General theme: Lonergan: A Review--What issues need to be addressed? Specific theme: Bridging the Gulf--Education as Implementation
By: Catherine B. King
Introduction
Let us begin from an understanding that Bernard Lonergan’s contributions to philosophy and theology (Insight: A Study of Human Understanding [1958 & 2000] was first published in 1958) are worth mediating to a larger audience—to the various fields of study, and to one’s personal life—namely, insight into insight and all of the ins-and-outs of personal self-appropriation-affirmation. By “larger” I mean an audience beyond "Lonergan scholarship” and beyond those who already are convinced of its import; and whether that conviction is based on uncritical belief, or on a set of developing direct and reflective insights. From that beginning, let us recall that in Lonergan Workshop 17, Fred Crowe writes:
My hope is that by the end of this century the basic idea of the four levels will be part of our general culture; so much so that to explain them, and still more to prove them, will be quite boring. Pupils leaving primary school will be as familiar with this structure as they are with, say, the golden rule. (2002)
If we are right about mediating Lonergan’s contributions, and if Dr. Crowe’s vision for education is to occur, then we who have found universal import in those contributions are charged with finding ways to bring Lonergan’s insights to a broader audience. It follows that if we are to be heard, then one of our entrances into the dialogue must be through the door of empirical-secular concerns, and particularly in the field of education. To do so, we will need to take general empirical method, at least as applied theory, as the central empirical basis and as the focus and object of our communications.
Section I: The Gulf--Impediments to Communication
With the above in mind, I suggest that at least six problems hinder teachers and writers (who recognize the importance of Lonergan’s work) from being heard: These hindrances are abbreviated here but developed further on a blogsite (King, 2009) and in the appendixes herewith.
Our first hindrance is the marginalization of the human sciences from the natural and physical sciences in Western history, and of philosophy and theology from all—which, in turn, has led to a long-standing fragmentation of-and-in all knowledge fields, and in a good part of common discourse. Lonergan saw that the whole project of philosophy and theology needed to be re-thought from bottom to top, as it were, and in terms of the ongoing influences of the scientific revolution, both good and bad.
In brief, first, that revolution exposed the question of knowledge and its connection to the truth-reality complex; and second, it laid bare the relationship of knowledge, etc., to doctrine and to the doctrinal, religious, and political authority of the day.
As many of us here understand, to date, only Lonergan’s work has supplied us with the avenue for a newly differentiated metaphysics, and for a cohesiveness of persons and fields through his regard for thoroughly understanding what it is to understand ….
For the brevity of this presentation, let us assume this movement of marginalization as Lonergan’s historical context and go on to some specifics of communicating Lonergan’s work from within that context (2009). (For further development of this section, See Appendix 1)
The second hindrance, then, is the existence of various and divisive camps centered on name recognitions and on specific technical conceptualizations. We are talking about human studies--and because of the flow of philosophical meaning that has come “down” to us from the scientific revolution (Cartesian dualism, mechanism, relativism, etc.), we find “Lonergan” and other thinkers isolated as various camps of thought. Such camps emerge from the very variety of philosophical biases, viewpoints, and issues that Lonergan critiques in Insight through his call for self-reflection and in his notion of a self-appropriation-affirmation, and of transcendental method and its theory of knowledge, and through his treatment of those biases and counter-positions. (See Appendix 2)
Transcendental method is at least equivalent to what he means by general empirical method. However, TM goes beyond GEM to include questing movements into, and even changes of horizon about, the mysterious, the divine, the ultimate [Lonergan, 2000, Chapter 19]).
Our third hindrance flows from the first two: We can point to the difficulty of communicating a philosophical generalist’s writings to such disparate, autonomous, and fragmented fields (maintaining a camp won’t do), or to gaining an audience for comparative analysis of camp theory, including in philosophy itself. The difficulty manifests in a pervasive sense of arbitrariness and in multiple and diverse concepts that lack a language of equivalence, in meaning, and in methods; and, again, in the vast foundational differences that Lonergan gave treatment to in Insight (1958 & 2000--see particularly Chapter 14, The Method of Metaphysics).
