Autor: Walsh, William J. S.J.

Buch: Workshop Rome 2001

Titel: PRINCIPLE AND FOUNDATION: IGNATIUS AND Lonergan

Stichwort: Indifference als Zustand kognitiver und willentlicher Gleichgewicht im voraus zur Entscheidung

Kurzinhalt: Ignatius über indifference, Zen Buddhism, Lonergan: detached, disinterested, unrestricted desire to know + willingness; Offenheit als Tatsache, achievment, Gnade;

Textausschnitt: Ignatius: It is necessary to keep as my objective the end for which I am created, to praise God our Lord and save my soul. Furthermore, I ought to find myself indifferent, that is, without any disordered affection, to such an extent that I am not more inclined or emotionally disposed toward taking the matter proposed rather than relinquishing it, nor more toward relinquishing it rather than taking it.
Instead, I should find myself in the middle, like the pointer of a balance, in order to be ready to follow that which I shall perceive to be more to the glory and praise of God our Lord and the salvation of my soul.()
The basic image here is of a balance at rest. ... Indifference, then, is a state of cognitional and volitional equilibrium prior to any deliberation about a decision or action.
()
Zen Buddhism expresses much the same idea to express the ideal state of attentiveness in prayer, using the image of a taut bowstring. One sits motionless in the lotus position, the body as still as Mt. Fuji, 'firmly planted [...] , massively composed.' The mind is 'alert, stretched like a taut bowstring.' One is in a 'heightened state of concentrated awareness,' like someone 'facing death.'
()
Ignatian indifference presupposes in the human subject what Lonergan calls openness and willingness: a detached, disinterested, unrestricted desire to know plus an antecedent unrestricted willingness to act. He analyzes openness as a fact and as an achievement. As fact, openness is an intrinsic component of the human subject's make-up; it is the pure desire to know, what Aristotle calls wonder, ... As achievement, says Lonergan, openness is the ultimate horizon one can reach, but which one reaches only through 'successive enlargements' of one's current horizon. And since man is fallen, he says, 'such successive enlargements lie under some law of diminishing returns.' And so, one stands in need of help, of grace, of God's gift of his enabling love. Lonergan sums up:
()
What the Principle and Foundation supplies is the specific Christian ideal. And so, the retreatant asks: how open and willing, how indifferent am I to reach the end for which I am created?