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Chapter 1 Basic Horizon and Historiography If one were to practice horticulture in a certain garden, one would want to know, for purpose of orientation and in order to bring the proper tools, the kind of garden and the kind of harvest it may be anticipated to yield. And so we may wish to come to a preliminary understanding about the garden of Lonergan’s philosophy of history. Should we expect, for example, to stand, tangled and dazed, amid the luxurious flora of a speculative philosophy of history in the mode of a Hegel? Or should we expect to have to dig beneath the distracting foliage of metaphysical theories and scientific accounts for an ontological philosophy of history, which explores the existential roots of human being in terms of human historicity? Or should we rather expect to make our way methodically along analytically precise rows of modest plants arranged according to the categories of an epistemological and methodological philosophy of history concerned with the status of the human sciences? As the title of this work indicates, we shall be focused on Lonergan’s epistemological and speculative philosophies of history, both of which are germane for the writing of history. We shall need to address a range of strategic questions pertinent to those fields in the philosophy of history . But as we contemplate those questions, we also realize that, if we are to pursue Lonergan’s approach, they are linked to questions in his ontological philosophy of history. Lonergan’s epistemological and speculative philosophies of history are, therefore, embedded in his ontological philosophy of history. Let us survey some strategic questions. If we ponder what is historical method, what are the relations among historical description, historical explanation, and historical narrative, and what is historical objectivity with respect to texts, facts, and values, we raise a series of further, more basic philosophical questions. What is the  Basic Horizon and Historiography  method of human knowing? What is the difference between description and explanation? What, if anything, constitutes lived history as a drama so as to lend special validity to historical narrative? What is the nature of objectivity? What is sound hermeneutics? What is moral objectivity (if there is such a thing)? What is the possibility of a critical history that would discern both progress and decline? If we further seek what is distinct, respectively, about psychohistory, cultural history, intellectual history, history of ideas, and the history of philosophy—as a propaedeutic for fostering collaboration—we encounter another set of fundamental questions. What is the psyche and what is its relation to the intellect? What is the cultural infrastructure? What is the mode of expression and of understanding of art and literature? What is an intellectual horizon? What is the efficacy of the notion of a Zeitgeist (i.e., is it a mere construct, or is it a metaphysical reality that absorbs the individual thinkers within it)? What is the relation of the creative thinker and the thinkers’ linguistic framework and intellectual tradition? What is the difference between creative thinkers and representative thinkers? What are the dynamic factors that transform intellectual horizons? What is a concept? What is an idea, and can ideas be the subject matter of history? What is the possibility of a genuine history of philosophy without succumbing to relativism or historicism? If we investigate what are the discernible long-term trends in the history of thought and consider whether such trends constitute an axial period of history, we engage, again, foundational philosophical questions. What is consciousness? What is differentiation? What is the nature and validity (if any) of myth? What are realms of meaning and patterns of experience? Does philosophy replace myth? Does modern science replace philosophy? Is a universal viewpoint compatible with historical diversity? In brief, the epistemological and speculative philosophies of history are conditioned by epistemology and by reflections on the history that is written about. Indeed, for Lonergan, epistemology itself is conditioned by cognitional fact, and cognitional fact is a recurrent pattern of historical existence. We shall, accordingly, refer to Lonergan’s broader analysis of history and the related epistemology throughout the text as the occasion warrants. This broader analysis is Lonergan’s horizon analysis. The burden of this chapter is to make explicit in sufficient detail the relevant features of Lonergan’s ontological philosophy of history for our enterprise. As we examine in this chapter Lonergan’s horizon analysis as the framework for his epistemological and speculative philosophies of history, we must keep in mind that...

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