method and sensibility: novak's debt to lonergan

American Academy of Religion

Method and Sensibility: Novak's Debt to LonerganAuthor(s): David BurrellSource: Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 40, No. 3 (Sep., 1972), pp. 349-367Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1461323 .

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IC RITICISM, DISCUSSION,

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SURVEY

Method and Sensibility: Novak's Debt to Lonergan

DAVID BURRELL, C.S.C.

Richard E. Crouter left off reading Michael Novak's Ascent of the Moun- tain, Flight of the Dove with his academic sensibilities shredded. He had

courage enough to document his pain in this Journal (March, 1972, pp. 55- 64). What resulted was an apologia from Novak (Ibid., pp. 65-78), more challenging than defensive. For it appears that Novak meant to offend those very sensibilities which Crouter so ably displays. Not that he would write something to offend, but that this introductory work and nearly everything else he has written are designed to make their central points in a provoca- tive manner. They are designed to pro- mote certain sensibilities and to con- front others. Novak's reply shows just how deliberate he has been about all

this. For he sees better than most just how revealingly our sensibilities play on our metaphysics.

The issues their discussion raises, then, are metaphysical ones. That is, they concern the approach one ought to take in elucidating religious issues. And deciding among approaches means choosing one language and method over another. The reasons we might give for so choosing are inevitably metaphysical reasons, for they must survey a particular language taken as a whole. One who has been taught to eschew reasons of this sort can harken only to his sensibilities. In fact, he usually calls upon venerable and unquestioned loyal- ties. Novak wants to help us focus our attention on those sensibilities from which we in fact operate and then

DAVID BURRELL, C.S.C., is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Chairman of the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana. He was recently elected as Chairman of the Central Committee for the Society for Religion in Higher Education. He has many articles published in both philosophical and theological journals. His book entitled Analogy and Philosophical Language is soon to be published by Yale Press.

JAAR XL/3 (Sept. 1972) ? AAR



350 DAVID BURRELL, C.S.C.

lead us to ask whether they really do reveal the shape of the world as it is. For that is what we will count on them to do.

The issues are revealed, then, by the

shape which our sensibilities allow in-

quiry to assume, and the ways in which those inquiries succeed in shaping their

object. All this lies imbedded in academic praxis. Hence Crouter appeals to a standard practice and Novak ex-

plicitly challenges accepted academic standards. Yet the very force of that

challenge might distract us enough to mistake it for a political statement. The terms of the debate are not political, however, but metaphysical-in the sense explained (which is the sense to which every "radical" aspires). The root issues have to do with theological method, certainly, but also with more than method. They touch upon that special quality of understanding which allows one to understand where he himself stands. Understanding of this sort involves certain strategies: skills which help us to catch hold of the language to which we have such spontaneous re- course that we can take it for granted.

It is this tacit dimension of method that Novak explores in his response, as he tries to show why sensibilities like those which Crouter displays should have been offended. And once he has clarified what is at stake, he can legiti- mately ask that we grant the entire subject more time and thought. Issues like these cannot be decided on the strength of one man's performance, for they ask for self-criticism from an entire discipline. That is why they are most prof- itably seen to be metaphysical issues. Or, if one insists, methodological; but

in a sense of method that calls attention to the performance of the inquirer himself and explicitly incorporates an auto- critical factor.

The source to which Novak appeals for this explicitly post-Cartesian view of method is his mentor, Bernard J. F.

Lonergan. Since Lonergan's awaited

opus on Method in Theology has just appeared (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), the reference should be an easy one to follow up. I suspect that it will not prove to be so, however. For

Lonergan has a way of eluding the con- scientious Anglo-American student of

philosophy or religion; a way of

answering every question except the ones which such a reader brings to him. And at that point he may even be told that Method presupposes Insight (New York, 1957).

I am offering this essay, originally prepared for the Lonergan Conference in 1970, as a way through this impasse. It was designed to interpret Insight to

colleagues trained in Anglo-American philosophy. It can now serve two further purposes for readers of the Re- view: It can provide a background for Lonergan's Method in Theology, and it can bring to a yet sharper focus the issues which Novak raises and which challenge settled procedures in the academic study of religion. These procedures, I have noted, embody metaphysical postures. Lonergan's entire effort in Insight aims at bringing us to a working awareness of this fact. Any- one armed with this awareness will ask more of method than a pattern to be routinely followed. So does Lonergan's study of Method in Theology build upon his earlier Insight.



METHOD AND SENSIBILITY 351

This essay offers a reading of Insight which links that work more with Witt-

genstein and Kierkegaard's pseudony- mous authorship than with Hegel or Whitehead. A prima facie reading of Insight tends to characterize Lonergan as one more systembuilder. The read-

ing I shall propose will carry quite different consequences, and I contend that it is more faithful to the intention that Insight consciously embodies. The

essay begins by tracing his fundamental

epistemological options to the classical tradition in which he did his earliest work and then proceeds to show how central judgment is to the philosophic way which Lonergan elaborates in In-

sight. The criticisms offered of his attempt to prove the existence of God and of his own formulation for judgment lead towards corroborating this reading of Insight. They should help an initial reader to grasp the scope of the issues at stake in Novak's as well as in Lonergan's work, and to assess the eventual cost to himself.

