Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Ethik und Geschichte 4; Zielwert, Ursprungwert (originating value); immanente Norm der Wahl; individuelle Wahl (Fortschritt, Niedergang) - Lauf der Geschichte

Kurzinhalt: The fact is that the self-constituting character of practical, responsible action is the central condition for the cumulative, and continually developing character of historical progress. The affirmation of progress over decline is fundamentally ...

Textausschnitt: 92/6
(2) If Method focuses on progress and decline as resulting or proceeding from the intersubjective activities of subjects who are, themselves, instances of originating value, this focus is in no way absent from Insight. The fact is that the self-constituting character of practical, responsible action is the central condition for the cumulative, and continually developing character of historical progress. And this explains why Lonergan sets terminal values as subordinate to originating value in his hierarchy of values. (198; Fs)

Again, terminal values are subordinate to originating values, for the originating values ground good will, and good will grounds the realization of the terminal values.1
93/6 Lonergan's introduction of the notion of 'conversion' in Method raises the question of the role of gratuitous grace in effecting a change in a subject's orientation. And this topic will be discussed further in the next chapter. But notwithstanding the degree of our own cooperation in constituting ourselves as instances of originating value, there remains an interesting dialectical interplay between practical, responsible activity and the course of historical events that follows from this account. Inasmuch as the dynamics of development and bias are operative immanently in the human subject the relative prevalence of the one or the other will orient the subjects' spontaneity and his or her habitual judgments and decisions. Such spontaneity will be reinforced or redirected by responsible acts. And these responsible acts will have the effect of increasing or decreasing the f-probable occurrence of judgments and realizations of true terminal values. Meanwhile the acts themselves will contribute to or present obstacles to the emergence of historical progress. And whatever they do, they will certainly change historical conditions to a greater or lesser degree, thus placing the subject in a new set of historical circumstances with a new set of practical problems to solve. (198; Fs)

94/6 Immanently operative development and bias find their influence felt [sic] on intersubjective, historical progress and decline, and vice versa. And the mediator or regulator is the subject who possesses the remarkable ability to monitor, in a cybernetic-like fashion, 'internal' and 'external' environmental events and processes by v-probably approaching a cognitional actuation of the intelligibility immanent in both sets of data, and ordering both manifolds in accordance with an emergent 'projection' of a possible course of action in the light of such cognition. The immanent norm for selection is the dynamic towards growth and development operative in the human subject. And the nature of truly human growth is such that a person can choose long-term progress in history even when such a choice leads to the short-term destruction of the person himself or herself. (198f; Fs) (notabene)

95/6 The affirmation of progress over decline is fundamentally at the root of the notion of value. And persons as originators of value are the engines of historical progress and decline. Were progress and decline only predicates of history and not immanently operative in the human subject, then responsible, moral action would be purely a matter of conformity to an extrinsic norm. Were they operative only immanently and not in history, then moral activity would not make a difference to the course of historical events. Morality would be irrelevant. Lonergan's approach, to try to explain both at once, in terms of generalizable heuristic, provides the bare bones of a possible explanation which may well bear some fruit if applied to the study of humanity and history. (199; Fs)

96/6 There remains the fact that while individuals will choose progress or decline, the course of a society and of history is never simply the result of one person's choice. It follows that there will certainly be coincidental aggregates of converging decisions and actions. And human society and human history will exhibit considerable evidence of randomness or absence of system. But randomness is never simply randomness. Rather, it is the condition of possibility for the emergence of higher order recurrence schemes which integrate lower order events into orders and routines, and regularly order the materials of the lower order in recurring patterns. Does this mean that there will be patterns or cycles in intersubjective, social and historical events? Lonergan's brief discussion of the three biases in chapter seven of Insight is his attempt to sketch a response to the great speculative philosophers of history on this question of the order(s) of history. (199; Fs)