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Lonergan and the Key to Philosophy
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4. Lonergan and the Key to Philosophy Elizabeth A. Murray Insofar as a philosopher is obscure, insofar as he is saying things that you do not get the hang of or that you do not see any importance in, insofar as you do not see where his ideas are leading , the philosopher is providing you with evidence of the existence of your horizon. —Lectures on Existentialism1 Lonergan as an Original Thinker Bernard Lonergan is counted among the major Catholic thinkers of the twentieth century. His contribution to philosophy with his major work, Insight, and to theology with his crowning achievement, Method in Theology, has been widely recognized at international conferences and is evidenced by a growing body of scholarly publications. Some consider Lonergan to be primarily a philosopher; more consider him to be a theologian. There is also growing interest in his economic manuscripts , the fruit of his life-long avocation. Yet, he himself once remarked : ‘‘Fortunately, I don’t think I come under any single label.’’2 He was, nevertheless, willing to refer to himself late in life as a ‘‘methodologist.’’3 But what he means by this designation is not obvious . There is no single discipline of methodology. In fact, most disciplines have their own methodologies, and specialists in various fields often focus on methodological questions. Lonergan is not unique in his Lonergan and the Key to Philosophy / 53 focus on method, but it is his single-minded focus on method in every investigation that breaks the disciplinary mold. The radical and comprehensive nature of Lonergan’s thought points to its epochal originality. The pioneering nature of his contribution can be indicated in its relation to the sciences, to philosophy, and to theology . Frederick Crowe in The Lonergan Enterprise writes of Lonergan as supplying a new organon, a new tool or instrument for inquiry. As Aristotle provided the organon of deductive logic, which was surpassed at the dawn of modernity by Bacon’s Novum organum of inductive scienti fic method, so Lonergan’s method of intentionality analysis provides a new organon for our age.4 This methodological tool enables Lonergan to formulate a new scientific worldview. With his transcendental method, Lonergan formulates the worldview of emergent probability . This is a post-Einsteinian, post-Darwinian scientific worldview, which takes into account quantum physics and statistical method. Further , Lonergan transcends the epistemological roadblocks of post-Kantian immanentism with his account of judgment and objectivity. Lonergan is postmodern in his recognition of the futility of the conflict of theoretical positions, but he neither bemoans nor rejoices in the death of metaphysics. Rather, he invites us to become fully engaged in the next historical stage of metaphysic—the stage of explicit metaphysics. Finally, Lonergan’s originality comes to fruition with his articulation of a fundamental and dialectical method for theology. The originality of Lonergan’s thought can be indicated in numerous ways, but let us here note the general nature of his originality. He understood his work to be a contribution to the program vetera novis augere et perficere, (ancient teachings enhanced and made new) initiated by Leo XIII in his encyclical Aeterni Patris.5 Lonergan spent years, in his words, ‘‘reaching up to the mind of Aquinas.’’6 Aquinas is not the only influence on Lonergan’s thought, however, and he explicitly rejected the label neo-Thomist. Early influences on his thought, before his doctoral work on Aquinas, include Mill, Suárez, Augustine, Plato, and Newman, and later he studied Marx and Hegel.7 Lonergan’s creation is not, then, ex nihilo, but it is original. In sum, Lonergan accomplished for the twentieth century a synthesis of Christian thought and Aristotelian science and hermeneutics that is comparable to the synthesis of Christian thought and Aristotelian science accomplished by Aquinas in the thirteenth century. [54.234.233.157] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 07:06 GMT) 54 / Elizabeth A. Murray The Key to Philosophy In the present work, I shall consider Lonergan the methodologist, primarily in his role as a philosopher, and I shall focus on what he considers to be ‘‘the key to philosophy.’’8 Wittgenstein once wrote that: ‘‘Philosophy is like trying to open a safe with a combination lock: each little adjustment of the dials seems to achieve nothing, only when everything is in place does the door open.’’9 To complicate the metaphor, for Lonergan there is a key to the employment of this combination lock. How do we find this key...