Why are art and the aesthetic so vitally important to our liberty, and to the re-creation of liberty in our living? How do they evoke the Ultimate in us? And why is that so important to our modern living? These are the vital questions that moved this author to a three-month personal exploration of aesthetic, artistic and ultimate meaning in its relation to liberty. The article is written pedagogically to lead the reader along the chain of ideas, thoughts and further (...) questions that the author explores in response to her questions. (shrink)

Normal.dotm 0 0 1 145 727 Memorial University 14 1 1017 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} The transcendental lift of Lonergan’s life was an incarnate leaning towards “a grasp of hitherto unnoticed or unrealized possibilities” ( Method in Theology , (...) 53), and the blossoming of that transcendental—so neatly identifying “being intelligent” on that page—seems to have been grossly missed by generations of his followers. The what-question in its fullness is a reach for what might be, and Lonergan’s final great leaning pulled together in a gentle global way the fragmentary present seeds of finitude’s lust for unity of purpose: “the end of the divine mission is not attained without the cooperation of human beings” ( CWL 11, 485). And what a Cosmopolitan Cooperation he envisaged! And what a shambles his disciples have made of his hope of a communal advance within “an adapted and specialized auxiliary ever ready to offset every interference with intellect’s unrestricted finality” ( Insight , 747)! (shrink)

Genetic engineering of life forms could well have a profound effect upon our sense of the sacred. Integrating the experience of the sacred as George Bataille does, we can characterize it as a phenomenological encounter with prelinguistic, noncategoreal experience. This view of the sacred is similar to Friedrich Nietzsche's Dionysian experience or Rudolf Otto's mysterium tremendum and diminishes one's sense of self. It seems similar to the eighteenth‐century aesthetic categorization of “the sublime.” Despite the dominant rational approach to religiosity (...) in the United States, intimations of this experience persist in popular culture. What possible relationship does genetic engineering have to this allegedly inevitable and profound experience? If certain modifications of life occur, they are likely to create such an experience of the sacred in us. In principle, we can now resurrect the mammoth or even create beings designed to directly potentiate our experience of the numinous such as satyrs or centaurs. The creation of such beings could become an art form associated with awaking the sacred, in turn appropriated by religion, as art has always been. Such experimentation, though morally questionable, is probably inevitable. (shrink)

Bernard Lonergan has argued for a theory of cognition that is transcendentally secure, that is, one such that any plausible attempt to refute it must presuppose its correctness, and one that also grounds a correct metaphysics and ontology. His proposal combines an identity theory of knowledge with an intentional relation between knower and known. It depends in a crucial way upon an appropriation of one’s own cognitional motives and acts, that is, upon “knowing one’s own knowing.” I argue (...) that because of conflicts between the identity and intentionality components of the theory, rational self-appropriation cannot, as Lonergan claims, be an iteration of just the same acts by which we acquire other sorts of knowledge. I propose an amended theory in which the relation between intending-subject and intended-object of first-level cognition becomes, in RSA, a numerical identity of knower and known and of the epistemic and the ontological. (shrink)

Guides for the Journey is an introduction to the lives and thoughts of three significant thinkers: John Macmurray, Bernard Lonergan, and James Fowler. The book shows how their work is helpful in interpreting our lives and the world in which we live. Written for the introductory student or reader, this book makes Macmurray, Lonergan, and Fowler's work more accessible and is the first book to actually compare the thought of the three. Throughout the book, quotations from their writings help (...) the reader to absorb and appreciate the texture and meaning of their work. Readers are not presumed to be familiar with philosophy or the meaning of technical terms used. An index and a glossary of names and key terms provide easy reference tools. Endnotes and a bibliography will stimulate further reading on the subject. Guides for the Journey is highly appropriate for university courses in religion as well as religious workshops and lectures. Contents: List of Tables; Preface; Acknowledgments; Introduction; Endnotes; John Macmurray ; Endnotes; Macmurray's Characterization of the Personal Life; Endnotes; Bernard Lonergan; Endnotes; Lonergan's Understanding of Understanding; Endnotes; James Fowler ; Endnotes; Fowler's Faith Development Theory; Endnotes; A Summing Up; Endnotes; Glossary; Bibliography; Index. (shrink)

Bernard Lonergan’s vocation as a Jesuit was central to his entire life’s work, although this is not well known. This essay shows the indebtedness of Lonergan’s method of self-appropriation owes a great deal to Ignatian spiritual practices. In particular, it shows how Ignatian prayer and Lonergan’s account of the structures of consciousness mutually enhance one another. In particular, it concentrates on how prayer is a transforming encounter between Christ and the one praying.