For our fourth hindrance, we can point to esoterica: Many of Lonergan's writings are quite technical and long, as they must be, considering that his target is not the objects of what he called extroverted consciousness (1958, p. 423; & 2000, p. 448), or mere logic and concept, but also readers’ self-reflective capacities and our full foundational development and corrective, especially from general bias or a disregard for theory.
Here, however, and for our purpose of opening communication venues, we find a great gulf, and the major difficulty of connecting Insight, etc., not to mention Lonergan’s aim, with common discourse and experience, and-or with the philosophical capacity of undergraduate, or even high school students. One semester will not do, especially when we consider the full sweep of what Lonergan was trying--not to convey, but to bring about. (Hand a copy of Insight to a K-12 teacher, and see what happens.)
Further, the writings often assume a basic understanding of science, mathematics, logic, and philosophy (and their terminologies) that many in a broader audience, whom we want to engage, do not have. In my own experience with teaching K-12 teachers, many are quite open-minded, critical, and astute; and they all care greatly for their students' development. However, many also are working from what Lonergan might recognize as an IN-sufficiently cultured consciousness. (See Appendix 3)
For our fifth hindrance, we can point to Insight’s later chapters’ and to Method in Theology’s apparent limitation to a religiously oriented audience, or even to Christian and particularly Catholic theologians.
Here, I do not criticize, diminish, or set aside the religious point of view, religious consciousness, or authentic religious conversion. Rather, I speak of a lack of distinction between (a) philosophical and (b) religious/theological aspects in Lonergan's writings and in much that has flowed from it since he graced us with his presence. Though Lonergan’s own interest is in the whole human quest--emphasize "whole," in today’s world, the oft-combining of philosophical and religious narrative can foster misunderstanding in a more secularly-grounded audience—and one who may see no difference between religious and theological discourse.
(Note that the June 2009 Lonergan conference at Boston College is named: Collaboration--in the Year of St. Paul. Of course there is nothing inherently "wrong" with this title. However, for those who are averse to combining religious with academic or scientific pursuits, the combination is off-putting.)
Many (in my experience) wrongly assume that a study of Lonergan’s work must begin in certain religious assumptions and, thus (apparently), and though remarkably intelligent, its writer begins uncritically from a prescribed belief, faith, doctrinal, ideological or, more remotely, from a from-above-downward or classicist set of views. If the critique were true, of course, by secular and critical-empirical/methodological standards, such arguments would rightly render Lonergan’s work irrelevant to all but the most devoted of religious followers. (See Appendix 4)
We find our sixth hindrance squarely on the side of the individual reader. And with Lonergan, we know we must meet the reader where they are—but there lies the paradox. That is, as with many philosophical matters, the polymorphism of mind that Lonergan treats is itself an impediment to mediating his work to a larger audience. Those impediments are rooted:
(1) in a lack of philosophical development;
(2) in the stunning array of unconsciously inherited foundational “lenses” that emerge in unison with clear thought when prompted by philosophical discussion; and
(3) in consciously appropriated but inadequately conceived views (given high treatment in Insight as biases and counter-positions). (See also Piscitelli's development of what he refers to as lower viewpoints [1985].)
Further, these impediments are commonly held together tightly by what I call a foundational dogmatism--an aversion to self-reflection and an unwillingness to address one's own foundational viewpoints or lenses.
Such lenses greatly influence our understanding of everything in our purview. However, a reflective and theoretical self-inspection of such lenses is presently missing from our common educational experience (in the United States, and in my experience of several educational venues). Or as Lonergan states, our suggested audience is rarely “very far from a set of assumptions that are neither formulated or scrutinized” (Lonergan, 1958, p. 416; 2000, p. 441).
Generally stated, the assumption and sometimes-statement is: “My knowing already works for me, so why go into it?” Translated, such statements mean that general empirical method is already at work in the speaker; and one of the counter-positions, for instance, relativism, are next-up for killing the philosophical baby in its crib, as it were. The complaint, you might say, is inconsistency of thought, and you would be right. However, such is the case with the meaning of polymorphism of mind. (See Appendix 5)
Conclusion to Part 1
For many reasons, then, many highly intelligent and well-meaning thinkers who may have neither “formulated nor scrutinized” their own sets of assumptions (e.g., teachers, where a treatment of general bias is particularly important), can miss being introduced to a body of work that provides a critical avenue for such scrutiny and formulation for themselves and for their students.
