Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Ethik, Geschichte: Möglichkeit der Umkehr; Kosmopolis (3 Kennzeichen), höherer Gesichtspunkt - Verengung

Kurzinhalt: ... there arises a growing preoccupation with the environmental and interior determinants of human life ... In opposition to the short-term practicality of intelligence, Lonergan proposes a 'higher viewpoint' ...

Textausschnitt: 7.7.1 The Higher Viewpoint, Cosmopolis, and Moral Impotence

81/7 The root of the problem in the human condition, the general bias, is understood by Lonergan as an insufficient development and a corresponding insufficiently frequent actuation of the human capacities and skills for intelligent knowing and doing. The consequence of this insufficient development is a deformation or bias in common sense intelligence's habitual operation. The direction of this bias is towards short-term practicality, and its preoccupation with immediately realizable solutions using immediately available means and commonly available experiential resources. Because the world of experience of any historical age is, for the most part, constituted by the insights that were made operative by the previous generations, this bias towards short-term practicality results in an ever-narrowing series of horizons. As common sense becomes more and more practical, the range of experiential data and insights that are deemed relevant to human life shrinks to include only those elements that can be discovered and verified in a appeal to current practice. Since the insights that order and regulate human life emerge from the experiential data base on man which that age recognizes as relevant, the ever-shrinking ranges of practical insights will bequeath upon successive generations ever-shrinking experiential ranges. And the major upshot of this trend is intelligence's rejection of the need for development and its despair of the possibility of development. As intelligence progressively is judged irrelevant to human life there arises a growing preoccupation with the environmental and interior determinants of human life. Corresponding to this growing conviction there arises a growing appeal to the use of force either to ensure and secure those determinants which are thought essential to the routine operation of existing social schemes, or to realize those determinants which are thought to be capable of transforming social life. Such is the longer cycle of decline. (239; Fs) (notabene)

82/7 The possibility for the reversal of this bias and its longer cycle consists in reversing this deceleration in the development of intelligent capacities and skills and promoting accelerated development. In opposition to the short-term practicality of intelligence, Lonergan proposes a 'higher viewpoint' on man and history from whose perspective common sense, with its virtues and its deficiencies, can be understood.1 Such a higher viewpoint would be something like what Vico, Marx and Dilthey sought to develop: an integrated theory of man and history which would grasp man's fundamental and essentially human capacities and which would explain their positive and negative contributions to the dynamism of human history. But Lonergan insists that the central element of this higher viewpoint must be the discovery that intelligently mediated operations play the chief role in the constitution of culture and history and that because intelligence has its own immanent norms, norms which cannot be forced or externally conditioned, there is no alternative to the widescale development of responsible subjects. If a higher viewpoint is to meet the general bias and its longer cycle of decline it must grasp the route towards this development and it must affirm both its possibility and its necessity. (239f; Fs) (notabene)

83/7 In Lonergan's analysis, the route towards progress requires the recognition that if intelligence and responsibility contain their own immanent norms, then progress can be cultivated only through the growth of the whole human person. Human progress can never be realized merely through the transformation of social or economic life conditions or through the imposition of the rule of force. Quite the contrary, in this analysis of the human situation, force can and must play but a minor role. For inasmuch as intelligent acts and intelligent development have the structure of a probably emergence of a higher-order integration, the condition of possibility for this emergence is a sufficient randomness.2 In human life the form of this randomness is liberty, the opportunity for trial and error accumulation of skills, and a sufficiently wide range of opportunities for the application and cultivation of skill and creativity.3 Environmental conditions and the exercise of force play a role in reversal insofar as they promote rather than supplant this assimilation and adjustment growth scheme.4 (240; Fs)

84/7 The role of culture in reversal is to embrace and to reflect this higher viewpoint on human life and human history and to critique any deformations in common sense intelligence in the interests of its liberation from short-term practicality. But first culture itself needs to undergo this very liberation. As long as the general bias has its strangle-hold on culture then culture only accelerates the decline. Consequently culture must understand the elements of the higher viewpoint.5 (240; Fs)

85/7 It is to this higher viewpoint on man and history that Lonergan gives the name 'cosmopolis.' It is not altogether clear precisely what Lonergan intends by cosmopolis. But three of its functions can be summarized. (240; Fs)

