Autor: Tekippe, Terry J.

Buch: What Is Lonergan Up to in Insight?

Titel: What Is Lonergan Up to in Insight?

Stichwort: Epistemologie, Erkenntnistheorie, Jesus, Höhlenmythos; Johannesevangelium, der ungläubige Thomas, Höhle ->Schatten,

Kurzinhalt: Blest are they who have not seen and have believed' (John 20:9). Reality, then, is larger and grander than what can be seen. The gospel is diametrically opposed to any empiricism.

Textausschnitt: 480 Jesus is not usually thought of as an epistemologist. Yet there are epistemological implications to some of his statements. This is particularly true of a story toward the end of John's Gospel. Jesus appeared to his disciples on the night of Easter, but Thomas was not with them. When told of the encounter, Thomas was sceptical. He would not believe unless he could put his finger into Jesus' wounds. A week later, Jesus appears again, and Thomas is with the disciples. Jesus invites Thomas to do just as he had demanded, rebuking him for his disbelief. Thomas makes the profession of faith which forms the literary climax of the Gospel; but Jesus points up the moral of the story: 'You became a believer because you saw me. Blest are they who have not seen and have believed' (John 20:9). Reality, then, is larger and grander than what can be seen. The gospel is diametrically opposed to any empiricism. (117; Fs)

481 That same message may also be the deepest meaning of the myth of the cave. It concerns two criteria of reality. On the one hand, there is the criterion that most people adopt, the spontaneous empiricism that identifies knowing with experience. But such people are deceived. What they see are mere shadows, though they take them to be realities: 'Do you not think they would suppose that in naming the things that they saw they were naming passing objects?' Again, what they heard were not true voices, but echoes: 'And if their prison had an echo from the wall opposite them, when one of the passers-by uttered a sound, do you think that they would suppose anything else than the passing shadow to be the speaker?' In other words, the prisoners of the cave take shadows and echoes to be reality: 'Then in every way such prisoners would deem reality to be nothing else than the shadows of artificial objects.' Such a confusion is the natural human condition, Socrates implies. For when Glaucon confesses this to be a strange image, and these strange prisoners, Socrates says, 'Like to us.' (117; Fs)

482 But there is a release and a healing to such confusion. It comes when the knower - perhaps against any natural inclinations - is freed from his shackles, allowed to turn around, and face the light itself. In this way he is able to approach reality in its true nature: 'What do you suppose would be his answer if someone told him that what he had seen before was all a cheat and an illusion, but that now, being nearer to reality and turned toward more real things, he saw more truly?' The process is not easy, and the habituation would take time. But eventually the person would be able to see the sun, the very source of light, in its own reality: 'And so, finally, I suppose he would be able to look upon the sun itself and see its true nature, not by reflections in water or phantasms of it in an alien setting, but in and by itself in its own place.' (117f; Fs)

483 Almost all the terms for mental activities, it was pointed out in chapter 3, are taken from metaphors from sense experience. Thus 'insight' means, literally, 'looking into.' Perhaps now the importance of this observation can be appreciated. Since sense experience is more obvious, and inner experience more hidden, this appeal is natural and appropriate; and it does no harm as long as it is kept in mind that the expression is metaphorical. The problems begin when the expression is taken literally. Then one falls into the empiricist trap of identifying knowing with looking, believing with seeing. (118; Fs)