History, Objectivity, and Moral Conversion

HISTORY, OBJECTIVITY, AND MORAL CONVERSION W HAT IS SPECIFICALLY at issue in this study can be expressed in several historical contexts. First of all, it can be indicated by asking whether Lonergan's " pure desire to know " as fact can become the " pure desire to know" as achievement apart from the process of Blondel's la volonte voulante becoming la volonte voulue. That is to say, can one talk of "the actual orientation of consciousness coinciding with the exigences of the pure, detached, disinterested, unrestricted desire to know " 1 without explicitating the moral conversion which seems to be a necessary condition (in the concrete order) for the realization of such a fact? 2 Again, does not the nature of judgment-in Lonergan's terms-as a " virtually unconditioned " require explicitation of all conditions that need to be fulfilled-i. e., not only formaltranscendental conditions, but also existential-contextual? 3 Again, what is at issue is implied in Heidegger's notion of Befindlichkeit 4 (already-having-found-itself-there-ness 5 ) • For 1 Bernard Lonergan, " Openness and Religious Experience, " in Colledion: Papers by Bernard Lonergan, ed. by Frederick E. Crowe, S. J. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967), p. 199. 2 The question I am raising here is similar to that raised by David Tracy in "Lonergan's Foundational Theology: An Interpretation and a Critique," in Foundations of Theology, ed. by P. McShane (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1971), pp. 217-19 and passim. There are two points of difference in my question: (I) I am concerned with moral conversion in the functioning of intelligence generally, and not simply as a requisite prior to God-talk; (2) I am focusing primarily on moral conversion here-Tracy's central concern is with both religious conversion and moral conversion. 3 Cf. Tracy, loc. cit. • Cf. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), pp. 172-79. Cf. also J. B. Metz, "Befindlichkeit," Lexikon fur Theologie und Kirche, Vol. II, pp. 102-104; and William J. Richardson, S. J., Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1967), pp. 64-65. 569 570 DAVID L. SCHINDLER acording to this notion one does not so much '" find onself " as a neutral subject prior to reflection, as one " is found " in a subjectivity already informed by its own freedom.6 Hence the issue arises as to the sense in which one's ongoing decisions are immanent in the cognitional process itself-in the very act of knowing. Finally, in a Thomist context, the issue is expressed by asking in what sense the act of willing is a necessary condition for the proper functioning of the intellect in the speculative order. Hence by implication the question is whether, or in what sense, the Thomistic distinction between the speculative and practical order is adequate, or again, whether an authentic intellectualism does not demand a kind of thoroughgoing voluntarism.7 My intention in this essay is to address, principally in the latter (i.e., Thomist) context, the systematic issue which I believe to be implied in all three contexts: 8 specifically, whether, or to what extent, judgments of truth are simultaneously , and with equal necessity, the consequence of both intel5 Macquarrie, in his translation of Sein und Zeit cited above, translates " Benfindlichkeit " as " state of mind. " Richardson, loc. cit., to avoid all connotation of the ontic dimension, translates it as " ontological disposition. " 6 Cf. Karl Rahner, Hearers of the Word, trans. by Michael Richards (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), p. 106, n. 8. 7 The contexts in which essentially the same issue emerges could, of course, be multiplied: cf., for example, Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, wherein he holds that perceiving truth is a function of living truly: only the phronimos perceives moral truth. (Aristotle is, of course, referring exclusively to moral truth; the key, in terms of the purpose of this article, is to determine whether, or in what sense, the same principle is operative in the "speculative" order.) For further discussion of Aristotle on this point, cf. Stanley Parry, "Reason and the Restoration of Tradition," in What Is Conservatism, ed. by Frank S. Meyer (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston...