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: Zusammenfassung: Natur - Aristoteles, Lonergan; Tatsache des Bösen - Gnade; Moderne: Austreibung des Bösen durch das Böse

Kurzinhalt: The crisis of modernity has been caused by modernity's series of attempts to use evil to countervail against evil.

Textausschnitt: 3. CONCLUDING REMARKS

56a The foregoing is an attempt to clarify Lonergan's transposition of the normative core of "nature" into the modern context. Here I indicate what I think are some of the implications of this interpretation of Insight. (Fs)

(1) The classicist tradition's reliance on the norm of nature was heavily indebted both to some of Aristotle's limitations as well as to what was normative in his account. The classicist tradition has tended to go beyond the normative heuristic account of nature by incorporating certain unfortunate secondary determinations. In particular, meanings and roles which served as intelligent conditions for intelligent human functioning in classicist terms are not invariant in the way that the structure of human consciousness is. Without some estimate of the concrete problems which are posed in changed patterns of meanings, and some understanding and evaluation of how well classicist standards respond to those challenges, insistence on classicist standards may be an insistence on something unnatural. (Fs)

(2) On account of Aristotle's tendency to focus on completed virtues, anything other than a completed virtue might be judged, not immature, but wicked. Correlatively, one overlooks the fact that the natural occurrence of new insights means that virtues are but temporary achievements, and human excellence is ever a matter of continual excellent developing. More importantly, one might be tempted to limit the relationship of intelligence to good living in the virtuous person to the addition by phronesis (practical wisdom) of "one further insight into the situation at hand" (Lonergan, 1958: 175), while forgetting that "further insights" are constantly needed over and above formed moral virtues. This oversight has led to the consequent denigration of phronesis even in the classicist tradition itself. It has led to a failure to appreciate the great importance of other types of understanding and their relationships to human living. A lack of intelligent grasp of long-term consequences has promoted much long-term decline. (Fs)

(3) Finally, Lonergan's heuristic structure of nature is entirely compatible with what is normative in modern science. It is a heuristic for arriving at objective judgments about what is and is not in accord with human nature. But it does not imply that the solution to pervasive unnatural conditioning of human life can or must be natural. Aristotle clearly recognized the powers of corruption in his own day. Although he also knew that a certain small number of genuinely virtuous people emerged whose presence was absolutely indispensable for any level of decency in the rest of the culture, he did not really understand what makes this emergence possible and probable beyond acknowledging that it had a kind of regularity reminiscent of the regularities of Nature. Aristotle's and Plato's profound reverence for Nature did not flinch from the great evils of humankind; nevertheless it rested on a reasoned trust in a natural support for ultimate natural goodness. But Augustine, Aquinas, and Lonergan transposed this reasonable trust into a context in which the emergence of good transforming human lives depended not upon the regularities of Nature, but the supernatural mysteries of divine grace. (Fs)

57a Within the horizon of modernity, the regularities of human affairs show only that human nature is evil, and one cannot change that. The crisis of modernity has been caused by modernity's series of attempts to use evil to countervail against evil. If an alternative to the crisis of modernity is to be found, it must be sought by a graced, hopeful understanding and communication of what truly is in accord with subhuman human nature. Clearly, without either the tenuous, reasoned, yet undifferentiated trust in natural goodness of an Aristotle or Plato, or the theologically differentiated and transformed hope of Christianity, any appeal to standards of intelligent and reasonable nature will appear pathetic. (Fs; 07.02.2009) (notabene)