The world we live in is described as modern, or sometimes post modern. It has an expanding population of six billion needing to be clothed and fed, and ecology in need of greater care in countless ways. Not only common sense but technical expertise is needed to keep everything running.
Behind the world of technical expertise is an ongoing world of scientific discovery which leaps forward remarkably. There is also an ongoing world of historical, sociological, and psychological scholarships which deals with what has stirred man in various ways at various times and places. Religion could be subsumed under religious studies here, so that it might become a matter once vital for various peoples, but now fading away.
Or it should be noticed that for some, religion is alive and well and a vital matter in personal and group contact. So we find, beyond the common sense world, a world of science, scholarship, and religion. Keats wrote “Ever let the fancy roam, pleasure never is at home” and in the roaming of fancy we find the realm of art, which can bring refreshment to the human spirit.
Human meanings develop in collaboration so we find developments in science, scholarship, religion, and art. The creation of terminology belongs to the group so we witness a Tower of Babel effect, wherein scientists live in one theoretical world, scholars another, religious people another and artistic people another and the idea that there should be some sort of communication which runs across these developing areas seems impossible.
Philosophy produces different stances. Some think that the only truth lies with empirical science and so the age of philosophy is over. Or some think its purpose is to chart the different meanings of terms as they are used in ordinary speech. Some think human studies should be value free whereas others are open to values so long as God is excluded. The phenomenologists would describe and the existentialists decide. Is there some way of bringing the philosophical world together so that it can address the world we find with its huge tasks and its specialised developments?
The recognition that there are different sorts of norms to be recognised in different sorts of activities is perhaps a starting point. So if you are riding in a bike race you need to look to your diet, or you won’t have enough energy. If you are looking after children, there are again norms about diet and also about conduct. The children might set the house on fire. There are norms around what it is to be a responsible parent. A failure to fulfil responsible norms which one recognises leads to a feeling of guilt.
So, according to one’s goal an appropriate norm is to attend to the data. If you are a bank clerk, you should count the notes in the wad carefully, but if you are a painter, you should note how the sunlight falls on the wad. We all live in the same world but we notice things differently according to the purposes which occupy us, “our memories, associations, a structure and one’s emotive and expressive reactions”. Sensation is rarely just raw sensation but rather a perception of some sort, and the perception to be worthy needs according to one’s purpose, to fulfil certain norms.
So sometimes I set myself the task of doing some reading, but sometimes I find I am quite distracted so that as the words pass before my eyes, I find I am not there, I am somewhere else. I have a choice – somehow to recall myself to the task in hand, or set myself the different task of finding out what it is that is occupying me, and preoccupying me. To read without taking in what is said, fails to fulfil the norm ”be attentive”.
One might say that the norm of being attentive is purely subjective, but if a painter only occasionally noticed the little matter of light and shade, his colleagues and critics would point out the fact and make him aware that his subjective fault had an objective set of consequences which, attended to, would bring him round to a better performance. I think one can see that in the scientific world and the scholarly world, the example of others and their advice helps subjectively to attain a better standard, to recognise the norms of subjectivity.
In a social discipline such as science, one can recognise the influence of others, but it is perhaps not out of place to note the development from the id to the ego, from the ego to the self, and from the self to the affirmation of individual identity. The id is the subconscious ordination to pleasure, survival and procreation and so the source of instinctual unfolding. The ego is that unfolding coming under the influence of archetypes which are sociologically carried. There are things appropriate for a boy or for a girl. Sex is here an archetypal controller. Or “Every little boy or girl that’s born alive is either a little Liberal or a Conservative”. I heard of a little boy wild about dressing up, and I felt sorry for him, for somehow the archetype had not been communicated through the subtle world of praise and blame. The ego then is shaped by archetypes. Imagine a little king – everyone should bow to him! The ego could rule a life, but the emergence of the self is something different. The self has projects and sacrifices to make to bring an achievement to fruition. It takes its cue from the world it finds and the opportunities presented. A sense of identity may be achieved and a reputation established. The affirmation of identity is not just a matter of the present and the future, but also of the past. I am the same one who has passed through infancy, the carelessness of schooldays, the discipline of study, a marriage, successful or not etc, etc. Potencies have been unfolding, but all along the same one has been engaged. There have been mistakes – I bear the scars. There have been sins – there is the task of repentance and reparation. There is the dawn of holiness. I recognise this identical self in its development is set for eternity.
So man inescapably finds himself set in a religious context. Facing fearsome problems in time one may seek to escape but can you escape from being the self that you are? Religion brings a transformation of that self to a self that is loved and, through the vicissitudes of life, learning to love. The transformation, so full of meaning, gives rise to a further specialisation as it is reflected upon, so in addition to commonsense, science, scholarships and art, we find theology, resulting from “in loveness” dominating the meaning of life.
If one remains with the scholastics and the priority of metaphysics, then one would be able to conclude that the supernatural infinitely outweighs the natural. The natural is its own order, but the supernatural is the middle ground between infinite divinity and mortal and indeed sinful humanity. There is upon man, the endless task of conversion from a simply natural set of demands to the demands and gifts of God Himself, whose ways are not our ways.
If one shifts from the metaphysical outlook, which gives one first, principles from which to make valid deductions, to the outlook which recognises the human subject himself in his authentic recognition of the norms governing subjectivity, then the infinite outweighing of the natural by the supernatural becomes the fact that it is love and God’s love that gives meaning to one’s life and there is nothing else, even a metaphysical first principle, that can outweigh the existential fact.
Such a realisation is not automatically matched by a flawless performance, for life has many demands and distractions and so the love of God when realised, sets in motion a process of conversion lasting over a lifetime in which the gift of love is more profoundly acknowledged and more efficaciously responded to. One can blandly say that washing up is part of God’s will but one’s motivation easily descends to the pragmatic, whereas conversion is concerned with that motivation as consciously moving. There is then, a luminous intensification possible and monastic life might help it. Intensification is a taking thought, a getting interested, a gaining of insights and a context in which to express them, a coalescence of insights so that a person’s inner structure develops and changes moving towards Christian, or other religious maturity in a development which may be experienced as crushingly slow. Still, understanding does develop and moves towards fullness as it embraces in the mystery but increasingly clearly all that God has made and plans. With concern for one’s development, others and the world a clear moral dimension emerges. Concern with values and the invisible ground of love brings awareness of the potency of mind and so also an intellectual conversion.
A metaphysical analysis reveals the mind as capax omnia, as unlimited in its scope but awareness of the priority of love gives mind its task in discerning the right order of things against “all the easy speeches that comfort cruel men”, and so the task of overcoming evil with good and lies with truth. The world is in greater measure than one realises, a conspiracy which consents to evil.
