Head and Heart proposes a theory of a triune consciousness formed by the heart and mind, composed of an equal partnership of reason, will, and affection. Professor Tallon sets out asking whether and how affective consciousness fits into this triad. By first defining affection in terms of intentionality (as the theory of a triune consciousness is possible only when affectivity has been shown to participate in intentionality), he argues that affection, in its full scope of passion, emotion, and mood, earns (...) a place equal to cognition and volition as a constituent of the human consciousness. Tallon accomplishes his task by proving the existence of affectivity as a distinct kind of consciousness inseparable from the other two, by showing precisely how affection works, how it operates in synthesis with reason and will, and, finally, by offering a new concept of a triune consciousness as paradigm for the human mind. (shrink)

This essay takes its starting point from the position of Aidan Nichols (From Newman to Congar: The Idea of Doctrinal Development from the Victorians to the Second Vatican Council) that doctrinal development depends on wisdom. A key figure for Nichols’s position is Pierre Rousselot, whose idea of sympathetic knowing helps explain how wisdom itself works, namely, as knowledge influenced by love. I focus on Rousselot’s use of the Thomist concept of connaturality as the underlying basis of sympathetic knowing and offer (...) a modern interpretation of Aquinas’s Summa theologiae 2a 2ae, q 45, a 2, the key text on connaturality in ethical and mystical experience (being for affection what Summa theologiae 1a, q 84, a 7 is for cognition). I cite Bernard Lonergan’s “Newman’s Theorem” to show how omitting affection from theological explanation has dominated older interpretations of human intentionality, not only in Aquinas himself but in many of his followers. (shrink)

The criterion of 1 John for preferring John’s community over the secessionists is that the former love one another: John’s heart does not accuse him. Expressions in 1 John and Brown’s commentary suggest that knowledge by affective connaturality and recent neuroscience furnish exegetical access to this text. John’s appeal to the accusing heart is to social praxis as access to doxa. John’s community can know they love and are God’s children only intersubjectively, in the social. John’s heart should accuse him. (...) Were his heart changed, love for the secessionists would not be burdensome. John’s community became a sect because their love never became love for their enemies. (shrink)

The correct understanding of the concept of heart in Rahner consists in a recognition that the highest performance of a finite spirit comprises affective, cognitive, and volitional consciousness in a functional union that could be called the heart-mind. Rather than privilege cognition and volition and then consider feelings and moods as separate and purely subjective phenomena, we must recognize the intentionality of certain higher affective responses, i.e., those that have become integrated into the highest operational synthesis of a person who (...) is developing as an adult in matters ethical and mystical. The highest actions of such a person are intersubjective faith, love, and hope. (shrink)