LOCATING LONERGAN

Epistemologically, Insight properly understood allows one to overcome the incoherencies latent in ordinary render- ings of abstraction by reminding us that the triad-experience, understanding and judgment-is located within an intentional way of being, or as Lonergan would have it: a relentless desire to know. This initial and studied concession to "ontologism" allows Lon- ergan to offer a coherent interpretation

of Aquinas' dictum, "being is that which is first known in every act of

knowing," without thereby presuming any full-blown or adequately articulated

knowledge of being. Once reason is linked with a passion for inquiry, one is free to develop a genuinely epi- genetic view of coming to know, and so divert any tendency to want experience to be determinate enough to

"ground" our knowledge. By insisting that a claim to know

that p involves the triad-experience, understanding, and judgment-Loner- gan overcame the temptation to invoke a fido-fido theory of meaning: What- ever is known must be known within a framework (sub aspectu formali cog- noscentis). Furthermore, by distin-

guishing understanding from judgment and by reminding us that judgment yields a "virtually unconditioned" verdict, Lonergan opened a way of re-

sponding to the idealist dilemma: How can we know that p is the case until we have fully located p in a completely elaborated context? His discussion of

judgment as rendering a virtually unconditioned verdict also opens up fruitful avenues for assessing metaphysical and religious statements, since it offers a way of handling the limits of discourse.1

To put it rather mechanically, Loner- gan asks that judgment do the work that Thomists asked of abstraction. Or, to put it more accurately, Lonergan has shown both in his analysis of Aquinas on abstraction and in his analysis of

'It is in considerations of judgment that Lonergan broaches the "external" questions involved with accepting or rejecting the frameworks we in fact employ. Cf. my "Analogy and Judgment" in Spirit as Inquiry, ed. by F. E. Crowe, S.J. (Chicago, 1964) [= Con- tinuum 2 (1964)] 134-146.




the ways we in fact come to understand and assert that p, that any under-

standing of a situation, involves formu-

lating what the case is. And every formulation implies a framework. Hence, all understanding is inescapably abstract, because any framework exercises discrimination on those features relevant to this formulation. Further- more, unless this entire process is car- ried out with quality of conscious self-

positioning which Lonergan calls judgment, our native tendency will be to assume that the object as we have come to know it is the object to be known. In the concrete dynamics of human discussion, to abstract will be to lie. So abstrahere EST mentiri, unless that

process summarily termed abstraction includes the quality of awareness which

Lonergan isolates as an act of self-conscious positioning regarding what one asserts--namely, a judgment.

A Closer Look at Judgment But to realize that one is up to some-

thing in employing a conceptual framework is already to be able to assume a

posture towards one's own understand-

ing. And if this posture is to be a re-

sponsible one, it will have to exhibit intelligible characteristics. At the same time we are not entitled to bring for- ward yet another act of understanding, since we are speaking of a posture which one is able to assume towards any act of understanding. So runs the logic of Lonergan's account of experience, understanding, and judgment.

Like most "accounts" of understanding, its own status is difficult to assess. Lonergan argues that his account is accessible and defensible in its own

terms. We certainly are aware of ex-

perience, understanding and judgment. We can also understand how the ful- fillment of this pattern would amount to knowing, and I am capable of judging whether or not what he has offered is in fact the case. To substantiate the specific terms of the progression, the distinction between understanding and judgment recaptures in its own way an indispensable semantic distinction between proposition and statement. To distinguish in this manner helps to clarify discussions like those which sur- rounded the assertion sign in Principia Mathematica. While the book is entitled Insight, and while an act of understanding would not be what it is were it not for the unaccountable plus- factor which insight contributes, merely asserting the fact of insight could not establish Lonergan's epistemological breakthrough. It is rather his reminder that insights demand formulation, and that formulations carry conditions which we can judge to be fulfilled or not. This progressive and progressively articulate rendering of our intentional and cognitive situation establishes In- sight's philosophic merit and offers some excuse for its prolixity.

Furthermore, the reminders about articulation and judgment do not simply amount to further remarks about insight, as cursory readers might assume as they tried to understand judgment on the model of insight. For while the act of judging may involve a bevy of insights, judging itself cannot be an insight, because it proceeds to the dis- position of those formulations which embody insights. Such is the logic of the matter. Were judging an insight,




it would have to be an insight of the whole, discerning precisely where the statement in question fits. What would result would be a classical rendition of idealism. Furthermore, were judging an insight, it would demand formulation, verification and so on ad infini- tum. Lonergan's distinctive contribution of the "virtually unconditioned" would find no place.

But what is it about judging that allows it to cap off a stage of the know-

ing process? Certainly today's set of

judgments do set the stage for tomor- row's experiences. The triad which

Lonergan associates with coming-to- know is always recurring; the process is ongoing. Yet "judgment" denomi- nates that culminating aspect for any particular stage, when one-quite conscious of the peculiar manner supplied by the language in which he has formulated his understanding-nonetheless asserts that such is indeed (or probably) the case. In what does this consciousness and hence resolve consist? And how could we go about trying to answer that question?

Certainly the consciousness that

guides insight has something to do with it, but this is obviously too general a remark. Classically judgment is associated with a reduplication of that consciousness; hence the expression, "reflective insight." The metaphor of

positioning and expressly of self-positioning also comes to mind, in an effort to plot the angle of perspective on an object against a common factor or background. It is the common factor or background which renders this meta-

phor suspect, much like Newton's demand for fixed parameters of space and time. Lonergan's description of

judgment as establishing (certainly or

probably) a statement to be virtually unconditioned involves "grasping the

sufficiency of the evidence made for the claim." We shall look into this

description more carefully in the next section.

