Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Philosophie: Beitrag für eine Theologie; transzendentale Methode: Erkenntnistheorie, Epistomologie, Metaphysik

Kurzinhalt: ... What does one know when one does it? When the foregoing questions are answered with philosophic generality, one is already in possession of a transcendental method, ... The foregoing is, in my opinion, the core contribution a philosophy can make ...

Textausschnitt: The Contribution of Philosophy to the Establishment of New Thought-Forms

202b One can turn on the television set and adjust it without ever having attempted to penetrate the mysteries of electronics. But if one wishes to design a new and better type of television set, the more one knows of electronics and the more fertile one is in invention, the greater the likelihood one will succeed. Similarly, one can learn the techniques of this or that branch or division of theology by repeating the performance of others revealed in their lectures, their seminars, their articles, and their books. But it is one thing to juxtapose the various techniques of the many branches. It is quite another to see how each set can be rearranged, expanded, curtailed, transformed, so that all will lock together in a single, ongoing, cumulative process. Most of all, it is in preparing that transforming and unifying view that philosophy can make a contribution to contemporary theology. (Fs)

203a For a method guides cognitional performance. Because the performance is cognitional, there are needed full and precise answers to three basic questions. There is the question of cognitional theory: What precisely is one doing when one is knowing? There is the question of epistemology: Why is doing that knowing? There is the question of metaphysics? What does one know when one does it? When the foregoing questions are answered with philosophic generality, one is already in possession of a transcendental method, that is, of a method that is as yet not specified by any particular field or subject but, by suitable additions and adaptations, can be specified to any field or subject of human inquiry. (Fs) (notabene)

203b The foregoing is, in my opinion, the core contribution a philosophy can make to contemporary theological need. But it also can make further contributions that help theology explicate its proper adaptations of transcendental method. Let me briefly indicate the nature of such further contributions. (Fs)

203c First, in terms of cognitional theory, epistemology, and metaphysics, there has to be worked out a foundational account both of hermeneutics and of critical history. The techniques exist and are practised. But there is needed an adequate analysis followed by an epistemological critique of the different interpretations given the techniques by naive realists, by empiricists, by positivists, by idealists, by phenomenologists, by critical realists. Without the analysis and the epistemological critique, any attempt to get beyond the "Jesus of history" to the "Christ of faith" risks being blocked by usually unacknowledged philosophic assumptions. (Fs)

203d Secondly, let me note that the metaphysics I would envisage would not be a philosophic first. It would be a conclusion derived from epistemology and cognitional theory, and these in turn would be formulations of one's personal experience of one's own cognitional operations. In this fashion philosophy and the root of theological method would come out of the personal experience of the thinker and it would evoke the personal experience of those to whom he speaks or for whom he writes. (Fs)

204a Thirdly, cognitional theory, epistemology, and metaphysics are needed but they are not enough. They have to be subsumed under the higher operations that integrate knowing with feeling and consist in deliberating, evaluating, deciding, acting. It is on this level that people move from unauthenticity to authenticity; it is on this level that they decide to believe; it is at the root of this level that God's love floods their hearts through the gift of the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5: 5). As before, so here too the account is not to presuppose a metaphysical framework of potencies, habits, acts, objects but basically it is to proceed from personal experience and move towards an analysis of the structures of our conscious and intentional operations. More than anywhere it is essential here to be able to speak from the heart to the heart without introducing elements that, however true in themselves, have the disadvantage of not being given in experience. (Fs)

204b Fourthly, there exist religious studies. There are the history of religions, the phenomenology of religion, the psychology of religion, the sociology of religion, and underpinning them all and, as well, overarching them there is the philosophy of religion. Philosophy of religion reveals how basic thinking relates itself to the various branches of religious studies. Thereby it offers theology an analogous model of the way it can relate itself to religious studies, how it can profit from them, and how it can teach its own students what they will need to understand if the new secretariats, established by Vatican II, for ecumenism, for non-Christian religions, and for unbelievers, are to have competent staffs and to be properly understood, supported, and promoted by the Church and the hierarchy. (Fs)

204c Fifthly, there is the history of philosophy. If one is to read Tertullian, one had best know Stoicism. If one is to read Origen, one has to be acquainted with Middle Platonism. If one is to read Augustine, one has to know his Platonici. Similarly, down the ages, theology has drawn upon the philosophers, because it has to speak both of the man that grace converts and of the world in which he lives. The historical theologian, then, has to know the philosophers relevant to his field of study; he has to be able to discern how much of the philosophers' thought the Christian writer really grasped and how much was only loosely assimilated. Finally, he must also be a critical philosopher, both capable of spotting what is misleading or inadequate in this or that philosophy, and able to reveal how philosophic defect led to theological defect. By such criticism historical theology can yield a dialectic. By revealing the philosophic sources of aberrations, it can account for differences in patristic and in theological thought. By discerning the manner in which aberrations have been overcome, it can sketch the genesis of a distinctive Catholic philosophy. For neither Plato nor Aristotle, neither Stoics nor Gnostics, anticipated the notions implied by Nicea, by Ephesus, by Chalcedon. (Fs)