In this essay, the relation between art and religion is explored using the concepts experience and imagination as understood by the American philosopher John Dewey. In Dewey’s view, experience involves both the experiencer and the experienced: it is a phenomenon of the in-between. When we are really touched by what we meet in interacting with our physical and social surroundings, experience acquires an aesthetic quality that opens us to the value and the potential of what we perceive. We can see (...) the factual in light of the possible, thus enriching it with new layers of meaning. We experience this as resonance between us and the world. It is the work of the imagination. Due to their imaginative capacity, humans can aspire to a ‘good life’. This aspiration is discussed in terms of invitation and response. Can we experience ourselves as being invited to respond to this unruly world with attachment and care? Here art and religion come into play. Art is understood as the domain of the possible: it explores the world behind or beyond what we usually accept as fact. An aesthetic experience acquires religious quality when it evokes in us an ideal that guides our sense of self and world, stimulating us to realize our ideals in daily actions. If inspired by imagination, art and religion may evoke intense experiences of resonance and invite us to new ways of connecting and transformative action. This is explored with the help of a hermeneutical circle, a ‘cycle of imagination’. (shrink)

Drawing on Bernard Lonergan's Method in Theology (1972) I argue that theology can be taught because personal knowledge, of which it is an instance, is at the heart of academic inquiry; and it should be taught because critical engagement with basic ways of taking one's life as a whole (religion in a broad sense) furnishes a critique of the typical oversights of contemporary culture. The appropriation of one's subjectivity entails an awareness of an existential dialectic that pushes towards (...) a decisive option for affirming the possibility and worth of growth in one's powers of self-determination and self-transcendence. Thus conversion—precisely defined in terms of this dialectic—has moral and intellectual dimensions whose promotion goes to the heart of the academic enterprise. By separating out those disciplines (systematics, for example) which are mediated by the existential stance taken by the scholar, Lonergan allows theology to be seen as one world view among others. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hegel and Herder on Art, History, and ReasonKristin GjesdalThe introduction of a historical perspective in aesthetics is usually traced back to Hegel's 1820 lectures on fine art. Given at the University of Berlin, these lectures were amongst Hegel's most successful and best attended.1 By then a recognized intellectual figure, Hegel sets out to salvage art from its subjectivization in Kantian and romantic aesthetics, but ends up declaring that art, (...) considered in its highest vocation, is a thing of the past. This judgment on art—that its greatness is a thing of the past—follows from Hegel's attempt to combine a notion of art's historicity with a conception of its absolute essence. Hegel, however, was not the first to think systematically about the historicity of art. For this aspect of art—and, indeed, of reason too—was explored philosophically a good sixty years before Hegel's Berlin lectures by a young and aspiring student of Kant's, namely Johann Gottfried Herder. In a series of essays and fragments, Herder develops an advanced and elaborate alternative to Hegel's conception, a fundamentally non-essentialist approach to art, history, and reason.Over the past twenty years or so, Hegel's attempt to combine an essentialist and an historicist approach to art has been revitalized, with increasing force and sophistication, by Arthur Danto.2 The attempts to rehabilitate Herder's aesthetics, however, have been few and far between.3 This is the aim of the present essay, which seeks to contrast the young Herder's non-essentialist understanding of the historicity of art with Hegel's essentialist views on the artwork's historicity, pleading for a rehabilitation of the former.4 I approach this task from three different directions. First, I offer a brief account of Herder's and Hegel's views on reason, history, and art. Second, I look closer at their conceptions of classical tragedy and sculpture, which, due to Winckelmann's studies, [End Page 17] were perceived at the time as the gateway to a historically sensitive conception of culture as such. Finally, I round off by looking at some of the hermeneutic implications of Herder's non-essentialist standpoint.IAccording to Hegel, a phenomenologically mature and accountable philosophy is distinguished by its readiness to reflect on its own, historical presuppositions. It must acknowledge the critical commitments of modern thinking, but also take into account how these commitments are the result of spirit's laborious journey through history. Only by combining the perspective of modernity with the resources of tradition may philosophy inhabit a place where systematicity and historicity concur. Reality may now be exhausted in the form of a speculative logic. This, according to Hegel, is the end of history, but as the end of history, it is also the dawn of a new era, that of free and self-determining spirit.Hegel's notion of the end of history testifies to a formidable optimism about the power of critical thought. In modernity, Hegel claims, art and religion no longer emerge as adequate media of self-reflection. It is philosophy that has taken on this task. Considered from the standpoint of modernity, religion and art are no longer appropriate forms of expression; now only the conceptual optics of philosophy adequately reflects our deepest truths and values.5Artistically speaking, this moment may well emerge as a loss. For even though Hegel never claims that art, as such, will no longer be produced,6 he reckons it will not be produced in the same spirit as before. No longer expressive of a shared, ethical and political commitment, art is not brought forth by necessity. Intellectually speaking, however, the end of art triggers a different response. Not only does the end of art represent another step towards the conceptual self-determination of spirit. It also follows that only when a phenomenon such as art has finally fulfilled its historical possibilities can it be brought to philosophical clarity about itself. Only after art can we know conceptually what art is. Aesthetics can only begin at the point when art, considered in its highest vocation, no longer holds a historical future.IIAs a young and... (shrink)