Let it simply be said now that the

original formulation implies criteria, yet it avoids asking how such criteria function. This apparent oversight has misled some to characterize judgment as another insight: one which sees that the evidence is sufficient. We shall discover that this will not do. Further- more, by avoiding the straightforward questions associated with justification, we may miss the revealing fact that criteria are logically involved in any judgment that is more than a routine checking operation, but that their role or manner of functioning is elusive to the point of paradox.2 One suspects that criteria functions much like rules in the expression "semantic rule." Con- vinced that semantic behavior is intel- ligent, we are led to postulate rules, yet no one has been able to formulate any rules specific enough to function as a respectable rule should.

Again, perhaps Lonergan's avoiding asking how criteria function in passing judgment is more perceptive than at first appears. It may well be that judgment is and must be employed in such a manner as to defuse the how-question. In its place we might find ourselves substituting a more dispositional

2 On the intrinsically paradoxical character of criteria for judgment, cf. "Analogy and Judgment."




and less algorithmic formulation, some-

thing like a know-how.

Preview of an Alternative Formulation

The preceding remarks have sketched the main lines of the hypothesis that I shall argue in detail in the following sections of this essay: that the most fruitful way of characterizing that dimension of the activity of coming to know that p is the case which Lonergan calls judgment would be to call it a know-how. And a specific know-how:

knowing how to use the language in

question. To anticipate, an insight begs formu-

lation, and a formula implies a lan-

guage, where by language we mean a set of "trules" specifying acceptable inferences. But of all possible inferences licensed by the language, which pathway should we follow in the inquiry at hand? The response to this question involves a "feel," a sense for the lay of the land, a bump of direction. The moment of judgment is a moment of relevance: Of what issue is the tissue of interconnected insights which we have called a language? How is one to

put it to use? The judgment of fit: "that's right"

to a certain metaphor that comes for- ward to fill the space awaiting it, sounds like the Eureka! of an insight. It further shares with insight that mys- terious self-authenticating tone, yet the judgment differs from the insight in

one crucial character. There is no formulation in the offing to embody the

activity of judging, nor is an unambig- uous formulation available should we demand one. The entire activity is more like a feel for the subject at hand, a know-how with respect to the lan-

guage employed. Again to anticipate, there is some-

thing congenial about this formulation of judgment. It accentuates the crafts- man image of a human knower. It reminds us that flying by the seat of one's

pants is a decidedly rational way of

proceeding. Finally, it brings the system-building aspiration of a philosopher into perspective by reserving a

higher place as well as a less preten- tious manner for the activity of assess- ment. Above all, it recalls many common associations with "good judgment."

INSIGHT AS AN EXERCISE TO JUDGMENT

The most frequent and most re-

spectable way of misreading Insight would be to take it as a theory of human understanding.8 It is a common

misreading because the level of gen- erality on which the book proceeds makes it look as though it is proposing a theory. But a theory must exclude the

subject, while Insight includes the subject operatively: "'We are concerned not with the existence of knowledge but with its nature, not with what is

SThis is what Michael Novak has appreciated so well, and what Edward MacKinnon manages to miss completely. Hence however useful the comprehensive summary he has offered, his critical remarks tend to miss the point: "Understanding according to Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S.J.," Thomist 28 (1964), 97-132, 338-372, and esp. 475-522. Inter alia one may refer to Novak's contribution to Spirit as Inquiry, "Lonergan's Starting Place: the Performance of Asking Questions," 89-101.




known but with the structures of the knowing, not with the abstract prop- erties of cognitional process but with a personal appropriation of one's own dynamic and recurrently operative structure of cognitional activity" (p. xxiii). Again, a theory must establish criteria of verification, yet Lonergan explicitly eschews the criteria question: "The crucial issue is an experi- mental issue, and the experiment will be performed not publicly but private- ly. It will consist in one's own rational self-consciousness clearly and distinctly taking possession of itself as rational self-consciousness. Up to that decisive achievement, all leads. From it, all follows" (p. xviii).

But if Insight is mis-taken as a theory of knowledge, what is it? If it does not offer a reconstruction, is it then a description? Or is it something else again, like a way? What it seems to have issued in for many people is sound advice. That is, it contains reminders salient and accurate enough to gain our acceptance. One may then assemble these reminders, as Lonergan himself has, into a program which offers breath-taking intellectual libera- tion. In this sense, Lonergan frees one to go on.

Take the focus of our considerations, judgment. Lonergan does not elaborate what it is so much as offer us a pattern within which it "functions." He reminds us of the two basic question forms: what is X? and does X exist? He then suggests three "levels" of intellectual activity-experience, understanding, and judgment-which form the structure for his analysis of the manner in which we know. The

scheme itself proves irreducibly vague, but most of the exposition in Insight amounts to illustrations which show how our manifold experiences of coming-to-know exhibit one feature or another of the scheme. Much of the rest of the book consists in recommenda- tions how to implement a scheme so utterly flexible.

Yet the scheme itself calls for some elucidation. It is at this point that Lonergan borders on theory, for he pre- sumes to assimilate judgment to insight, thereby hoping that the detailed analysis of the early chapters of the book will do double-duty for an exposition of judgment:

Like the acts of direct and introspec- tive understanding, the act of reflective understanding is an insight. As they meet questions for intelligence, it meets questions for reflection. As they lead to definitions and formulations, it leads to judgments. As they grasp unity, or system, or ideal frequency, it grasps the sufficiency of the evidence for a prospective judgment. (p. 279)

Yet of course a judgment which "grasps sufficiency" is not articulating a pattern, but seems more like the feeling that the pattern one is using does in fact fit.

