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An Exigence for the Other: Exploring Intersubjectivity through
Lonergan, Levinas, and Girard
by
Brian Leo Bajzek
A Doctoral Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Regis College and
the Graduate Centre for Theological Studies of the Toronto School
of Theology.
In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy in Theological Studies awarded by Regis
College and the University of Toronto.
© Copyright by Brian Leo Bajzek 2018
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An Exigence for the Other: Exploring Intersubjectivity through
Lonergan, Levinas, and Girard
Brian Leo Bajzek
Doctor of Philosophy in Theological Studies
Regis College and the University of Toronto
2018
Abstract
This thesis explores intersubjectivity’s often-overlooked impact
upon the drama of human
progress, decline, and redemption. First, I establish Bernard
Lonergan’s account of
subjectivity and self-transcendence as a base for analyzing
intersubjectivity’s integral role in
the operations of consciousness, communal self-constitution, and
socio-cultural development.
I then suggest that Emmanuel Levinas offers resources for
expanding Lonergan’s account of
intersubjectivity by illustrating its inherent link to an ethics
of alterity. Next, I outline René
Girard’s work with acquisitive mimesis, exploring how his
writings unmask the many ways
interdividuation and pre-thematic rivalry can distort
intersubjectivity, connecting his work to
Lonergan’s account of bias.
Contextualizing the decline resulting from such disorder as a
series of crises of meaning, I
argue that John Dadosky’s post-Lonergan development of a fourth
stage of meaning provides
necessary resources for overcoming relational crises and
decline. I then undertake my own
exploration of the fourth stage of meaning, relating the
interdependent principles of alterity
and similarity to intersubjectivity and its role in the healing
and elevation of humanity’s
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relational capacities. Lonergan’s Four-Point Hypothesis provides
a framework for
understanding and fostering humanity’s cooperation with this
healing and elevating love, and
my thesis’ concluding section resources this hypothesis to argue
that our principal
participation in God’s meaning in history—the meaning that
overcomes evil with love—is
itself an imitative participation in God’s love. This love
reintegrates and reorders the “prior
‘we’” of intersubjectivity in conformity with the divine “We” of
the Triune God.
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Acknowledgments
This dissertation suggests that the bonds between human beings
flow from the gift of God’s
love, and I want to begin by thanking the many people who are
gifts in my own life. I am so
profoundly grateful for so much, and to so many. It is
impossible for me to acknowledge
everyone who has helped me to write this dissertation, and it is
also impossible for me to
express the depth of my gratitude. All the same, I want to give
special recognition and thanks
to a few people.
First, I want to thank all of my many teachers, and especially
the members of my committee,
whose questions, insights, and support have made this
dissertation possible. Second, I want
to thank my director: John Dadosky. Your encouragement and
advice have played an
incalculable role in my development, both as a thinker and as a
human being. Through your
patience, generosity, and kindness, you have given me an example
of the kind of scholar,
teacher, and mentor I hope to become. This dissertation could
never have happened without
you. I also want to thank the mentor John and I share: Robert
Doran. Bob, your guidance and
friendship have changed me forever. You deserve more gratitude
than I can express.
Next, I want to thank my friends, especially Eric Mabry. Our
friendship and fellowship give
me proof that grace works through human relationships. I did not
come to Toronto expecting
to gain a brother, but I did. I am a better person because I
know you.
I owe my most profound debt and deepest thanks to my family. To
my Mom, Dad, Matt, and
Emily, all I can say is “thank you.” I hope you know how very
much I love you, and how
much your support means to me. As I have grown up, I have become
more and more aware
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of just how special our family is. Everything I have and
everything I am is because of you.
Next, I want to give my love and thanks to Megen Rependa. You
have completely
transformed my life. I thought I knew where that life was
headed. I thought I knew a decent
amount about love. I thought I knew a whole lot of things, and
then I happened to dance with
a pretty girl at a friend’s wedding, and I realized I had so
much left to learn. I could not be
more grateful. I am so excited to see what our future holds.
Finally, I must also express my gratitude to the students,
faculty, and staff of Christ the King
Seminary in East Aurora, NY. I am especially grateful to Fr.
John Mack, the seminary’s
director of pre-theology. Thank you for your friendship, and for
your belief in me. You gave
me my first chance to teach philosophy and theology, and I will
never be able to repay you
for trusting me. Learning to understand education as formation
has humbled me greatly, and I
am thrilled and honored to begin my full-time career at CKS.
To these, and to the countless more that have made this
dissertation possible, I offer my most
heartfelt thanks.
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Contents Introduction
...................................................................................................................................
1
A Methodological Clarification
...................................................................................
4
The Structure of the Thesis
.........................................................................................
8
Chapter 1: Lonergan on the Self-Transcending Subject
........................................................... 9
Cognitional Structure and Self-Transcendence
......................................................... 10
“Two Ways of Being Conscious”
.............................................................................
15
Intersubjectivity
.........................................................................................................
19
Intentional Relationality and Community
.................................................................
22
The Dynamic State of Being-in-Love
.......................................................................
25
The Scale of Values
...................................................................................................
29
Chapter 2: A Levinasian Expansion of Lonergan on
Intersubjectivity ................................. 35
Responsibility and the Face of the Other
..................................................................
37
The Trace of the Infinite
............................................................................................
46
Intersubjectivity and Responsibility for the Other: Lonergan and
Levinas .............. 51
Chapter 3: Interdividuation, Crisis, Violence, and Decline
.................................................... 55
Girard’s Mimetic Theory
...........................................................................................
56
Lonergan on Bias
.......................................................................................................
65
Longer Cycles of Decline
..........................................................................................
72
Anticipating Recovery
...............................................................................................
75
Chapter 4: Meeting these Crises of Meaning
...........................................................................
78
The World Mediated by Meaning
.............................................................................
79
Carriers of Meaning
...................................................................................................
81
Further Elements of Meaning
....................................................................................
88
The Realms and Stages of Meaning
..........................................................................
94
A Fourth Stage of Meaning
.....................................................................................
100
Broaching the Fourth Stage of Meaning
.................................................................
105
Chapter 5: Exploring the Fourth Stage of Meaning
..............................................................
111
Lonergan’s Basic Position on Dialectic
..................................................................
112
Doran’s Further Differentiation
...............................................................................
115
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Alterity and Similarity as Integral Dialectic of Contraries
...................................... 117
Moving Beyond Counterpositions: Levinas’ Epistemology
................................... 121
Knowing the Other: Irreducibility, Exhortation,
Self-Transcendence .................... 127
Interpretation and Isomorphism: Advancing an Ontology of Being
....................... 136
Divine Meaning, Otherness, and Being
...................................................................
139
Chapter 6: A Framework for Imitation and Participation: The
Four-Point Hypothesis .. 142
The Four-Point Hypothesis
.....................................................................................
143
Trinitarian Background: Processions, Relations, Persons,
Missions ...................... 145
Contingent Predication
............................................................................................
149
Imitation, Participation, and Intersubjectivity
......................................................... 152
Looking Ahead: Healing and Elevating Intersubjectivity
....................................... 160
Chapter 7: Conclusion: Relationality and Redemption
........................................................ 164
Grace, Human Being(s), and the Other
...................................................................
166
Being-in-love is Being-for-the-Other
......................................................................
172
Relating Horizontal and Vertical Alterity: the Fourth Stage of
Meaning
and Illeity
.................................................................................................................
182
Alterity, Similarity, and the Incarnation of Divine Meaning
.................................. 186
Concluding Reflection: Redeeming “We”
..............................................................
189
Bibliography
..............................................................................................................................
196
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Introduction
[A human being] is an artist. His practicality is part of his
dramatic pursuit of dignified living. His aim is not for raw and
isolated satisfactions. If he never dreams of disregarding the
little matter of food and drink, still what he wants is a sustained
succession of varied and artistically transformed acquisitions and
attainments. If he never forgets his personal interest, still his
person is no Leibnizian monad; for he was born of his parents’
love; he grew and developed in the gravitational field of their
affection; he asserted his own independence only to fall in love
and provide himself with his own hostages to fortune. As the
members of the hive or herd belong together and function together,
so too men are social animals, and the primordial basis of their
community is not the discovery of an idea but a spontaneous
intersubjectivity.1
This quote, which appears in the seventh chapter of Bernard
Lonergan’s Insight: A Study of
Human Understanding, profoundly altered the course of my life.
As a master’s student at
Marquette University, my initial engagement with Lonergan’s work
exposed me to a number
of new resources and horizons. Perhaps the most lasting impact
of this encounter, however,
came from the methodical clarity with which he outlined a topic
that had long fascinated me:
relationality.