The spirit blows where it will. The above analysis is derived from a Christian context, of course, but is philosophical rather than theological and so might be acceptable to any person of a different tradition. It shows philosophy to be not just the love of wisdom, but the wisdom which acknowledges its grounding in love. It is a wisdom which recognises subjective norms, which are objective and binding and shows such norms to exist where consciousness is differentiated scientifically, in a scholarly way; in an artistic way; in a religious way and indeed, in a philosophical way which is authentic and recognises norms arising from consciousness itself. So there is a norm not to waste one’s life sleeping!
Tuesday 30 June 2009
Matter, Form, Potency and Act
It is true that one can construct an abstract notion of human nature and make certain deductions. Medicine does this very successfully, but the very success of medicine witnesses to another dimension which always belongs to man in the concrete, namely historicity. There was a time when nothing was known about DNA – now every year adds to man’s knowledge in a historical development.
Certain developments belong to all, affecting the culture, the set of meanings, values, and beliefs that inform life. One cannot avoid the fact that the Jewish people had a uniquely important historical experience over two millennia before Christ and indeed subsequently. Nor can one avoid the arrival of Christianity on the stage and the conversion of the Roman Empire under Constantine. There are first millennium conciliar teachings about the Trinity and Christology; there are second millennium schisms and the divide of the Western Church by the Reformation, a movement which appears not have affected the Greek Orthodox Church.
While nature can simply be explored as a constant that yields up its secrets in greater and greater and greater degree, history does not manifest a simple progress with everyone growing closer and closer in mind and heart. There are radically different stances and one cannot avoid being brought up within one tradition or another.
The fact that we are shaped by tradition becomes clearer as human studies develop. The Enlightenment thought mankind might have a new start, basing everything on reason, and a golden future beckoned in which man-made progress would lead mankind into sunny uplands. The idea of Progress became the leitmotif in late Victorian and the early Edwardian age, foundering in the First World War. Freedom from tradition does not mean freedom from ideology. It is as if Reason is fine once you find the first principle, but how do you find the first principle?
What science witnesses to is not a set of first principles but rather a method which leads to discovery. With natural science the discovery concerns nature and so is universal. With historical science, “The geisteswissenschaften”, the discovery concerns another people at another time, and how and why they acted as they did. Religious beliefs show up as a regular component in the historical shaping of man, so you get a sociology of religion and also religious studies.
So religion was found by Durkheim to help man in his vital social commitments, for example to marriage or to the State. It was found to be a principle guiding societies by Talcott-Parsons, or I suppose in our present society, one might say not guiding Society! Obviously a society with a common religious tradition has values which have to be respected, and so it has a basis for praise and blame. The finding of such values on a purely rational basis is not unproblematic. So I think the present government would like to be able to define what it is to be British, but rightly finds it beyond them. Life for most people does not in the end come down to supporting a cricket team, or even a political party. The different religions of the world seek in their different ways to express the ultimate meaning and value of human life, and the Christian might find here expression of the fact that God gives all men sufficient grace to be saved.
Are we in a position to lay down a common historical tradition for mankind today? That tradition everywhere has to be founded upon the practicality of making a living and doing so in an ecologically sustainable way. The discovery that animals and so man depends on a habitat, goes back I think to the 1950s.
It includes the discovery of mind with the Greeks. According to Jaspers this discovery was an axial moment going on in some way with other cultures. That discovery in the West led to a “tinge” of theoretical consciousness, so that, for example, Athanasius could make his rule. That tinge has allowed dogmas to be expressed and sciences to develop, so that modern science as an ongoing reality belongs to mankind’s common historical tradition.
Modern man is aware of different histories and different cultures, of the geisteswissenschaften, of the idea that man’s different concerns and achievements at different times can be increasingly understood and expressed. Such work is value free to the extent that, if one is to reconstruct the constructions of the human spirit, one should not fall silent when one discovers an aberration, for example, the religious aberration of child sacrifice, or the slaughter of the infidel. Such study is likely to show up historical folly and perhaps indicate more fruitful paths in the present. So, for example, the Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations in 1949, while in some ways it perhaps went too far and in other ways not far enough, pointed to a common moral kernel for mankind, affirmed from recent aberrations.
While the scientific and the historical differentiations of consciousness have had their axial moment, perhaps the artistic differentiation, with its undoubted masters, has not. It has lost touch with religion and perhaps sometimes with meaning and feeling. It has something to do with communicating beauty in its embodiment of meaning and value, to the multitude.
The religious differentiation has its supreme moment in the Paschal Mystery but perhaps an axial moment was December 7th 1965, when the Vatican Council published its Declaration on Religious Liberty. About this supremely important exercise of understanding and responsibility there should be no coercion.
Philosophy has been caught up in worlds of metaphysics, religion, science and more recently personal decision. Alongside man’s growing knowledge then, is the human subject who makes the advances. I suppose it must have been about 1951 that Lonergan, writing his book Insight, (published 1957) descried the structure of the human subject and the norms, “Be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible”. This was something axial. Man’s faltering performance is assisted by the mystery of love which surrounds, touches and informs human living but here we deal with religion.
Alongside human nature then, our human living in the modern world is informed by modern science, modern history by modern art which has, it seems, yet to find its axial moment, by religion moving to find common ground and by a philosophic achievement which shows man as formed by tradition, as capable of critical assessment, as bound to be constructive. This group of historicity as a compound with nature should help all things forward.
The recognition of man in the concrete as a compound of historicity and nature means that “progress” needs to include historicity as well as nature, so that just as there is care for the public health, so there should be care for the different communities. Logically, if we care for the Welsh speakers, we should care for the Polish speakers and all peoples with strange dialects, but perhaps it is not unreasonable to care that all share a common language. So too, there are different religions but again, all religions should recognise “nature” and also “historicity”. The recognition of historicity should mean the glad recognition that the same God is working in other groups.
The recognition of historicity should make the natural sciences realise that their competence is not about every matter. It is beyond the competence of a natural scientist to dismiss God, or for that matter to decide in favour of this or that religion. Different sorts of questions require different sorts of method.
Religion may find itself involved in various historical affirmations, but of course, that does not mean competence in all such affirmations. The community of historians have their own methodology moving from evidence to conclusion. They can enrich a religion with a yet more inspiring description of their past.
Beauty is transcendent, belonging to God, as well as belonging to material forms, but I think one might claim that without beauty, feelings are not stirred, and without refinement of beauty, feelings are not refined. The common sense world waits on the artist to find the way forward.
Maybe as philosophy descries the task of natural science and of history and as it may open man to the divine, so it may help the world of art to find anew its soul in this modern world and so to greatly help the multitude.
Certain developments belong to all, affecting the culture, the set of meanings, values, and beliefs that inform life. One cannot avoid the fact that the Jewish people had a uniquely important historical experience over two millennia before Christ and indeed subsequently. Nor can one avoid the arrival of Christianity on the stage and the conversion of the Roman Empire under Constantine. There are first millennium conciliar teachings about the Trinity and Christology; there are second millennium schisms and the divide of the Western Church by the Reformation, a movement which appears not have affected the Greek Orthodox Church.