As I have already suggested, there must in fact be a logical discontinuity between insight-cum-formulation and judgment, if judgment is to respond to a different question (is it the case?) and also to culminate the process of understanding initiated by the original question: What is it? Unless we recognize this logical discontinuity, we could easily be overtaken by the readily recurring metaphor of taking-a-look.




Then "grasping the sufficiency of the evidence" would be to see that it is sufficient. Or more graphically, to position oneself and the assertions in question by placing them in perspective would be to see them in relation to "the whole." This last familiar statement issues in idealism and makes it the ism which it is. If Lonergan is to avoid this classical "counter-position," it will be because he recognizes the logical discontinuity between judgment and insight, even though he may not have adequately formulated the distinction between them. Let us see how this is in fact the case.

Were one able to consider "the sufficiency of the evidence" as a distinctive pattern, then judgment could be assimilated to insight. Lonergan poses the question in these terms: what are the scales on which evidence is weighed? (p. 279), but never answers it in those terms. Instead he formulates a criterion which can never be assimilated to a distinctive pattern: "When there are no further questions, the insight is invulnerable" (p. 284). And he insists that this open-ended remark serves as a criterion, "the basic element in our solution";

the link between the conditioned and its conditions, is a law immanent and operative in cognitional process. The conditioned is the prospective judgment: this or that direct or introspec- tive insight is correct. The immanent law of cognitional process may be formulated from our analysis. Such an insight is correct, if there are no further, pertinent questions. (p. 284)

He avoids remarking the logical nov- elty such a criterion affords, but shows that he is aware of the difference in

treatment by changing pace. At this point he shifts to personal recommen- dations:

How is one to know when it is reached? ... in the first place, one has to give the further questions the chance to arise .... One has to take the steps needed for that retinue to come to life.

. Something equivalent is to be sought by intellectual alertness, by taking one's time, by talking things over, by putting viewpoints to the test of action. . . . Behind the theory of correct insight is a theory of correct problems.... An inquirer that understands the background of the situation . .. knows what is to be expected.... In the third place, then, there is the process of learning. . ... It is the process of learning that breaks the vicious circle. (pp. 285-286)

As a theoretic statement, these recom- mendations are freighted with ambiguities, just as the criterion-that no further questions do arise--is inapplicable in any recursive manner. Which is to say, of course, that it does not function as a theoretic criterion should. The ultimate reason why Lonergan's account will not work as a theory is precisely that he does not pretend to seek a justification for coming-to-know that p is the case. In fact, he asserts quite explicitly:

Nor in the last resort can one reach a deeper foundation than that pragmatic engagement. Even to seek it involves a vicious circle; for if one seeks such a foundation, one employs one's cognitional process; and the foundation to be reached will be no more secure or solid than the inquiry utilized to reach it. As I might not be, as I might be other than I am, so my knowing might not be and it might be other than it is. The ultimate basis of our




knowing is not necessity but contin- gent fact, and the fact is established, not prior to our engagement in knowing, but simultaneously with it. (p. 332)

What has been remarked so far sounds crippling, yet it is crippling only if Lonergan is proposing a theory of knowledge. If he is not, these obser- vations become precise hermeneutic pointers to what he is doing. For to insist that the "criterion" is inapplicable is to say that not just anybody can do it. There is no routinization possible, no mechanical or algorithmic method available: "Were there some simple formula or recipe in answer to such questions, then men of good judgment could be produced at will and in-

definitely" (p. 285). To say that Lon-

ergan's account won't work as a theory is to say that something more than just anyone is required to instantiate it. In that case, then, what is affirmed in In- sight essentially involves the one affirming it-not his idiosyncratic viewpoint but his actual performance. This, I take it, is what Lonergan means when he announces his intent to translate every metaphysical issue into a question of concrete psychological fact.4

Beyond System

I am simply saying in the most decisive possible way that Lonergan's account can only be mis-taken as a theory. For as a theory not only will it not "work" but it also begs innumerable questions along the way. These remarks will help us to locate Lonergan's account of human understanding in In-

sight. Lonergan himself notes that this

type of elucidation eludes his earlier distinction between explanation and

description (p. 333). Since it purports to lay down an invariant structure, it looks like an explanation. Yet because statements involving consciousness en-

joy a privileged status, what is said often looks like a description. It would look more like a description were one to be reminded of Wittenstein's use of that term in the Philosophical Investi-

gations-reflecting all the while on

Lonergan's battle against knowing as

"taking a look":

We must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place. And this description gets its light, that is to say its purpose-from the philosophical problems. These are, of course, not empirical problems; they are solved, rather, by looking into the workings of our language, and that in such a way as to make us recognize those workings: in despite of an urge to misunderstand them. The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have always known. Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language. (No. 109)

Perhaps the best way to begin answering one's questions about what Lonergan is up to would be to try to identify the experience we have upon undertaking the journey which Insight becomes. The most common description is liberating, for Lonergan does succeed for many in providing sufficient insight into insight that one may trust his own understanding and go on

' Cf. Lonergan's own contribution to Spirit as Inquiry: "Cognitional Structures."




(p. xxvii). In that sense and to that

end-enabling one to go on-Loner-

gan's description does attain what it claims: a universal viewpoint (p. 568). Yet this expression is notori-

ously ambiguous. Lonergan's project, for example, has little or nothing in common with Whitehead's, where

metaphysics claims a universal view-

point by attempting to describe the most general features of reality.5 The tenor of Whitehead's claim harkens to that view of knowing modeled on "taking a look" which Lonergan regards as

perniciously pervasive. The only uni-

versality which Insight affords is a

grasp of understanding which allows one to trust his understanding. Those students of Lonergan, furthermore, who have taken him in this way do not busy themselves elaborating his remarks, but have gone on to do other things.