In chapter seven of Insight, Lonergan elucidates the relational
matrices foundational to
human progress, connecting this relationality to the subject’s
desire to know, and outlining
the disastrous consequences resulting from distortions of these
connections. This account of
relationality offers clarity not only on a descriptive level,
but in its explanatory account of the
ways human beings are always-already inherently linked, sharing
in the highs and lows of the
drama of progress, decline, and recovery. According to Lonergan,
this entire process of
human community and its self-constitution “has its obscure
origins in intersubjectivity.”2
1 Bernard J.F. Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human
Understanding, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and
Robert M. Doran, 5th Edition, Collected Works of Bernard
Lonergan, Volume 3 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992),
237.
2 Ibid., 238.
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As I will outline in the pages that follow, Lonergan’s analysis
of intersubjectivity reappears
throughout his career, and the nuances with which he employs the
term evolve over time. By
the publication of Method in Theology in 1972, Lonergan begins
to describe intersubjectivity
as an always-already-present connection linking human beings
together in an irreducible,
foundational relatedness: “Prior to the ‘we’ that results from
the mutual love of an ‘I’ and a
‘thou,’ there is the earlier ‘we’ that “precedes the distinction
of subjects and survives its
oblivion.”3 This “prior ‘we’” informs all human encounter, and
even manifests itself in
spontaneous, pre-reflective aid for other human beings.4
The mention of spontaneous intersubjective aid provides another
recurring pattern in
Lonergan’s thought, and—as I will recount in my thesis’ first
chapter—brief but intriguing
references to the acts that manifest spontaneous
intersubjectivity become a common
occurrence in Lonergan’s writings. “Brief but intriguing” is, in
fact, a fitting way to describe
Lonergan’s entire engagement with intersubjectivity, which,
despite its frequent appearances
in his writings, never receives an extended treatment of its
own. Despite its relative brevity, I
will establish that Lonergan’s work with this sensitive-psychic
connection offers as-yet
unexplored resources for a theological analysis of
intersubjectivity and its impact upon
human history.5
3 Bernard J.F. Lonergan, Method in Theology, ed. Robert M. Doran
and John D. Dadosky, Collected
Works of Bernard Lonergan, Volume 14 (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 2017), 56. 4 Ibid., 57. 5 As I will outline in my
thesis, Lonergan generally uses the term “intersubjectivity” to
refer to the pre-
intentional, sensitive-psychic bonds between all human beings,
while he usually employs “interpersonal” to denote the
intentionally relational, including all the ways our understanding,
judgment, and decision are bound up in the social and communal
elements of human life. My own usage of these terms will observe
and follow this distinction, which I will explain in Chapter 1.
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In order to explore these insights into intersubjectivity, I
will bring Lonergan’s philosophical
and theological anthropology into dialogue with two primary
interlocutors: Emmanuel
Levinas and René Girard. Lonergan’s account of subjectivity and
self-transcendence
provides a robust base from which to explore relationality, and
Levinas offers resources for
expanding Lonergan’s brief account of intersubjectivity by
bringing it into dialogue with an
ethics of alterity. Girard’s writings unmask the myriad ways
relationality can go awry, and
this work is complementary to Lonergan’s examinations of bias.
Each of these thinkers,
therefore, provides an essential component to my project.
Together, they present the
resources necessary for a holistic exploration of
intersubjectivity.6
Drawing from this unexplored interplay, my thesis will culminate
in an articulation of
humanity’s role in the cruciform reversal of relational
distortions. Arguing that the
movement of self-transcendence is ordered toward the divine call
presented in the face of the
Other, I will utilize Lonergan’s trinitarian theology to
establish how the response to this
injunction is itself an imitative participation in the relations
at the heart of the immanent
Trinity. Through this relational reorientation, we can most
fully meet the ethical exigence
toward alterity, transcending our natural capacities for
lovingness, responding to decline in
cooperation with the grace that transfigures our
being-in-the-world as being-for-the-Other.
In its engagement with both interconnectedness and alterity, I
hope my thesis might
contribute useful theoretical resources for navigating the
current intellectual landscape, one
characterized by the polarization, paranoia, and ressentiment
that have pushed contemporary
6 Furthermore, while the secondary literature on each of these
authors analyzes their individual insights
into intersubjectivity, societal decline, and redemption, no one
has constructively connected their three theoretical
frameworks.
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relationality to a point of impasse. Meeting these crises will
require the charitable
collaboration of a variety of viewpoints, both acknowledging the
distinctive volatility of our
time, and contextualizing present conflicts within a fuller
historical framework, since
intolerance and enmity are not new phenomena.
My research provides an explanatory account of key factors
operative in these crises,
unpacking intersubjectivity’s often-overlooked importance in
human beings’ struggles
toward self-transcendence. As underpinning, overarching, and
accompanying societal and
cultural development, intersubjectivity is intimately linked to
the ways progress can spiral
into decline through bias, totalization, and large-scale
deterioration. These malformations can
only be met through the identification of the sources of
intersubjective aberrations, fuller
differentiation of the response to alterity, and the self-giving
love that cooperates with the
divinely originated solution to decline.
1 A Methodological Clarification
Before beginning my analysis of Lonergan, Levinas, Girard, and
their insights into
intersubjectivity, I must establish the limits of my thesis.
First, I do not intend to argue that
Lonergan, Levinas, and Girard’s projects are perfectly
commensurable. Furthermore, I will
not engage these thinkers’ wide-ranging explorations of
questions and concepts beyond the
issues immediately related to their engagement with
intersubjectivity. My thesis’ interaction
with Levinas is restricted to his discovery that the subject’s
horizon is always informed by an
intersubjective exigence toward the Other, and that this
relational responsibility is concretely
re-presented in each particular encounter with the face of the
Other, which manifests a divine
imperative toward relational authenticity. Similarly, my
engagement with Girard is limited to
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his mimetic theory’s implications for the distortions of
intersubjectivity, distortions that
reduce relationality to a series of rivalries and calculating
objectifications.
I recognize from the outset that Levinas and Girard’s writings
are complex, and that, like all
thinkers, they begin their analyses from within their own,
particular philosophical and
theological horizons, which are not entirely commensurate with
Lonergan’s. For the purposes
of my thesis, however, the majority of these divergences need
not be engaged, as my work in
the pages that follow is neither intended to compare and
contrast the entire projects of
Lonergan, Levinas, and Girard, nor to catalogue their varying
agreements and disagreements
on any number of topics.7 Instead, I am arguing that Lonergan,
Levinas, and Girard each
offer crucial insights into intersubjectivity and its importance
for a philosophical and
theological analysis of progress, decline, and redemption.
Perfect or overwhelming
methodological agreement between them is not necessary.
Given the aims of my thesis, I must also stress that I will not
be employing Lonergan,
Levinas and Girard equally. Their writings do not receive equal
real estate in the pages of
this thesis. My operative definition of intersubjectivity is
drawn directly from Lonergan. His
understanding of intersubjectivity is the base for all that
follows, and so my thesis is
technically a synthetic-constructive expansion of Lonergan’s
position on intersubjectivity,
which needs to be bolstered by Levinas’ ethical framework, and
Girard’s account of the
7 This does not mean that I will completely prescind from all
analysis of the divergences between their
projects (Ch. 5, for example, is largely dedicated to proposing
a solution to a key methodological divergence between Lonergan and
Levinas), just that the divergences I engage will be restricted to
those relevant to an analysis of intersubjectivity.
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many ways intersubjectivity can become disordered. 8 Lonergan’s
thought, therefore,
provides the primary scaffolding on which my
synthetic-constructive work with
intersubjectivity can take place. My goal is to present the most
philosophically and
theologically explanatory account of intersubjectivity and its
place in the drama of progress,
decline, and redemption. The relative usage of each of my
thesis’ interlocutors is at the
service of this aim. My horizon on intersubjectivity is
primarily shaped by Lonergan,
secondarily by Levinas, and then by Girard, but I am employing
their thought to treat an
issue that requires the insights of all three thinkers.
The key to my argument is that their positions on
intersubjectivity illuminate essential
elements of the “prior ‘we’” of intersubjectivity, its
importance, and its implications. My
project is not comparative, but synthetic-constructive. I am
interested in advancing each
thinker’s insights into intersubjectivity. While I recognize
that there is a great deal of
scholarship examining potential problematics with Lonergan’s
writings, Levinas’ writings, or
Girard’s writings, my goal is not to defend their projects as a
whole. I will engage secondary
literature that is relevant to the insights into
intersubjectivity that I have outlined above, but I
do not intend to exhaustively catalogue the various debates
regarding interpretation of any of
my thesis’ three primary interlocutors.
