Appendixes: The Gulf, Education as Implementation

APPENDIXES for Bridging the Gulf--Education as Implementation

Section 1, Appendix 1: The Historical Context

Let us give only a brief treatment of this context by considering “the gap” (one of several) that was exposed during the scientific revolution.

Twentieth century philosophy and theology inherited this upside-down, or right-side up, state of affairs, depending on your view; and Lonergan gave treatment to it in his Insight and other works (1958, pp. 732-33; & 2000, pp. 754-55). So that no matter what problems of communication are present in Lonergan’s work, that post-enlightenment context—the “gap” where the problem of knowledge lives--already puts philosophy and theology, and Lonergan, trying to come in from the cold of marginalization to meet with the (so often considered) more legitimate and critical fields of study.

The problem of knowledge emerged from within the differentiating, reversing, and conflicting movements of the scientific revolution, or from a change of direction and emphasis in vector-flow—from tradition and its Doctrine-as-knowledge from-above, to knowledge as developed from below and supported by a body of evidence, regardless of tradition or religious proclamations. The revolution exposed a gap in our thinking and laid bare the question of the knowledge-truth-reality complex and its relationship to doctrine (from above), and to doctrinal, religious, and political authority. The whole project of knowledge needed to be re-thought from bottom to top, as it were, and in terms of the ongoing revolution. Knowledge of anything that wasn't rooted in the natural, physical, or statistical sciences was now irretrievably in a vacuum in-between the two vectoral forces.

Clearly knowledge was what the scientist could discover and prove in the laboratory to every one's satisfaction. And even in commonsense practical matters today, we find an “unpleasant ambiguity in an assertion of principle” that is “not coupled with the evidence of fact” (1958, p. 733; 2000, p. 755).

In this way, however, it “fell” to the quasi-philosopher of the time, whose field (in part) is knowledge, to now explain what the knowing-knowledge-truth complex really is, as a now-necessary prerequisite for claiming that doctrine is also knowledge. Over time, the lack of forthcoming, unified, and qualified explanations, and the interminable technical arguments, opened the door to the estrangement of philosophy and its various fields, including ethics. (At this writing, ethics is enjoying an albeit pragmatic comeback.) And it opened the door for psychology, logic, and the statistical sciences to at least try to fill the void that is still the real home of philosophical discourse--about meaning and the good, and about objectivity and the knowledge-truth-real complex. (See King, 2009, Blog: Excerpt from Preface).

Appendix 2: Camp Mentality

We might compare the camp mentality in philosophy and (to a lesser degree) in the human sciences and education with, for instance, Einstein’s theories. Though Einstein’s name is attached to his theories, physicists do not (seemingly arbitrarily) choose another theoretical or conceptually-different camp that treats physics, special relativity, and time, for instance, according to their different and un-inspected foundational viewpoints. So that, in physics, the discoverer’s name commonly follows the theory; whereas in the human sciences, etc., the theories follow the names. Hence, various “camps” of thought have emerged. And many papers and books that take Lonergan’s work as their centerpiece often have “Lonergan” in their titles.

Appendix 3: Esoterica

Those who have read both of Lonergan’s major works, Insight, A Study of Human Understanding (1958 &; 2000) and Method in Theology (1972), will recognize my reference here to the difference in writing style and delivery between the two works. Whereas Insight is thick, intricate, and cavernous, Method In Theology feels like breathing fresh air, especially after having struggled through Insight with its “in the seventeenth place” esoterica (1958, p. 556; & 2000, p. 579)

On the good side, many Lonergan-savvy teachers presently teach in undergraduate secular institutions adapting the work and even using Method in Theology, etc., in variously-named philosophy, theology, and religion courses. Here, teachers may easily convey that any field can benefit from the insights found there, thereby gaining a larger audience for the work. Even so, the question remains whether Method in Theology is accessible for college undergraduates; or for non-theology students involved in special or general studies; or for those new to any sort of philosophical study; or for the easy consideration of administrators in secular colleges and universities. My experience of using this text for such students: It is not.

Insight is not always so difficult to read; however, Lonergan wrote Insight with the scientist in mind; for a “sufficiently cultured consciousness;” and for those already familiar with reading philosophical history and its texts. For the teacher looking for cognitional theory, or for the cultured renaissance reader who could benefit greatly from Lonergan’s contributions, alas, Insight is entirely too long and technical (1958, p. xxviii; & 2000, p. 11). Thus, in reading Insight, the reader is asked to grasp a long series of places, “in the twelfth place,” and B-C-D and E before getting to Lonergan’s A. As such, Insight has a more foundational “punch” for the scientist, but is difficult for those who are not scientists; whereas, Method in Theology is a happier read for the teacher, or the literary scholar, or the renaissance reader. Even though Method In Theology offers a more literary style and makes much quicker correlations between the A-B-C’s developed there, it is still not undergraduate material.

