Autor: Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 4

Buch: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 4, Supplmentary Issue

Titel: Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop

Stichwort: 'Instant' Lonergan; 2 Prinzipien: invariante Struktur - Geschichte; Beispiel: Tschechow

Kurzinhalt: The framework remains steady and becomes familiar with use, but what happens within the framework can be quite new and unfamiliar ... Such endless variety cannot be handled the way the structural principle was; ...

Textausschnitt: 1. 'INSTANT'LONERGAN: AN OVERALL VIEW

2a To offer an overall view of Lonergan's thought sounds like a threat. Will it include all that has been said in these workshops since 1974? Be not afraid. For present purposes I offer an 'instant' Lonergan: a pair of headings that are comprehensive in intent but omit all details. I am told that one can put half of physics into seven typing spaces: E = mc2. I present a formula like that for my overall view of Lonergan. (Fs)

2b The formula, then, states that there are two components in his thinking. There is the structural principle. This focuses on the invariant, the hard and fast, the fixed and determined. But there is also what we may call the historical principle, which is not invariant at all but subject to continual change, is not hard and fast but open to development or to decline, is not fixed and determined but insecure and precarious, does not provide some instant Utopia but would lead the human race forward in a steady process of learning. (Fs)

2c Lonergan himself provides support for this formula: 'A contemporary ontology,' he says, 'would distinguish two components in concrete human reality: on the one hand, a constant, human nature; on the other hand, a variable, human historicity. Nature is given man at birth. Historicity is what man makes of man.'1 That is a statement in ontology; transfer it from ontology to his work and thought, and you have my instant Lonergan. (Fs)

2d Still, even an instant view may be allowed some expansion. I will expand my first principle very briefly, my second not so briefly. (Fs)

2e The obvious illustration of the structural principle is the four levels of consciousness.2 You have heard about those levels a dozen times, and it would bore you to tears to hear me go through them again. From my viewpoint it should bore you, as it should bore future generations; that's a position I'll take when I come to its future in part 3. So it needs no further discussion at the moment. (Fs)
3a Next, the historical principle. The framework remains steady and becomes familiar with use, but what happens within the framework can be quite new and unfamiliar, infinitely various, infinitely rich, and very exciting. When I first worked on this talk, I happened to be reading an old book, The Tales of Tchehov.3 The 'Introduction,' by Edward Garnett, speaks of Chekhov's 'picture of life's teeming freshness and fulness,' of the way he conveys 'a mysterious sense ... of life's ceaseless intricacy.' He points out how Chekhov's 'flexible and transparent method reproduces the pulse and beat of life, its pressure, its fluidity, its momentum, its rhythm and change ...'4 This may not at first sound much like Lonergan. On reflection, however, and thinking of the two principles in our instant formula, we might agree that it is the perfect partner to his thought on history. Garnet says of history in artistic terms what Lonergan says of it in his more theoretic terms. It is the addition of history, with its endless variety, to structure; it is not the steady framework, it is what happens within the framework. (Fs)

3b And what is it that happens? What happens is Homer singing of Ulysses, Plato writing his dialogues, Archimedes taking a bath, Augustine hearing the child say 'Take up and read.' Thomas Aquinas happens, and so does Dante, so does Isaac Newton. Jean Vanier establishes his L'Arche communities, while others climb Mt Everest or land on the moon or give their lives for the poor and oppressed of the third world. Well, you get the idea: in 'the pulse and beat of life' anything and everything and everybody happens. (Fs)

3c Such endless variety cannot be handled the way the structural principle was; it needs more study; and that brings me to part 2. (Fs)