Autor: Mehrere Autoren: Method, Journal of Lonergan Studies, 11,1

Buch: Method, Journal of Lonergan Studies, Volume 11, Number 1

Titel: Lonergan, Bernard - Analytic Concept of History

Stichwort: Geschichte: 3 Abschnitte: spontan - spontan, spontan - reflexiv, reflexiv - reflexiv; je induktiv und deduktiv

Kurzinhalt: 5.7 The three periods of history and their characteristics

Textausschnitt: 5.7 The three periods of history and their characteristics

18b First, from the distinction of spontaneous and reflex thought, we have three periods of history:

(a) spontaneous history and spontaneous thought;
(b) spontaneous history and reflex thought;
(c) reflex history and reflex thought. (Fs)

The first period is from the beginning to the discoveries of philosophy and science.1 (Fs)

The second period is from these discoveries to the social application of philosophy and science to human life in its essential task: the making of man. (Fs)

The third is society dominated by the consciousness of its historic mission: the making or unmaking of man. (Fs)

18c We would note that the second period does not end with the writing of Plato's Republic, nor even with the medieval application of philosophy to society, but rather with the social passion for an ideal republic that marked the French Revolution, the nineteenth-century liberals, the modern communists, and the promised Kingship of Christ through Catholic Action and missiology.1 The 'class consciousness' advocated by the communists is perhaps the clearest expression of the transition from reflex thought to reflex history. (Fs)

18d Second, from the distinction of philosophic and scientific, deductive and inductive thought, we may distinguish two levels of thought in each of the three periods. Thus:2

(a) Spontaneous thought and history

Deductive field:
popular religion and morality
Inductive field:
agriculture, mechanical arts, economic and political structures, fine arts, humanism, discovery of philosophy and science

b) Reflex thought but spontaneous history

Deductive field:
religion and morality on philosophic basis
Inductive field:
applied science, international law, (universal law)1, enlightenment, theories of history

(c) Reflex thought and history

Deductive field:
the 'general line' of history philosophically determined (compare Stalin's general line)2
Inductive field:
edification of world state

Third, to this table we may add certain general norms. (Fs)

19a Third, to this table we may add certain general norms. (Fs)
(a) Progress is from the spontaneous social unit of tribe or race to the reflex social unit of the state. (Fs)
(b) The development of humanistic culture presupposes large-scale agriculture, its universalization presupposes applied science: priority of the economic as a condition. (Fs)
(c) The tendency of progress is to remove man from his dependence upon nature to dependence upon the social structure, to substitute state for kinship. (Fs)
(d) The greater the progress, the greater [also is] the differentiation of occupation, the more complex the social structure, and the wider its extent: for man progresses by intellect's domination over matter; but this domination is that of the universal over the many: its exploitation, hierarchy.1 (Progress as intellectual)2 (Fs)

(e) Man must not permit himself to be led by the nose by this progress: the result would be wonderfully intelligible but not human. (Fs)

20a Man has an intellect, but he is not an intellect. Virtue is in the man, even the virtue of progress. (As human)