Autor: Lawrence, G. Frederick

Buch: The Ethics of Authenticity and the Human Good: Beyond Left and Richt in Politics

Titel: The Ethics of Authenticity and the Human Good: Beyond Left and Richt in Politics

Stichwort: Hermeneutischer Zirkel: Glaube - Vernunft; Befangenheit (bias), Sünde

Kurzinhalt: Bias, combined with basic sin, distorts the hermeneutic circle of understanding and believing

Textausschnitt: 9a In Insight Lonergan had transposed Thomas Aquinas's metaphysical analysis of the structure of human knowing into the contemporary framework of phenomenologically ostensible intentionality analysis. In coming to terms with the genetic and dialectical dimensions of human cognitional development this intentionality analysis took shape as a horizon-analysis of the dynamics of the hermeneutic circle: understanding in order to believe, and believing in order to understand. These dynamics feature the priority of the dramatic pattern in human living over other-biological, aesthetic, and intellectual patternings of consciousness that function as parts within the dramatic pattern's whole.1

9b However, our dramatic pattern of human experience is beset by bias and basic sin.1 This means that the dynamism of conscious intentionality as headed spontaneously toward intelligibility, truth, and goodness is subject to dramatic, individual, group, and commonsense biases. Moreover, basic sin is our failure to choose what the spontaneous dynamism of our spirits knows to be intelligent, reasonable, and responsible courses of action. Bias, combined with basic sin, distorts the hermeneutic circle of understanding and believing. The impersonal forces of a cultural and social surd begin to prevail to such an extent that the gap between our natural and our effective freedom becomes a radical moral impotence that cannot be overcome by human resources alone.2 The inevitable time-lag between living and knowing how to live leads to the short-circuiting of human genuineness by the 'reign of sin.'3

10a For Lonergan philosophic horizon-analysis inevitably yields to theological horizon­analysis as a matter of integrity. For in concrete human living the social and cultural surd of sin can only be countered adequately by a transformation due to a gift of God's love that is disproportionate to human nature.4 After Insight, in essays before Method in Theology, in Method itself, and in the writings that followed, Lonergan's horizon-analysis gradually transposed Thomas Aquinas's theology of grace and freedom that he had originally retrieved on its own terms in his doctoral dissertation in the late 1930s into contemporary terms.5

10b According to Lonergan's dialectical analysis of horizon, human development is shown to be a mixture of progress and decline.6 However, as he came to acknowledge, concrete human becoming occurs in the context or tension of two vectors of human development: a vector of healing that moves from above downwards and that in the highest instance is empowered by the God's self-gift (according to the Christian interpretation of redemption); and a vector of creativity that moves from below upwards starting with attentiveness to data, through intelligent inquiry and reasonable discernment, to responsible deliberation, evaluation, decision, arid action.7