8 Perhaps more precisely, my operative definition of
intersubjectivity is the definition I have come to
understand and develop through Lonergan’s writings. This
definition diverges from the way(s) many Lonergan scholars
understand intersubjectivity, largely because my own reading of
Lonergan is so indebted to Robert Doran and John Dadosky. I have
come to this definition, not because it is Lonergan’s (or, at the
very least, derived from Lonergan’s), but because it is the most
explanatory account of intersubjectivity I have encountered,
especially when it is supplemented and expanded by engagement with
Levinas and Girard. In this sense, the “through” of my thesis’
title indicates that I am exploring and expanding a particular
account of intersubjectivity (i.e., Lonergan’s) through insights in
various components of Lonergan, Levinas, and Girard’s writings. I
must also mention that I am greatly indebted to Tom Reynolds for
suggesting the term “synthetic-constructive” as shorthand for my
thesis’ methodology. This term quite clearly and succinctly
summarizes the aims of my thesis.
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I must also highlight that my thesis, while focusing narrowly on
the topic of intersubjectivity,
will also build upon Lonergan’s, Levinas’, and Girard’s
foundational accounts of
intersubjectivity, its roots in an ethical obligation, and the
many ways this obligation and its
response can be warped or rejected. Lonergan’s trinitarian
theology will serve as the
springboard for exploring a solution to these problematics. As
no secondary source brings
these three thinkers into dialogue on the topic of
intersubjectivity, the primary importance of
my bibliography’s secondary literature is methodological. In
this regard, my thesis is
especially influenced by the writings of Robert Doran and John
Dadosky.
Both Doran and Dadosky develop Lonergan’s insights, and their
projects are not primarily
interpretive, favoring instead a creative, constructive, and
original implementation of the
tools Lonergan provides. Following this example, I will draw
from Doran’s writings on the
dialectics at play in human history, Dadosky’s suggestion of a
fourth stage of meaning, and
their collective writings advancing Lonergan’s Four-Point
Hypothesis. The latter hypothesis
will account for the healing and elevation of human relations
through grace as participating
in the divine relations. Just as these ideas support Lonergan’s
project, but expand beyond his
writings on history, meaning, or Trinitarian theology, I will
build upon the resources in
Doran’s and Dadosky’s work in order to offer my own, original
contribution to the
conversation. By expanding upon this framework to provide the
most fully explanatory
account of intersubjectivity’s place in the drama of progress,
decline, and redemption, my
own research will attempt to enter into unexplored
territory.
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2 The Structure of the Thesis
This thesis is divided into three major sections. The first of
these sections will establish
intersubjectivity’s place in the writings of Lonergan (Chapter
1), Levinas (Chapter 2), and
Girard (Chapter 3), explanatorily engaging these three thinkers’
insights on intersubjectivity
to unpack its integral, often-overlooked role in history. This
section will establish that
subjectivity is always-already intersubjective, and that this
intersubjectivity has profound
consequences for human history. The second of the thesis’
sections will frame
intersubjectivity within the macro context of meaning in history
(Chapter 4), establishing the
ways Lonergan, Levinas, and Girard each help illuminate the
movement into a fourth stage of
meaning, relating the interdependent principles of alterity and
similarity to intersubjectivity
and its role in the healing and elevation of humanity’s
relational capacities (Chapter 5).
The thesis’ third section will propose a theological framework
for overcoming relational
decline, using Lonergan’s Four-Point Hypothesis to explore how
our principal participation
in God’s meaning in history—the meaning that overcomes evil with
love—is itself an
imitative participation in Trinitarian relationality, which
heals and elevates intersubjectivity
(Chapter 6). I will conclude my thesis by arguing that through
the response to the divine
injunction in the face of the Other, we respond to decline in
cooperation with the grace that
transfigures our being-in-the-world as being-for-the-Other. This
grace is both healing and
elevating, restoring intersubjective spontaneity by reversing
the decline described by Girard
and Lonergan, and heightening our response to the
intersubjective exigence toward the Other
described by Levinas (Chapter 7).
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Chapter 1 Lonergan on Self-Transcending Subjectivity
Beginning my analysis of intersubjectivity and its impact upon
the drama of human progress,
decline, and redemption, my thesis’ first chapter will provide a
foundation from which to
begin my synthetic-constructive task. This chapter’s analysis of
self-transcendence,
development, community, and their connections to
intersubjectivity begins my thesis’
opening section. The three chapters comprising this section
establish intersubjectivity’s place
in the writings of Lonergan, Levinas, and Girard, and use these
three thinkers’ insights on
intersubjectivity to unpack its integral, often-overlooked role
in history.
As an inherently relational undertaking, human living is
complex, and, as the sensitive-
psychic bond linking all human subjects to one another on a
pre-thematic, elemental level,
intersubjectivity has wide-ranging, often unforeseen effects on
all aspects of this intricate
enterprise. In order to sufficiently consider these processes, I
will begin by unpacking
Lonergan’s philosophical and theological anthropology, and
intersubjectivity’s place in it. As
I will illustrate, Lonergan’s thought provides a robust base for
approaching the mutually
conditioning issues of subjectivity, intersubjective and
interpersonal relationality, and the
struggle for authenticity in self-transcendence.1
1 Lonergan generally uses the term “intersubjectivity” to refer
to the pre-intentional, spontaneous,
sensitive-psychic bonds between all human beings, while he
usually employs “interpersonal” to denote the intentionally
relational, including all the ways our understanding, judgment, and
decision are bound up in the social and communal elements of human
life. Frederick Crowe notes this distinction when he writes, “I
[i.e., Frederick Crowe] use the word ‘intersubjectivity’ to refer
here to the full range of relations between subjects; this is not,
I think, the particular use Lonergan sometimes makes of the term,
as when it refers to the intersubjectivity that is ‘vital and
functional,’ an intersubjectivity of ‘action and feeling’ (Method
in Theology, 57, 59).” As we will see below, with his clarification
and expansion of the distinction between the sensitive-psychic and
the intellectual-spiritual ways of being conscious, Robert Doran
accentuates the importance of making the distinction between the
underpinning, overarching, and accompanying relational element
(i.e.,
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1 Cognitional Structure and Self-Transcendence
Lonergan’s thought begins by emphasizing the dynamism
underlying, conditioning, and
advancing all of Creation. From the smallest quantum occurrences
to the most sweeping
interstellar events, the universe is always engaged in “an
upwardly but indeterminately
directed dynamism towards ever fuller realization of being.”2 As
participants in this
movement, human beings are also always engaging in a process of
self-transcendence.3
Ideally, this involves an ever-fuller actualization of subjects’
capacities for inquiry and
engagement with the world around them.4
intersubjectivity), and its correlate in the intellectual
spiritual dimension. I also understand Lonergan’s later treatments
of subjectivity and relationality to have been impacted by his
interactions with Doran and his writings, and Lonergan’s increased
emphasis on the role of the psyche in the full range of human
living and self-transcendence (exemplified by his shift to the
language of “quasi-operator”) corroborates this suggestion. My own
usage of the terms “intersubjective” and “interpersonal” will
observe and follow Lonergan’s and Doran’s distinction.
2 Insight, 477. 3 Lonergan connects humanity’s cognitional
dynamism to the dynamism of Being in the following
terms: “Just as cognitional activity does not know in advance
what being is and so has to define it heuristically as whatever is
to be known by intelligent grasp and reasonable affirmation, so
objective process is not the realization of some blueprint but the
cumulation of a conditioned series of things and schemes of
recurrence in accord with successive schedules of probabilities.
Just as cognitional activity is the becoming known of being, so
objective process is the becoming of proportionate being. Indeed,
since cognitional activity is itself but a part of this universe,
so its heading to being is but the particular instance in which
universal striving towards being becomes conscious and intelligent
and reasonable. Such is the meaning we would attach to the name
finality (Insight, 445).
4 For a general introduction to the unfolding of this vertical
finality (especially as this movement involves humanity) see
Bernard J.F. Lonergan, “Mission and the Spirit,” in A Third
Collection, ed. Frederick E. Crowe, Collected Works of Bernard
Lonergan, Volume 16 (University of Toronto Press, 2017), 21–33.
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Humanity’s innate inclination toward investigation and
interaction is rooted in an
unrestricted desire to know.5 This unrestricted desire orders
subjectivity toward the true and
the real, just as questions are ordered toward answers:
This intrinsic relation of the dynamic structure of human
knowing to being and so to reality primarily is not pensée pensée
hut pensée pensante, not intentio intenta but intentio intendens,
not noêma but noêsis. It is the originating drive of human knowing.
