Reflections Based on the Work of Bernard Lonergan :: Bernard Lonegran Essays

Reflections Based on the Work of Bernard Lonergan ABSTRACT: The theory of agency, it has been claimed, seems to involve two strange notions: on the one hand, that of a self who is not merely an event, but a substance; and that of causation, according to which an agent, who is a substance, can nevertheless be the cause of an event. The understanding of the conscious subject as constituted by the operations of experience, understanding, judgment and decision, proposed by the Canadian philosopher and theologian, Bernard Lonergan, might resolve the puzzle, and provide the basis for an understanding of human freedom that is the affirmation of neither determinism nor arbitrariness. Perhaps one of the strongest arguments in the proposal's favor is that any attempt to refute it in theory would entail its adoption in practice. I. Introduction The theme of freedom is an early and enduring one in the works of the Canadian philosopher and theologian, Bernard J. F. Lonergan (1904-1984). It was the subject of his 1940 doctoral dissertation at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome (subsequently published as Grace and Freedom in 1971). Lonergan devoted further explicit attention to the topic in his study of human understanding, Insight, and again, in 1972, in Method in Theology. Since the focus of the doctoral thesis is centred on supernatural grace, I shall turn to the two later works, and other articles, for the elaboration of Lonergan's understanding of human freedom. II. Consciousness and Subjectivity What Lonergan wants to propose concerning human freedom cannot be understood apart from his view of the human subject who is free. In many ways, in fact, Lonergan's understanding of freedom, like his cognitional theory and his theological methodology, is simply an application of a more basic theory of subjectivity. In Lonergan's view, while there is a great emphasis on the human subject in contemporary philosophy, the understanding attained is either incomplete or mistaken. The study of the subject is nothing other than the study of oneself inasmuch as one is conscious, and should proceed as follows: It attends to operations and to their centre and source which is the self. It discerns the different levels of consciousness, the consciousness of the dream, of the waking subject, of the intelligently inquiring subject, of the rationally reflecting subject, of the responsibly deliberating subject. It examines the different operations on the different levels and their relations to one another. One's view of human subjectivity will be inaccurate or mistaken to the degree that one either does not advert to all the different operations of consciousness, or to their inter-relationship.