While nature can simply be explored as a constant that yields up its secrets in greater and greater and greater degree, history does not manifest a simple progress with everyone growing closer and closer in mind and heart. There are radically different stances and one cannot avoid being brought up within one tradition or another.
The fact that we are shaped by tradition becomes clearer as human studies develop. The Enlightenment thought mankind might have a new start, basing everything on reason, and a golden future beckoned in which man-made progress would lead mankind into sunny uplands. The idea of Progress became the leitmotif in late Victorian and the early Edwardian age, foundering in the First World War. Freedom from tradition does not mean freedom from ideology. It is as if Reason is fine once you find the first principle, but how do you find the first principle?
What science witnesses to is not a set of first principles but rather a method which leads to discovery. With natural science the discovery concerns nature and so is universal. With historical science, “The geisteswissenschaften”, the discovery concerns another people at another time, and how and why they acted as they did. Religious beliefs show up as a regular component in the historical shaping of man, so you get a sociology of religion and also religious studies.
So religion was found by Durkheim to help man in his vital social commitments, for example to marriage or to the State. It was found to be a principle guiding societies by Talcott-Parsons, or I suppose in our present society, one might say not guiding Society! Obviously a society with a common religious tradition has values which have to be respected, and so it has a basis for praise and blame. The finding of such values on a purely rational basis is not unproblematic. So I think the present government would like to be able to define what it is to be British, but rightly finds it beyond them. Life for most people does not in the end come down to supporting a cricket team, or even a political party. The different religions of the world seek in their different ways to express the ultimate meaning and value of human life, and the Christian might find here expression of the fact that God gives all men sufficient grace to be saved.
Are we in a position to lay down a common historical tradition for mankind today? That tradition everywhere has to be founded upon the practicality of making a living and doing so in an ecologically sustainable way. The discovery that animals and so man depends on a habitat, goes back I think to the 1950s.
It includes the discovery of mind with the Greeks. According to Jaspers this discovery was an axial moment going on in some way with other cultures. That discovery in the West led to a “tinge” of theoretical consciousness, so that, for example, Athanasius could make his rule. That tinge has allowed dogmas to be expressed and sciences to develop, so that modern science as an ongoing reality belongs to mankind’s common historical tradition.
Modern man is aware of different histories and different cultures, of the geisteswissenschaften, of the idea that man’s different concerns and achievements at different times can be increasingly understood and expressed. Such work is value free to the extent that, if one is to reconstruct the constructions of the human spirit, one should not fall silent when one discovers an aberration, for example, the religious aberration of child sacrifice, or the slaughter of the infidel. Such study is likely to show up historical folly and perhaps indicate more fruitful paths in the present. So, for example, the Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations in 1949, while in some ways it perhaps went too far and in other ways not far enough, pointed to a common moral kernel for mankind, affirmed from recent aberrations.
While the scientific and the historical differentiations of consciousness have had their axial moment, perhaps the artistic differentiation, with its undoubted masters, has not. It has lost touch with religion and perhaps sometimes with meaning and feeling. It has something to do with communicating beauty in its embodiment of meaning and value, to the multitude.
The religious differentiation has its supreme moment in the Paschal Mystery but perhaps an axial moment was December 7th 1965, when the Vatican Council published its Declaration on Religious Liberty. About this supremely important exercise of understanding and responsibility there should be no coercion.
Philosophy has been caught up in worlds of metaphysics, religion, science and more recently personal decision. Alongside man’s growing knowledge then, is the human subject who makes the advances. I suppose it must have been about 1951 that Lonergan, writing his book Insight, (published 1957) descried the structure of the human subject and the norms, “Be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible”. This was something axial. Man’s faltering performance is assisted by the mystery of love which surrounds, touches and informs human living but here we deal with religion.
Alongside human nature then, our human living in the modern world is informed by modern science, modern history by modern art which has, it seems, yet to find its axial moment, by religion moving to find common ground and by a philosophic achievement which shows man as formed by tradition, as capable of critical assessment, as bound to be constructive. This group of historicity as a compound with nature should help all things forward.
The recognition of man in the concrete as a compound of historicity and nature means that “progress” needs to include historicity as well as nature, so that just as there is care for the public health, so there should be care for the different communities. Logically, if we care for the Welsh speakers, we should care for the Polish speakers and all peoples with strange dialects, but perhaps it is not unreasonable to care that all share a common language. So too, there are different religions but again, all religions should recognise “nature” and also “historicity”. The recognition of historicity should mean the glad recognition that the same God is working in other groups.
The recognition of historicity should make the natural sciences realise that their competence is not about every matter. It is beyond the competence of a natural scientist to dismiss God, or for that matter to decide in favour of this or that religion. Different sorts of questions require different sorts of method.
Religion may find itself involved in various historical affirmations, but of course, that does not mean competence in all such affirmations. The community of historians have their own methodology moving from evidence to conclusion. They can enrich a religion with a yet more inspiring description of their past.
Beauty is transcendent, belonging to God, as well as belonging to material forms, but I think one might claim that without beauty, feelings are not stirred, and without refinement of beauty, feelings are not refined. The common sense world waits on the artist to find the way forward.
Maybe as philosophy descries the task of natural science and of history and as it may open man to the divine, so it may help the world of art to find anew its soul in this modern world and so to greatly help the multitude.
Historicity and Foundations
It is true that one can construct an abstract notion of human nature and make certain deductions. Medicine does this very successfully, but the very success of medicine witnesses to another dimension which always belongs to man in the concrete, namely historicity. There was a time when nothing was known about DNA – now every year adds to man’s knowledge in a historical development.
Certain developments belong to all, affecting the culture, the set of meanings, values, and beliefs that inform life. One cannot avoid the fact that the Jewish people had a uniquely important historical experience over two millennia before Christ and indeed subsequently. Nor can one avoid the arrival of Christianity on the stage and the conversion of the Roman Empire under Constantine. There are first millennium conciliar teachings about the Trinity and Christology; there are second millennium schisms and the divide of the Western Church by the Reformation, a movement which appears not have affected the Greek Orthodox Church.
While nature can simply be explored as a constant that yields up its secrets in greater and greater and greater degree, history does not manifest a simple progress with everyone growing closer and closer in mind and heart. There are radically different stances and one cannot avoid being brought up within one tradition or another.
The fact that we are shaped by tradition becomes clearer as human studies develop. The Enlightenment thought mankind might have a new start, basing everything on reason, and a golden future beckoned in which man-made progress would lead mankind into sunny uplands. The idea of Progress became the leitmotif in late Victorian and the early Edwardian age, foundering in the First World War. Freedom from tradition does not mean freedom from ideology. It is as if Reason is fine once you find the first principle, but how do you find the first principle?