Consciously, intelligently, rationally it goes beyond: beyond data
to intelligibility; beyond intelligibility to truth and through
truth to being; and beyond known truth and being to the truth and
being still to be known. But though it goes beyond, it does not
leave behind. It goes beyond to add, and when it has added, it
unites. It is the active principle that calls forth in turn our
several cognitional activities.6
These activities form a dynamic, ordered whole: intentional
consciousness. The operations of
human knowing intend and attend to objects, and the subject is
present to herself and aware
of her own agency as operator.7 The subject experiences herself
engaging and interacting
with the world, and each of her consciousness’ operations brings
with it a new series of
qualitative differences and actualizations of self-presence.
Lonergan distinguishes these
5 As I will outline below, Lonergan uses a number of terms
(e.g., unrestricted desire to know, intending
intention of being, the transcendental notions, tidal movement
of subjectivity, passionateness of being, etc.) to highlight
various characteristics of this desire and its role in orienting
and ordering subjectivity. John Dadosky has also emphasized the
importance of four fundamental desires Lonergan identifies in his
the supplement “On the Redemption,” included in his Latin
Christology: “(1) the desire to understand; (2) the desire for
rectitude (integrity between knowing and doing); (3) the desire for
happiness; and (4) the desire for immortality” (John D. Dadosky,
“Desire, Bias, and Love: Revisiting Lonergan’s Philosophical
Anthropology,” Irish Theological Quarterly 77, no. 3 (2012):
244–64, at 245–47, citing Bernard Lonergan, De Verbo Incarnato,
trans. Charles Hefling (Rome: Gregorian University, 1964). This
supplement will be published as Volume 9 of the Collected Works of
Bernard Lonergan). These terms are all in re reducible to the same
drive: the dynamic movement at the core of subjectivity, the
natural desire for God. Whether it is thematized or not, this
innate longing is the impetus for the entire endeavor of
self-transcendence.
6 Bernard J.F. Lonergan, “Cognitional Structure,” in Collection:
Papers by Bernard J.F. Lonergan, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert
M. Doran, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, Volume 4 (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1993), 211–12.
7 Method in Theology, 7.
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12
differences through the metaphor of distinct, interrelated
‘levels’ of consciousness. Together,
these levels constitute the polymorphic structure of cognitional
process.8
On the level of experience, the subject interacts with her
environment through the senses,
perceiving and imagining, moving through and receiving the
myriad sights, smells, tastes,
sounds, and textures of the world. Next, on the level of
intelligence, she approaches an
understanding of what she experiences, asking “what?,” “why?,”
and “how?,” recognizing
the relations, patterns, unities, and identities immanent in the
data, and generating concepts,
definitions, and formulations of these understandings. In a
further step, she comes to
reflection, deliberating upon the fruits of her inquiry, and
passing judgment on the truth or
falsity of her understanding of the evidence marshaled. Next,
her self-transcendence reaches
beyond the order of knowing into the order of doing, and
questions for deliberation lead to
judgments of value regarding how the subject will live her life,
asserting who she wants to be
through the actions she decides to perform.9
This entire process is driven by the natural, spontaneous desire
to know. The undertow of this
pure desire compels the subject to inquire about the world she
inhabits, ordering attentiveness
toward intelligence, intelligence toward reasonableness, and
reasonableness toward
8 I must stress from the outset that this foundational emphasis
on the cognitional operations of the
subject ought not be read as exclusively or even excessively
focused on the individual. In fact, the term “individual” is itself
something of a misnomer. The subject is always already bound up in
communal, social, and cultural contexts and connections. As Paul
Kidder argues, “Lonergan finds utter ontological priority in
neither the individual nor the community, but rather makes an
ontological commitment to their dynamic interrelationship” (Kidder,
“Lonergan and the Husserlian Problem of Transcendental
Intersubjectivity,” ed. Mark D. Morelli, Method: Journal of
Lonergan Studies 4, no. 1 (March 1986): 30, emphasis added).
Balancing the subject’s exigences toward authenticity with the
shared meanings and self-correction of collaboration, Lonergan’s
method is ultimately grounded in the communication and dialogue
fostered by interpersonal encounter.
9 Method in Theology, 9.
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13
responsibility. The desire’s unrestrictedness is derived
precisely from the importance and
scope of questioning, “for there is nothing that we cannot at
least question.”10 The operations
of cognitional structure are differentiated, therefore,
according to the types of question being
asked:
There are questions for intelligence asking what, why, how, what
for. There are questions for reflection asking whether our answers
to the previous type of question are true or false, certain or only
probable. Finally, there are questions for deliberation, and
deliberations are of two kinds: there are the deliberations of the
egoist asking what’s in it for me or for us; there are also the
deliberations of moral people, who inquire whether the proposed end
is a value, whether it is really and truly worth while.11
These four levels (experiencing, understanding, judging,
deciding) are related to each other
sequentially through “instances of what Hegel named sublation,
of a lower being retained,
preserved, yet transcended and completed by a higher.”12 From
experience up through
decision, each of the levels builds upon those preceding it,
carrying the contributions of the
previous operations forward to a higher fulfillment. The
cumulative unfolding of these
operations allows the subject to transcend her finitude, coming
to an objective judgment.
10 “Cognitional Structure,” 211. 11 Bernard J.F. Lonergan,
“Reality, Myth, Symbol,” in Philosophical and Theological Papers
1965-
1980, ed. Robert C. Croken and Robert M. Doran, 2nd Revised
Edition, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, Volume 17 (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2004), 385–86.
12 Bernard J.F. Lonergan, “The Subject,” in A Second Collection,
ed. Robert Doran S.J and John Dadosky, Collected Works of Bernard
Lonergan, Volume 13 (University of Toronto Press, 2016), 69. Unlike
Hegel’s Aufhebung, however, Lonergan’s understanding of sublation
omits “the Hegelian view that the higher reconciles a contradiction
in the lower,” and this amendment allows for the possibility of
truly mutual dialectical benefit, as the movement to higher
synthesis does not entail the violent or destructive implications
inherent in the opposition of the Hegelian paradigm of thesis,
antithesis, and synthesis (Method in Theology, 80).
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14
With such a judgment, the subject asserts that, absent the
emergence of further relevant
questions or as yet unrecognized data, the conditions for
affirming x are fulfilled.13
It is with such an affirmation, Lonergan argues, “[a human
being] achieves authenticity in
self-transcendence.”14 In an even further step, the subject who
brackets their own “calculus
of the pleasures and pains involved,” making responsible
decision by opting “not for the
13 Insight, 305–12. This affirmation is clearly variable in
content and context, and it usually happens so
quickly that the subject is barely even aware of the individual
steps that occasioned and supported the judgment. The vast majority
of our daily judgments are mundane and reflexive enough to occur at
an extremely expedited rate. This does not, however, mean that the
structure of this process is changed, even if it occurs with
remarkable speed. Whether identifying a loved one walking into a
room, accepting or rejecting a particular philosopher’s
epistemological claims, or solving a highly advanced mathematical
equation, the operations of consciousness unfold according to the
movement outlined above. Differences in learning style, education,
and/or life experience might hinder or help expedite the movement
between operations, but this does not alter the fundamental process
by which one attains self-transcendence in judgment. The
objectivity of such judgments—and the ways Lonergan’s epistemology
varies from other common presentations of judgment—will be
addressed more fully in Chapter 5.
14 Method in Theology, 104. This understanding of
self-transcendence is also the basis of Lonergan’s position on
objectivity. According to Lonergan, the majority of post-Cartesian
philosophers attribute objectivity to the experience of the object,
not the judgment in which the object is affirmed. At the same time,
if you asked these philosophers, “Would you consider the typewriter
to be an object if you knew it to be true that there was no
typewriter?” they would say “No.” But that is a matter of judgment.
