Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Selbst-Transzendenz auf verschiedenen Stufen: Gefühl, Intellekt, Entscheidung; (Binswanger, Hopkins)

Kurzinhalt: transition from consciousness to conscience, from moral feelings to the exercise of responsibility; all bear convincing testimony that self-transcendence is the eagerly sought goal

Textausschnitt: 8/9 In various ways clinical psychologists have revealed in man's preconscious activity a preformation, as it were, and an orientation towards the self-transcendence that becomes increasingly more explicit as we envisage successive levels of consciousness. (131; Fs)

9/9 Perhaps most revealing in this respect is a distinction drawn by the existential analyst, Ludwig Binswanger, between dreams of the night and dreams of the morning. ...
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13/9 Beyond the data of experience, beyond questions for intelligence and the answers to them, beyond questions for reflection concerned with evidence, truth, certitude, reality, there are the questions for deliberation. By them we ask what is to be done and whether it is up to us to do it. By them is effected the transition from consciousness to conscience, from moral feelings to the exercise of responsibility, from the push of fear and the pull of desire to the decisions of human freedom. So it is that on the level of deliberating there emerges a still further dimension to self-transcendence. On previous levels there stood in the foreground the self-transcendence of coming to know. But deliberation confronts us with the challenge of self-direction, self-actualization, self-mastery, even self-sacrifice. (132; Fs) (notabene) (notabene)

14/9 Already I have spoken of consciousness as a polyphony with different themes at different intensities sung simultaneously. Now I would draw attention to the different qualities, to what Gerard Manley Hopkins might call the different self-taste, on the successive levels: the spontaneous vitality of our sensitivity, the shrewd intelligence of our inquiring, the detached rationality of our demand for evidence, the peace of a good conscience and the disquiet released by memory of words wrongly said or deeds wrongly done. Yet together they form a single stream, and we live its unity long before we have the leisure, the training, the patience to discern in our own lives the several strands. (132; Fs)

15/9 The basic unity of consciousness reaches down into the unconscious. It is true that conflicts do arise, as the psychiatrists have insisted. But this truth must not be allowed to distract us from a far profounder and far more marvelous harmony. In man, the symbolic animal, there is an all but endless plasticity that permits the whole of our bodily reality to be fine-tuned to the beck and call of symbolic constellations. The agility of the acrobat, the endurance of the athlete, the fingers of the concert pianist, the tongue of those that speak and the ears of those that listen and the eyes of those that read, the formation of images that call forth insights, the recall of evidence that qualifies judgments, the empathy that sets our own feelings in resonance with the feelings of others-all bear convincing testimony that self-transcendence is the eagerly sought goal not only of our sensitivity, not only of our intelligent and rational knowing, not only of our freedom and responsibility, but first of all of our flesh and blood that through nerves and brain have come spontaneously to live out symbolic meanings and to carry out symbolic demands. (132f; Fs) (notabene)