What science witnesses to is not a set of first principles but rather a method which leads to discovery. With natural science the discovery concerns nature and so is universal. With historical science, “The geisteswissenschaften”, the discovery concerns another people at another time, and how and why they acted as they did. Religious beliefs show up as a regular component in the historical shaping of man, so you get a sociology of religion and also religious studies.
So religion was found by Durkheim to help man in his vital social commitments, for example to marriage or to the State. It was found to be a principle guiding societies by Talcott-Parsons, or I suppose in our present society, one might say not guiding Society! Obviously a society with a common religious tradition has values which have to be respected, and so it has a basis for praise and blame. The finding of such values on a purely rational basis is not unproblematic. So I think the present government would like to be able to define what it is to be British, but rightly finds it beyond them. Life for most people does not in the end come down to supporting a cricket team, or even a political party. The different religions of the world seek in their different ways to express the ultimate meaning and value of human life, and the Christian might find here expression of the fact that God gives all men sufficient grace to be saved.
Are we in a position to lay down a common historical tradition for mankind today? That tradition everywhere has to be founded upon the practicality of making a living and doing so in an ecologically sustainable way. The discovery that animals and so man depends on a habitat, goes back I think to the 1950s.
It includes the discovery of mind with the Greeks. According to Jaspers this discovery was an axial moment going on in some way with other cultures. That discovery in the West led to a “tinge” of theoretical consciousness, so that, for example, Athanasius could make his rule. That tinge has allowed dogmas to be expressed and sciences to develop, so that modern science as an ongoing reality belongs to mankind’s common historical tradition.
Modern man is aware of different histories and different cultures, of the geisteswissenschaften, of the idea that man’s different concerns and achievements at different times can be increasingly understood and expressed. Such work is value free to the extent that, if one is to reconstruct the constructions of the human spirit, one should not fall silent when one discovers an aberration, for example, the religious aberration of child sacrifice, or the slaughter of the infidel. Such study is likely to show up historical folly and perhaps indicate more fruitful paths in the present. So, for example, the Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations in 1949, while in some ways it perhaps went too far and in other ways not far enough, pointed to a common moral kernel for mankind, affirmed from recent aberrations.
While the scientific and the historical differentiations of consciousness have had their axial moment, perhaps the artistic differentiation, with its undoubted masters, has not. It has lost touch with religion and perhaps sometimes with meaning and feeling. It has something to do with communicating beauty in its embodiment of meaning and value, to the multitude.
The religious differentiation has its supreme moment in the Paschal Mystery but perhaps an axial moment was December 7th 1965, when the Vatican Council published its Declaration on Religious Liberty. About this supremely important exercise of understanding and responsibility there should be no coercion.
Philosophy has been caught up in worlds of metaphysics, religion, science and more recently personal decision. Alongside man’s growing knowledge then, is the human subject who makes the advances. I suppose it must have been about 1951 that Lonergan, writing his book Insight, (published 1957) descried the structure of the human subject and the norms, “Be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible”. This was something axial. Man’s faltering performance is assisted by the mystery of love which surrounds, touches and informs human living but here we deal with religion.
Alongside human nature then, our human living in the modern world is informed by modern science, modern history by modern art which has, it seems, yet to find its axial moment, by religion moving to find common ground and by a philosophic achievement which shows man as formed by tradition, as capable of critical assessment, as bound to be constructive. This group of historicity as a compound with nature should help all things forward.
The recognition of man in the concrete as a compound of historicity and nature means that “progress” needs to include historicity as well as nature, so that just as there is care for the public health, so there should be care for the different communities. Logically, if we care for the Welsh speakers, we should care for the Polish speakers and all peoples with strange dialects, but perhaps it is not unreasonable to care that all share a common language. So too, there are different religions but again, all religions should recognise “nature” and also “historicity”. The recognition of historicity should mean the glad recognition that the same God is working in other groups.
The recognition of historicity should make the natural sciences realise that their competence is not about every matter. It is beyond the competence of a natural scientist to dismiss God, or for that matter to decide in favour of this or that religion. Different sorts of questions require different sorts of method.
Religion may find itself involved in various historical affirmations, but of course, that does not mean competence in all such affirmations. The community of historians have their own methodology moving from evidence to conclusion. They can enrich a religion with a yet more inspiring description of their past.
Beauty is transcendent, belonging to God, as well as belonging to material forms, but I think one might claim that without beauty, feelings are not stirred, and without refinement of beauty, feelings are not refined. The common sense world waits on the artist to find the way forward.
Maybe as philosophy descries the task of natural science and of history and as it may open man to the divine, so it may help the world of art to find anew its soul in this modern world and so to greatly help the multitude.
Certain developments belong to all, affecting the culture, the set of meanings, values, and beliefs that inform life. One cannot avoid the fact that the Jewish people had a uniquely important historical experience over two millennia before Christ and indeed subsequently. Nor can one avoid the arrival of Christianity on the stage and the conversion of the Roman Empire under Constantine. There are first millennium conciliar teachings about the Trinity and Christology; there are second millennium schisms and the divide of the Western Church by the Reformation, a movement which appears not have affected the Greek Orthodox Church.
While nature can simply be explored as a constant that yields up its secrets in greater and greater and greater degree, history does not manifest a simple progress with everyone growing closer and closer in mind and heart. There are radically different stances and one cannot avoid being brought up within one tradition or another.
The fact that we are shaped by tradition becomes clearer as human studies develop. The Enlightenment thought mankind might have a new start, basing everything on reason, and a golden future beckoned in which man-made progress would lead mankind into sunny uplands. The idea of Progress became the leitmotif in late Victorian and the early Edwardian age, foundering in the First World War. Freedom from tradition does not mean freedom from ideology. It is as if Reason is fine once you find the first principle, but how do you find the first principle?
What science witnesses to is not a set of first principles but rather a method which leads to discovery. With natural science the discovery concerns nature and so is universal. With historical science, “The geisteswissenschaften”, the discovery concerns another people at another time, and how and why they acted as they did. Religious beliefs show up as a regular component in the historical shaping of man, so you get a sociology of religion and also religious studies.
So religion was found by Durkheim to help man in his vital social commitments, for example to marriage or to the State. It was found to be a principle guiding societies by Talcott-Parsons, or I suppose in our present society, one might say not guiding Society! Obviously a society with a common religious tradition has values which have to be respected, and so it has a basis for praise and blame. The finding of such values on a purely rational basis is not unproblematic. So I think the present government would like to be able to define what it is to be British, but rightly finds it beyond them. Life for most people does not in the end come down to supporting a cricket team, or even a political party. The different religions of the world seek in their different ways to express the ultimate meaning and value of human life, and the Christian might find here expression of the fact that God gives all men sufficient grace to be saved.
Are we in a position to lay down a common historical tradition for mankind today? That tradition everywhere has to be founded upon the practicality of making a living and doing so in an ecologically sustainable way. The discovery that animals and so man depends on a habitat, goes back I think to the 1950s.