Appendix 4: No Distinction between Religious/Theological and Philosophical Content

Many who would benefit from Lonergan’s work mistakenly regard Lonergan as “only” a Catholic or Christian theologian. With such wrong assumptions of religious or theological intent in mind, the work is seen as not really critical or applicable to the concerns of the more secular-minded reader, or to the critical-theoretical fields, and certainly cannot provide the philosophical underpinnings of fields of study (e.g., through the functional specialties) (1972).

Of course we know that Lonergan has a vision of the whole which includes theology (see Insight’s epilogue) as not just another field of study, but as the wherewithal of a comprehensive view from what he means by the higher viewpoint. And of course, Lonergan contributes greatly to religious and theological persons and issues.

However, (from my reading of him) he was also quite aware of the ever-present need to open channels of communication to others who would gain first from a philosophical appropriation of transcendental method and the underlying shifts of personal foundational meaning he referred to in terms of various correctives and conversions. In this regard, many writers and websites have not clearly distinguished between religious and philosophical issues.

Indeed, such a wrong-headed critique (that Lonergan’s work is uncritical) reveals a tension that rightly exists between secular and religious, if not theological, arenas of thought; and those who understand Lonergan’s meaning will recognize a moment of high irony in such a dismissal.

Further, Lonergan was a Jesuit and spent his major intellectual work from within the venue of theological and religious studies. His long-term study of St. Thomas Aquinas is well-known throughout the circles of Lonergan scholars. Moreover, because Lonergan was a major thinker who made major contributions, many from his intellectual milieu have developed their own work around what was basic to his.

The upshot of the above, however, is that authors’ writings that emerge from having understood Lonergan’s work are often published in relatively arcane publications in the fields of academic philosophy, theology, and religion, often developed in off-the-beaten-track conferences such as this one where, in most cases, we are preaching to the choir.

Also, many writers use the still-unknown “Lonergan” in their book titles; or maintain their religious references there and in their subject matter; or they maintain an esoteric language and presentation equal to or surpassing Lonergan’s own (as in dissertations); or they continue to combine (and confuse) foundational with topical treatment. In any of these cases, and well-written or not, the movement of Lonergan’s contribution through these writers, towards a larger audience of educators and persons of good commonsense, is slow.

Appendix 5: Impediments on the Side of the Audience

First, under the half-reflective view of such polymorphism, our present project cannot be done critically, on principle. From this lens, only the natural and physical sciences and their related fields, and maybe statistics in some multi-blind studies, can provide authentic data or the methods to approach such data; and consequently the data of these fields are the only data we can be truly critical, unbiased, and scientific about.

Second, under other aspects of such polymorphism, some harbor various versions of the view that anything goes. Here, everything is interpreted and keeps changing, and so there is nothing really known, true, or real, except maybe in a fuzzy sort of way. Here, all theorists, scholars, and academicians are “liberal” and are really about ivory towers, overblown-ego, and arbitrariness; and none has a lock on anything save their own hubris, whatsoever, especially in the fields of education and human studies. Such folks have nary a ground, no umbrella, no net, no guide and no practical connection whatsoever with concrete truth or reality, no workable or non-arbitrary vision for the future; and further, they all should stop looking for one. Anything they say, in fact, is just subjective, personal, and sentimental bias; and only a too-soft heart will listen (bleed), and then only out of a similarly ungrounded sense of social indulgence. And paying attention to social amenities or tearful anecdotes can hardly be called “scientific.”

Third, and mixed within the above views, are those who think all real and objective knowledge can never have a personal component, or have an intimate dimension and, at the same time, remain objective knowledge. There indeed is a reality, but subjectivity has little or nothing to do with it. Though half-reflective views emerge in different arguments for different reasons, in unreflective living, commonsense ethics rules the day (born of our given fundamental thrust), and it’s a good thing considering the alternatives.

Fourth, the view from either assumption is that, though some “big names” are attractive, can write well, and have careers, a philosopher, of all people, will never discover or be able to explain to us in reasonable terms how our studies, our natural science, our ethics, our politics, and our education all fit together and point towards a future. Obvious self-contradictions aside, from either view, if there is a “rock” to build on, no one has found it, given theory to it, or expects anyone to listen if they do; for on principle, it cannot be done (Lonergan, 1972, pp. 19-20). And by the way, there is no rock, but there is only hard science and clouds, and even then we are not really certain.

