Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Methode (allgemein); Fragen (3 Typen) als Ausdruck der Selbsttranszenden (Dynamik); Wurzel: das Unbewusste

Kurzinhalt: method; degrees of self-transcendence (6 Stufen); drifters: have not yet found themselves

Textausschnitt: 20/13 But before closing this first part of my first section, I feel I should indicate roughly, not yet the stages, but perhaps the successive degrees of self-transcendence. The first is the emergence of consciousness in the fragmentary form of the dream, where human substance yields place to the human subject. The second is waking when our senses and feelings come to life, where our memories recall pleasures and our imaginations anticipate fears, but our vitality envisages courses of action. The third is inquiry which enables us to move out of the mere habitat of an animal and into our human world of relatives, friends, acquaintances, associates, projects, accomplishments, ambitions, fears. The fourth is the discovery of a truth, which is not the idle repetition of a "good look" but the grasp in a manifold of data of the sufficiency of the evidence for our affirmation or negation. The fifth is the successive negotiation of the stages of morality and/or identity till we reach the point where we discover that it is up to ourselves to decide for ourselves what we are to make of ourselves, where we decisively meet the challenge of that discovery, where we set ourselves apart from the drifters. For drifters have not yet found themselves. They have not yet found their own deed and so are content to do what everyone else is doing. They have not yet found a will of their own, and so they are content to choose what everyone else is choosing. They have not yet developed minds of their own, and so they are content to think and say what everyone else is thinking and saying. And everyone else, it happens, can be doing and choosing and thinking and saying what others are doing and choosing and thinking and saying. (208; Fs) (notabene)
21/13 But this fifth stage in self-transcendence becomes a successful way of life only when we really are pulled out of ourselves as, for example, when we fall in love, whether our love be the domestic love that unites husband and wife and children, or the love of our fellows whose well-being we promote and defend, or the love of God above all in whom we love our neighbor as ourselves. (208; Fs)