It includes the discovery of mind with the Greeks. According to Jaspers this discovery was an axial moment going on in some way with other cultures. That discovery in the West led to a “tinge” of theoretical consciousness, so that, for example, Athanasius could make his rule. That tinge has allowed dogmas to be expressed and sciences to develop, so that modern science as an ongoing reality belongs to mankind’s common historical tradition.
Modern man is aware of different histories and different cultures, of the geisteswissenschaften, of the idea that man’s different concerns and achievements at different times can be increasingly understood and expressed. Such work is value free to the extent that, if one is to reconstruct the constructions of the human spirit, one should not fall silent when one discovers an aberration, for example, the religious aberration of child sacrifice, or the slaughter of the infidel. Such study is likely to show up historical folly and perhaps indicate more fruitful paths in the present. So, for example, the Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations in 1949, while in some ways it perhaps went too far and in other ways not far enough, pointed to a common moral kernel for mankind, affirmed from recent aberrations.
While the scientific and the historical differentiations of consciousness have had their axial moment, perhaps the artistic differentiation, with its undoubted masters, has not. It has lost touch with religion and perhaps sometimes with meaning and feeling. It has something to do with communicating beauty in its embodiment of meaning and value, to the multitude.
The religious differentiation has its supreme moment in the Paschal Mystery but perhaps an axial moment was December 7th 1965, when the Vatican Council published its Declaration on Religious Liberty. About this supremely important exercise of understanding and responsibility there should be no coercion.
Philosophy has been caught up in worlds of metaphysics, religion, science and more recently personal decision. Alongside man’s growing knowledge then, is the human subject who makes the advances. I suppose it must have been about 1951 that Lonergan, writing his book Insight, (published 1957) descried the structure of the human subject and the norms, “Be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible”. This was something axial. Man’s faltering performance is assisted by the mystery of love which surrounds, touches and informs human living but here we deal with religion.
Alongside human nature then, our human living in the modern world is informed by modern science, modern history by modern art which has, it seems, yet to find its axial moment, by religion moving to find common ground and by a philosophic achievement which shows man as formed by tradition, as capable of critical assessment, as bound to be constructive. This group of historicity as a compound with nature should help all things forward.
The recognition of man in the concrete as a compound of historicity and nature means that “progress” needs to include historicity as well as nature, so that just as there is care for the public health, so there should be care for the different communities. Logically, if we care for the Welsh speakers, we should care for the Polish speakers and all peoples with strange dialects, but perhaps it is not unreasonable to care that all share a common language. So too, there are different religions but again, all religions should recognise “nature” and also “historicity”. The recognition of historicity should mean the glad recognition that the same God is working in other groups.
The recognition of historicity should make the natural sciences realise that their competence is not about every matter. It is beyond the competence of a natural scientist to dismiss God, or for that matter to decide in favour of this or that religion. Different sorts of questions require different sorts of method.
Religion may find itself involved in various historical affirmations, but of course, that does not mean competence in all such affirmations. The community of historians have their own methodology moving from evidence to conclusion. They can enrich a religion with a yet more inspiring description of their past.
Beauty is transcendent, belonging to God, as well as belonging to material forms, but I think one might claim that without beauty, feelings are not stirred, and without refinement of beauty, feelings are not refined. The common sense world waits on the artist to find the way forward.
Maybe as philosophy descries the task of natural science and of history and as it may open man to the divine, so it may help the world of art to find anew its soul in this modern world and so to greatly help the multitude.
The Role of Philosophy
Early man, as well as hunting and gathering, appears to have been much caught up in myth and magic. Early religion appears to have known spiritual ecstasy and promoted it by such things as mushrooms and physical exercises. One can see dangers here, especially when problems such as drought were faced, for religion would be interpreted by myth and myth does not have a means of criticising meanings and coming to know the truth and the right thing to do, so easily enough man found himself the victim of his own mythic powers and bound to cruel activities such as human sacrifice, even the sacrifice of children. It is a mark of its divine inspiration that the Old Testament, living in such a world, is entirely free of child sacrifice, though the story of Abraham and Isaac shows that such a thing was “in the air”.
Philosophy is the discovery of mind, the discovery of a yardstick man, from his human resources, can bring to bear on things human and divine, and indeed on the natural world around. So before atoms were thought of men thought everything was composed of earth, air, fire and water. The Greek philosophers do not seem to have hit on the idea of creation. The myths accounted for the beginning of things. The early philosophers seem to have thought the world had always been there and perhaps always would be. Recurrence was a theme. They thought the divine worked within them helping them to develop their understanding. Aristotle thought one should follow this inner light, and this way perhaps become divine.
Life presented man with an option: to go for power and pleasure and praise but in this way to lose one’s own self. Pride leads to a fall; or to seek truth and excellence in a genuinely human way under the guidance of God. Aristotle studies virtues and vices in a rigorous and systematic way, finding that virtue was a middle path between excess and lack. So courage lies between cowardice and foolhardiness. St Thomas Aquinas found he could accept many of Aristotle’s conclusions.
Greek philosophy then was something like a religion with a way of life. It belonged, of course, to an elite and the way of life was based on slavery.
An important conclusion they reached was that either a thing was, or it was not. There was no middle ground for being. There was a missionary in Japan who came across the idea held by the religious leaders there, that there were many different paths to Heaven. He argues with them for several years about there being no middle ground between being and not being and eventually he won the argument and they all joined the Church with their people
St Thomas the Apostle took the faith to Kerala, India. He founded a church which still exists, but the mission did not flourish and convert India. I recall Bishop Butler noting how “Christianity went West” and he suggested this was not just because of Roman roads and civilisation, but because Greek philosophy permeated the Western world.
Lonergan makes the same point in discussing the Council of Nicea. The fathers were Greek and their culture had a philosophical “tincture” so that it was possible to make statements about statements, so you get the Athanasian rule that whatever one says of the Father, one must say of the Son, except that the Father is the Father and the Son the Son. The key word at Nicea, homoouson, did not come from philosophy but from cloth merchants – it meant “of the same stuff”.
Cardinal Newman in his book on Arianism makes an extraordinary statement. Emanating from Babylon, there were in 325AD 56 Archbishoprics spreading into China and North India. These fell prey to Arianism and so, 300 years later, to the Moslem religion. Was the reason for this the lack of a philosophic tincture to the general culture, so that the rules for apprehending the meaning of the Council of Nicea were not comprehensible and so not effective?
This story shows the value of “a philosophic” tincture belonging to a culture. It perhaps provides a link in conversation with Moslems and explains the great devotion they have to Jesus and Mary. It perhaps also suggests the importance of a philosophic tincture for the Church and the world today.