This example illustrates the tendency to confuse the criteria of
objectivity, moving back and forth between sensation and judgment,
mistakenly formulating the question of objectivity as something
like, “How do I get outside of myself and know what is sensibly
‘out there’ in the real world”? Lonergan argues that this
formulation of the question is inherently misleading. It treats an
“internal” subject as something divorced from being. It forgets
that the one’s own subjectivity is something about which one has
already made a judgment (at least an implicit one). My own
subjectivity is something all my other judgments presume. This
presumption already affirms an object: the self. This selfhood
exists within being. It is both and object and a subject. At the
same time, we make judgments about countless other objects, and “we
contend that [these] other judgments are equally possible and
reasonable, so that through experience, inquiry, and reflection
there arises knowledge of other objects both as beings and as being
other than the knower. Hence we place transcendence, not in going
beyond a known knower, but in heading for being, within which there
are positive differences and, among such differences, the
difference between object and subject. Inasmuch as such judgments
occur, there are in fact objectivity and transcendence; and whether
or not such judgments are correct is a distinct question to be
resolved along the lines reached in the analysis of judgment”
(Insight, 401-02). For Lonergan, therefore, knowing is not a matter
of going from “in here” to “out there,” but of going from
experience through understanding to judgment. This is true whether
the reality affirmed in judgment happens to be oneself or anything
else. The question of self-transcendence, then, should actually be
framed, “How does the subject transcend her finitude in order to
come to objectively accurate knowledge of anything, including
herself?” For a fuller account of the relationship of subjectivity
and objectivity, see Chapters 12 and 13 of Insight.
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15
merely apparent good, but for the true good, […] is achieving
moral self-transcendence;
[such a person] is existing authentically.”15
Lonergan frames the exhortation to such self-transcending
authenticity through the
injunctions he names “transcendental precepts.”16 These precepts
compel human beings to
“Be attentive, Be intelligent, Be reasonable, Be responsible.”
17 Prior to any explicit
thematization or linguistic expression, however, these precepts
exist concretely “in the
spontaneous, structured dynamism of human consciousness.”18 The
subject is even capable
of objectifying, understanding, and reflecting upon this process
itself, continually improving
the effectiveness with which these operations recur, growing in
self-appropriation and
authenticity, heightening self-awareness.19
2 “Two Ways of Being Conscious”
Returning to the metaphor of levels, we can understand the
process of human knowing as a
development from the bottom upward, with each new operation
building upon and drawing
15 Ibid., 50. 16 Bernard J.F. Lonergan, “Lecture 3: Philosophy
of God and the Functional Specialty ‘Systematics,’”
in Philosophical and Theological Papers 1965-1980, ed. Robert C.
Croken and Robert M. Doran, 2nd Revised Edition, Collected Works of
Bernard Lonergan, Volume 17 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2004), 201.
17 Method in Theology, 20. 18 Ibid. 19 According to Lonergan,
this structure of human cognitional process serves as a concrete,
normative
base from which to assess the objectivity and authenticity
(i.e., the attentiveness, intelligence, reasonableness, and
responsibility) of a given position, action, etc. This method
overcomes the common dichotomization of subjectivity and
objectivity, understanding these terms “[not in] the sense of
subject-object-in here now, out there now-but in the sense that
objectivity is the fruit of authentic subjectivity” (Bernard J.F.
Lonergan, “An Interview with Fr. Bernard Lonergan, S.J.,” in A
Second Collection, ed. Robert Doran S.J and John Dadosky, Collected
Works of Bernard Lonergan, Volume 13 (University of Toronto Press,
2016), 180). Such “authentic subjectivity [is] the result of
raising and answering all relevant questions for intelligence, for
reflection, and for deliberation” (“Reality, Myth, Symbol,” 389).
The method that reflects upon this dynamic process’ “data of
consciousness” (i.e., the operations of intentional consciousness
objectified) asks, “What am I doing when I am knowing? Why is doing
that knowing? What do I know when I do it?’ (Insight, 779). For a
thorough overview of Lonergan’s cognitional theory, see Lonergan,
“Cognitional Structure,” 205–21.
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16
from the scaffolding laid by the previous questions and
operations. The structure of these
sublative levels is complicated by Lonergan’s further
distinction that “we are conscious in
two ways: in one way, through our sensibility, we undergo rather
passively what we sense
and imagine, our desires and fears, our delights and sorrows,
our joys and sadness; in another
way, through our intellectuality,” when we understand, judge,
and decide.20 The former,
sensitive-psychic dimension of consciousness receives less
attention in Lonergan’s writings
than the intellectual, but Robert Doran’s work thoroughly
expands upon and clarifies the
relationship between these two ways of being conscious.21
Developing the sensitive-psychic dimension’s relation to the
intellectual-spiritual, Doran
describes how the first “way of being conscious” suffuses the
intellectual-spiritual, either
supporting or conflicting with the subject’s orientation toward
the real, the true, the good,
and the beautiful.22 This productive tension between the
unfolding of unconscious neural
20 Bernard J.F. Lonergan, The Triune God: Systematics, ed.
Robert M. Doran and Daniel Monsour,
trans. Michael G. Shields, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan,
Volume 12 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 139. The
passivity of our advertence to the sensitive-psyche does not mean
that the experiential component of this “way of being conscious” is
entirely without direction or agency. The subject does (at least
partially) select what she directs her attention toward, but this
selection is only partially patterned, ordering itself toward
higher intentionality in understanding, judgment, and decision.
21 See for example Robert M. Doran, Subject and Psyche, Second
Edition (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1994). For a
further expansion of these ideas, as well as their expansion into a
broader theological context, see also Robert M. Doran, Theology and
the Dialectics of History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1990). Lonergan endorsed Doran’s expansion of his (i.e.,
Lonergan’s) project, and pointed his own readers to Doran’s work
with psyche, symbol, affect, etc., lauding the “distinct advance”
offered by Doran’s writings (Lonergan, “Reality, Myth, Symbol,”
389-90). After reading Doran’s suggestions regarding the psyche,
conversion, and the symbol, Lonergan’s own work begins to show
signs of Doran’s influence in Lonergan’s own work, including
Lonergan’s shift to the language of “quasi-operator,” which
emphasizes the dynamism with which the entire structure of
subjectivity (beginning with the psyche’s integration of neural
manifolds) is ordered toward self-transcendence. This development
is especially evident in “Mission and the Spirit.” For an excellent
analysis of the relation between Lonergan’s work and Doran’s
implementation and expansion of it, see Gerard Whelan, Redeeming
History: Social Concern in Bernard Lonergan and Robert Doran,
Analecta Gregoriana 322 (Rome: Gregorian & Biblical Press,
2013).
22 Robert M. Doran, The Trinity in History: A Theology of the
Divine Missions, Volume 1: Missions and Processions, 3rd Revised
Edition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 199.
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17
demands manifested in the psyche and the operations of
intentional consciousness is what
Lonergan names the dialectic of the subject.23 Highlighting the
integral connection between
these two components of subjectivity, Doran writes:
The movement of life is experienced in the pulsing flow of
sensitive psychic experience: the sequence of sensations, memories,
images, emotions, conations, associations, bodily movements, and
spontaneous intersubjective responses that provides an operational
definition of what is meant by the psyche. The search for direction
in this movement is engaged in as we raise questions for
intelligibility, truth, and the good. These questions provide an
operational definition of intentionality. And the good, the telos
of the intentional search, is to be understood as a process, at
once individual and social, that is engaged in in freedom, and that
consists in the making of humanity, in its advance in authenticity,
in the fulfillment of its affectivity, and in the direction of
human labor toward cultural, social, and vital values that are
really worth while.24
In relation to the other levels of intentional consciousness,
the sensitive psyche is something
akin to the structure’s foundation, a lower, ‘subterranean’
component, underpinning,
overarching, and accompanying all knowing and doing.25 As
underpinning, this dimension of
consciousness functions as the quasi-operator facilitating and
governing the transition from
neural processes to psychic occurrences. “As accompanying
intentional consciousness it is
the mass and momentum, the color and tone and power of feeling.
As reaching beyond or
overarching intentional consciousness it is the [quasi-operator]
of community,” establishing
the full range of relationality, whether in terms of
intersubjectivity, solidarity, or being-in-
love.26
23 Insight, 242–44. For a thorough overview of this tension, see
Doran, Theology and the Dialectics of
History, 177-210. 24 Robert M. Doran, Theology and the
Dialectics of History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1990), 214. 25 The Trinity in History, 200. 26 Robert M. Doran,
What Is Systematic Theology? (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2005), 27.
