Being and Shallowness

There is the sense of his or her own being that a person may have and there is the being of everything else; minerals, plants, animals, men, angels, and God.

Our sense of being is very much tied up with our knowledge of being. Much knowledge is at the maybe level. So one might say the level of exports is related to 1) the size of the economy related to the world economy 2) the exchange rate and 3) the presence of nationals in other countries. When I was dealing with such maybes, I came across some ideas which were at once widely neglected but of supreme importance. One was man’s dignity and often his need. Another was the existence of God. Others concerned the Church and morality. What I did not notice was that instead of making hypothetical theories, I was able to make a truth judgement, a judgement about the being of things.

Hypothetical judgements might get one good marks. Truth judgements give one the world one lives in, so that one is, one is not just experiencing one’s own being, but living in a world one has, in some measure, come to know.

The capacity to affirm “it is so”, “it may be so”, “it is not so”, is strangely absent to our modern culture, for indeed, the whole scientific superstructure rests on the best theory at the moment. Lonergan points out that while scientific theories may be revisable, scientific method is not. Of course, the instruments may change and so the details of a method may change, but there is ever the matter of attending to the evidence, of producing theories, of testing them by experiment, and so of revising theories and improving technologies.

One comes to be certain then about the general pattern of the human way of working. As a young man I would have thought this is something really important. Now, I would say this is the truth and so it has the importance in the scheme of things that it has.

Returning to the idea of certain ideas being really important, I think I was witnessing to the fact that we cannot reach a truth judgement without being profoundly stirred thereby. In the 1960s human dignity was such that before man went into space programmes, he should see that every hungry child was fed. I cannot really now disagree with the idealistic youth that I was. Truth judgements are inescapably involved with feelings and so, values. One recalls the statement that “feelings are the mass and momentum of our living” and that values are apprehended in feelings.

Values are connected with conduct and conduct takes us into the realm of the not totally comprehended concrete. Alongside Sophia, there is phronesisis, alongside sapientia there is prudentia, and I think in English, we all know that the very clever person can be a blithering idiot when it comes to conduct.

The fact that one feels strongly about a conclusion does not mean that one should feel strongly in the process of reaching a conclusion. Here is the original place for detachment – is it so, is it not? It does not depend on me! It is a matter of evidence. So I care deeply whether or not I am in the red with the bank – but I look at the entries to see if they are correct. I care deeply whether the world is heading to global warming – so I concern myself to look at the evidence as it is. The detachment required for clear judgement may not always obtain. In 1917, Einstein’s theory about light bending was verified by observers who were already convinced and apparently the cloud cover was such that nothing could be verified.

For Lonergan judgement it is that takes one into the realm of being. “It is” means that what is proposed is part of that realm. For the world tinged with idealism judgement is just a further theoretical component whereby upon correct promises a correct conclusion is reached. Judgement therefore does not reach the “It is”. For Gadamer I suspect the whole theoretical world is thus tinged with idealism, but for him I think the hermeneutic world, the world known but not conceptualised, is where being is to be found. I think he would say that we know being in our hearts but once we express things we get into the shallowness of concepts. Lonergan would agree we know being in our hearts but has the critical realistic position that we use concepts and words to sometimes know something more of what is. This then enters the mind in a subconscious way to be brought forth by memory at the appropriate time. So the good historian has a multitude of true judgements hidden away but can bring forth a helpful example when in discussion, say.

Phronesis, praxis, prudentia, common sense, le bon sense is a matter not just of words expressing what is true, but of actions and commitments which are appropriate and often shared. The energy associated with a truth judgement comes to promote and help the word of praxis. So in matters religious there can be a first fervour which helps a person say to make a religious commitment, to join an order say.

Of course, one can grow accustomed to everything and then suffer a sort of boredom or acidic which is dangerous for religious life whether in the parish or a religious house. In a parish there are those who just fail to turn up. In a religions house a manifest boredom can be dangerous in another way.

The problem is that there is a failure of developing understanding to provide developing interest and energy. The remedy then is enlightenment or further understanding. If one conceives understanding as just a matter of conception and logic then it, too, will appear boring, so it is really important to grasp that knowledge following the question “Is it?” extends one’s own self with its energy and responsibility.

My grandfather used occasionally to complain of “brain fag” and take off to the Lake District leaving his physics lab for a week or two. I would say this was a need for recuperation, for the whole psyche to find a broader balance. But it must happen in secular studies where the understanding is a conceptualism, an idealism that the process of discovery becomes tedious. So you come across the strange phenomenon of a scientist just giving up what should be his greatest concern and delight. He has not realised that he is dealing with the real.

One finds in the Church some people with an antipathy to philosophy or dogma. They have a devotional life based on Scripture and Liturgy. They find themselves threatened by the “Is it so, is it not so?” level of thought or by the question, “Is there a better way of understanding all this?” It is worth noticing that the word “Amen” means “it is so”. Helpful too, is St Augustine and St Anselm’s approach of “faith seeking understanding”. Cardinal Newman’s phrase “the development of dogma” has about it the idea of a developing understanding as does Vatican One. One can see the dogmas of the Church as answers to questions which have arisen by the Church in the spirit of faith. “This is our belief!” Hence the anathema sit – let them be dismissed – for those who do not accept.

Kant’s Copernican turn to the subject was too poor an affair, for it did not appreciate the importance of saying “it is so”. The subsequent culture, phenomenological, existential, pragmatic, does not deal with existence unless one regards Lonergan as a phenomenologist of consciousness, setting off with the question “What do I do when I know?”.

“What do I do when I know?”, is phenomenological and descriptive of states, of processes and of feelings which stir us on. The curiosity of sense leads to a new state where wonder works on phantasm, to form a schematic image whence flows conception and description; a new state emerges with the question, “Is it so?”; and a further state with “What should I do about it?”.

Perhaps activities is a more familiar word for us – so a state (sensing), gives rise to an activity (wondering), gives rise to a new state (working with phantasm), and a new activity (finding answers). One state and activity gives rise to another under an emotional impulse which drives us on.