While the philosophic spirit exposed the mythological basis around ancient public religions, it is valuable to notice that for around 2,000 years, from 500BC to 1600AD, philosophy and religion went hand in hand, especially in the immense scholastic achievement running from 1070 to 1274, which came to use the metaphysics and logic of Aristotle in a systematic way. For the scholastics, philosophy was not regarded as autonomous but rather as the handmaid of theology. Especially important was the distinction between nature and grace (Philip the Chancellor, 1230). That very distinction though, grounded the possibility of natural science, of philosophy and of history developing in autonomous ways, so that science and history came to recognise their way forward, the canons which govern their methodical advance. So for science, the Royal Society (1660) recognised only observation and experiment and, perhaps for history, a key moment was the recognition that it is about the constructions, good or bad, of the human spirit.
In medieval times it was thought that Theology using Aristotle’s philosophy could address the whole of Western culture, but the development of Western Science involved dropping the link of thought with Aristotle. Scientific method uses mathematical correlation to anticipate physical correlation. The theories it holds are for the most part just the best at the moment. Correlation has replaced causality. Scientists and Theologians might talk about “truth”, but where the Theologian based on Aristotle, means knowledge of causes, the scientist means the best possible knowledge of correlations. Here is a problem for modern philosophy to address.
In history again, if one see history as the recording of events – so 1066, the Norman invasion of England – then what you have is a series of more or less definite facts. If though, history is to be the reconstruction of the constructions of the human spirit, then a development in psychology, or a development in sociology might give one new insights into the motivation of William the Conqueror. One makes progress not about points of certitude but rather about points that are less than certain.
What applies to our knowledge of William the Conqueror applies also to our knowledge of the prophet Isaiah. I think one can see that here, too, there is a problem for Theology. It is great to have greater knowledge of Isaiah, but it is problematic if definite prophecies – Virgo concipiet – become utterances with probable meanings.
Lonergan in writing of Christology and in recognising how studies endlessly move things forward, finds in the title given to Christ in every(?) new testament document – the Son of God - an irreversible starting point.
In a situation where Aristotle somehow needs to be broadened out so that he can cope with modern science and modern history, I find helpful his remark that one does not expect the same sort of reasoning from a politician as from a mathematician.
The conclusion of reasoning, “the truth” as we know it, was identified by Aquinas as being “Ens et verum convertuntur”. For Lonergan, a truth affirmed becomes part of a person’s horizon, and since it is communicable, part of man’s world. For Lonergan and others (Heidegger) as our knowledge of the world expands, so does our knowledge of the self.
If the only knowledge man can have is of empirical science, then he himself becomes a merely material object. Philosophers today may confirm or deny this. How does one base this further autonomous discipline?
Philosophy is the discovery of mind, the discovery of a yardstick man, from his human resources, can bring to bear on things human and divine, and indeed on the natural world around. So before atoms were thought of men thought everything was composed of earth, air, fire and water. The Greek philosophers do not seem to have hit on the idea of creation. The myths accounted for the beginning of things. The early philosophers seem to have thought the world had always been there and perhaps always would be. Recurrence was a theme. They thought the divine worked within them helping them to develop their understanding. Aristotle thought one should follow this inner light, and this way perhaps become divine.
Life presented man with an option: to go for power and pleasure and praise but in this way to lose one’s own self. Pride leads to a fall; or to seek truth and excellence in a genuinely human way under the guidance of God. Aristotle studies virtues and vices in a rigorous and systematic way, finding that virtue was a middle path between excess and lack. So courage lies between cowardice and foolhardiness. St Thomas Aquinas found he could accept many of Aristotle’s conclusions.
Greek philosophy then was something like a religion with a way of life. It belonged, of course, to an elite and the way of life was based on slavery.
An important conclusion they reached was that either a thing was, or it was not. There was no middle ground for being. There was a missionary in Japan who came across the idea held by the religious leaders there, that there were many different paths to Heaven. He argues with them for several years about there being no middle ground between being and not being and eventually he won the argument and they all joined the Church with their people
St Thomas the Apostle took the faith to Kerala, India. He founded a church which still exists, but the mission did not flourish and convert India. I recall Bishop Butler noting how “Christianity went West” and he suggested this was not just because of Roman roads and civilisation, but because Greek philosophy permeated the Western world.
Lonergan makes the same point in discussing the Council of Nicea. The fathers were Greek and their culture had a philosophical “tincture” so that it was possible to make statements about statements, so you get the Athanasian rule that whatever one says of the Father, one must say of the Son, except that the Father is the Father and the Son the Son. The key word at Nicea, homoouson, did not come from philosophy but from cloth merchants – it meant “of the same stuff”.
Cardinal Newman in his book on Arianism makes an extraordinary statement. Emanating from Babylon, there were in 325AD 56 Archbishoprics spreading into China and North India. These fell prey to Arianism and so, 300 years later, to the Moslem religion. Was the reason for this the lack of a philosophic tincture to the general culture, so that the rules for apprehending the meaning of the Council of Nicea were not comprehensible and so not effective?
This story shows the value of “a philosophic” tincture belonging to a culture. It perhaps provides a link in conversation with Moslems and explains the great devotion they have to Jesus and Mary. It perhaps also suggests the importance of a philosophic tincture for the Church and the world today.
While the philosophic spirit exposed the mythological basis around ancient public religions, it is valuable to notice that for around 2,000 years, from 500BC to 1600AD, philosophy and religion went hand in hand, especially in the immense scholastic achievement running from 1070 to 1274, which came to use the metaphysics and logic of Aristotle in a systematic way. For the scholastics, philosophy was not regarded as autonomous but rather as the handmaid of theology. Especially important was the distinction between nature and grace (Philip the Chancellor, 1230). That very distinction though, grounded the possibility of natural science, of philosophy and of history developing in autonomous ways, so that science and history came to recognise their way forward, the canons which govern their methodical advance. So for science, the Royal Society (1660) recognised only observation and experiment and, perhaps for history, a key moment was the recognition that it is about the constructions, good or bad, of the human spirit.
In medieval times it was thought that Theology using Aristotle’s philosophy could address the whole of Western culture, but the development of Western Science involved dropping the link of thought with Aristotle. Scientific method uses mathematical correlation to anticipate physical correlation. The theories it holds are for the most part just the best at the moment. Correlation has replaced causality. Scientists and Theologians might talk about “truth”, but where the Theologian based on Aristotle, means knowledge of causes, the scientist means the best possible knowledge of correlations. Here is a problem for modern philosophy to address.
In history again, if one see history as the recording of events – so 1066, the Norman invasion of England – then what you have is a series of more or less definite facts. If though, history is to be the reconstruction of the constructions of the human spirit, then a development in psychology, or a development in sociology might give one new insights into the motivation of William the Conqueror. One makes progress not about points of certitude but rather about points that are less than certain.
What applies to our knowledge of William the Conqueror applies also to our knowledge of the prophet Isaiah. I think one can see that here, too, there is a problem for Theology. It is great to have greater knowledge of Isaiah, but it is problematic if definite prophecies – Virgo concipiet – become utterances with probable meanings.