Thus in its capacity to unify one's

understanding of understanding, In-

sight functions more like a theory of

knowledge. Yet by scrupulously avoid-

ing any claim to be observer-neutral, we seem to be offered a phenomeno- logical description. To the extent, however, that the conclusions of Insight are not restricted to any particular observer or formulation, but rather capable of attainment by any observer, the work becomes universal without for that being abstract.

So Insight can neither be called ex-

planation nor description; its results are utterly general without being abstract: as utterly general, they are ana-

lytic; yet as involving performance they are synthetic. The aim of this method is to elicit the reader's recognition: That's it! Lonergan does this by offer-

ing a description in general enough terms that it could forever be argued or simply be accepted. And if it is

accepted, one is free to move on. And in moving one, more and more of oneself is engaged, and yet engaged more and more freely. For the descriptions to which one has assented form a cum- ulative set and progressively free one to do what he is doing, since he now understands what he is doing that much better. What is being effected is a man's relationship to himself and to his world. What results is a freedom to go on to do his thing and become what he is. Lonergan's introductory remarks about method in metaphysics make this point explicitly:

A method is a set of directives that serve to guide a process toward a result. The result, at which we are aim- ing, is the explicit metaphysics outlined in the previous section. It would consist in a symbolic indication of the total range of possible experience, in a set of acts of insight that unify such experience, and in a grasp of the virtually unconditioned issuing in a reas-

"Whitehead's procedure is the most cogent testimony that I can offer, although Don- ald Sherburne has collected his ex professo statements in an appendix to his Key to White- head's Process and Reality (New York, 1966) entitled "In Defense of Speculative Philoso- phy." Hence: "Speculative Philosophy is the endeavor to frame a coherent, logical, neces- sary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted,... i.e., shall have the character of a particular instance of the general scheme" (p. 191, = Process and Reality [New York, 1960] p. 4). He will, of course, demur: "Philosophers can never hope finally to formulate these metaphysical first principles" (Key, p. 192; Process, p. 6), but the ideal remains that of the most general science of all.




onable affirmation of the unified view. This result can exist only in the empirical, intellectual, and rational consciousness of the self-affirming subject. Metaphysics, then, is not something in a book but something in a mind. Moreover, it is produced not by a book but only by the mind in which it is. ... Explicit metaphysics is a personal attainment. (p. 396)

He goes on to outline the movement from latent to explicit metaphysics in a paragraph which reads like a summary of the entire book:

As the subject's advertence to the poly- morphism of his consciousness leads to a transforming reorientation of his sci- entific opinions and his common sense, so his advertance both to his detached and disinterested desire to know and to the immanent structure of its un- folding leads to an integration of what is known and what is to be known of the universe of proportionate being. It is in this integration that metaphysics becomes explicit. . . . (p. 399)

Metaphysical Discourse

Here we are at the heart of Insight and close to the reasons why one might misinterpret it as a theory. The first reason, of course, is that we have come to expect theory, and the second is closely linked to it: the book is written in an expository fashion, and many theoretic-sounding assertions are made. I have noted that to isolate these and criticize them would be an endless process, and fruitless as well if the book does not present a theory. By attending closely to the actual procedure which Lonergan employs, and asking oneself the difficult questions about how it is to be understood and to be taken, we can come into posses-

sion of a revolutionary approach to doing philosophy. For it is Lonergan's procedure which not only respects but gives a model for understanding the unique character of metaphysical statements.

The endless arguments between idealists and realists which compose chapters for texts in the history of philosophy all testify to a failure to appreciate the unique character of metaphysical statements. For anyone who subscribes to either label appar- ently conceives of himself as providing an utterly general description without a subject. That is, the realist offers us a panorama into which the subject is free to fit as another object, while the idealist asserts that the panorama re- flects or projects the ideal subject. To the extent, however, that anyone's philosophic work fits this description, he has failed to realize that it is not the objective features of a subject which must be incorporated into one's aspiration to a universal viewpoint. What must be incorporated is rather what makes a subject a subject: its performance. Once this has been recognized, of course, the metaphor of a "viewpoint" ceases to carry us towards our goal and begins to hinder our understanding what it is we are about.

Lonergan's contribution has pro- vided us with a manner of characterizing metaphysical statements by show- ing forth their peculiar nature in a book which succeeds only to the extent that it elicits our performance parallel to it own exposition. So in spite of appearances to the contrary, Lonergan's way of philosophic inquiry bears more affinities to Wittgenstein's Philosophi-




cal Investigations and to Kierkegaard's multiple exercises in "indirect com- munication" than it does to Hegel or Whitehead. Far from being "philosophy in the grand style," Insight prom- ises a "universal viewpoint" only to one who is prepared to latch onto the moving viewpoint from which the book is

confessedly composed; and a closer look at the method employed reveals that this "moving viewpoint" functions as it should only when it succeeds in

shaping the style of my life. So while Insight's expository and magisterial manner likens it to Hegel's comprehensive synthesis, what proves liberating about the book and unique about the procedure is a conception of philosophy as disciplined therapy which reminds one more of the relentless ques- tioning of the Investigations or the polymorphic self-critical inquiry car- ried on by Kierkegaard under his multiple pseudonyms.