Thus, our relatively isolated field of “Lonergan studies” suffers from briefly-put—the gulf--the lack of well-defined, secularly useful (empirically based), curriculum-development strategies drawn from Lonergan’s work and based in a clear pedagogical method for teachers, for students of philosophy in early study, for the renaissance reader, and for the open-minded specialist in any knowledge field and profession. Such strategies are needed, and are appropriate to departments of education--the only hopeful ground for methodological entrance into Kindergarten-12 applications. (See Appendix 6)
Section II: The Caveat for Implementation
I point to a disjunctive, then, between (1) an all-too-common need for philosophical development and guided self-correction, particularly in teachers who covertly pass down philosophical polymorphism to their students; and (2) an accessible pedagogical path to grasp a core of critically established insights drawn from Lonergan’s contributions to philosophy, and particularly to the philosophy of education. Though the religious question (not yet doctrine) does constitute the remote context of all study, it cannot be the beginning point of secular study.
Here is the caveat, however. If done fully and well the philosophical journey is long, and cannot be otherwise (1958, p. xxiii; & 2000, p. 17). If so, such a disjunctive calls for a difficult but ever-present task on the part of we mediators:
To present core but distinct aspects of Lonergan’s contributions to differentiated and varied audiences and venues in relatively abbreviated format--however, (and this is the hard part) to do so without telescoping the philosophical journey or without vulgarizing Lonergan’s or others’ associated work—without cutting them to pieces and leaving the essentials behind--without missing the point that recovering such a core needs to be “painstaking and slow” for each person; and that such a recovery is central to the history of philosophy, to the sciences and humanities and to education for the “common culture” (Lonergan, 1958, p. xxiii & p. 544; & 2000, p. 17 & p. 568).
(In today’s environment, I fear to say “liberal education” for the common culture.)
Further, in the Preface to Insight, Lonergan says that, if we are to build a whole ship or a philosophy, “incompleteness is equivalent to failure” and, “against the flight from understanding half measures are of no avail” (1958, p. xiv; & 2000, p. 7). Again, he suggests a long and comprehensive journey. And as Hugo Meynell related over coffee earlier in our conference here, Fred Crowe has remarked that: if you are doing Lonergan briefly, you are not doing Lonergan.
Also, Phil McShane quotes Lonergan as saying: “I can’t put all of Insight into two weeks of talk” (McShane, 2009). Nor should we think we can do so, or in one three-month course, in equivalent fashion.
The distinction: In my own journey into method and language (Piscitelli, 1977), I found a neat, relatively brief, pedagogical-experimental connection between (1) the reader’s experience of language and (2) conscious structure. However, the same problem of adequate presentation still hovered for years and needed to be worked out.
The insight that finally emerged was this: To mediate to education what Lonergan means by self-appropriation-affirmation with any hope of maintaining its relationship with what must be “painstakingly slow,” I needed to distinguish (1) a shorter philosophical journey (my original insight of offering a brief experimental connection) from (2) a longer philosophical journey (foundational development and corrective, or what Lonergan and others are trying to convey in writings like Insight—see 2000, pp. 422-23, & 1958, pp. 397-98;). So, half of the problem was to define the problem clearly.
The Treatment
Making the distinction between the two journeys allowed the problem of two different but related treatments to emerge: I had to find a way to (1) isolate the central briefer experiment while (2) making the experimenter aware of, and maintaining a clear and constant invitation to, experience those potential deeper philosophical insights—only afforded by the longer journey. To fail in this communication of a proper distinction-in-relation would be to telescope and vulgarize--like building half-a-ship, or like planting a tree in poor soil—the ship will not float, and neither tree nor experiment will flourish.
Indeed, if the experiment is to flourish I must make clear the longer journey in the shorter. I must make clear the richness and complexity of the writing from which the shorter journey is drawn (Insight, etc.). First, I must constantly convey the potential for much further personal development and self-reflection with regard to reader foundations.
Second, within that context, I must convey a need for self-knowledge and the self-correction that can follow with regard to the experimenter’s philosophical inheritance (i.e., biases, counter-positions, attitudes, etc.).
And third, I must mirror the need for new development--of distinctions and interrelationships forged from an apprehension of theory, of a theory, and of those theoretical insights applied critically to that longer self-reflective journey.