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18
This sensitive-psychic component is partially constitutive of
the higher operations it supports,
but it is not synonymous with or reducible to any of these
operations (and none of these
operations are reducible to the sensitive psyche):
“We do require images if requisite insights are to occur. And we
do feel the process that leads to and culminates in insight: our
feeling changes as we move from a disorganized set of experiences
to the organization that arises from insight into those
experiences; we feel differently when insight emerges. But the
insight itself is a function, not of those feelings, but of the
intelligent questions on which it depends. The sensitive stream
permeates the life of the spirit yet remains distinct, though not
separate, from it.”27
Ideally, the sensitive-psychic dimension of consciousness
strengthens and supports the
intellectual-spiritual dimension. Unfortunately, this paragon is
rarely realized, and disorder
within the sensitive psyche almost inevitably results in a
truncated development of the
intellectual-spiritual operations of consciousness.28 In short,
the sensitive psyche affects the
entire unfolding of a subject’s vertical finality, the capacity
for self-transcendence actualized
in the movement from data to decision.29
27 Theology and the Dialectics of History, 220, emphasis
Doran's. 28 These truncations and deviations will be addressed in
Chapter 3’s analysis of bias and mimetic
rivalry. The divinely originated solution to deviated
self-transcendence will be explored in Chapter 7. For now, it is
simply worth noting the integral link between the sensitive-psychic
dimension of consciousness and the intellectual-spiritual
dimension’s constant quest for meaning. As Doran observes, the key
to restoring this psychological integration “lies in grasping the
relation between the movement of life experienced by the sensitive
psyche and the search for direction in that movement carried on by
the inquiring spirit of incarnate human subjects engaged in the
dialectical processes that constitute history and its progress or
decline” (Theology and the Dialectics of History, 214).
29 This emphasis on the integral impact of the sensitive-psyche
on the intellectual-spiritual dimension of consciousness is one of
the major differences between Doran and Freud/Jung. As wholly
integrated into the structure of subjectivity, the psyche is not
unconscious or subconscious. Doran understands those psychologies
that present the psyche as wholly or partially inaccessible on the
basis of its relegation to an unconscious or subconscious status as
indebted to a Kantian counterposition, one that truncates the
mysterious and inaccessible “real” to a noumenal realm. For Doran’s
own account of these problematics, see Chapters 9 and 10 of
Theology and the Dialectics of History.
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19
3 Intersubjectivity
One facet of the underlying, sensitive-psychic dimension of
consciousness is
intersubjectivity. According to Lonergan, human beings are
fundamentally, relationally
linked to one another: “Prior to the ‘we’ that results from the
mutual love of an ‘I’ and a
‘thou,’ there is the earlier ‘we’ that “precedes the distinction
of subjects and survives its
oblivion.”30 This prior ‘we’ is vital and functional.”31
Lonergan addresses this
intersubjectivity “both at the descriptive level, when he gives
examples of intersubjective
encounters, and at the theoretical level, when he discusses the
role that such encounters,
either genuine or biased, play in the shaping of human life,
either in a fully developed or in a
faulty way.”32 While each human being has her or his own
personal interests and concerns,
the self “is no Leibnizian monad,” but a communal, social being,
joined to others by the
primordial ties “of mother and child, man and wife, father and
son.”33 It is within the
intersubjective matrix of these foundational connections that
human beings grow and learn,
developing as a part of the family, “clan or tribe or nation.”34
Interestingly, the bonds of
intersubjectivity even extend beyond one’s immediate kin or
compatriots, reaching to the
entire human family. As underpinning the intentionally
relational, intersubjectivity provides
the sensitive-psychic precondition for the emergence and
flourishing of all relationships. As
30 Method in Theology, 56. 31 Ibid., 57. As integrated into the
lifeblood of human community, providing the precondition for
all
interactions and institutions, intersubjectivity serves as a
vital good, one that is necessary for the health, strength, and
vigor of human beings. As integrated into the successive
development of both particular human relationships and the wider
matrix of relationality itself, intersubjectivity functionally
links subjects together in the primordial “we” that underpins,
overarches, and accompanies the entire unfolding of inherently
intersubjective humanity, operatively steering societal and
cultural growth.
32 Taddei-Ferretti, “Intersubjectivity in the Thought of Bernard
Lonergan,” 191. 33 Insight, 237. 34 Ibid.
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20
accompanying the intentionally relational, the intersubjective
textures the affective bonds and
pre-reflective fellow-feeling informing our interactions with
others.35 As overarching the
intentionally relational, intersubjectivity anticipates its
culmination in the community of
being-in-love, ordering the entire structure of intentional
relationality toward its interpersonal
telos.
This natural, pre-reflective connection to all one’s fellow
human beings is exemplified “in
spontaneous mutual aid,” in situations where one’s “perception,
feeling, and bodily
movement are involved, but the help given another is not
deliberate but spontaneous.”36
These acts are manifestations of our intersubjectivity; they are
moments at which we act in
accordance with an irreducible, relational responsibility, “as
if ‘we’ were members of one
another prior to our distinctions of each from the others.”37
This interconnectedness informs
the entire unfolding of the intellectual-spiritual operations
and actions it precedes. In such
instances, one’s action is not reflected upon or deliberated in
advance. It is only adverted to
during or after its occurrence, and the assistance provided for
another occurs as
35 Drawing the term “fellow-feeling” from the writings of Max
Scheler, Lonergan states: “Both
community of feeling and fellow-feeling are intentional
responses that presuppose the apprehension of objects that arouse
feeling. In community of feeling two or more persons respond in
parallel fashion to the same object. In fellow-feeling a first
person responds to an object, and a second responds to the
manifested feeling of the first. So community of feeling would be
illustrated by the sorrow felt by both parents for their dead
child, but fellow-feeling would be felt by a third party moved by
their sorrow. Again, in community worship, there is community of
feeling inasmuch as worshippers are similarly concerned with God,
but there is fellow-feeling inasmuch as some are moved to devotion
by the prayerful attitude of others” (Method in Theology, 58). In
Scheler’s writings, fellow-feeling and community of feeling stand
as the intentional correlates to emotional identification and
psychic contagion, which Lonergan identifies as the
“intersubjectivity of feeling” complimentary to his own discussion
of spontaneous intersubjective acts and intersubjective meanings
(Method in Theology, 58).
36 Method in Theology, 57. 37 Ibid. The shift from this “prior”
spontaneity to the deliberative recognition and fostering of
this
connection is at least partially constitutive of the shift from
the intersubjective to the interpersonal.
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21
spontaneously as an arm would be raised to block one’s own head
from being hit.38 Lonergan
often cites a particular personal experience as an illustration
of such spontaneous,
intersubjective action:
Leading up to the Borghese Gardens in Rome, where I usually go
for my favorite walk, there is a ramp. Coming down the ramp was a
small child running ahead of its mother. He started to trip and
tumbled; I was a good twenty feet away but spontaneously I moved
forward before taking any thought at all, as if to pick up the
child. There is an intersubjectivity, there is a sense in which we
are all members of one another before we think about it. A shriek
frightens us; it does not merely startle us but also frightens
us.39
This mention of the spontaneous reaction to the shriek provides
a transition to the discussion
of the intersubjective carriers of meaning that take place
naturally and extemporaneously in
human life.40 The smile is Lonergan’s most frequently cited
example of such intersubjective
meaning.41 We do not learn to smile as we learn other skills,
which necessitate our acquiring
38 Ibid. 39 Bernard J.F. Lonergan, “Time and Meaning,” in
Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964,
ed. Robert C. Croken, Frederick E. Crowe, and Robert M. Doran,
2nd Revised Edition, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, Volume 6
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 96. This episode is
alluded to in many of Lonergan’s works, and it is often mentioned
as a correlate to Scheler’s The Nature of Sympathy, which Lonergan
references as a foundational text on intersubjectivity. See Method
in Theology, 57; “Analogy of Meaning,” in Philosophical Papers
1958-1964, ed. Robert C. Croken, Frederick E. Crowe, and Robert M.
Doran. 2nd Revised Edition, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan,
Volume 6 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 187;
“Philosophical Positions with Regard to Knowing,” in Philosophical
and Theological Papers 1958-1964, ed. Robert C. Croken, Frederick
E. Crowe, and Robert M. Doran, 2nd Revised Edition, Collected Works
of Bernard Lonergan, Volume 6 (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1996), 241-42; “The World Mediated by Meaning,” in
Philosophical and Theological Papers 1965-1980, ed. Robert C.
Croken and Robert M. Doran, 2nd Revised Edition, Collected Works of
Bernard Lonergan, Volume 17 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2004), 110-11.
40 Lonergan’s articulation of meaning and its carriers will be
more fully addressed in Chapter 4. For now, I am briefly treating
intersubjective carriers of meaning in order to establish how
profoundly intersubjectivity impacts and shapes the unfolding of
all relationality.
41 Method in Theology, 60. See also “Method in Catholic
Theology,” in Philosophical Papers 1958-1964, ed. Robert C. Croken,
Frederick E. Crowe, and Robert M. Doran. 2nd Revised Edition,
Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, Volume 6 (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1996), 37; “Time and Meaning,” 97; “Analogy of
Meaning,” in Philosophical Papers 1958-1964, ed. Robert C. Croken,
Frederick E. Crowe, and Robert M. Doran. 2nd Revised Edition,
Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, Volume 6 (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1996), 210-11; Topics in Education: The
Cincinnati Lectures of 1959 on the Philosophy of Education, ed.
