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: Niedergang des praktischen Denkens (minor decline); Habsucht: Privilegierte - Unterdrückte

Kurzinhalt: This bias of practical thought transforms the distinction of those who govern and those who are governed into a distinction between the privileged and the depressed.

Textausschnitt: 21b Practical progress or social improvement proceeds by the laws of inductive thought: its theses indeed are not simply false, else they could hardly begin to function; but they are incomplete, as classical education is incomplete1 and so finds an antithesis in the modern side. (Fs)

21c Now the new syntheses of progressive understanding have three disadvantages: (a) it is not clear that they offer the better, for concrete issues are complex; (b) it is certain they threaten the liquidation of what is tried and established, and so they meet with the inevitable bias and opposition of the vested interests; (c) in most cases they contain an element of risk and demand the spirit that contemns the sheltered life - insured from tip to toe - and so meet with the condemnation of all whose wisdom is more lack of courage than penetration of intellect. (Fs)

21d Thus the mere fact of progress produces social tension, and every little boy or girl is born liberal or conservative. But minor decline begins with sin. (Fs)

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil."2

Self-interest is never enlightened because it is never objective: it sees the universe with the 'ego' at the center, but the 'ego' of the individual or the class or the nation is not the center. (Fs)

21e This bias of practical thought transforms the distinction of those who govern and those who are governed into a distinction between the privileged and the depressed. The latter distinction in time becomes an abyss: its mechanism would seem [to be] as follows. Insensibly the privileged find the solution to the antitheses of their own well-being and progress. Too easily they pronounce nonexistent or insoluble the antitheses that militate against the well-being of the depressed. (Fs)

22a Thus it is that with the course of time, the privileged enjoy a rapid but narrowly extended expansion of progress, and meanwhile the depressed are not merely left behind but more or less degraded by the set of palliatives invented and applied to prevent their envy bursting into the flame of anger and revolution. The total result is an objective disorder: both the progress of the few and the backwardness of the many are distorted; the former by its unnatural exclusiveness, the latter by the senseless palliatives. And this distortion is not merely some abstract grievance waiting on mere good will and polite words to be set right: it is the concrete and almost irradicable form of achievements, institutions, habits, customs, mentalities, characters. (Fs)
So much for minor decline. (Fs)