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: mannigfache Dialektik (multiple dialectic); Dialektik: mit und ohne Gnade

Kurzinhalt: The multiple dialectic is the synthetic unity of the aggregate of single dialectics ...

Textausschnitt: 8. THE MULTIPLE DIALECTIC
8.1 Single and multiple dialectic
8.2 Single dialectic without grace
8.3 Single dialectic with grace
8.4 Multiple dialectic without grace
8.5 Multiple dialectic with grace
8.6 Meaning of history

8.1 Single and multiple dialectic
26a The single dialectic is, as we have seen, the succession of situation, thought, action, new situation, new thought, etc., within the social unit. (Fs)

The multiple dialectic is the synthetic unity of the aggregate of single dialectics: it is this aggregate in their solidarity and differences, their transferences and reactions. (Fs)

8.2 Single dialectic without grace

26b Progress is of nature. Decline is the cumulative effect of sin. Hence it follows that the course of the history of the social unit, influenced by grace, is an initial progress that gradually is submerged in the mounting flood of sin. Further, this curve - first ascending, then descending - is accentuated by the priority of the economic over the cultural: to labor for economic improvement is easy; to sacrifice for the impalpable benefits of culture is difficult. Thus the course of the history of the social unit in the case we are considering is: first, economic development; second, a certain measure of cultural advance; third, the animalization of man on the higher level of his achievement. (Compare Spengler's theory.)1 (Fs) (notabene)

8.3 Single dialectic with grace

8.3 Single dialectic with grace

26c The 'new order' eliminates the possibility of major decline within its own frontiers. (Fs)

27a In the measure in which the evangelical counsels are embraced by an elite and their spirit observed by all, the 'new order' excludes the possibility of minor decline. (Fs)

27b But adherence to the new order is a matter of free individual choice: hence the insertion of grace into the dialectic tends in the long run to disrupt the social unit. I have come on earth to bring not peace but the sword [Matthew 10:34]. In a word, the 'vessels of wrath' [Romans 9:22] will find in the constraints of the new order not the guarantee of the stability of their initial progress but a hindrance to its expansion; they will find in the disproportion between the profession and the practice of the counsels an occasion for rebellion and so open the door to major decline; and in major decline, the successive lower syntheses will be all the more violently asserted and vigorously brought into execution because of the presence of opposition. (Fs) (notabene)

27c The disruption that follows from grace must be distinguished from the atomization, the Zersplitterung,1 that follows from decline. Grace divides society into two opposing camps in vital conflict: it is the Socratic gadfly.2 Decline reduces man to the animal level, the stagnation of the sluggish dialectic. All the anti-Catholic syntheses and 'mysticisms' of the modern world have their significance and their force in their anti-Catholicism ultimately. (Fs) (notabene)

1.Kommentar (19/06/08): Apology 30e: 30e For if you kill me you will not easily find a successor to me, who, if I may use such a ludicrous figure of speech, am a sort of gadfly, given to the state by God; and the state is a great and noble stead who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into life. I am that gadfly whichGod has attached to the state, and all day long and in all places am always 31a fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you.

(Compare Donoso Cortes: Blood must flow: the only question is whether it flow in love or hatred.)3 (Fs)

8.4 Multiple dialectic without grace

27d The transition from the single dialectics to the multiple may best be made by considering transference and reaction. (Fs)
Transference is the importation by a social unit of the achievements or the miseries of another.1 (Fs)

It is spatial when the units are contemporary; it is temporal when one unit inherits from another now in decay. (Fs)

27e Reaction commonly denotes opposition to progress or decline within the social unit: here we use it to denote opposition to importation. We distinguish healthy and unhealthy reaction: healthy is opposition to the importation of foreign decadence; unhealthy is opposition to the importation of foreign progress. (Fs)

28a The synthetic unity of the multiple dialectic without grace is [stated as follows]. (Fs)

Transference with healthy reaction results in the continuity of human progress despite the fact that each progressive social unity in turn succumbs to decline. (Fs)

Transference without healthy reaction universalizes decline: it makes the backward people 'bruler l'étape' in the downward course of decline. Russia under the Soviets expiates the sins of the West. Native tribes learn the sins without emulating the achievements of the modern world. (Wars, conquest, white man's burden.) (Fs)

8.5 Multiple dialectic with grace

28b First consider the single dialectics with grace. These will be either in the initial stage of progress or the later stage of disruption. In the former case, the different social units will be united in a superstate, [as in] Christendom, and will act as one, more or less, against what is alien to them [as in the] Crusades. Again, as long as major decline is avoided, then no matter what the minor decline in any unit, there will remain the seeds of renaissance, of a second spring: [as in] the vitality of the West, rising out of the ruins of the Roman Empire and despite continual lapses into minor decline steadily advancing to achievement hitherto unattained. (Fs)

If on the other hand, the social units are tending to disruption we would seem threatened with the persecutions and wars of the Apocalypse. (Fs)

Finally, the relations between the dialectics with grace and those without form the subject matter of missiology.1 (Fs)