PHILOSOPHY AS A WAY OF LIFE

In addition to the recurring tendency to misinterpret Insight as a theory of knowledge-a temptation every bit as endemic as the tendency to view knowing as "taking a look"-there remain two features of Lonergan's own performance which jeopardize one's assimilating Insight in the manner which I have described. One such feature appears in Chapter XIX, where Lonergan affirms an unrestricted act of understanding: that is, something which I cannot perform nor whose performance can I conceive. If Insight

succeeds to the extent that it elicits my parallel performance, then Chapter XIX must fail. For if it suceeds, In- sight becomes metaphysics in the grand style and fails of its aim. If the chapter fails, on the other hand, it must fail by the very principles which Lonergan himself has enunciated; otherwise In- sight falls short of completeness. I have argued elsewhere and shall argue with renewed vigor here that Chapter XIX not only betrays the movement of Insight but can be shown to do so from the very procedure exhibited in the work itself.6 The other way in which Lonergan jeopardizes his own peculiar achievements is in offering too syncretic an account of judgment. His systematizing tendencies lead him to assimilate judgment to an insight. I have suggested and shall argue that too close an assimilation neutralizes the virtue specific to the "moving viewpoint" which characterizes the pecu- liarly fruitful procedure of Insight.

Proper Formulation for Judgment If judgment has to do with the ap-

propriateness of an expression or the fit of a particular language, then (following the linguistic lead of the metaphor) it is better felt than seen. Judg- ment re-introduces the individual in his subjectivity-though this individual has been subjected to a rigorous discipline and his subjectivity weaned away from the purely idiosyncratic. When he spoke of a criterion, Loner- gan offered the open-ended formulation of questions no longer arising.

6 "How Complete Can Intelligibility Be? A Commentary on Insight: Chapter XIX," Proceedings American Catholic Philosophical Association 1967, 250-253.




One could speak as fruitfully of a feeling of congruence, lightness or peace. That Lonergan does not employ these terms is certainly to his credit, for these too look like but are not criteria.

My suggestion has been that judgment is rather more like a know-how. That is, if it is more like a feeling than a clear view, it is not a raw feel but a disciplined feel-like that associated with skill or know-how. This would amount to a discriminating sense that no relevant questions remain. So far, if anything I have said amounts to a substantial correction of Lonergan's language about judgment, I have done so by trading more explicitly and dog- gedly on the connotations of judgment. So far as philosophical expositions are concerned, there is little doubt that Lonergan's triad of experience/understanding/judgment offers a significant advance over other more foundational elucidations of coming-to-know. His account eschews certitude just as his manner of proceeding exhibits and establishes an account of metaphysics alternative to "the most general description of reality." For this latter conception falters on the same logical rock as the quest for certitude: just as it proves vain to ask for a guarantee that I know p to be the case, so nothing can guarantee that a description offered is the most general description of all.

In Lonergan's terms, however, how does one know that no further questions will arise? He does not know it, of course, and cannot know it, since the judgment that no further questions will arise is precisely what is ingredient in knowing that something is the case.

It is here that one is tempted to say: He must feel it to be the case. Yet this expression, while more immediately evocative than know, nonetheless shares many of the ambiguities and the logical improprieties of intuition. One would have to be able to ask which feeling works in which case, and the one who answered would have to be able to say how he knew which feeling worked in which case. In most general terms, we are faced with a recurring difficulty for epistemology: How can a rational process which of its nature is mediated, corrigible and articulate, culminate in an event which is described in terms which make it imme- diate, incorrigible and inarticulate? And yet we can also respond: How else can such a process culminate?

Our difficulty has been compounded, however, by casting it in such utterly general terms. These terms feed our temptation to identify the expression "John feels that no more questions will arise" with "a feeling (on the part of whomever) that no more questions will arise." This innocent linguistic shift effectively cuts the feeling away from John and leads to questions about identifying it as though it were the sort of thing that one identifies and re- identifies-namely, a substance. Hence my proposal: If we are to yield to the temptation to speak of someone's feeling that no more questions will arise (and obviously we are close to something genuine if the temptation is so strong!), it were best to observe a more precise sense of "feeling" associated with a certain know-how. Then we would be less tempted to disasso- ciate the feeling from the skilled per-




son and the exercises which he must undertake to possess the know-how which he does.

What we find ourselves doing in this linguistic exploration is reaffirm-

ing the individuality, even the bodili- ness of consciousness. And we are do-

ing so precisely at that point where

understanding culminates in objective knowing: The judgment that what I understand to be the case is indeed the case. At this point we stumble over the

paradox of knowing, or to put it more

explicitly, of objective knowing. Be- cause so much philosophy, notably since Kant, concerns itself with "objective knowing," to grasp this paradox is to lay hold of a way of doing philosophy. As Lonergan might put it, what can be more objective than mature and critical subjectivity? Indeed, the more

misleading term in this elusive con-

trariety turns out to be objective, for it

pretends to circumvent consciousness. Another way of putting it would be

to remind ourselves that a statement can at best state what is the case, not that it is the case. That something is the case can neither be stated nor need it be stated; it suffices that the statement be made. But what is it that jus- tifies one's affirming that what is said to be the case is in fact the case? A

judgment, of course. And what is a

judgment? A judgment is when it happens that one affirms that what he says to be the case is in fact the case...

-- another way of reminding ourselves that justification is not itself a formal procedure. Otherwise judgment would occupy the same logical space as understanding; one could know that any single statement was true only to the

extent that it fit within a larger schema; and the aim of philosophy would necessarily become a search for the most comprehensive schema of all.