Reason has reasons of which ‘reason’ knows nothing. It was this essential insight, along with the methodological prioritisation of a phenomenology of cognition and the recognition of the epistemological distinctiveness of judgment, that a young Bernard Lonergan gleaned from his study of John Henry Newman's Grammar of Assent. Given that the ‘later’, post‐Insight (1953) Lonergan enacted a more explicit transposition of his thought into a hermeneutical and existential framework, one might be tempted to assume that this coincided with a (...) drift away from his tutelage under the nineteenth‐century Englishman. Indeed, an examination of the secondary literature detailing their relationship would suggest as much. Yet, in the hope of contributing to the regrettably sparse Newman‐Lonergan scholarship and proposing a modest recalibration therein, I argue that the more existential, hermeneutical, and committed to the philosophical turn to concrete socio‐historical subjectivity Lonergan grew, the more fruit his early Newmanian formation bore. By analysing Newman's proto‐Lonerganian anticipations in the areas of self‐appropriation, conversion, the relationship of subjectivity to objectivity, and the hermeneutical nature of consciousness, I will contend that Newman—a presciently continental mind writing as one untimely born into an analytical milieu—was the wellspring from which Lonergan never ceased to draw. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:OBJECTIVITY AND RELlGIOUS TRUTH: A COMPARISON OF WILFRED CANTWELL SMITH AND BERNARD LONERGAN DENNIS M. DOYLE University of Dayton Dayton, Ohio WILFRED CANTWELL SMITH •and Bernard Lonergan both propose a new agenda for theology n response to ;the same basic cultura.I developments.1 Both Smith and Lonergan pinpoint the crux of the current siturution!aJS the convergence of various cultures in a world where Western culture had.been heM by (...) its pwrticiipants to be univers•al.and normrutive. The majo'l" problem concerning religious truth :that 1 arises out of this situation concerns universality. Formulrutions tha:t were once taken for granted are now seen to he relative to their context. Concepts that it.T1anscend particular formulations are themselves recognized irus indigenous to 1a culture. T·ruth itself is questioned as to whether it too is not!l'elative to eaich oontert. The responses of Smith and Lonergan to this situa:tion are remarkably ·similar in structure. In the midst of these similarities, 1 however, arise some differences with important implications concerning oibjectivity, itruth, and theology in a global context. Objec:tivity, Method, and Human Knowledge Smith and Lonergan both 'address rthe issue of human knowing before establishing their programs for theo1 logy.2 For botih, 1 Smith's proposal is put forth in Towards a World Theology (Phila.: Westminster Press, 1981 )• Lonergan's proposal can be found in Method in Theology (N.Y.: Herder and Herder, 1972). 2 Smith's reflections on human knowing are in "Objectivity and the Humane Sciences,'' in Towards a World Theology, pp. 56·80'. Lonergan's 461 462 DENNIS M. DOYLE a major problem in wayis of conceiving human knowing in recent centuries has heen an ohjectivism according to which knowledge was iheld to he absolute without regard to human SUJbjectivity and without an openness to other cultures. Both find a £acile cultural remtivism to he.an unsatisfactory reaction to this problem. In response, :both Smith and Lonergan try to re-root human knowing in a human conte:rl. Lonergan does ·this hy establishing the ground of knowing in an analysis of human intentionality. Smith does this by estaiblishing the ground of knowing in a mutual interchange between persons who participate in some traditions and who are observers of other traditions. Smith la.bels such knowing ·a" 001·iporaite critica1 self-iconsciousness." What emerges from such consciousness is "humane knowledge." Although some major di:ffevences arise at this point, the context of istructul'lal similarities must he noted.3 For hoth Smith and Lonergan, hruman knowing is intrinsically connected with :the quality of living both individually and oommullla1ly. Eiach in his own way stresses that knowing is vitally linked to the consciousness of individuals. Each in his own way stresses that knowing takes place within ·community, and that the breadth and quality of the community affects the breadth and quality of the knowing. Smith •and Lonergan both, furthermore, envision the taisk of theology as the conceptualization and articulation in a new context of wihat was once known in a strictly objective, theoretical f:vame;work. Both, finailily, 'lay ouit the major work on human knowing is Insight: A Study of Human Understo;nding (N.Y.: Philosophical Library, 1957). For a summary view, see chapter one of Method in Theology. For Lonergan's position on objectivity, see "The Origins of Christian Realism" in A Second Collection (Phila.: Westminster Press, 1974), ·pp. 239-61. a For an earlier comparison of the methods of Smith and Lonergan, see Walter E. Conn, "'Faith' and 'Cumulative Tradition' in Functional Specialization : A Study in the Methodologies of Wilfred Cantwell Smith and Bernard Lonergan," Studies in ReligiOn/Soiences Religieuses 5 (1975/76) : 221-46•.Although this article was published before several of Smith's major works in the area, the methodological similarities unearthed by Conn still hold true. WILFRED CANTWELL SMITH & BERNARD LONERGAN 463 problem specifically in terms of tmnscending false subject/object :dichotomies. At this point, however, differences between Smith and Lonwgian begin to emerge, foir each attempts to transcend false.suibjoot/oibject dichotomies in a different way. Lonergan holds that objectivity is the fruit of authentic ;subjectivity.4 1t is intended hy the self-transcending subject who loves... (shrink)