In other words, the text and teaching must convey what I am referring to here as an understanding that the shorter journey can deliver scientific-to-personal exploration and critical verification of a theory of mind (it can--the Finding the Mind classroom text affords this shorter journey.) However, it also must convey that the longer journey awaits us all and goes beyond--to include major internal change, foundational development and self-correction, a treatment of the flight from understanding, and what Lonergan refers to as a heightening of your own rational self-consciousness around various deeply felt but now fully conscious and critically known experiences—or in a word, comprehensive and critically established self-knowledge.
As an historical aside, let us recall Plato’s setting out the difference between Socrates (1) as teacher, which he disclaims, and (2) as midwife, which he claims for himself, the philosopher. In terms of the shorter journey, the teacher can teach about self-appropriation-affirmation; and we can even take readers through a critically established process pointing to the remote but clearly present basic structure and set of operations within the self—all in a scientific-objectivist way. However, the philosopher-as-midwife is involved in what I am referring to as the longer journey. Here, the philosopher assists the seeker-person through various deeply felt, but no less critical, developments and corrections—or to use the midwife metaphor, the philosopher helps birth someone into the philosophical life—though, as Socrates knew, stillbirths always can occur in the birthing process. (See Appendix 7)
Of course, Lonergan himself was involved with the longer journey, which includes the shorter. Whereas teaching to the shorter journey without midwifery into the longer journey defines what he and McShane refer to as a vulgarization of his work and of philosophy; and I would add of education in general.
And this brings us to a seventh hindrance, which is specific to education. In that sense, much of what goes by the name education in the USA, especially in K-12, is more of a vulgarization of the educative experience (often rightly defined but not as often practiced in education circles as a “leading out”) than it is an increase-in or a deepening-of spirit that education in the fullest sense can be and, I with many others argue, should be.
So introducing such work to the field of education is fraught with the same problems as mediating to individuals, only here, and though much open-mindedness can be found, the problems and omissions have become institutionalized. (See Appendixes 6 and 7)
Section 3--The Project
Finding the Mind--Pedagogy for Verifying Cognitional Theory/ Experimental Primer for Foundational Review and Self-Appropriation-Affirmation
Thus, I undertake the task of distinguishing and writing specifically for the shorter and then longer journeys, for the sake (1) of approaching a broader audience of readers than Lonergan’s or many others’ bodies of work presently attract; and (2) of providing a critical introductory foundational text for education, for personal development and for philosophy and, with some adjustments, for the humanities and other departments of learning where foundations are of interest. Both are offered with the reader’s autonomy-of-choice in mind in the matter of taking on more pervasive philosophical studies though, of course again, I heartily recommend such a journey.
And so the experiment as written—Finding the Mind--is an introduction to, but not a proffered short-cut to, a philosophical education. The text is divided into a Preface, an Introduction and two basic parts:
First, as structure, at the front of the book are the chapters that guide the reader methodically through the experiment as the shorter journey.
The second section is constituted by several appendices treating various philosophical issues that are touched on, but not developed well in the experiment, e.g., self-presence, the pervasiveness of the good, objectivity, knowledge and deriving ought from is, etc.
More covertly, the text conditions the reader for the different conversions, especially for what Lonergan refers to as intellectual conversion. To avoid the term conversion and its "baggage," let us refer to the experience as foundational insights as distinct from informational insights. Foundational insights change the ground for all informational insights and open new horizons for us with regard to everything we think, say, and do.
Thus, generally speaking, the layered structure of the text mimics the layered structure of internal meaning:
Experiment (Layer 3)
Appendixes (Layer 2)
References to core philosophical texts(Layer 1)
Extroverted Consciousness (Layer 3)
Foundations (polymorphic or not) (Layer 2)
Basic-given (fundamental) Structure (Layer 1)
The appendixes, then, provide a bridge--or access to a deeper layer of potential self-reflection—reader foundations (layers 2). They are meant to inspire the reader’s potential for taking that longer philosophical, and perhaps spiritual, journey; whereas participating in the experiment can only take us on a critical-scientific, but relatively “extroverted” tour of the philosophical journey; hence its name: The shorter journey. (In my experience in the classroom, though the verification of the theory is secured by all, the event of "finding the mind" varies with the specific situation of the student--or, "where they are" presently in their philosophical state of affairs.)