If on the other hand, philosophy refers rather to a special critical ability which allows us to discriminate true statements from false, fruitful formulations from misleading ones, felicitous expressions from cruder ones, then the best thing it could do would be to bring us to trust our judgment when it happens. And this, I take it, is both the expressed and the operating aim of Insight. Hence it veers when properly understood much closer to that conception of doing philosophy associated with the later Wittgenstein and with the philosopher Kierkegaard than with "philosophy in the grand style." In fact, one might discriminate between fruitful and mistaken readings of In- sight by examining his subsequent understanding of subjectivity. My contention has been that if one does Insight as the exercise it is meant to be, then that subjectivity of which Kierkegaard speaks, that critical awareness of oneself and where one stands which he dramatizes in the diverse pseudonyms, comes to fill the job description once held by "objectivity." Part of my contention has been that a systematizing tendency on Lonergan's part to assimilate judgment to insight contributes to a mistaken reading of his work, and misleads one as to Lonergan's final conception of what it is to do philosophy. These contextual and linguistic explo- rations have contributed to elucidating that contention. My second proposal was that Chapter XIX betrays this genuinely revolutionary conception of do-




ing philosophy since it tries to go on to draw a philosophic conclusion- when the upshot of Insight as a discipline moves precisely beyond conclusions and formulations.

Transcendent Knowledge?

The mini-proof of Chapter XIX reads as follows:

If the real is completely intelligible, God exists. But the real is completely intelligible, therefore God exists. (p. 672)

The condition is established through establishing the cognate premise: Be- ing is completely intelligible. Loner- gan's argumentation proceeds nearly oblivious of the careful conditions established for judgment throughout In- sight. Indeed the once fashionable charge of idealism, utterly inappropri- ate to the rest of the book, finds prise here. We would see this immediately were we to ask whether being is, in fact, intelligible? For that little "in fact" would immediately trigger the question as odd and indeed paradoxical. For how could we possibly ascer- tain whether the entire context within which our judgments are made was itself intelligible? And to sensitize ourselves to this paradox would have the advantage of displaying the logical space into which we stumble with such a question. Lonergan's formulation: whether being is completely intelligible? masks the logical peculiarity of the question. For this allows him to affirm that being as the objective of the pure desire to know is indeed intelligible, but this is no news at all.

We are not dealing here with a

judgment, as we would be were we to ask whether being is in fact intelligible, but with the very conditions for understanding and judgment, some- times formulated as the "principle of sufficient reason." Yet if the condition for God's existence is to be affirmed, that affirmation must amount to something more than a reiteration of the principle of sufficient reason; it must amount to an affirmation that being is in fact intelligible. For these are the only affirmations which we know. Otherwise we find ourselves dealing with another variety of "ontological proof."

It is admittedly odd to ask whether being is in fact intelligible, but the admitted oddness has the advantage of revealing to us what it is precisely that we are up to. How could we manage to affirm that being was in fact intelligible? There are ways, of course. One could do yoga breathing and chuckle; one could remark that ordinary language is perfectly in order; one could dance before the ark, or leap in the air and land in the same spot. Or again, one could be faithful to his wife and/or to his God; one could let himself be loved and feel his way into his own individual life and destiny- all of which is to say that the best metaphysics makes itself superfluous. And finally, there is the chance that one could in such a state receive the key to a new intelligibility-a factual key to a factual intelligibility: the Incarna- tion.

What I am trying to gesture towards with these reminders is that the truth of the statement that being is intelligible cannot be argued, for both the




meaning of what is asserted as well as the quality of spirit which could assert it demand personal integration. And furthermore, I take this realization to be utterly central to the sort of thing which Lonergan is doing in Insight. It is my suspicion that Chapter XIX

betrays the authentic movement of the rest of the book precisely because it tries to translate the vision of all things ordained to give greater glory to God into an argument. Yet a vision is not an argument, and knowing of the kind that involves affirming that something is the case is not formally advanced by vision.

On the other hand, one may cer-

tainly allow himself to be so overtaken

by the exigencies of the demand for

intelligibility in all his actions that he not only becomes convinced that being is in fact intelligible, but gives witness to that conviction in the manner in which his life is transformed.7 Further- more, it is difficult to see what could count as a more cogent testimony to what is the case at this level of pur- suing truth than the testimony of personal embodiment. Yet personal embodiment is not for that a proof. Once again, we are reminded that one who has renounced knowing as taking a look may still find himself hankering for an overview. In fact, nothing speaks so eloquently in favor of philosophy as a continual therapeutic discipline than occasional backsliding on the part of its obviously disciplined performers.

One final reference may be in order lest our linking of Lonergan to Kierke-

gaard be a baffling one. In the Philo-

sophical Fragments Kierkegaard speaks of "the Unknown." He gives this paradoxical expression some determinate

meaning in the context, and one sense

compatible with Kierkegaard's discussion and reminiscent of Lonergan would be to paraphrase the expression by the question: Is it all worth it? Does it all make sense? The answer to these questions, were it available, would function like Kirkegaard's ex-

pression "the truth"-i.e., the secret which animates everything else one does. Kierkegaard takes chapter three of the Fragments to show us how ut-

terly paradoxical such a question turns out to be: What would count as show-

ing that it all makes sense? To ask the

question that way is to remind us that we would be baffled to say; hence, the entire logical neighborhood into which

questions like this introduce us may properly be called "the Unknown." What will then be required of philosophy is certainly not to try to make known what is unknown, but rather to

discipline one to live with it and in that way to deal with questions whose answers reach beyond our capacity to frame them. How better characterize what "transcendent knowledge" ought to be for one who has assimilated the discipline of Insight?

A MORE APPROPRIATE IDIOM?