(1) Cosmopolis seeks to express and make operative the ideas on man and history that are rendered inoperative by the general bias of common sense. In contrast to common sense's short-term practicality, cosmopolis proclaims a wider perspective on man and champions those dimensions of human life that are not immediately practical. Cosmopolis must witness publicly to the possibility of such ideas being made operative in society and culture without appeal to the use of force.6

(2) Cosmopolis has the critical function of exposing, ridiculing and falsifying the deformations in common sense's exclusively practical concern for day-to-day living. Far from repudiating the practical orientation of intelligence such a critical function operates in the interests of practical intelligence. For it is common sense's exclusive preoccupation with short-term practicality that results in its own ultimate destruction.7
(3) Cosmopolis develops its higher viewpoint on man on the basis of a critical analysis of history. And to carry out its tasks cosmopolis needs continually to be engaged in the critical study of historical origins and historical responsibilities. Thus while cosmopolis is a development of intelligence it is not merely another specialized field for the operation of common sense. Rather, it is a development of intelligence beyond common sense from whose perspective the historical operations and limitations of common sense could be understood, and from whose perspective common sense's positive and negative contributions to the whole historical process can be understood.8 (240f; Fs)

86/7 In a very general sense cosmopolis includes the very project which Lonergan has begun in his own life's work. It concerns a developed understanding of those operations which distinguish human life as, in a limited but nonetheless essential sense, self-regulating or self-constituting. It concerns an account of human history as essentially constituted by human acts of intelligence and it concerns the specific ways in which the horrors and deformations of human life are to be explained in terms of the limitations and perversions of these acts. It concerns the fact that such a grasp of the limitations of intelligence can lead to a subsequent reduction in the impact of such limitations and to a development in the competent operation of intelligence. But it also concerns the fact that such a grasp of the limitations of intelligence leads to a fuller and richer appreciation of the limitations of the human condition. For to grasp the possibility for the reversal of the general bias is also to grasp that the fulfillment of the conditions for such a reversal appears unlikely.9 (241; Fs)

87/7 Clearly cosmopolis is conceived by Lonergan to be the foundation of the possibility for the reversal of decline. But if his presentation would have ended with Insight, chapter seven, Lonergan would have left us with an account of the human situation whose central problem, intelligence's inability and refusal to develop, could only be resolved if the human situation were to undergo significant structural change. For clearly, cosmopolis is the very thing that the bias of common sense precludes. However, his account of the possibilities for the reversal of decline does not end with Insight, chapter seven. And it is clear in chapters eighteen to twenty that Lonergan recognizes that as long as the analysis is restricted to man, the sufficiently widespread proliferation of cosmopolis must be considered unlikely.10 (241f; Fs)

88/7 It is certain that Lonergan appreciates the dilemma that his presentation leaves for man. For in his subsection of chapter twenty entitled 'The Existence of a Solution,' he defines what he means by the human 'problem.' 'First of all, I have employed the name, problem, in a technical sense, so that it is meaningless to speak of a problem for which no solution exists.'11 If Lonergan's analysis of the human situation and his introduction of the notion of cosmopolis as the condition for reversal are to be something more than a counsel of despair then his intended meaning needs to be re-examined. And I would suggest that a first clue in this re-examination is to be found at the end of chapter eighteen. (242; Fs)

Earlier, in the chapter on Common Sense as Object, it was concluded that a viewpoint higher than the viewpoint of common sense was needed; moreover, that X was given the name, cosmopolis, and some of its aspects and functions were indicated. But the subsequent argument has revealed that, besides higher viewpoints in the mind, there are higher integrations in the realm of being; [...]

Finally, whether the needed higher integration has emerged or is yet to emerge, is a question of fact. Similarly, its nature is not an object for speculation but for empirical inquiry. Still, what can that empirical inquiry be? Since our metaphysics and ethics have been developed under a restriction to proportionate being, we have to raise the question of transcendent knowledge before we can attempt an investigation of the ulterior finality of man.12

89/7 It becomes perfectly clear in chapters nineteen and twenty that the viewpoint higher than common sense, to which corresponds the higher integration in the realm of transcendent being, demands grappling, finally, with the question of God. (242; Fs)