Robert M. Doran and H. Daniel Monsour, Collected Works of Bernard
Lonergan, Volume 10
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22
habits and developing ordered patterns of actions.42 The smile
happens spontaneously. At the
same time, we do not learn the meaning of the smile in the same
way we learn the meanings
of words, sentences, or phrases. “There is something irreducible
to the smile. It cannot be
explained by causes outside meaning.”43 Where the meanings of
words can be objectively
communicated and expressed in a relatively standardized
fashioned, the intersubjective
meaning of the smile “supposes the interpersonal situation with
its antecedents in previous
encounters. […] Moreover, that meaning is not about some object.
Rather it reveals or even
betrays the subject, and the revelation is immediate.”44
4 Intentional Relationality and Community
Intersubjective meanings are manifested and experienced on a
pre-reflective level, engaging
and arising from the sensitive-psychic dimension of
consciousness. But beyond these
common intersubjective meanings, there are also common meanings
which exist and operate
exclusively within the intellectual-spiritual dimension of
consciousness, insofar as a
particular community is shaped by a common field of experience,
shares a common
understanding and cooperatively avoids misinterpretation, makes
common and/or agreed
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 166-67, 210;
“Analysis of Meaning and Introduction to Religion,” in Early Works
on Theological Method 1, ed. Robert M. Doran and Robert C. Croken,
1st edition, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, Volume 22
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), 535; Bernard J.F.
Lonergan, “The Absence of God in Modern Culture,” in A Second
Collection, ed. Robert Doran S.J and John Dadosky, Collected Works
of Bernard Lonergan, Volume 13 (University of Toronto Press, 2016),
87; “Belief: Today’s Issue,” in A Second Collection, ed. Robert
Doran S.J and John Dadosky, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan,
Volume 13 (University of Toronto Press, 2016), 78; “The World
Mediated by Meaning,” in Philosophical and Theological Papers
1965-1980, ed. Robert C. Croken and Robert M. Doran, 2nd Revised
Edition, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, Volume 17 (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2004), 111.
42 Ibid., 28–30. 43 Ibid., 60. 44 Ibid.
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23
upon judgments regarding what is true, and collectively
constitutes itself by way of a
common will.45
This communal self-constitution is particularly important, as
“Human living is strictly human
when you move to that fourth level [of decision] where people
are acting, relating with one
another.”46 It is within this intentionally communal component
of human living that we are
called to fuller existential flourishing. In communities, our
interpersonal relationality allows
us to “emerge as persons, meet one another in a common concern
for values, seek to abolish
the organization of human living on the basis of competing
egoisms and to replace it by an
organization on the basis of [human beings’] perceptiveness and
intelligence, [their]
reasonableness, and [their] responsible exercise of freedom.”47
Such freedom ought to be
understood, not primarily in terms of the removal of negative
constraints upon the individual,
but as the capacity to grow into the most attentive,
intelligent, reasonable, responsible, and
loving subject one can be. This exercise of freedom is
inextricably linked to all other
members of the community, as no element of human life ever
occurs in a vacuum.48
Attentive, intelligent, reasonable, and responsible human living
is, therefore, “at once
individual and social. Individuals do not just operate to meet
their needs but cooperate to
45 Bernard J.F. Lonergan, “Philosophical Positions with Regard
to Knowing,” in Philosophical and
Theological Papers 1958-1964, ed. Robert C. Croken, Frederick E.
Crowe, and Robert M. Doran, 2nd Revised Edition, Collected Works of
Bernard Lonergan, Volume 6 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1996), 234–35.
46 Ibid., 235. 47 Method in Theology, 10. 48 For a detailed
discussion of human liberty, particularly as it relates to value,
development, and
relationality, see Method in Theology, 50-2).
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24
meet one another’s needs.”49 This natural tendency toward
cooperation results from the
bonds of intersubjectivity, and the sublative succession of
intellectual-spiritual operations
practically and creatively orders collaboration. “As the
community develops its institutions to
facilitate cooperation, so individuals develop skills to fulfill
the roles and perform the tasks
set by the institutional framework. Though the roles are
fulfilled and the tasks are performed
that the needs be met, still all is done not blindly but
knowingly, not necessarily but freely.”50
This is because the development of shared meanings, values,
institutions, and
accomplishments is not ordered simply toward an unlimited
exaltation of human ingenuity.
Instead, this movement is meant to foster reflection upon the
higher goals of human
flourishing in self-transcendence. “The process is not merely
the service of [humanity]; it is
above all the making of [humanity], [humanity’s] advance in
authenticity, the fulfillment of
[humanity’s] affectivity, and the direction of [humanity’s] work
to the particular goods and a
good of order that are worth while.”51
This advancement of human accomplishments into the higher
horizons of truth, goodness,
and beauty is a natural consequence of the shared source of our
intersubjective and
interpersonal attributes, interactions, spontaneities, etc.:
“[Our] separate, unrevealed, hidden
cores have a common circle of reference, the human community,
and for believers an
ultimate point of reference, which is God who is all in all.”52
Our personal projects of self-
transcendence and authenticity are ordered toward ends extending
beyond our own interests.
49 Method in Theology, 52. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid. 52 Bernard J.F.
Lonergan, “Self-Transcendence: Intellectual, Moral, Religious,” in
Philosophical and
Theological Papers 1965-1980, ed. Robert C. Croken and Robert M.
Doran, 2nd Revised Edition, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan,
Volume 17 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 314.
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25
Similarly, although the self-transcendence described by Lonergan
usually refers to the
subject transcending her finitude by raising questions,
attending to data, understanding,
judging, deciding, then objectifying and reflecting upon these
operations, the fullness of self-
transcendence results from the subject wholly giving herself
over to another in the apex of
relationality: love.
5 The Dynamic State of Being-in-Love
Lonergan describes the dynamic state of being-in-love as the
telos of the subject’s movement
toward self-transcendence. This state reorders and reorients all
other conscious operations:
[Our] questions for intelligence, for reflection, and for
deliberation constitute our capacity for self-transcendence. That
capacity becomes an actuality when one falls in love. Then one’s
being becomes being-in-love. Such being-in-love has its
antecedents, its causes, its conditions, its occasions. But once it
has blossomed forth and as long as it lasts, it takes over. It is
the first principle. From it flow one’s desires and fears, one’s
joys and sorrows, one’s discernment of values, one’s decisions and
deeds.53
There are different kinds of being-in-love, and Lonergan
identifies romantic, parental,
communal, regional, and sororal or fraternal loves as common
examples.54 In the most
profound instances of such existentially constitutive
relationality,
The intersubjective situation, the vital interchange of mutual
presence—all the aspects of intersubjectivity studied by
psychologists—and the importance of decision in leading a human
life are given full emphasis. … [You] have two subjects, and the
two subjects are not totally separate. Besides ‘I’ and ‘thou,’
there is ‘we,’ ‘us,’ ‘ourselves,’ ‘ours’—a viewpoint for
living.55
53 Method in Theology, 105. In Lonergan’s writings,
being-in-love is often hyphenated to signify that
the very core of a person’s being is transformed by subsisting
in a state of love. 54 Ibid. 55 Bernard J.F. Lonergan,
“Philosophical Positions with Regard to Knowing,” in Philosophical
and
Theological Papers 1958-1964, ed. Robert C. Croken, Frederick E.
Crowe, and Robert M. Doran, 2nd Revised Edition, Collected Works Of
Bernard Lonergan, Vol. 6 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1996), 235.
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26
Here, the intersubjective situation manifests itself in an
existential sense on the part of both
subjects. To invert Lonergan’s initial description of
intersubjectivity in Method in Theology,
the primordial, pre-intentional ‘we’ of intersubjectivity is
followed through to its fullest
conclusion and given a particular, intentional manifestation
when the ‘we’ that results from
the mutual love of an ‘I’ and a ‘thou’ becomes somehow
constitutive of both parties
involved. The self-presence of both parties is now
disproportionate to that of each individual
party, as each of the two lovers is “bonded into a ‘we’ [by]
participating in the self-presence
of the community [of two] that that love is.”56
This particular type of ‘we’ is brought about by a relationship
of mutual self-mediation, an
existential positing of self —of making oneself who one wants to
be—by which and in which
each party wholly gives herself or himself over to the beloved,
entering a state transcending
the limits of giving and receiving.57 In such a state, two
people open themselves up to each
other in the most profound way possible, with each person loving
and acting for and with the
beloved.58 In such situations, the parties involved are drawn
into the dynamic state of being-
in-love.
