In Deference to the Other: Lonergan and Contemporary Continental Thought

3. Self-Appropriation: Lonergan’s Pearl of Great Price

Chapter 3 Self-Appropriation Lonergan’s Pearl of Great Price JAMES L. MARSH T here are many philosophers who have proposed one of their ideas as a key to understanding the world. Examples that come to mind are Plato’s theory of forms, Aristotle’s account of the good, Kant’s transcendental deduction, and Hegel’s Begriff. But for my money, Lonergan ’s self-appropriation is the most valuable of all keys. One reason for Lonergan’s superiority is that he draws on and incorporates into a new, higher synthesis aspects of all these thinkers. But his own contribution is significant and important too. Yet one can easily miss the centrality of self-appropriation in Lonergan ’s work, especially in his work Insight, reading it as a treatise in epistemology or philosophy of science or metaphysics rather than seeing the book’s main purpose as self-appropriation, the cognitive and existential taking possession of myself as a knower, chooser, actor, and lover in relation to being. Such enterprises as philosophy of science or metaphysics only have relevance in Insight as effects and implications of self-appropriation. I propose in this essay, therefore, to discuss self-appropriation, first by articulating and reflecting on some basic Lonerganian texts on the issue, then in the context of contemporary philosophy, showing how such self-knowledge can illumine and resolve perplexities arising from inadequate self-knowledge, then reflecting on my own work as an instance of self-appropriation, and concluding with some reflections on the subject. Who and what is the subject, and how is the subject related to selfappropriation ? 53 One reason for reflecting on my work in this context is that in thinking about the issue, I have been led to discover or rediscover an autobiographical or individual element in the notion of self-appropriation. Self-appropriation enables me as a knower and chooser and actor to discover and create myself as a unique and transcendentally universal self. Consequently, my own work is an expression of my own unique selfappropriation , and it might be of interest to reflect on my work in that light. Different people can do different things and become different people as a result of self-appropriation, and the effect on a community of self-appropriated selves can be complementary, mutually enriching, and enabling fruitful mutual and individual self-criticism. Different self-appropriated knowers can mutually illumine and enrich and criticize one another in a negative and positively constructive manner. Lonergan on Self-Appropriation Clues to the centrality of self-appropriation in Lonergan are given in the introduction to Insight. Here Lonergan says that this book “is not about mathematics, nor a book on science, nor a book on common sense, nor a book on metaphysics; indeed, in a sense, it is not even a book on knowledge . . . .”1 On a first level, the book contains sentences about mathematicians or science or common sense. On a second level, their meaning and significance are to be grasped “only by going beyond the scraps of mathematics or science or common sense or metaphysics to the dynamic, cognitional structure that is exemplified in knowing them.”2 On a third level, “the dynamic cognitional structure to be reached is not the transcendental ego of Fichtean speculation, nor the abstract patterns of relationships in Tom or Dick or Harry, but the personally appropriated structure of one’s own experiencing , one’s own intelligent inquiry and insights, ones’ own critical reflection and judging and deciding.”3 Already we see Lonergan emphasizing the personal and unique in relation to the transcendental and universal. Lonergan goes on. The crucial issue is an experimental one, and the experiments will be performed not publicly but privately: “It will consist in one’s own rational self-consciousness clearly and distinctly taking possession of itself as rational self-consciousness. Up to that decisive achievement , all leads. From it, all follows.”4 Here we see further evidence for the private, individual aspect of self-appropriation, linked to universal aspects. No one else, no matter what his knowledge, eloquence, logical rigor, persuasiveness , can do it for me. Nonetheless, the act has public antecedents 54 In Deference to the Other and consequences. The private and individual are linked to the public and universal. And just in case we have not gotten the point, Lonergan drives it home: “In the third place, then, more than all else, the aim of the book is to...