Appropriating the Lonergan Idea


Book Description

'Appropriating the Lonergan Idea stands as a splendid monument to its author's wisdom, humanity, scholarship, and good sense ... Anyone wishing to get a preliminary overview of the nature and aims of Insight could hardly do better than read [this volume.'-Hugo Meynell




Authenticity as Self-transcendence


Book Description

McCarthy develops and expands his earlier argument with four new essays, designed to show Lonergan's exceptional relevance to the cultural situation of late modernity.




The Relevance of Bernard Lonergan's Notion of Self-appropriation to a Mystical-political Theology


Book Description

In The Relevance of Bernard Lonergan's Notion of Self-Appropriation to a Mystical-Political Theology, Ian Bell takes on the issue of the separation of the interior and exterior lives that has come to dominate mystical theology over the years. The mystical life, he claims, is necessarily involved in the establishment of social structures and institutions that govern human living, and the work of Bernard Lonergan on the human subject provides a means by which the connection between the interior and exterior lives may be established. Because human persons operate in a consistent pattern regardless of a given moment's particularities, mystical experience is no longer relegated to so-called spiritual matters, and the insights of mystics may be applied to the Christian call to live as agents of love. With this connection in place, mystical theology and political theology come together in a theology that is both mystical and political.




Developing the Lonergan Legacy


Book Description

Comprising twenty papers, including six never before published, this long-awaited work spans the fifty-year career of noted theologian Frederick E. Crowe, a scholar who has devoted himself to studying, expounding, and making available the writings of Bernard Lonergan, the well-known Canadian Jesuit philosopher and theologian who died in 1984. The publication of these papers, compiled by Michael Vertin, is a tribute both to their subject and to their author. Developing the Lonergan Legacy both recounts the history of Lonergan’s work in philosophy and theology, and offers significant theoretical and existential developments of that work. Divided into two sections – ‘studies,’ which examines the historical context of Lonergan and his writings, and ‘essays,’ which applies Lonergan’s work in different directions – the essays in this volume are motivated by Crowe’s deep concern for the concrete intellectual, moral, and religious welfare of his readers, of all those whom his readers might influence, and ultimately of the entire human community. Vertin’s meticulous editing and thoughtful sequencing only add to the uniquely spiritual character of Crowe’s works.




Lonergan and the Level of Our Time


Book Description

This third and final collection of articles by the noted Lonergan expert Frederick E. Crowe comprises twenty-eight papers written between 1961 and 2004, five of which have never before been published. --




Transforming Conflict through Insight


Book Description

Examining the difficulties of conflict resolution, Transforming Conflict through Insight demonstrates how applying Bernard Lonergan's philosophy of insight to mediation can lead to more productive and constructive negotiations. Kenneth R. Melchin and Cheryl A. Picard provide both an overview of conflict research and an introduction to Lonergan's "insight theory," offering an outstanding piece of ethical philosophy and a useful method of mediation. Introducing readers to a method of self-discovery, the different kinds of operations involved in learning, and the role of feelings and values in shaping interactions with others in conflict, this volume also includes the practical experience of mediators who detail strategies of insight mediation for working creatively through conflict. Attending to the important role played by transformative learning in navigating conflicts, the authors show how insights and learning can move people past obstacles caused by feelings of threat. Informative, compassionate, and convincing, Transforming Conflict through Insight is a welcome resource for working to resolve difficulties in an ethical and educational manner.




Bernard Lonergan


Book Description

Recounts the startling reach of Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984) in areas as diverse as pragmatic self-knowledge, mathematical logic and metalogic, economics, and systematic theology. The final chapters highlight the importance of physics in his magnum opus Insight as well as his breakthrough identification of a practical theory of history.




Lonergan and Feminism


Book Description

While Lonergan's work has been developed and applied to a range of cultures and ideas, few scholars have addressed the question of whether it is subject to feminist critique. And few feminists have employed the transcendental method of Lonergan to aid the feminist scholarly agenda. This collection of ten essays initiates dialogue among scholars interested in Lonergan and concerned with feminism, and engages several fields of enquiry: philosophy, natural science, human science, ethics, and theology. Frederick E. Crowe deals with the challenges involved when one applies the work of a generalist, such as Lonergan, to a particular set of concerns, such as those of feminists. Three articles by philosophers - Paulette Kidder, Michael Vertin, and Elizabeth Morelli - treat questions of epistemology and gender. Cynthia Crysdale discusses women's ways of knowing from a social scientific perspective. Articles by Tad Dunne and Denise Carmody deal with the question of authenticity and the criteria by which feminist truths are delineated. Michael Shute examines Lonergan's work on `emergent probability' in light of eco-feminist critiques of the `great chain of being.' Mary Frohlich addresses the question of the theological significance of sexuality. Charles Hefling examines Lonergan's Christology in reference to the feminist question of whether a male saviour can save women. Lonergan invites his readers to engage in an experiment in cognitive self-appropriation - Lonergan and Feminism encourages this experiment.




Contingent Future Persons


Book Description

How ought we evaluate the individual and collective actions on which the existence, numbers and identities of future people depend? In the briefest of terms, this question poses what is addressed here as the problem of contingent future persons, and as such it poses relatively novel challenges for philosophical and theological ethicists. For though it may be counter-intuitive, it seems that those contingent future persons who are actually brought into existence by such actions cannot benefit from or be harmed by these actions in any conventional sense of the terms. This intriguing problem was defined almost three decades ago by Jan Narveson [2], and to date its implications have been explored most exhaustively by Derek Parfit [3] and David Heyd [1]. Nevertheless, as yet there is simply no consensus on how we ought to evaluate such actions or, indeed, on whether we can. Still, the pursuit of a solution to the problem has been interestingly employed by moral philosophers to press the limits of ethics and to urge a reconsideration of the nature and source of value at its most fundamental level. It is thus proving to be a very fruitful investigation, with far-reaching theoretical and practical implications.




By Nature Equal


Book Description

What do we mean when we refer to people as being equal by nature? In the first book devoted to human equality as a fact rather than as a social goal or a legal claim, John Coons and Patrick Brennan argue that even if people possess unequal talents or are born into unequal circumstances, all may still be equal if it is true that human nature provides them the same access to moral self-perfection. Plausibly, in the authors' view, such access stems from the power of individuals to achieve goodness simply by doing the best they can to discover and perform correct actions. If people enjoy the same degree of natural capacity to try, all of us are offered the same opportunities for moral self-fulfillment. To believe this is to believe in equality. This truly interdisciplinary work not only proposes the authors' own rationale but also provides an effective deconstruction of several other contemporary theories of equality, while it engages historical, philosophical, and Christian accounts as well. Furthermore, by divorcing the "best" from the "brightest," it shows how descriptive equality acquires practical significance. Among other accomplishments, By Nature Equal offers communitarians a core principle that has until now eluded them, rescues human dignity from the hierarchy of intellect, identifies racism in a new way, and shows how justice can be freshly grounded in the conviction that every rational person has the same capacity for moral excellence.