Such an abbreviated experiment alone, then, can introduce the reader to, but cannot take us through, that longer journey of interior development and corrective that is meant to occur by the use of a moving viewpoint in Insight—the journey that, at times, is known to momentarily unsettle us and, at times, even turns us upside down in our heads. “… and one has not made it yet if one has no clear memory of its startling strangeness …” (1958, p. xxviii; 2000, p. 22).
In turn, that journey is recursive--it will eventually lend a newly understood quality to the briefer experiment, and to its singular purpose of readers personally verifying the theory and of finding and verifying the basic structure and activities of their own mind, albeit if only in a critical-objectivist and scientific sort of way.
Furthermore, mediation includes a twofold pedagogical task: First, we need to quickly gain and hold reader-interest (and student-interest for teachers), in this case, for mediation into the field of education.
… the method of metaphysics is primarily pedagogical: it is headed towards an end that is unknown and as yet cannot be disclosed; from the viewpoint of the pupil, it proceeds by cajoling or forcing attention and not by explaining the intended goal and by inviting an intelligent and reasonable cooperation (1958, 397; & 2000, p. 422-23)
Second, and again, we need to keep the longer and more comprehensive project of philosophical learning constantly in view as readers go through the experiment. In Finding the Mind, the first task is met by the relative brevity of the experiment (it can be completed in a one-semester course), and by drawing our experimental data from the reader’s own experience of language for use as the critical-controlling factor throughout the experiment.
….”introspection” may be understood to mean, not consciousness itself but the process of objectifying the contents of consciousness. Just as we move from the data of sense through inquiry, insight, reflection, judgment, to statements about sensible things, so too we move from the data of consciousness through inquiry, understanding, reflection judgment, to statements about conscious subjects and their operations. That, of course, is just what we are doing and inviting the reader to do at the present time.
But the reader will do it, not by looking inwardly, but by recognizing in our expressions the objectification of his subjective experience. (Lonergan, 1972, pp. 8-9)
The second task is met by the constant foreshadowing and invitation in the text towards further study and self-examination provided for in the appendixes, references, and in the unique treatment and structure of the text. (The text’s structure is similar to this paper and to a webpage where clicking on the blue print takes you to deeper sections of the text.) As pedagogy, then, the experiment’s relative brevity makes it appropriate for formal classroom use. (See Appendix 8)
Section 4—Demonstration
If there is time, I will give a brief demonstration of the experiment developed in Finding the Mind: Pedagogy for Verifying Cognitional Theory (2011). Lanham MD: University Press of America.
References
Crowe, F. E. (2002). The future: Charting the unknown with Lonergan. In F. Lawrence (Ed). Lonergan workshop: Vol. 17. Boston College.
King, C. B. (2009). www.educationasimplementation.blogspot.com
King, C. B. (2009). Chapter 3, The Gaps. http://findingthemind3.blogspot.com
Lonergan, B. J. F. (1958). Insight, a study of human understanding. New York: Philosophical Library.
Lonergan, B. J. F. (2000). Collected works of Bernard Lonergan: Insight. F. E. Crowe & R. M. Doran (eds.). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Lonergan, B. J. F. (1972). Method in theology. Minneapolis: Winston Press, Inc.
McShane, P. (2009). Field Nocturnes CanTower 47: (http://www.philipmcshane.ca).
Morelli, M., & Morelli, E. (1997) (Eds). The Lonergan reader. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Ornstein, A. C. & Hunkins, F. P. (Eds.) (1998 & 2004). Curriculum—Foundations, principles, and issues. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Piscitelli, E. J. (1977). Language and method in the philosophy of religion: A critical study of the development of the philosophy of Bernard Lonergan. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Georgetown University, Washington, DC.
Piscitelli, E. J. (1985). The fundamental attitudes of the liberally educated person: Foundational dialectics. In Fred Lawrence (Ed.), The Lonergan workshop: Vol. 5. (pp. 289-342). Chico, CA: Chico Press. [Later referred to as The Foundations of Philosophy: The Person—Education and Dialectics.] Retrieved: April 17, 2008. http://mysite.verizon.net/thelogos/Dialectic.pdf)
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