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: Wiedergeburt, Erlösung (Lonergan hier: renaissance); allgemein, Kennzeichen; Folgen

Kurzinhalt: What transcends man is to man as man is to the beast, the beast to the plant, the plant to the nonadaptive element.

Textausschnitt: 7. RENAISSANCE1

7.1 The essential character of renaissance
7.2 Characteristics of renaissance
7.3 Consequences of renaissance
7.1 The essential character of renaissance

24b Progress is the thesis of nature; decline the antithesis of sin; the higher synthesis of these two necessarily lies beyond the confines of this world and the intellect of man. It is not the mind of man that can make issue with the unintelligibility of sin and the distortion and dethronement of the mind itself. (Fs) (notabene)

Hence the essential character of renaissance is that it presupposes a transcendence of humanity, the emergence of a 'new' order. (Fs)
(Compare truth and error in Trotskyist 'continual revolution.')2 (Fs)

7.2 Characteristics of renaissance

24c What transcends man is to man as man is to the beast, the beast to the plant, the plant to the nonadaptive element. (Fs)
From this follow the four characteristics of renaissance, the basic principles of a 'higher criticism' to replace the Hegelian. (Fs)
24d First, the new order transcends man: therefore it would be to man mystery; it would be to his understanding as his understanding is to the brute; 'things beyond.'1 (Fs)
25a Second, the new order would be knowable: man knows being and outside being there is nothing. But because of the lack of understanding, this knowledge would be as the scientist's of empirical law.2 (Fs)
Third, man could not raise himself into the new order: nothing can transcend itself. (Fs)
Fourth, in the new order, man's nature would not be negated but included in a higher synthesis. This, on analogy: man transcends but does not negate the orders beneath him; as a mass of matter, he is subject to the laws of mechanics; as living, he is subject to the laws of cellular development and decay; as sentient, he has the perceptions and appetites of the brute. (Fs)
Hence, in the new order we would still have life under social conditions to an individualist end; the acceptance of the new order and life in it would be rational, and so be rationally acceptable (miracles) and humanly livable (authority).3 (Fs)

7.3 Consequences of renaissance

25b We have envisaged the new order as the higher synthesis of progress and decline. Hence it will restore progress and offset decline. (Fs)

To offset decline, the new order must attack major decline at its root: against self-justification it will set penance, against the objective unintelligibility and chaos it will set justice-transcending charity, against the discrediting of reason it will set faith.1 Again, against minor decline the new order must introduce what will compensate for the unbalance and bias of egoism: against cupidity, poverty of spirit; against revolution, obedience; against the beast, chastity. (Fs) (notabene)

25c To restore progress the new order must restore ordered freedom: the order which holds the balance between the fields of reason and understanding, philosophy and science; the freedom that is the auto-liberazione of the self-renouncing will; the ordered freedom in which all individuals find their own place of themselves, and all conspire for that infinitely nuanced 'better' that is the goal of progress, but can be known only by the work of all intelligences each in its own field, that can be attained only by individuals bearing the risks that each advance involves. Etc., etc. (Fs)