Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Authentizität - Selbsttranszendenz

Kurzinhalt: ... human authenticity is a matter of following the built-in law of the human spirit ... in the measure we fulfil these conditions of being human persons, we also achieve self-transcendence both in the field of knowledge and in the field of action ...

Textausschnitt: 1. Authenticity

165b First, then, authenticity. For I wish to begin from what is simply human and, indeed, from a contemporary apprehension of what it is to be human. There is the older, highly logical, and so abstract, static, and minimal apprehension of being human. It holds that being human is something independent of the merely accidental, and so one is pronounced human whether or not one is awake or asleep, a genius or a moron, a saint or a sinner, young or old, sober or drunk, well or ill, sane or crazy. In contrast with the static, minimal, logical approach, there is the contemporary, concrete, dynamic, maximal view that endeavors to envisage the range of human potentiality and to distinguish authentic from unauthentic realization of that potentiality. On this approach, being human is ambivalent: one can be human authentically, genuinely, and one can be human unauthentically. Moreover, besides ambivalence, there also is dialectic: authenticity never is some pure, serene, secure possession; it is always precarious, ever a withdrawal from unauthenticity, ever in danger of slipping back into unauthenticity. (Fs) (notabene)

166a On this view, then, the basic question is, What is authentic or genuine realization of human potentiality? In a word, my answer is that authentic realization is a self-transcending realization. So I must attempt to describe what I mean by self-transcending. I shall illustrate five different instances and conclude that the last four of the five form an ordered unity. (Fs)

166b In dreamless sleep, we are still alive. We are operating in accord with the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology. It may be said that we are ourselves but not that we are reaching beyond ourselves and, much less, that we are rising above ourselves. But when we begin to dream, consciousness emerges. However helpless, however lacking in initiative, the dreamer is an intending subject. What is intended, commonly is obscure, fragmentary, symbolic. In so-called dreams of the night the source of the dream is one's somatic state, say, the state of one's digestion. But in dreams of the morning the dreamer is anticipating his waking state; he is recollecting his world; he is beginning to adopt a stance within that world. In the dream of the morning, then, the dreamer has got beyond himself; he is concerned with what is distinct from himself; he is anticipating his self-transcendence. (Fs)

166c An enormously richer self-transcendence emerges when one awakes. There is the endless variety of things to be seen, sounds to be heard, odors to be sniffed, tastes to be palated, shapes and textures to be touched. We feel pleasure and pain, desire and fear, joy and sorrow, and in such feelings there seem to reside the mass and momentum of our lives. We move about in various manners, assume now this and now that posture and position, and by the fleeting movements of our facial muscles, communicate to others the quiet pulse or sudden surge of our feelings. (Fs)

166d Still, sensations, feelings, movements are confined to the narrow strip of space-time occupied by immediate experience. But beyond that there is a vastly larger world. Nor is anyone content with immediate experience. Imagination wants to fill out and round off the picture. Language makes questions possible, and intelligence makes them fascinating. So we ask why and what and what for and how. Our answers construct, serialize, extrapolate, generalize. Memory and tradition and belief put at our disposal the tales of travellers, the stories of clans or nations, the exploits of heroes, the treasures of literature, the discoveries of science, the reflections of philosophers, and the meditations of holy men. Each of us has his own little world of immediacy, but all such worlds are just minute strips within a far larger world, a world constructed by imagination and intelligence, mediated by words and meaning, and based largely upon belief. (Fs)

167a If the larger world is one and the same, still there are as many different constructions of it as there are stages in human development and differences in human cultures. But such diversity only serves to bring to light a still further dimension of self-transcendence. Beyond questions for intelligence-such as what and why and how and what for-there are the questions for reflection that ask, Is that so or is it not so? Is that certain or is it only probable? Unlike questions for intelligence, these can be answered by a simple "Yes" or "No." How we can give such answers, is beside my present purpose; but what such answers mean, is very much to it. For when we say that this or that really and truly is so, we do not mean that this is what appears, or what we imagine, or what we would like, or what we think, or what seems to be so, or what we would be inclined to say. No doubt, we frequently have to be content with such lesser statements. But the point I would make is that the greater statement is not reducible to the lesser. When we seriously affirm that something really and truly is so, we are making the claim that we have got beyond ourselves in some absolute fashion, somehow have got hold of something that is independent of ourselves, somehow have reached beyond, transcended ourselves. (Fs)
168a I have been endeavoring to clarify the notion of self-transcendence by contrasting, first, dreamless sleep with the beginnings of consciousness in the dream, secondly, the dreaming with the waking subject, thirdly, the world of immediate experience and the enormously vaster real world in which we live our lives, fourthly that larger world as constructed by intelligence with the same larger world as known to have been constructed as it really is. (Fs)