Fifth, dogmatism closes over all half-reflective counter-positions. From closure, we are unwillingness to either take on a long self-development project or to change old and deeply ingrained habits of mind. In fact, we are closed to the project of philosophical development and self-correction that Lonergan offers.

It goes without saying that, under the influence of such polymorphic foundations, philosophy as a reflection on those foundations, and on knowledge, etc., is ruled out of court at the start. Ethics, of course, follows suit—it just works for me, or it is a wispy idealized adjunct to the “hard sciences,” carried about in the briefcases of good, worried, but painfully sentimental professors who feel, if they do not understand, the political writing on the wall. On one view, neither philosophy nor ethics is hard science. On another view, neither really matters anyway, so what is the point?

As un-scrutinized, our polymorphic assumptions emerge from the half-light of fuzzy thought set up in static cul-de-sacs in the mind; and, more importantly, only one of these assumptions matches the deeper, equally exigent assumptions of scientists or persons of good common sense--assumptions that come into play when they actually move forward in any field of inquiry, whether in concrete human living that is inexorably good, or in building speculative and-or verified theory in any science. As un-scrutinized, what is basic to us continues to work.

As far as going forward while performing a philosophical contradiction is concerned, persons who perform such a feat, and who claim to be philosophers, "feat themselves" right out of the argument and the community of persons who are taking seriously their efforts to understand. We need pay as much attention to their self-contradictions as we do to mad-persons.

And so we have conflicting sets of assumptions and several lenses to look through. We look through one lens (basic) when we go forward in any field of discourse where knowledge is developed and where things get done. And we look through another lens when we think about what we are doing with our philosophical inheritance in place (self-contradictions, as above). That is, when science and commonsense work well, they do so from employing a right set of assumptions and lenses about the good-knowledge-true-real complex we all live in. It is when we start thinking about our philosophical assumptions, or when we are challenged, that we forget what we already have and work with, and what already works for and in us—rightly in most cases throughout history, and begin to think with our incomplete and-or distorted philosophical inheritance.

Our point of course is that getting philosophical attention is not an easy task.


Appendix 6: Conclusion to Part 1

At this writing I think it fair to assume that Lonergan’s contribution has not reached the K-12 setting in any systematic way; and I know of no integration of Lonergan’s work in formal K-12 curriculum theory, though I hope I am wrong in this. That being said, and besides fostering the art of self-appropriation-affirmation, the work of a researcher-scholar familiar with transcendental method and surrounding literature is, in part, that of developing a dialectical analysis of present theory in different aspects of curriculum, much of which is good if not fully functional (For example: Ornstein & Hunkins, 2004). For, many in education have broken through their positivist inheritance in fact if not as reflectively philosophical.

It remains that such analysis and critique is slow-to-non-existent; and, at the present rate and for years to come, many students will go through the academy without being introduced to the kind of self-knowledge that is now available to us through a full understanding and personal verification of transcendental method with or without a full understanding of its spiritual or religious import.

Regardless of his present limited (albeit growing) audience, Lonergan’s contribution is relevant to the larger philosophical project in the academic fields, to cultural studies, and to the foundations of the education of persons. Lonergan clearly knew that his work has vast implications for the foundations of the academy; for the philosophy of education and its various subsets; for cultural studies; for philosophy; and for any variously named departments of study--not to mention for statisticians and scientists involved in studies of the natural-physical world, cognition, and the brain. Also, his work self-consciously reaches beneath and far beyond the sciences and theology, though not beyond the scientist, the theologian and the renaissance reader, as critical thinkers in an increasingly complex world.

Section 2

Appendix 7: Comprehensive Self-Understanding as Goal

Again, there exists a need to bring the work to education and to add to the increasing body of access-literature written for those who will benefit greatly from being exposed to Lonergan’s many contributions to philosophy, not to mention theology. The theoretical work is seminal, generic, complex, comprehensive, innovative and unique. Precisely because of the sweep of Lonergan’s contributions, they can benefit from the establishment of a clear pedagogical method--a set of stepping-stones--not towards “Lonergan’s theory,” but towards a specified critical-objective, but also quite personal self-understanding for each of us, including both the person of good commonsense and the scientist who fully embraces scientific method and all of its critical canons.

Transcendental method is about, and continually points to, such self-understanding:

“For self-appropriation of itself is a grasp of transcendental method . . . .” (1972, p. 83).

