Lonergan and the philosophy of historical existence / Thomas J. McPartland.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McPartland, Thomas J., 1945-

Series:

Eric Voegelin Institute series in political philosophy

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Voegelin, Eric, 1901-1985.

Voegelin, Eric.

Consciousness.

History--Philosophy.

History.

Physical Description:

xi, 305 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Columbia : University of Missouri Press, [2001]

Summary:

Bernard Lonergan's ambitious study of human knowledge, based on his theory of consciousness, is among the major achievements of twentieth-century philosophy. He challenges the principles of contemporary intellectual culture by finding norms and standards not in external perceptions or reified concepts, but in the dynamism of consciousness itself.

Lonergan and the Philosophy of Historical Existence explores the implications of Lonergan's approach to the philosophy of history in a number of distinct but related contexts, covering a variety of intellectual disciplines. Each chapter can be read independently, but the series of chapters provides a coherent unfolding of Lonergan's case that the norms of inquiry endure as a standard of human thought and action amid continuous changes and fluctuations in politics, morals, religion, science, and scholarship. The book explains how Lonergan's idea of development follows from his theory of consciousness and how his treatment of human development inevitably focuses on historical development. The central theme of the book is that Lonergan's philosophy of history makes a pronounced distinction between historicity and historicism.

McPartland relates Lonergan's work to existentialist themes and, in the last chapters, to the work of Eric Voegelin. The book addresses the existentialist themes of dread, suffering, guilt, shame, and resentiment -- within overall themes of history, philosophy, and religion. McPartland argues that Lonergan's unique perspective on scientific method, epistemology, metaphysics, and critical theory can illuminate what seem to be the quite alien topics of reason as religious experience, the anxiety of existence, the existential roots of bias, and mythopoesis and mystery. Here there is a remarkable parallel to the philosophy of history of Eric Voegelin. The concluding chapters of the book show how the equivalence of the two philosophies offers a mutually enriching dialogue between Lonergan's critical realism and Voegelin's existential exegesis.

Contents:

Part I. Lonergan's Foundational Worldview

1 Lonergan's Philosophy of Consciousness 9

Age of Consciousness 10

Lonergan: Philosopher of Consciousness 12

Normative Structure of Consciousness 14

Self and Self-Knowledge 17

2 From Classicism to Emergent Probability: Lonergan's Notion of Development 25

Aristotle: Rudiments of Development 27

Plato and Aristotle: Human Development 29

Lonergan's Notion of Development 31

Lonergan's Notion of Human Development 40

Lonergan's Notion of Historical Development 45

Part II. Historical Existence

3 Dialectic of History 55

Dialectic of Historical Interpretations 56

Lonergan and Dialectic 64

History 69

4 Historicism and Historicity: Two Perspectives on History 76

Historicism 79

The Epistemological Assumptions of Historicism 82

Historicity 94

Emerging Intellectual Horizon 106

5 Reason and History 108

Classicism and Historicism 109

Reason 116

Reason and History 120

6 Cosmopolis: The Community of Open Existence 125

Cosmos and Polis 126

Cosmopolis and Historicity 129

Cosmopolis and the Challenge of History 135

7 Historicity and the Event of Philosophy 141

Lonergan and Historical Consciusness 142

Philosophy and Existence 147

The Subjective Pole of Philosophy 147

Philosophy and Religious Experience 150

Noetic Consciousness and History 154

Engaging the Philosophical Past 159

Dialectic of Philosopher and Philosophical Tradition 159

Philosophy and Relativism 162

Historical Consciousness and Functional Specialties 165

Mythopoesis 168

Philosophy and Praxis 173

Philosophical Therapy and Existential Deformation 173

Philosophy and Intellectual Culture 177

Part III. Authentic Existence

8 Dread and the Horizon of Existence 183

Self-Transcendence 185

Dread 186

Suffering 187

Guilt 187

Shame 188

Ressentiment 190

9 Noetic Science: Aristotle, Voegelin, and the Philosophy of Consciousness 193

Political Science and Noetic Science 194

Voegelin and Aristotle 196

Nous and Theoros: The Historical Context 198

Episteme and Nous 199

Cognitive Habits 200

Cognitive Acts 201

Principle of Science 202

Nous as Episteme 203

The Self-Luminosity of Nous 204

Nous and Phronesis 205

Limits of Aristotle's Analysis 207

Noetic Science as Philosophy of Consciousness 209

10 Self-Appropriation in Lonergan and Voegelin 214

Lonergan's Reflective Subjectivity 215

Voegelin's Existential Exegesis 220

Comparative Assessment 222

11 Equivalence of Meaning: Lonergan's Cognitional Theory and Voegelin's History of Symbols 226

Response to the Crisis 229

Lonergan's Cognitional Theory 237

Lonergan's Expanded Cognitional Theory 245

Historical Existence 253

Lonergan-Voegelin Dialogue 265.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 273-287) and index.

ISBN:

0826213456

OCLC:

46641928