If my critical reading of Insight is correct, Lonergan not only fails to characterize judgment in a fruitful way but is himself misled by too hasty an

'I am grateful to Jon Nilson, a graduate student in theology at Notre Dame, for this

way of formulating the kind of intellibility available to us here.




assimilation of judgment to insight. Hence, we are left with the task of trying to come closer to characterizing that logical space occupied by judgment. My tentative proposal is that rendering judgment amounts to knowing how to use a language. My subsequent remarks will try to unravel some of the ambiguities in this model for judgment.

This way of characterizing judgment has the initial advantage of capturing what Lonergan is able to capture, namely Aquinas' insistence that being is known in every act of knowing. Lonergan identifies the being which is so known as the objective of the pure desire to know; we would go on to characterize it as the conscious capacity to use language. Then a judgment regarding the appropriateness of any specific framework would amount to knowing how to use the particular language in question. Knowing how to use a language involves a certain feel for appropriate expressions; it brings one to pursue one pathway rather than another, to adopt one model in prefer- ence to the many which offer themselves in the language. So knowing- how displays a certain finesse in moving about amongst the myriad possibil- ities which the syntax of the language makes available.

To speak in this way also invites an initial parallel between judgment and insight. For insights also demand expression. Indeed, to have an insight involves bringing hitherto disparate terms into a single formula: So that's how it is! Our society is built on har-

nessing aggression, and this involves promoting ego-trips. So before he knows it, a man's entire life is shaped by this pattern. Once remarking this fact, we are now able to see what we could not see before. And when insights like this begin to coalesce, a person can build on them and use shorthand terms (like "military-indus- trial complex") with a more respon- sible ease.8

Yet isn't this process of developing insight precisely what one terms "knowing how to use a language?" So far what has adopting a particular expression to do with judging that something is the case? Our discussion could remain theoretical and detached-and isn't this what we mean by a "theoretical investigation": one which for all its fluency remains hypothetical and bracketed? Yet how does one remove the brackets? What does removing them amount to? My proposal is that to remove the brackets simply means living by what he is saying-that is, letting the shape of his language shape his activity. One is reminded of Loner- gan's remarks: "Nor in the last resort can one reach a deeper foundation than that pragmatic engagement" (p. 332). In the example we have given, he can knowingly shape himself to society as he recognizes it to be, or he may consciously adopt a variant life style, understanding that it is variant and hence be prepared for what may issue from that fact.

On this view, we let the language we have learned how to use have at us where it can, by accepting its logic into

8 Cf. Julius Kovesi, Moral Notions (London, 1969) for a detailed account of this development and its relevance to ethics.




the shaping of our lives. In this sense, our lives become experiments with truth, and so long as undermining questions do not arise as we live into this way of life and this language, then we have judged this language to yield the shape of that world which it pro- poses to articulate. What we then feel, and what others may well remark upon, is a certain congruence or fit between what we say and what we do. And this

congruent feeling issues in a much greater confidence in using the language appropriate to this domain. But does it also lead to greater detachment and openness to criticism?

If no interior movement were involved in learning how to use a language, then the answer would be no. In that case, the movement from un-

derstanding to judgment would be little more than indoctrination, and the judgment we have associated with using the language would simply amount to group reinforcement. Yet another attitude is available to us: that of living into where we find ourselves to be. And the empirical results of such a posture are that we become more free to conceive and rehearse alternatives. Hence the paradox of knowing and judging takes flesh: The more consciously and freely we adopt a life-style the more we become free to appreciate and live our way into alternative ways of life and of expression.

What I have proposed is proposed in a tenuous and suggestive manner in

order to help clarify the notion of judgment which functions so centrally in Lonergan's thought. Indeed, as I have tried to show, judgment is so utterly central that to misunderstand it is to misread Insight entirely.9 Yet I have also argued that Lonergan's failure to find an idiom appropriate to judgment together with his tendency to assimilate it to insight, itself contributes to a misreading of the work. What this initial attempt at characterizing judgment shows most fruitfully is that Lonergan has in fact offered us an alternative conception of doing philosophy, a conception with multiple affinities to that which may be gleaned from the procedures of Wittgenstein in the Philosophical Investigations.

Philosophy becomes more a discipline than a system, for the subject- the philosopher-is himself intimately engaged in his work. The work issues less in conclusions than it does in a know-how, a skill, a new power. To exercise this capacity is to become conscious of it, and to exercise it consciously is to understand whence one says what he says and does what he does. It is this capacity to understand where it is that one stands as shown forth in an increasing discrimination and finesse that adds up to the philosophic temper. In this way, standard questions of criteria become rather reflective opportunities for self-possession. And precisely at this point all of the paradoxes surrounding self-possession begin to arise.

' This perspective on Lonergan characterizes the comprehensive study of David Tracy: The Achievement of Bernard Lonergan (New York, 1970). I am grateful for many discussions with David Tracy, though I would not want to make him party to the strong thesis of this essay.




Perhaps the easiest and most direct way to summarize these reflections is to point out the affinities between judgment and decision. For the im- portant decisions of our life, it seems, are less the sort of thing we do or make than they are a gradual accepting of where it is that I in fact stand. In that sense, to decide is to have decided just as to judge is to have judged. But

more importantly, perhaps, to reach a judgment-like reaching a decision- is to have touched something within myself which otherwise need not be called into play. One might put it dra- matically by saying that while I have insights, I become my judgments. Lan- guage, or better, knowing how to use a language, becomes a way of life.



method and sensibility: novak's debt to lonergan

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