Further, many good writings exist in the vein of mediating Lonergan’s work, e.g., The Lonergan Reader (Morelli, 1997). And many themes have been abstracted from Lonergan’s work and treated separately while maintaining the integrity of the treatise and-or the specific coursework—where the whole of self-appropriation is not the aim. However, the driving question for me still remained: How to isolate and bring the centerpiece of the work--self-appropriation-affirmation, and the pearl of self-reflection--to teachers in a curricular format for education (for my field interest) and an offering to other fields, again, without vulgarizing or telescoping the work, or without writing another book like Insight?

Nine years ago, I started with the set of insights--that still holds nine years later—by isolating and developing an abstracted experiment towards consciously and critically coming to know one’s own mind. The relatively brief experiment contains a critically established proof, as it were, of the inner structure and functioning of one’s own mind. However, at that time, and in my naiveté, I expected too much of it—I expected, if not a “single leap,” as it were (p. xxiii & p. 17), at least a better result. Though I wouldn’t call it a vulgarization, the experiment didn’t carry with it the foundational insights that I had naively expected to occur.

Appendix 8: Teachers Today, and the Purpose of the Moving Viewpoint

Most teachers in my experience have a deep-set but unsaid resonance with the longer journey, and a felt conflict with an over-emphasis on teaching to what I am calling the shorter journey. Many try to serve their deeper sense of what is right and actually teach to the longer journey of understanding, as our students are also given to strive for it. However, much of the policy and practice surrounding the institution of education is on the shorter, telescoped, and should I say vulgarized, track with much pressure to continue on that track.

At least for education, that need is to provide a clear pedagogical method that can be used directly in, or transposed into, other knowledge fields. Further, such pedagogy will show how the theory is related to our “sense experience.” The task, then, was to write a text that distinguishes, but also to maintain the relationship between, what I am calling the longer and shorter philosophical journeys.

For the reader-experimenter, the task is to at least become aware of the essence of and potential for the longer philosophical journey (suffering through one’s own long and painstaking philosophical development and self-correction) that, generally, are the central themes of Lonergan’s body of work. Thus, the structure of the text must distinguish but also relate (1) a relatively brief experiment and its singular A-Z intent from (2) other more comprehensive and life-qualifying meanings associated with foundational study. Those deeper meanings are about developing our powers of critical self-awareness and understanding and, through that development, increasing our self-knowledge and abilities to self-correct. And those meanings of mind and spirit are potential to occur only in that longer journey, however it is made—Lonergan is speaking of that longer journey in his declaration that he couldn’t deliver Insight in two weeks.

Further, as Lonergan states he uses a moving viewpoint in writing his Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1958 & 2000). He does so because he is not only talking about insights and surrounding cognitional process, but also because he is trying to inspire a set of sometimes-startling insights and changes of horizon to occur in the reader. Thus, he hopes to draw his readers in to a fuller, and intimately personal, self-understanding. The process, hopefully, will supply us with both the philosophical development and the historical correctives that are central to his contribution to philosophical thought and that underlie the self-appropriation/affirmation that is his fundamental aim.

Thus, in engaging Insight, we are not merely learning what a particular philosopher thinks, but we are also applying that thought—manifest in a well-developed theory--to our own thought processes and testing our philosophical assumptions as we go through the reading.

The hoped-for outcome of moving through a complex text in this way is to inspire gradual growth in reader’s self-understanding and to challenge readers’ present philosophical foundations so that, perhaps, we can slowly develop different “eyes” after having engaged it. Here, I mean by eyes that we already have a set of philosophical lenses through which we “look” and, thus, through which we approach all old and new meaning. Such is the metaphorical meaning of the foundations of a house or the boundaries of a football game. Like anything else, however, these lenses can be our objects of analysis and critique. Such a self-understanding can result in life-changing insights, self-corrections, and formidable changes of horizon and direction. More generally speaking, such reflections can result in our becoming consciously aware of our own deepening of spirit as it occurs.

Lonergan’s writings are complex; and they include many references to the inexorably intimate, universal, and concrete; and as Frederick Crowe suggests, they follow a long arch of universal and historical vision (Crowe, 2002, p. 15). Insight, however, is over 800 pages long; and none of Lonergan’s writings are known as “easy reads.” At this time in our philosophical history in academia, the writings are commonly reserved for post-graduate study, unless severely interpreted, abbreviated, or modified from course to course.

The insight that I needed to add to the original experiment was this: Anything both short and philosophical must have and show a clearly recognizable context, and it must give proper reference and place to what I have named the longer journey. It must begin by explaining the relationship of the experiment with the experimenter’s “sense experience,” and it must be set in the clear recognition of a field of personal experience and development where deeper insights and self-corrections are understood as potential to all, are the aim, and are overtly invited to occur.