Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Differentiale des Guten: intellektuelle Entwicklung, Sünde, Erlösung; i. E.: Kultur, Zivilisation (Hutchins, Toynbee)

Kurzinhalt: Fortschritt der Technik: Vergleich mit Rad; The process functions as a wheel: situation, insight, counsel, policy, common consent, action, new situation, new insight, new counsel,

Textausschnitt: 1/3 The differentials of the human good are of three kinds.1 The first is intellectual development. Man's intellect is potens omnia facere et fieri: it is infinite potentially. Moreover, it moves through incomplete acts towards more complete actuation. The angel from the first moment of its existence knows naturally all that it will ever know, but the human race exists in time, and through time acquires its knowledge. It is natural to man to have an intellect that develops in time. That intellectual development, which is accountable for progress, is a first principle differentiating human societies.2. (49; Fs)

2/3 The second principle differentiating human societies is sin. In sin, man is the first cause. Whenever we do good, we are just God's instruments, but with respect to the radical element in sin man is the initiator, the first cause. Sin is nothing, a negation, but that is man's originality; and that makes a difference: sin is the basis of decline in human society.3 (49f; Fs) (notabene)

The third differential is redemption, victory over sin, the restoration of the order destroyed by sin.4 (50; Fs)

1.1 Intellectual Development5

1.1.1 The Development of Intelligence

3/3 As we distinguished insight or intelligence and judgment, so we shall distinguish two levels of development in the first differential. There is intellectual development, and there is reflective development. Intellectual development corresponds to civilization, reflective development to culture - if you want to distinguish between civilization and culture. Again, Hutchins in The University of Utopia distinguishes between the methods of discovery and the methods of discussion6? His distinction is approximately the same as the one I am making. Methods of discovery are scientific methods pertaining more to insight or intelligence, while methods of discussion are concerned with aims and values, educational purposes, and so on, and pertain more to the reflective level. (50; Fs)

4/3 With regard to the first level, then, we can see the structure of civilizational development from our account of insight. The act of understanding occurs with respect to imagined or sensible data. The human situation at any time includes a set of data; someone understands something, gets a bright idea, and figures out what would happen if this idea were put into effect. He takes counsel with others or with the influential people; a policy is devised; consent is won; and human action changes in the light of the new idea. The change in human action brings about a new situation, and the new situation suggests further acts of understanding. The process functions as a wheel: situation, insight, counsel, policy, common consent, action, new situation, new insight, new counsel, new policy, and so on.7 The wheel can turn indefinitely. Such an analysis of process is mainly in terms of experience and insight, and also choice. The analysis can be illustrated by what Toynbee's Study of History says about 'Challenge-and-Response.'8 Challenge is the situation, and response is guided by an insight into the situation. The response creates a new situation, which brings forth a further challenge, and so on as the process keeps going. (50f; Fs)

5/3 Now this process of new ideas can spread through the whole good of order. You start changing the situation at one point, but that change in the situation will involve repercussions all through the good of order. New ideas will start popping up everywhere. There will result augmented well-being, and it affects each of the aspects of the human good:9 the flow of particular goods becomes more frequent, more intense, more varied; new equipment is produced; institutions are remodeled; new types of goods are provided; the society enjoys more democracy and more education; new habits are formed to deal with the new equipment in the new institutions; there is status for all, because everything is running smoothly; everybody is too busy to be bothered with knifing other people; there are happy personal relations, a development in taste, in aesthetic value and its appreciation, and in ethics, in the autonomy of the subject; finally, there is more time for people to attend to their own perfection in religion. (51; Fs)

6/3 This process of change moves the situation away from the roots of chronic evils. The old evils cannot function in the new setup, simply because they pertain to the old situation, and that old situation has been changed. This process of development has no fixed frontiers. It radiates, as it were, from a center. The people in the next town, the next state, the next country start doing likewise. They can see that the new situation is good, and so they too have to change. (51; Fs)

