever present problem of distinguishing between the world of immediacy and the world mediated by meaning and motivated by values.
There comes a time when an institution has to reflect on its own reality, to express itself to itself, and so it is with the three loves at the heart of the third plateau. Of course there have always been major symbolic expressions, marriages, coronations and religious events. Such commitments though need daily expression for the love to grow deeper and to be handed over to a new generation. The Jews are good at family prayer at the Passover, when the youngest, by a question, is involved in the liturgy. Catholics have from St Dominic the resource of the Rosary, and today they have the divine office in the vernacular. How love for mankind should be expressed daily is a good question, each person putting a penny in a box for the missions, maybe. Family love is perhaps simply expressed by each person doing something for the others each day, so, helping with a meal maybe.
If one understands something at a particular moment, to retain the understanding one needs to express it. What is understood and expressed can be understood by another. At the heart of tradition there are the three loves which interweave, affection, devotion and loyalty. The heart of the education process has always been here, so one can see that the family is the first teacher of the heart in its self transcendence. We should live aware of our family identity, aware that we are children of God and as parts of contemporary humanity with its contemporary problems. These loves could be learned even if one is part of the 10% of the population which is illiterate. But I do not see how one can expect to transmit a love unless one has learned to express it.
Our education process seems skewed towards practicality – earning a living – and theory, perhaps for the sake of practicality or perhaps for its own sake. The education of the heart is not generally seen as being so important. We let our children lapse so long as they pass their exams. I recall a Downside abbot causing a bit of a shock saying to parents they taught the boys not to live but to die. Having passed through the system, I think this may have been wishful thinking.
If the heart is committed to threefold love then morals are accounted for one might think. The scriptures though attest that the heart is devious. There is a proneness to justify satisfactions as necessary for the attainment of values. Moral conversion is attentive to a yardstick criticising bad conduct and applauding good conduct. As an MP should I really have a free new kitchen? As a lawyer should I really charge £120 for that five minute phone call? As sexually active in sanctified marriage am I justified in distorting the teleology of nature which God made? As a priest can I dispense myself from saying the divine office because I have been so busy watching TV? So little ones should be taught, in addition to how to love, that there is a right and a wrong.
Without intellectual conversion, moral conversion will not have a content. Intellect is concerned with content, the idea expressed, and whether it is true. It is also concerned with a value expressed and whether it is binding. Intellect moves beyond the here and now into symbols, language which expresses truth and falsehood. The bank statement normally expresses what is true about one’s credit – something one cannot see. As well as indicating what should not be done, intellect may grant you the conclusion that something should be done and help you to wonder what.