Wisdom and Practicality

There are two sides of the brain, one intuitive, practical, feminine, and one argumentative, rational, and obviously wise. In fact from the beginning of philosophy it was realised that you could be a learned fool and that alongside wisdom there was right conduct. For the Greeks the difference was between sophia and phronesis; for the Romans it was sapientia and prudential; and for Aquinas a person had to get natural and supernatural prudential into some sort of kilter. Perhaps Luther’s focus on faith, not works, echoes the matter.

Lonergan thinks that, under scholastic influence, which analysed human being under sense experience, intellect and will, the focus has been on sophia, on intellect, for one cannot will what one does not know. The assumption has been that knowledge is free of bias since it is concerned with truth. Modern writers though see that what we choose to know is not unrelated to our interest. If one is a scripture scholar in the UK, one’s career would probably be ruined if one held that Matthew not Mark wrote the first Gospel. As a fish one is expected to swim with the shoal and as an academic too.

Lonergan though sees the will as shaping up intellectual concerns for he goes in for what he calls intentionality analysis and finds that man is most stirred by what he loves. So the love of God might arouse an interest in theology to explain the matter; the love of a wife might lead to carcerism and an interest in passing certain exams and the love of a people or mankind might be stirred more by eloquence and vague examples rather than a scholarly attention to a detailed argument. The fact of love at the level of the will or the fourth intentional level gives high matter for reflection and further decision. Love can invade one’s being beyond reason, whereas with faculty analysis love is an emanation from intellect. One moves from a position where nothing can be loved unless it is known, to a position where nothing is truly known unless it is loved.

Intentionality analysis though comes upon an interesting point when it notes that with historical studies or social studies, ‘the reconstruction of the constructions of the human spirit’, the point of judgement is primarily subconscious, not conscious. So if you ask a non Catholic the meaning of “You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church”, you will find a minimalistic interpretation, but if you ask a Catholic, the text will be related forward to show the importance of the Holy See. We have different mindsets, horizons, blics and our mindset shapes the way we think.

This is in contrast with doing a calculation or a scientific experiment. Everything here is consciously formulated and verified. Historians turn to an understanding which is held in memory and which is not brought forth as part of the evidence. A historian who does not believe in God will always deny a miracle and finds that sincere people can be self deceived.

The psyche then is not just the source of images and feelings helpful to consciousness for the solving of a problem. It is the source of memories and judgements which exercise a control over what can be thought. Conversion is a change in the mindset operating at a subconscious as well as a conscious level. Fr Doran holds that realising the importance of the psyche involves a further sort of conversion. Memory is another world for the psyche and the realisation comes that forgetting is part of the health of memory as well as remembering, as Neitsche pointed out. Memory becomes something to be cared for and more deliberately constructed. One comes to recognise materials which are helpful for one’s emotional and imaginative development. One sees the disordered development where fascination develops around what is perverse and evil. With all developments, including perverse ones, we find others are involved, encouraging what is good but also encouraging what is evil.

Our Lord, in the parable of the Sower, sees the ground which is well cultivated as yielding fruit one hundred fold. Our speech reflects the heart, a more familiar word than the psyche. Yielding fruit means teaching others, so any tradition is passed on from age to age. A person making an effort needs training, education, encouragement and support. The key to passing on the faith is to have taken it to heart oneself but I suspect that teaching the faith is much like teaching the piano. It does not just happen.

Where there is a great experience (erlebris) then the passing on of the matter is more a matter of oratory than of technical discourse, and the oratory may be more a matter of telling a tale than of standing on a platform and rallying the crowd. I have learned about El Alamein from a man who shot two soldiers and when he examined them saw they were just boys. The technical matters of strategies, exact locations, exact dates are not the heart of the matter as it passes on from generation to generation.

It is not only language but also conduct that gets passed on this way. A people has its traditions which are dear to it. For an Englishman, Crown and Parliament are part of the set up, but for most Frenchmen the Revolution and Napoleon have shaped up a more modern identity. So the committed Anglican or committed Catholic have been shaped up in a thousand ways by their people. The precise origin of the difference with its technical positions will be unknown to most and perhaps still a matter of learned dispute. Heart speaks to heart in the roar of waters.

There was a ‘modern man’, a nineteenth century historian, who was described as modern because the tradition of his forebears had ceased to be his home and had become his historical object. But one’s historical object is a single event, whereas one’s shaping by one’s spiritual home is a multiple series of events. If to realise this is part of what it means to be a post-modern man, then here is an advance on sheer modernity. There is something similar for the natural science. Every time we breathe or eat or see the sunrise, we are virtually connected with the world of nature. To imagine that the whole world of nature has become one’s scientific object is an impoverishment and an error. There are technical questions in theology, some of which might require learning Hebrew to answer. One does not therefore cease to celebrate Christmas and Easter till the point is clear. There are problems in economics. If one can keep it going one does not give up one’s job till the question is answered.

Lonergan sees our culture at any moment as historically shaped by a cooperation and development (or decline) going on across the generations and by the cooperation going on today between individuals and families, economic enterprises and government bodies. Different cultures have different histories and different conventions to be followed. There is a substructure if commonsense which keeps everything operating in a variegated way, so schools teach and medical centres dispense potions and law courts dispense justice and legislative assemblies make laws. This realm, though it makes use of expertise, though it respects expertise, has as its object the common good. I think we can identify this area with Lord Shaftesbury’s ‘common sense’ – a sense for the common good – and with the French, ‘Le Bon sens’. But to culture there is a super structural area which is in development in highly specialised ways, scientific, historical, philosophical, artistic, religious – or of course, these worlds of expertise can be in decline. So the Pharisees were highly religious but their teaching on the Sabbath was too strict for human flesh and blood and denounced by the Messiah.

Lord Acton pointed out the danger of power which belongs to the common sense realm – “All power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely”, but the super-structural areas witness to the arrogance of the experts, and I do not have Lord Action’s pen to express the matter succinctly. From way back, whence I know not, “a little learning is a dangerous thing”. But what of the President of the Royal College of Science declaring that global warming is a fact”! It seems that our secular society has found a new Pope! I find in myself when asked to bow and bend the knee before some secular authority that I am more stiff jointed than perhaps I should be. Perhaps working on Lord Action’s dictum one could say “All expert knowledge tends to arrogance. Absolute certainty leads to dictatorship”.

Ever since I first heard it, I have thought Lord Acton’s dictum wrong at a metaphysical level because God is all powerful but corruption in no way belongs to Him. Similarly, all God’s knowledge is utterly certain, but as Lord Action discerned history, under God’s Providence, as a case of “He puts forth His arm in strength and raises the lowly”. In raising the lowly He gives us certitude but it is a lowly affair in terms of temporal power. In fact a great certitude we have, is that it would be a great thing to overcome our own wayward inclinations arising from the psyche, from ‘the heart’.