205a Sixthly, just as transcendental method can be adapted and extended into theology, into religious studies, into historical theology, so too it can be adapted and extended into sociocultural studies. Meanings, values, modes of group action have developed and diversified down the ages. There is no lack of detailed studies. There is no lack of the expertise that, through the self-correcting process of common-sense learning, comes to understand alien cultures. Besides detailed studies there exist such overall views as Bruno Snell's The Discovery of Mind and Ernst Cassirer's Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. (Fs)

205b But something more is wanted. It is not supplied either by Aquinas' interpretation of Scripture in Aristotelian terms or by Bultmann's interpretation of the New Testament in terms of the early Heidegger. Rather what is wanted is a coming together of the fruits of historical expertise and, on the other hand, of models derived from the data of consciousness, from the different types of its differentiation and specialization, from the various structures that result from differentiation and specialization. From the interaction of detailed research, overall views, and the construction of models there would gradually emerge a phylogenetic set of schemata that would provide socio-cultural expertise with a first approximation to the notions it has to express and, on the other hand, would provide students both with an initial access to alien cultures and with an overall view of the stages and variations of human meanings, values, structures. (Fs)

206a To this academic utility there must be added its practical utility. The Gospel is to be preached to all nations, to every class of men in every culture. As long as classicist culture was accepted, it could be thought that there existed but a single culture and that the Gospel could be preached substantially through that culture, even though accidentally certain adaptations had to be made to reach the uncultured. Now that classicist culture is a thing of the past, we can no longer suppose that classicist assumptions could succeed in preaching the Gospel to all nations. We have to learn to express the Gospel message so that it can be grasped by the members of every class within each of the cultures of the world. A philosophy of culture can make a great contribution towards the fulfilment of that task. (Fs)

206b There is, then, a certain type of philosophy that in many ways is very relevant to Catholic theology in its current crisis. For the current crisis is a shift in horizon. The earlier horizon was a basic outlook in terms of logic and of eternal truths, with the consequence that serious change of context was assumed to be impossible and so its possibility was not investigated. The current horizon is a basic outlook in terms of method and developing doctrines. The application of hermeneutics and critical history has brought to light notable changes of context and, with them, those continuities and contrasts that we refer to as doctrinal developments. In place of eternal truths, we now have differing apprehensions of the object of faith, where the differences rise from the changing contexts within which the apprehensions occur. (Fs)

207a A philosophy very relevant to this shift of horizon, of basic outlook, is one that centers on three questions: (1) What am I doing when I am knowing? (2) Why is doing that knowing? and (3) What do I know when I do it? With answers to those questions ascertained, one reaches the method of theology by asking and answering the specific question: What are we doing when we do theology?

207b The same type of philosophy also makes possible an analysis and a much needed critique both of hermeneutics and of critical history. It underpins a philosophy of action-a philosophy of deliberation, evaluation, decision, deed. It opens out upon a philosophy of religion, a dialectical history of theology, a philosophy of culture and of communications. In all these areas it blazes trails for theology to follow, enlarge, enrich. (Fs)

SUMMARY COMMENTS

1. Transcendental method is transcendental both in the Scholastic sense (it is not confined to any particular genus or category of inquiry) and in the Kantian sense (it is the condition of the possibility, that is, the necessary but not sufficient condition of any categorial method). (Fs)

2. Those that still cling to eternal truths may object that my position is relativist. They may argue a posteriori: hermeneutics and critical history did lead to the historicism of Ernst Troeltsch, which was just a thorough-going relativism. They may argue a priori: a truth that is not eternal is relative to some particular place and time. (Fs)

To the a posteriori argument: recall that I accept hermeneutics and critical method but not without a soundly based analysis and an epistemological critique. Troeltsch's relativism springs from a philosophic inadequacy. (Fs)

To the a priori argument: note that truths that are not eternal are relative, not to a place and time, but to the context of a place and time; but such contexts are related to one another; history includes the study of such relations; in the light of history it becomes possible to transpose from one context to another; by such transpositions one reaches a truth that extends over places and times. (Fs)

3. While the paper sets forth problems in contemporary theology, it can make no attempt to solve them on the theological level. That is a task for a separate book. Our concern is limited to the contribution that philosophy might make to the solution of theological problems. (Fs)