Hermeneutics and Method: The ‘Universal Viewpoint’ in Bernard Lonergan by Ivo Coelho (review)

humanities 521 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 regime, like the author of The Master and Margarita, did so with some detriment to the complexity and depth of their picture of Soviet life, complete with the concerns of the people, however brilliant and enjoyable their caricatures of things Soviet might be. The myth of the Revolution wielded such great prestige and was so widely and enthusiastically believed well into the 1950s that it could not simply be dismissed by serious writers as some unpleasant >reality= imposed on them under duress. The forms of compromise, their degrees of depth and honesty, the artistic devices brought into play to flesh them out B from Sholokhov to Kaverin, from Ilf and Petrov to Ehrenburg, from Kataev to Paustovskii, and so on B were as many, as variegated, and often as sophisticated as the Soviet writers themselves; and here again we find regrettable the comparatively insulated spirit of Thomson=s analysis of Leonov and his failure to address B be it even in a brief and casual manner B the wider issue of the typology of Soviet compromises. The author is exceptionally competent and well informed; his understanding of his subject and its Soviet context is marked with the highest degree of professionalism. We have noticed only three minor cases of inexact statement: the wood engraver=s Falileev=s name was not Dmitrii, but Vadim Dmitrievich; the name >Butylkin= is derived from bottle, not button; and the hero of >How the Still Was Tempered= is still alive as the novel ends. (YURI SHCHEGLOV) Ivo Coelho. Hermeneutics and Method: The >Universal Viewpoint= in Bernard Lonergan University of Toronto Press. xx, 346. $65.00 Ivo Coelho presents the reader with more than a specialized text, interpreting the development of an architectonic notion in the thought of the internationally acknowledged Canadian Jesuit philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan (1904B84). Coelho complements his masterful competence in Lonergan studies with a richly nuanced appreciation of the relevance of Lonergan=s three insights into wisdom, understanding and love for transcultural exploration, and cross-cultural exchange. Coelho, a Roman Catholic Indian theologian, guides readers through the postmodern valences of Western culture to rediscover the authenticity that matures in genuine dialogue. Coelho takes the reader outside of the practised paths of critical theory to find >not a new closure but a new openness= in Lonergan=s methodologically grounded thought. Lonergan specialists and patient readers will note Coelho=s careful assembly and synthetic interpretation of the evidence of the development of the notion of the universal viewpoint spanning three distinct periods in Lonergan=s thought, from the anticipation and preparation of Insight: A 522 letters in canada 2001 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 Study of Human Understanding (1957) to the completion of Method in Theology (1972). Particularly noteworthy is his diligent scrutiny of the period between the publication of these two major monographs. Coelho=s analysis is enriched through the mustering and interpolation of many clues found in unpublished archival materials. Coelho takes the reader through the emergence of Lonergan=s progressively refined accounts of the basis and horizon of intentional human activity. He begins this journey with an account and assessment of the early achievement found in Insight. Here Lonergan advances an analysis of human cognition that acts as a basis upon which to construct a metaphysics of limited being, a framework for ethics, a scientific approach to the range of possible interpretations of human meaning and the extrapolation of a theological viewpoint which anticipates ultimate intelligibility and value. Within this early articulation, these constructed achievements inform a universal viewpoint that acts as a >cognitional tool,= enabling the discovery of an unknown through the interaction of a structured anticipation and the encountered data. Coelho subsequently traces how Lonergan develops his analysis of the cognitional base of these constructions until he is able to relocate them more consistently as the horizon intended by the existential operations of the human subject. Coelho demonstrates that Lonergan=s progressively refined methodological account of the cognitional operations promotes a revised appreciation of the >intension= of intentional human activity. He observes very acutely that even though the anticipated...