Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Dialektik, Ricoeur, Fortschritt, Rückschritt (progess - decline) Rationalisierung; Religion: recover from decline

Kurzinhalt: Ricoeur. a hermeneutic of recovery and suspicion; Rationalizations multiply, accumulate, are linked together ...

Textausschnitt: 40/10 The end of the age of innocence means that authenticity is never to be taken for granted. Mathematicians had to generalize their notion of number to include irrational and imaginary numbers. Physicists had to develop quantum theory because instruments of observation modified the data they were to observe. In similar fashion human studies have to cope with the complexity that recognizes both (1) that the data may be a mixed product of authenticity and of unauthenticity and (2) that the very investigation of the data may be affected by the personal or inherited unauthenticity of the investigators. (157; Fs) (notabene)
41/10 The objective aspect of the problem has come to light in Paul Ricoeur's distinction between a hermeneutic of recovery, that brings to light what is true and good, and a hermeneutic of suspicion, that joins Marx in impugning the rich, or Nietzsche in reviling the humble, or Freud in finding consciousness itself an unreliable witness to our motives. Again, it may be illustrated in my own account of "The Origins of Christian Realism," that distinguished the Christological and Trinitarian doctrines of Tertullian, Origen, and Athanasius on the basis of a philosophic dialectic. Tertullian under Stoic influence was oriented towards a world of immediacy. Origen under Middle Platonist influence was in a world mediated by meaning, where however meaning was the meaning of ideas. Athanasius finally was in the world mediated by meaning, where the meaning was the truth of the Christian kerygma. (157; Fs)
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44/10 Similarly, decline is cyclic and cumulative, but now unauthenticity distorts what authenticity would have improved. The policies, projects, plans, courses of action that come from creative insight into the existing situation have the misfortune of running counter not merely to vested interests but to any and every form of human unauthenticity. Doubts are raised, objections formulated, suspicions insinuated, compromises imposed. Policies, projects, plans, courses of action are modified to make the new situation not a progressive product of human authenticity but a mixed product partly of human authenticity and partly of human obtuseness, unreasonableness, irresponsibility. As this process continues, the objective situation will become to an ever greater extent an intractable problem. The only way to understand it correctly will be to acknowledge its source in human waywardness. The only way to deal with it will be to admonish the wayward. But such sophistication may be lacking, and then one can expect not repentance but rationalization. So decline continues unabashed. The intractable problem keeps growing. Rationalizations multiply, accumulate, are linked together into a stately system of thought that is praised by all who forget the adage: Whom the gods would destroy, they first make blind. (157f; Fs) (notabene)
45/10 Can a people, a civilization, recover from such decline? To my mind the only solution is religious. What will sweep away the rationalizations?