Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Kultur; Metastrukur (superculture); Unterschied: klassische - moderne Kultur (normativ - empirisch); Zeit der Verwirrung

Kurzinhalt: A basic difference, then, lies in the mere size of the superstructure ... We as a group are immeasurably richer but as individuals we have immeasurably more that we can know only by believing.

Textausschnitt: 91a But besides a way of living, the social, there is also the cultural, and by the "cultural" I would denote the meaning we find in our present way of life, the value we place upon it, or, again, the things we find meaningless, stupid, wicked, horrid, atrocious, disastrous. (Fs)
91b In its immediacy the cultural is the meaning already present in the dream before it is interpreted, the meaning in a work of art before it is articulated by the critic, the endless shades of meaning in everyday speech, the intersubjective meanings of smile and frown, tone and gesture, evasion and silence, the passionate meanings of love and hatred, of high achievement and wrathful destruction. (Fs)

91c But besides the meaning and value immediately intuited, felt, spoken, acted out, there is to any advanced culture a superstructure. To art and literature there are added criticism. To artisans and craftsmen there are added inventors and technicians. To common sense there is added science. To the proverbs of wise men there are added the reflections of philosophers. Industry and commerce are complicated by economics, togetherness by sociology, the state by political theory, the law by jurisprudence, man's body by medicine and his mind by psychiatry, schools by educational theories, and religions by theologies. Besides the meanings and values immanent in everyday living there is an enormous process in which meanings are elaborated and values are discerned in a far more reflective, deliberate, critical fashion. (Fs)

91d I have been presenting a notion of culture and, if I am to characterize contemporary cultural change, I must briefly compare modern culture with its classicist predecessor. (Fs)

91e A basic difference, then, lies in the mere size of the superstructure. Our age is an age of specialization for other reasons, of course, but also out of sheer necessity. Modern mathematics, modern physics, modern chemistry are just too vast for any of them to be mastered entirely by a single mind. What holds of them, also holds to a greater or less extent in other fields. Today the renaissance ideal of the uomo universale, master of every art and science, would be a mere figment of the imagination. But in the classicist period the modern sciences were in their infancy, and there existed a liberal education that enabled anyone so inclined to assimilate the substance of the cultural superstructure and to follow intelligently and critically the work of pioneers. We as a group are immeasurably richer but as individuals we have immeasurably more that we can know only by believing. (Fs) (notabene)

92a Again, classicist culture contrasted itself with barbarism. It was culture with a capital "C." Others might participate in it to a greater or less extent and, in the measure they did so, they ceased to be barbarians. In other words culture was conceived normatively. It was a matter of good manners and good taste, of grace and style, of virtue and character, of models and ideals, of eternal verities and inviolable laws. (Fs)

92b But the modern notion of culture is not normative but empirical. Culture is a general notion. It denotes something found in every people, for in every people there is some apprehension of meaning and value in their way of life. So it is that modern culture is the culture that knows about other cultures, that relates them to one another genetically, that knows all of them to be man-made. Far more open than classicist culture, far better informed, far more discerning, it lacks the convictions of its predecessor, its clear-cut norms, its elemental strength. (Fs)

92c Classicist culture was stable. It took its stand on what ought to be, and what ought to be is not to be refuted by what is. It legislated with its eye on the substance of things, on the unchanging essence of human living and, while it never doubted either that circumstances alter cases or that circumstances change, still it also was quite sure that essences did not change, that change affected only the accidental details that were of no great account. So its philosophy was perennial philosophy, its classics were immortal works of art, its religion and ethics enshrined the wisdom of the ages, its laws and its tribunals the prudence of mankind. (Fs)

93a Classicist culture, by conceiving itself normatively and universally, also had to think of itself as the one and only culture for all time. But modern culture is culture on the move. It is historicist. Because human cultures are man-made, they can be changed by man. They not only can but also should be changed. Modern man is not concerned simply to perpetuate the wisdom of his ancestors. For him the past is just the springboard to the future and the future, if it is to be good, will improve on all that is good in the past and it will liquidate all that is evil. (Fs)

93b The classicist was aware that men individually are responsible for the lives they lead. Modern man is aware that men collectively are responsible for the world in which they lead them. (Fs)

93c So a contemporary humanism is dynamic. It holds forth not an ideal of fixity but a programme of change. It was or is the automatic progress of the liberal, the dialectical materialism of the Marxist, the identification of cosmogenesis and christogenesis by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Ours is a time that criticizes and debunks the past, that preaches an ideology, that looks forward to an Utopia. (Fs)

93d It also is a time of confusion, for there are many voices, many of them shrill, and most of them contradictory. (Fs)

93e Such a time of confusion, as I have said, calls beliefs into question and, because they are just beliefs, because they are not personally generated knowledge, answers are hard to come by. So to confusion there are easily added disorientation, disillusionment, crisis, surrender, unbelief. But, as I also said, from the present situation Catholics are suffering more keenly than others, not indeed because their plight is worse, but because up to Vatican II they were sheltered against the modern world and since Vatican II they have been exposed more and more to the chill winds of modernity. Let me briefly explain why this is so. (Fs)