168b There remains a still further dimension of self-transcendence. Our illustrations, so far, have mainly regarded knowledge. There remains action. Beyond questions for intelligence-what? why? how? what for?-there are questions for reflection-is that so? But beyond both there are questions for deliberation. Beyond the pleasures we enjoy and the pains we dread, there are the values to which we may respond with the whole of our being. On the topmost level of human consciousness the subject deliberates, evaluates, decides, controls, acts. At once he is practical and existential: practical inasmuch as he is concerned with concrete courses of action; existential inasmuch as control includes self-control, and the possibility of self-control involves responsibility for the effects of his actions on others and, more basically, on himself. The topmost level of human consciousness is conscience. (Fs)

168c However, man's self-control can proceed from quite different grounds. It can tend to be mere selfishness. Then the process of deliberation, evaluation, decision, is limited to determining what is most to one's advantage, what best serves one's interests, what on the whole yields a maximum of pleasure and a minimum of pain. At the opposite pole it can tend to be concerned solely with values: with the vital values of health and strength; with the social values enshrined in family and custom, society and education, the state and the law, the economy and technology, the church or sect; with the cultural values of religion and art, language and literature, science, philosophy, history, theology; with the achieved personal value of one dedicated to realizing values in himself and promoting their realization in others. (Fs)

169a In the measure that one's living, one's aims, one's achievements are a response to values, in that measure self-transcendence is effected in the field of action. One has got beyond mere selfishness. One has become a principle of benevolence and beneficence. One has become capable of genuine collaboration and of true love. In the measure that self-transcendence in the field of action characterizes the members of a society, in that measure their world not only is constructed by imagination and intelligence, mediated by words and meaning, based by and large on belief; it also is a world motivated and regulated not by self-seeking but by values, not by what is only apparently good but by what truly is good. (Fs) (notabene)

169b Now if we compare the last four of our modes of self-transcendence, we find that they form an interlocking unity. Experiencing is presupposed and complemented by inquiry and understanding. Experiencing and understanding are presupposed and complemented by reflecting and judging. Experiencing, understanding, and judging, are presupposed and complemented by deliberating and deciding. The four modes are interdependent, and each later level sublates those that precede in the sense that it goes beyond them, introduces something entirely new, makes that new element a new basis of operation; but so far from crowding or interfering with its predecessors, it preserves them, perfects them, and extends their relevance and significance. Inquiry sharpens our powers of observation, understanding enormously extends the field of data one can master, reflection and judgment force inquiry to attend to ever further data and force understanding to revise its previous achievements, deliberation turns attention from what is to what can be, to what probably would be and above all, to what really is worthwhile. (Fs)

169c To conclude, human authenticity is a matter of following the built-in law of the human spirit. Because we can experience, we should attend. Because we can understand, we should inquire. Because we can reach the truth, we should reflect and check. Because we can realize values in ourselves and promote them in others, we should deliberate. In the measure that we follow these precepts, in the measure we fulfil these conditions of being human persons, we also achieve self-transcendence both in the field of knowledge and in the field of action. (Fs)

170a Now you may have been wondering why I have spent so much time on so remote a topic as authenticity. I have had three reasons for doing so. First, I wished to get out of the abstract and static context dictated by logical clarity, coherence, and rigor and into the concrete, open, and ongoing context dictated by attention, inquiry, reflection, and deliberation. Secondly, I wished to get out of the context of a faculty psychology with its consequent alternatives of voluntarism, intellectualism, sentimentalism, and sensism, none of which has any serious, viable meaning, and into the context of intentionality analysis that distinguishes and relates the manifold of human conscious operations and reveals that together they head man towards self-trauscendence. Thirdly, I wished to have a base, a starting-point, a springboard, in people as they are and as they can discover themselves to be; for without such a base, talk about the Spirit, the Word, the apostolate, the Jesuit priesthood is all in the air; it sounds abstract, irrelevant, without substance. (Fs)