56 Jeremy W. Blackwood, And Hope Does Not Disappoint: Love,
Grace, and Subjectivity in the Work
of Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S.J. (Milwaukee: Marquette University
Press, 2017), 169. 57 For Lonergan’s overview of the various types
of mediation, including mutual self-mediation, see
Bernard J.F. Lonergan, “The Mediation of Christ in Prayer,” in
Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964, ed. Robert C.
Croken, Frederick E. Crowe, and Robert M. Doran, 2nd Revised
Edition, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, Volume 6 (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1996), 160–82. This account of mutual
self-mediation presumes the genuineness and authenticity of the
connection. Unfortunately, codependents are also technically
mutually self-mediating, as the inherent value of human connection,
spontaneity, and communion can be distorted by trauma, bias, etc. I
will address inauthenticity and decline in relationality in Chapter
3.
58 Robert M. Doran, What Is Systematic Theology? (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2005), 56.
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27
While human loves have a profound, transformative impact on a
person’s life, it is in the
dynamic state of being-in-love with God that we find our
intentionality and capacity for self-
transcendence fulfilled.59 In the paramount instance of
being-in-love, the object of one’s love
is God, and such a love results in a complete reorientation of
one’s whole way of life.60
Although the exact relationship of the dynamic state of
being-in-love to the four-level
structure of conscious operations has been disputed, it is
difficult to deny that Lonergan’s
later writings highlight the way this state elevates, heals, and
provides the culmination of
consciousness’ entire structure.61 In one particularly
interesting passage, Lonergan describes
how the four levels of experience, understanding, judgment, and
decision “may prove open at
both ends.”62 Lonergan writes:
Beyond the moral operator that promotes us from judgments of
fact to judgments of value with their retinue of decisions and
actions, there is a further realm of interpersonal relations and
total commitment in which human beings tend to find the immanent
goal of their being and, with it, their fullest joy and deepest
peace. […] From a specifically Christian viewpoint, I have
characterized the total commitment of religious living as “being in
love in an unrestricted manner”; I have associated it with St.
Paul’s statement that “God’s love has flooded our inmost heart
through the Holy Spirit he has given us” (Romans 5:5); and I have
noted that the Christian case of the
59 That is, the dynamic state of being-in-love with God is the
closest we come to a pre-beatific-vision
fulfillment of our sensitive-psyche’s desire for the divine. 60
Method in Theology, 105. 61 For a thorough overview of the debates
surrounding whether this dynamic state constitutes a distinct
fifth level of intentional consciousness, see Blackwood, And
Hope Does Not Disappoint, 179-234. Blackwood argues that
being-in-love does constitute a fifth level, and I find his
arguments compelling. He also argues that proportionate
being-in-love (i.e., love among human beings) also elevates and
heals self-presence, operating in and through experiencing,
understanding, judging, and deciding in a manner of sublation
meriting the term “fifth level.” I also agree with Blackwood on
this point. For the purposes of my present thesis, however, I will
limit my discussion of being-in-love to being-in-love with God.
This is both because the unrestrictedness of being-in-love with God
makes it the paramount instance of human loving, and because its
complete elevation and reorientation of subjectivity is necessary
for reversing large-scale relational decline. Human participation
in such reversal will be discussed in this thesis’ final
chapter.
62 Bernard J.F. Lonergan, “Philosophy and the Religious
Phenomenon,” in Philosophical and Theological Papers 1965-1980, ed.
Robert C. Croken and Robert M. Doran, 2nd Revised Edition,
Collected Works Of Bernard Lonergan, Vol. 17 (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 2004), 400.
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28
subject being in love with God is complemented by God’s
manifestation of his love for us in the death and resurrection of
Christ Jesus.63
This expanded horizon is the culmination of the
sensitive-psychic and intellectual-spiritual
dimensions of consciousness, sublating all that precedes it in a
far more profound sense than
understanding sublates experiencing, judging sublates
understanding, or deciding sublates
judging. Within the dynamic state of being-in-love with God, the
subject deliberates, makes
judgments of value, and acts responsibly, but these operations
are brought to fulfillment,
converted, “broadened and deepened and heightened and enriched
but not superseded, as
ready to deliberate and judge and decide and act with the easy
freedom of those that do all
good because they are in love.”64
Having brought intentional consciousness to its zenith, the
dynamic state of being-in-love
then works ‘downward’ from the ‘highest level,’ reordering our
daily lives as we cooperate
with God’s grace, acting in interpersonally cooperative
conformity to the true, the good, and
the beautiful.65 In this way, the dynamic state of being-in-love
has a special relationship to
our relationally responsible decisions, as one’s
self-transcendence is posited in an existential
sense, manifesting itself in graced, loving acts. These acts
pertain to the subject as both
individual and social, “[bearing] fruit in a love of one’s
neighbor that strives mightily to
63 Ibid., 400–01. The gift of God’s love that constitutes this
state is synonymous with sanctifying grace,
with the notional distinction that within the stage of meaning
“when the world of interiority has been made the explicit ground of
the worlds of theory and of common sense […], the gift of God’s
love first is described as an experience and only consequently is
objectified in theoretical categories” (Method in Theology, 107).
This understanding of transposition will be addressed in later
chapters on the stages of meaning, the Four-Point Hypothesis, and
cooperation with the divinely-originated solution to decline.
64 Method in Theology, 107. 65 Ibid., 102-03.
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29
bring about the kingdom of God on this earth.”66 Because God
loves all human beings, this
overflowing of grace flooding our hearts transforms our
horizons, compelling us to spread
God’s love to the entire human family. In the sense that the
dynamic state, “as principle of
acts of love, hope, faith, repentance, and so on, is grace as
cooperative,” we are called to
responsibly respond to it of our own will and volition,
outwardly manifesting our reply to
God’s love by loving our fellow human beings.67
In the dynamic state of being-in-love, therefore, grace
transforms the subject’s entire
understanding of self, especially in her relation to God, to
other subjects, to the pursuit of
cultural development, and to the creation of just social
structures. Lonergan’s articulation of
the scale of values provides an explanatory heuristic by which
these relationships can be
integrally articulated. This scale will serve as one of the
primary tools for my own
explorations of intersubjectivity’s role in progress, decline,
and redemption.
6 The Scale of Values
Doran identifies the scale of values as one of Lonergan’s most
important contributions to a
philosophy and theology of history, as it offers a dynamic,
non-reductive account of the
relation between subject and community, grounding both these
terms in their orientation
toward—and influence from—God’s love:
The scale of values enables us to place the issue of personal
development, of growth toward the integrity of the dialectic of the
subject, in a context that is at once
66 Ibid., 105. 67 Ibid., 107. For a detailed treatment of the
relationship between operative and cooperative grace, see
Bernard Lonergan, Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the
Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M.
Doran, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, Vol. 1 (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2000).
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30
religious, cultural, and social. Then integrity can be
understood as identical with the authenticity that makes one a
principle of benevolence and beneficence, an agent of genuine
collaboration and true love in the world mediated by meaning and
motivated by values.68
This scale is presented in Method in Theology’s exploration of
feelings, which Lonergan
divides into two types: the non-intentional responses to states
and trends (e.g., fatigue,
hunger, irritability), and intentional responses to value or
disvalue.69 Authentic intentional
feelings respond to values ordered according to a “preferential
scale, where the respective
positions in the scale are based in the self-transcendence to
which we are carried by different
types of value.”70 These types of value are—in order of
sublation—vital, social, cultural,
personal, and religious.
Vital values consist of those goods necessary for the fostering
and preservation of health and
strength. Examples of such vital goods include food, water, and
shelter. Social values are
those goods of order whereby schemes for the equitable
distribution of vital goods are
fostered and preserved in recurrence.71 Examples of social goods
include economies,
political orders, law enforcement, and basic infrastructure such
as roads, railroads, sewers,
etc. Cultural values are those meanings, values, and
orientations informing a community’s
68 Theology and the Dialectics of History, 93. Doran’s
prioritization of the scale of values and its
multiple implementations is echoed in the works of several other
Lonergan scholars. For examples of the scale’s applications, see
Kenneth R. Melchin, ‘Democracy, Sublation, and the Scale of
Values,’ in The Importance of Insight: Essays in Honour of Michael
Vertin, ed. John J. Liptay and David Liptay (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press: 2007), 183-96; Joseph Ogbonnaya, Lonergan, Social
Transformation and Sustainable Human Development (Eugene, OR:
Pickwick Publications, 2013); Neil Ormerod, “The Grace-Nature
Distinction and the Construction of