Lonergan in writing of Christology and in recognising how studies endlessly move things forward, finds in the title given to Christ in every(?) new testament document – the Son of God - an irreversible starting point.
In a situation where Aristotle somehow needs to be broadened out so that he can cope with modern science and modern history, I find helpful his remark that one does not expect the same sort of reasoning from a politician as from a mathematician.
The conclusion of reasoning, “the truth” as we know it, was identified by Aquinas as being “Ens et verum convertuntur”. For Lonergan, a truth affirmed becomes part of a person’s horizon, and since it is communicable, part of man’s world. For Lonergan and others (Heidegger) as our knowledge of the world expands, so does our knowledge of the self.
If the only knowledge man can have is of empirical science, then he himself becomes a merely material object. Philosophers today may confirm or deny this. How does one base this further autonomous discipline?
Foundations
Around 1230, Philip the Chancellor of Paris made a distinction between grace and nature, the highest thing in nature being reason, but man could be supernaturally informed, by faith, hope, love, and other virtues such as prudence.
Nature, of course, belongs to all mankind. Today, man finds himself chronically and dangerously divided not just by secular issues and ideologies, but also by religious divides, for example, between the Moslems and the Christians. The idea of nature though provides common ground, so most diseases have cures which are not based on religious differences.
Nature though for Philip included man’s rationality and so the precepts “be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible, be in love” express what Lonergan calls the transposition from faculty analysis to intentionality analysis.
The transposition is from terms and relations that are beyond man’s direct experience to terms and relations which are verifiable in experiences as part of experience.
So Aquinas has “agent intellect” and “passive intellect”, but we have all experienced what it is to be puzzled and what it is to be certain. Aquinas’ terms have a base in metaphysical theory. Lonergan would have us draw foundational terms from our concrete experience, and so bring us to use our own mind and heart with greater confidence. This goes on at the level of nature, but a nature which is opened to and influenced by super-nature. How this openness works in a Hindu, or Moslem, or Christian tradition is for the respective faithful to discern, and the respective theologians to expound.
The foundation we are proposing then is human nature known by human experience, and the experience we find is something dynamic not something static; something historically conditioned not something abstract; something potentially creative not something simply determined.
Of course medicine studies human nature, but here a theoretical knowledge develops which is common to all so that what is discovered conditions man, though it might liberate him from this or that disease. There are diseases to entrap the human spirit though, dramatic bias; egoistic bias; group bias and general bias. These biases work to prevent the unfolding of the human spirit towards the intelligible; the true; the real; the good; the loving and the lovable.
That which weighs most heavily on the human spirit and yet which elevates it above all is the loving and the lovable. Here is found the immeasurable meaning of a life. It may or may not include the religious dimension. Nothing is loved of course unless it is known, except love itself. Here is the dimension to which all religious traditions bear witness. The words of Pascal are helpful: “The heart has its reasons which reason does not know”.
Such love is a starting point not a conclusion of reason. It is experimental not theoretical. It could lead man astray into a sort of spiritual bias so that man undervalues his natural potentialities and perhaps a whole culture might become fatalistic and irresponsible. “What will be, will be”. I think one is discerning a further bias here – in addition to Lonergan’s dramatic, egoistic, group and general – namely a religious bias which so disvalues man’s natural capacities so that through regard for religion man’s normal capacities to be attentive, intelligent, reasonable and responsible become disregarded in their normal operation. It might be thought that such a malady could only occur with Eastern Religions but in his essay on ‘The Subject’ (2nd Collection) Lonergan lists Western culprits in the names of “phenomenology, existential self understanding, human encounter, salvation history”. There is the danger of a truncation of human subjectivity. Perhaps some aspects of the charismatic movement would come under criticism here.
Let us call this “religious bias”. It does not of course mean that nothing should be attended to, thought about, concluded upon but such a bias closes the door to genuine developments going on in science, history, art, philosophy and theology. A church or religion can in this way retain a visible unity but contain incompatible positions having lost the possibility of fruitful dialogue. I suggest such bias can go on in quite strange ways. There is a “Christian Bookshop” near here which as far as I can see does not have a single Catholic author. I recall a Catholic dismissing a book written in the 1960’s by a Fr Tyrell because a Fr Tyrell had been a Modernist in the 1890’s.
There is no doubt when a person is religiously converted, they are concerned to maintain what has become the most significant part of their life. I have come across people whose children have become Moonies and who will only read Mooney literature. So it is surely a healthy thing that, since the Council of Trent, the seminary training for the Roman Catholic priesthood has involved two years spent on philosophy alongside six years spent altogether.
However, what we are looking for is a development in philosophy which requires a shift to intentionality analysis, so the philosopher begins to recognise objective norms belonging to subjectivity. So, to be an artist one had best use one’s eyes; to be a scholar one had best read the texts. Beyond the texts though, the scholar must use his judgement. I find myself facing the question, might a certain portrait actually be of Mary Tudor; might it be by Holbein; might the date be 1537? A possibility might be overridden by a fact. A probability can be added to by another bit of evidence. If one is looking for certainty, I think it is good to recall Aristotle’s advice, that one seeks different sorts of evidence in different areas. One expects demonstration from a mathematician but not from a politician. Nevertheless it would be madness for a Holbein scholar to deny that he knew that any Holbeins were by Holbein, or to doubt the existence of Holbein.
It is the area of judgement which is most difficult for modern man to recognise, I think largely because modern science which occupies such a huge realm of modern thought is in many revisable. Einstein has gone ahead of Newton in general and special relativity, but I think in our small group we have seen that his special relativity needs revising. The constant in science is an empirical method. If one is to reach scientific conclusion, it needs to be on the basis of evidence, even if it can be revised and improved upon.
If the area of judgement is difficult for modern man, so that metaphysical principles, for example “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts”, seem as doubtful as Einstein’s special relativity, then intentionality analysis, attending to the data of consciousness as well as the data of sense, finds that judgement belongs to our human existence all the time. So there is the intimate and personal question of love. Do I know what it is to be loved and to love in return? Have I any notion of what it is to be loved by God? The answer here is a simple ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. and for many, the truthful answer maybe ‘No’. If it is ‘Yes’, then from whatever religious tradition one is dealing with a process of conversion, for any love makes demands. “Lex est amor qui ligat et obligat” as Adam of Perseign put it.
Or, is it true that I am a subject of sense experience? One only becomes aware of the question through sense experience, so the judgement here has to be affirmative.
Have I ever understood anything? Here one might go into a panic. I had quite a wise aunt who was prepared to admit that she knew nothing! But if, in English culture, one became specific and asked “Do you know the meaning of the term ‘water’?”, the answer would be ‘Yes’. We have grown up learning to understand things, and in English water is tied up with that wet stuff. We have not only understood but can judge that our understanding is correct.
