Reflections Based on the Work of Bernard Lonergan :: Bernard Lonegran Essays

Reflections Based on the Work of Bernard LonerganABSTRACT The possibility of agency, it has been claimed, seems to implicate two strange nonions on the one hand, that of a self who is not merely an event, but a substance and that of causation, according to which an agent, who is a substance, flowerpot nevertheless be the cause of an event. The understanding of the conscious subject as constituted by the operations of experience, understanding, judgment and decision, castd by the Canadian philosopher and theologian, Bernard Lonergan, king resolve the puzzle, and provide the basis for an understanding of serviceman freedom that is the evidence of n both determinism nor arbitrariness. Perhaps one of the strongest arguments in the proposals favor is that any enterprise to refute it in theory would entail its adoption in practice.I. basisThe theme of freedom is an early and enduring one in the plant of the Canadian philosopher and theologian, Bernard J. F. Lonergan (1904-1984). It was the subject of his 1940 doctorial dissertation at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome (subsequently published as Grace and Freedom in 1971). Lonergan devoted further explicit attention to the topic in his subscribe to of human understanding, Insight, and again, in 1972, in Method in Theology. Since the focus of the doctoral thesis is centred on supernatural grace, I shall turn to the two later on works, and other articles, for the elaboration of Lonergans understanding of human freedom.II.Consciousness and SubjectivityWhat Lonergan wants to propose concerning human freedom cannot be understood apart from his chance of the human subject who is free. In many ways, in fact, Lonergans understanding of freedom, like his cognitional theory and his theological methodology, is simply an application of a more basic theory of subjectivity.In Lonergans view, while there is a great emphasis on the human subject in contemporary philosophy, the understanding attained is either incomplete or identify. The conduct of the subject is nothing other than the study of oneself inasmuch as one is conscious, and should proceed as followsIt attends to operations and to their centre and commencement which is the self. It discerns the unalike levels of consciousness, the consciousness of the dream, of the waking subject, of the intelligently inquiring subject, of the rationally reflecting subject, of the responsibly deliberating subject. It examines the different operations on the different levels and their relations to one another.Ones view of human subjectivity will be inaccurate or mistaken to the degree that one either does not advert to all the different operations of consciousness, or to their inter-relationship.