7/3 Secondly, who are the agents? I have spoken simply of the process - situation, insight, counsel, policy, new type of action, new situation, new insight, and the snowball effect of the entire cycle. The agents may be called a succession of creative personalities. The situation can be wholly transformed if there is a succession of personalities who are not simply sunk into the existing situation, immersed in its routines, and functioning like cogs in a wheel, with little grasp of possibilities, with a lack of daring.10 They withdraw, perhops even physically, but at least mentally.11 They are detached; it is because of their detachment that they can see how things could be different. They may be accounted as nobodies while they are withdrawn, but when they return, they transform the world. In their withdrawal they become themselves, and they return with a mission.12 The return, of course, may not occur in their own lifetime. The most influential man in the twentieth century - the strongest candidate at least - is Karl Marx,13 and he spent years in the British Museum writing books that everyone else laughed at. Toynbee accounts for the process of such influence in terms of a creative minority. To begin, a creative personality influences a small group, which in turn influences other groups. Plato speaks of a spark that leaps from soul to soul.14 (51f; Fs) (notabene)

8/3 Toynbee distinguishes four periods in such a process. The first is marked by enthusiasm. In the second period people are more sedate. The third period is one of disillusion, of storm and stress. And in the fourth period, people acquiesce, and the prophets are honored by the sons of those who had stoned them.15 Thus, insights occur to individuals; these individuals have to communicate their ideas to a minority; and the minority passes through the four periods. Others then will follow, but with limited understanding and devotion, and no initiative - Toynbee calls this 'mimesis.' They are charmed, they feel something is afoot, but they need a leader, they need to be organized, and so there develop a functional hierarchy, rule, law, loyalty.16 The major weakness in Toynbee's analysis is that he presented himself as an empirical scientist. On this point he has been severely criticized. But I find his work superb at another level, as an illustration of how human intelligence works in history.17 (52f; Fs)

9/3 The first of the differentials,18 then, is intellectual development, and we are considering it first on the level of intelligence. Aristotle divided all questions into four, and the four again into two: Quid sit? and, An sit? What is it? and, Does it exist? The answer to the question Quid sit? is on the level of intelligence. We have considered intellectual development in its social aspect, that is, in the sense of civilizational order, the development of society. A concrete illustration of this type of development is provided in Schumpeter's business cycles.19 Schumpeter divides business cycles into three types, the third and longest of which lasts about sixty years. An example is the age of the railroad. The discovery of the idea of the railroad and the subsequent building of the railroads transformed the entire economy of the United States - consider what things could not exist without the railroads, and what things came into existence because of them. The idea of having railroads involved numerous concrete implications and made possible things that before were not possible. In similar fashion, we live at the present time in an age of electronics. All sorts of developments stem from the single idea of electronic devices and appliances. It is a fundamental idea that, when put into practice, releases the possibility of a whole series of other ideas. Another illustration lies in motorcars and the transformation of the roads. The roads that we have now did not exist fifty years ago, and one of the main reasons they exist now is the existence of the motorcar. The existence of roads followed the existence of the motorcar, and all sorts of other things have followed from both. One idea leads to another and makes the realization of other ideas possible. One can see this very clearly in concrete instances of the technological order, although the same sort of thing , exists, though more obscurely, in ideas of a more immaterial character. (53f; Fs)

10/3 I have used Toynbee's analysis largely, in treating the development of social intelligence, that is, of intelligence with respect to the technology-economy-polity: the process from situation, insight, counsel, policy, new action, changed situation giving rise to, making possible and significant, further insights. The cycle is ongoing, and the entire good of order of a culture or civilization can be transformed in that manner. That is just the analysis of the process, however. There are also the agents. The prime agents of such a process are creative personalities. The immediate agents Toynbee calls the creative minority, the people who catch on to the idea, and with considerable risk and sacrifice devote themselves to its realization. Finally, the rank and file, who have some notion of the idea, are led, carried on in the stream. (54; Fs)

11/3 The more specific developments of intelligence in a pure sense - the development of science, mathematics, and so on - are a little too technical for us to treat at this point without digressing too far from our present topic. We will come back to these developments later when we consider the implements at the disposal of the educator to help him realize his purposes, and ask about the good of different subjects in education. But at present we are simply trying to form some notion of our ends. So we are thinking of the good in general, in order to arrive at both a determination of what the aims of education might be or should be and a criticism of what in fact they are. (54; Fs)