One might get into deconstructive, post modern mood and say water only means water for English people, but one can point out that terms and meanings develop in an age old collaboration, and that if a doctor dealing with a patient in emergency asks for a bowl of water, your response might be absolutely important, meaning life or death for a patient. The mass murderer might think life or death an unimportant matter anyway. So it is that the ground of significance is love, but love can be concerned about a glass of water given to the thirsty person.
I have been trying to show that concern for appropriate attentiveness, understanding, truth, reality and love belong to everyman be he Hindu, Moslem, Jew, Christian, or nothing in that way. We not only are human, have a human nature, but can confirm the fact through our experience – or be in some way subhuman.
Nature, of course, belongs to all mankind. Today, man finds himself chronically and dangerously divided not just by secular issues and ideologies, but also by religious divides, for example, between the Moslems and the Christians. The idea of nature though provides common ground, so most diseases have cures which are not based on religious differences.
Nature though for Philip included man’s rationality and so the precepts “be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible, be in love” express what Lonergan calls the transposition from faculty analysis to intentionality analysis.
The transposition is from terms and relations that are beyond man’s direct experience to terms and relations which are verifiable in experiences as part of experience.
So Aquinas has “agent intellect” and “passive intellect”, but we have all experienced what it is to be puzzled and what it is to be certain. Aquinas’ terms have a base in metaphysical theory. Lonergan would have us draw foundational terms from our concrete experience, and so bring us to use our own mind and heart with greater confidence. This goes on at the level of nature, but a nature which is opened to and influenced by super-nature. How this openness works in a Hindu, or Moslem, or Christian tradition is for the respective faithful to discern, and the respective theologians to expound.
The foundation we are proposing then is human nature known by human experience, and the experience we find is something dynamic not something static; something historically conditioned not something abstract; something potentially creative not something simply determined.
Of course medicine studies human nature, but here a theoretical knowledge develops which is common to all so that what is discovered conditions man, though it might liberate him from this or that disease. There are diseases to entrap the human spirit though, dramatic bias; egoistic bias; group bias and general bias. These biases work to prevent the unfolding of the human spirit towards the intelligible; the true; the real; the good; the loving and the lovable.
That which weighs most heavily on the human spirit and yet which elevates it above all is the loving and the lovable. Here is found the immeasurable meaning of a life. It may or may not include the religious dimension. Nothing is loved of course unless it is known, except love itself. Here is the dimension to which all religious traditions bear witness. The words of Pascal are helpful: “The heart has its reasons which reason does not know”.
Such love is a starting point not a conclusion of reason. It is experimental not theoretical. It could lead man astray into a sort of spiritual bias so that man undervalues his natural potentialities and perhaps a whole culture might become fatalistic and irresponsible. “What will be, will be”. I think one is discerning a further bias here – in addition to Lonergan’s dramatic, egoistic, group and general – namely a religious bias which so disvalues man’s natural capacities so that through regard for religion man’s normal capacities to be attentive, intelligent, reasonable and responsible become disregarded in their normal operation. It might be thought that such a malady could only occur with Eastern Religions but in his essay on ‘The Subject’ (2nd Collection) Lonergan lists Western culprits in the names of “phenomenology, existential self understanding, human encounter, salvation history”. There is the danger of a truncation of human subjectivity. Perhaps some aspects of the charismatic movement would come under criticism here.
Let us call this “religious bias”. It does not of course mean that nothing should be attended to, thought about, concluded upon but such a bias closes the door to genuine developments going on in science, history, art, philosophy and theology. A church or religion can in this way retain a visible unity but contain incompatible positions having lost the possibility of fruitful dialogue. I suggest such bias can go on in quite strange ways. There is a “Christian Bookshop” near here which as far as I can see does not have a single Catholic author. I recall a Catholic dismissing a book written in the 1960’s by a Fr Tyrell because a Fr Tyrell had been a Modernist in the 1890’s.
There is no doubt when a person is religiously converted, they are concerned to maintain what has become the most significant part of their life. I have come across people whose children have become Moonies and who will only read Mooney literature. So it is surely a healthy thing that, since the Council of Trent, the seminary training for the Roman Catholic priesthood has involved two years spent on philosophy alongside six years spent altogether.
However, what we are looking for is a development in philosophy which requires a shift to intentionality analysis, so the philosopher begins to recognise objective norms belonging to subjectivity. So, to be an artist one had best use one’s eyes; to be a scholar one had best read the texts. Beyond the texts though, the scholar must use his judgement. I find myself facing the question, might a certain portrait actually be of Mary Tudor; might it be by Holbein; might the date be 1537? A possibility might be overridden by a fact. A probability can be added to by another bit of evidence. If one is looking for certainty, I think it is good to recall Aristotle’s advice, that one seeks different sorts of evidence in different areas. One expects demonstration from a mathematician but not from a politician. Nevertheless it would be madness for a Holbein scholar to deny that he knew that any Holbeins were by Holbein, or to doubt the existence of Holbein.
It is the area of judgement which is most difficult for modern man to recognise, I think largely because modern science which occupies such a huge realm of modern thought is in many revisable. Einstein has gone ahead of Newton in general and special relativity, but I think in our small group we have seen that his special relativity needs revising. The constant in science is an empirical method. If one is to reach scientific conclusion, it needs to be on the basis of evidence, even if it can be revised and improved upon.
If the area of judgement is difficult for modern man, so that metaphysical principles, for example “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts”, seem as doubtful as Einstein’s special relativity, then intentionality analysis, attending to the data of consciousness as well as the data of sense, finds that judgement belongs to our human existence all the time. So there is the intimate and personal question of love. Do I know what it is to be loved and to love in return? Have I any notion of what it is to be loved by God? The answer here is a simple ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. and for many, the truthful answer maybe ‘No’. If it is ‘Yes’, then from whatever religious tradition one is dealing with a process of conversion, for any love makes demands. “Lex est amor qui ligat et obligat” as Adam of Perseign put it.
Or, is it true that I am a subject of sense experience? One only becomes aware of the question through sense experience, so the judgement here has to be affirmative.
Have I ever understood anything? Here one might go into a panic. I had quite a wise aunt who was prepared to admit that she knew nothing! But if, in English culture, one became specific and asked “Do you know the meaning of the term ‘water’?”, the answer would be ‘Yes’. We have grown up learning to understand things, and in English water is tied up with that wet stuff. We have not only understood but can judge that our understanding is correct.
One might get into deconstructive, post modern mood and say water only means water for English people, but one can point out that terms and meanings develop in an age old collaboration, and that if a doctor dealing with a patient in emergency asks for a bowl of water, your response might be absolutely important, meaning life or death for a patient. The mass murderer might think life or death an unimportant matter anyway. So it is that the ground of significance is love, but love can be concerned about a glass of water given to the thirsty person.
I have been trying to show that concern for appropriate attentiveness, understanding, truth, reality and love belong to everyman be he Hindu, Moslem, Jew, Christian, or nothing in that way. We not only are human, have a human nature, but can confirm the fact through our experience – or be in some way subhuman.
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