Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Byrne, Patrick H., Insight and the Retrieval of Nature

Stichwort: Lonergan: menschliche Natur und Geschichtlichkeit 1

Kurzinhalt: His [Lonergan] cognitional theory was an explanatory account of the correlations among the terms and relations which constitute human consciousness

Textausschnitt: 2.8 Human Nature and Historicity

50a The crucial question, of course regards human nature. Is there any such thing? Hasn't modern science swept this away, as first Rousseau and later Nietzsche held? Haven't the statistical sciences of the random left us with no norms at all? Since this is not a question about Nature in general, but about human nature, it is about what is natural, relative to human functioning. answer to the question follows the same pattern outlined in the preceding sections. (Fs)

51a We begin by noting that Lonergan considered his contributions to the theory of human consciousness to be concerned with explanation. His cognitional theory was an explanatory account of the correlations among the terms and relations which constitute human consciousness (1958: 333-334). The terms are cognitional acts-experiencing, direct insight, formulating, reflective insight, judgment of fact, judgment of value, decision. The pattern of correlations is the cognitional structure in which these acts are related to and defined in terms of one another via questions for intelligence, reasonableness, and responsibility. Hence, the questions themselves pose a natural standard for what is intelligent, reasonable, responsible, and loving. As Aristotle put it, once we discover something, our inquiry about it reaches a natural completion (89b26-28).1 Just as in the earlier illustrations, so here the terms are variables, but the correlation (i.e. cognitional structure) is invariant. For example, anything into which one intelligently inquires is an example of the variable, 'experience.' This invariance of the structure of our knowing is the fundamental meaning of the transposed phrase, "human nature," according to Lonergan. (Fs) (notabene)

51b Second, the variables correlated by this invariant structure can be combined in diverse sets of schemes. Human consciousness can integrate wide ranges of experiences with insights into them; with judgments about the correctness of those insights; with judgments about the value of possible ways of living worked out by insights; and with decisions as to whether or not to act in accord with values known to be good and true. This is a generic meaning of schemes, or habits, of human living. (Fs)

52a Third, it is somewhat abstract to speak of the recurrent schemes of conscious activity which actually constitute the living of any given human being. Schemes of any human being's conscious operating do not merely recur; they also develop. All patterns of human consciousness operate on the basis of the unrestricted desire to know and love. Already achieved human insights, judgments, and decisions are natural completions to particular questions put about particular ranges of experiencings. But they are not the natural completion of the source of all such questions, the unrestricted desire. The unrestricted desire is a permanent natural source of perfecting and transforming achieved habits or schemes into ever more highly developed ones. Hence, insights, judgments, and decisions occur only to give rise to questions which would not have occurred without them. (Fs) (notabene)