Untitled Page

Monday, January 25, 2010

Introduction To The Sgeme Blog
By Robert Henman

We now have a web blog setup at SGEME.org. We ask that you feel free to offer to the group your interests, your present ongoing work, your suggestions. Through this open dialogue we plan to suggest direction and connections with members involved in similar work areas. This will be in the order of simple beginnings that have the potential to develop into a scheme of recurrence towards a more theoretical and functional collaborative enterprise. Such beginnings offer us all a glimpse of the process of implementation so necessary in Lonergan Studies.

The history of Lonergan Studies has shown that it is often all too easy to slip into a form of dialogue that diverts attention away from the difficult task of theoretical understanding and yet that task is the "way" of implementation. Our SGEME membership highlights two modes of participation and perhaps my effort here to refine and distinguish those modes will give a focus to our discussions.

There are those of us who are working at understanding aspects of Lonergan's thought and there are those who are working on a research project, thesis or some similar effort. These two efforts require different forms of dialogue and yet offer the possibility of interplay. What will open the process up for development is the offering of your insights, in whatever mode you are in, within the context of Lonergan's thought, avoiding the descriptive and comparative activity that has dominated Lonergan Studies to date. Each mode can be helpful to the other and the public dialogue format allows us to communicate questions, seek after insights and formulations in a manner that will help us to find where we are in regard to having a shared common basis.

This is our simple beginning. Hopefully the suggestion of simplicity brings to mind Lonergan's recalling of Descartes; who "was convinced that too many people felt it beneath them to direct their efforts to apparently trifling problems." (INSIGHT, Chapter 1, page 27, CWL3). Perhaps we will find this to be a fresh start on that old text?

Posted By Default Admin At 11:20 AM • Comments (5)

A First Follow-up On Bob's Suggestions
by Phil McShane

Bob asked for my input on the orientation of the site and the dialogue, since he knows that I have been thinking of the problems of such dialogue on various websites. How, for instance, are we to avoid ramblings that reach disconnectedly into various authors, contemporary or ancient?

So let me begin with a suggestion that fits our title, SGEME. I split the title in two so as to identify two types of contribution to the site: SG and EME. Not too hard to bear in mind! SG designates the type of contribution that is a Seeking of Guidance. EME is a contribution which "Expresses My Explanation".

The distinction is not at all trivial. Our present situation in Lonergan studies is that the vast majority need to seek guidance: there is a way in which the tradition has moved along e.g. in an avoidance of the grim task of reading oneself reading Insight: "one has not only to read Insight but also to discover oneself in oneself" (Method in Theology, 260). SO; we see the key nudge of Bob's point, a fresh starting into Insight.

I don't want to enlarge on this, or on the types of questions that would emerge: we have to begin, see what emerges AND foster key attitudes in ourselves, [1] being self-critical (recall, from Insight, that characteristic of Cosmopolis) and [2] " being at pains not to conceal his [or her] tracks" (Method in Theology, 193).

This turn to key attitudes leads me to pause over EME.

EME has to be a taking of a stand, and we should find as we go along that the effort here helps us to glimpse the power of Lonergan's suggestions regarding functional collaboration. Again, I want to be brief in these initiating suggestions.

First there is the connection to the second half of page 250 of Method: the investigator objectifying his or her stand. This is vastly important: generalized empirical method in its full operation (A Third Collection, 141, top lines) requires this: a luminousity of self-articulation while articulating one's view of any object. This, simply and sadly, is not being done in present Lonergan studies. Do you not tire of those articles titled "Lonergan and Jones" where the author is somehow hiding, "at pains to cover his tracks"?

But there is a second strategic connection here, pointing towards a beginning of functional collaboration. My Stand, My Explanation, can be identified - slowly, collaboratively - as belonging to a particular functional zone. So, for example, it is MY Explanation that notices a research project: e.g. why don't we pick up on the texts in Lonergan that talk of haute vulgarization (e.g. vol. 6: 121, 155) and see what connection it has with general bias, or with myth and mystery? Does it connect with an interpretation of Fontenelle? .... And so on, round through the specialties with other questions from My Explanatory Stand.

We need to focus on Explanation: the word, the strategy. Bob draws our attention to this: "the difficult task of theoretical understanding". In both SG and EME we need to advert to the bent towards rich description that dominates present Lonergan studies. Rule (2) - page 528 of Insight - regarding "the anticipation of explanatory knowledge" is consistently ignored, with a resulting "pseudometaphysical mythmaking" (ibid). How are we to get into the required attitude? "We shall have to construct a diagram in which are symbolically represented all the various elements of the question" (Constitution of Christ, 151). One such diagramming is offered in Prehumous 2 with its list of Metagrams Wi. They supply something that parallels the periodic table in chemistry.

Finally, need I draw attention to the fact that the focus is on MY? One has to express - shyly, perhaps only to oneself! - one's own honest position. The membership of SGEME includes people of honest common sense who want to see a move to implementation. That interest is to be expressed here, and in sound common sense mode, a mode that challenges theologians and philosophers to shift to the theoretic perspective that is desperately needed. The past few generations of Lonergan teachers have failed to encourage the generations to follow to push for "the level of one's times" (Method, 350: these two pages 350-1 are very direct about the challenge, repeating Insight 555's). We need sound common sense to ask us all; What global good is being offered by Lonergan Studies "in its external relations" (Method, 132)?

Posted By Default Admin At 11:17 AM • Comments (4)