This paper explores the centrality of self-affirmation in Bernard Lonergan’s Insight and is specifically concerned with the role of bias in relation to self-appropriation and genuineness. I begin with an explication of the process of self-affirmation and the model of knowledge it involves. I then discuss the nature of bias and its relation to genuineness in Insight. My analysis concludes that bias is never “overcome,” in the sense of being eliminated. Thus, genuine self-appropriation (...) is never complete. Rather, being true to oneself is the struggle to recognize one’s biases while still affirming what is reasonable and choosing responsible action. I also conclude that total resistance to self-affirmation is a disingenuous refusal to engage one’s biases; it is an act of evasion, or a fear of genuineness and its accompanying responsibilities. I end by briefly addressing some of these tensions in relation to Catholicism, specifically raising questions concerning our thinking and acting from within a Catholic faith. (shrink)

In 2008, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon acquired a painting called The Flight into Egypt which was attributed to the French artist Nicolas Poussin. Thought to have been painted in 1657, the painting had gone missing for more than three centuries. Several versions were rediscovered in the 1980s and one was passed from hand to hand, from a family who had no idea of its value to gallery owners and eventually to the museum. A painting that had been sold (...) as a decorative object in 1986 for around 12,000 euros was acquired two decades later by the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon for 17 million euros. What does this remarkable story tell us about the nature of art and the way that it is valued? How is it that what seemed to be just an ordinary canvas could be transformed into a masterpiece, that a decorative object could become a national treasure? This is a story permeated by social magic the social alchemy that transforms lead into gold, the ordinary into the extraordinary, the profane into the sacred. Focusing on this extraordinary case, Bernard Lahire lays bare the beliefs and social processes that underpin the creation of a masterpiece. Like a detective piecing together the clues in an unsolved mystery he carefully reconstructs the steps that led from the same material object being treated as a copy of insignificant value to being endowed with the status of a highly-prized painting commanding a record-breaking price. He thereby shows that a painting is never just a painting, and is always more than a piece of stretched canvass to which brush strokes of paint have been applied: this object, and the value we attach to it, is also the product of a complex array of social processes – with its distinctive institutions and experts – that lies behind it. And through the history of this painting, Lahire uncovers some of the fundamental structures of our social world. For the social magic that can transform a painting from a simple copy into a masterpiece is similar to the social magic that is present throughout our societies, in economics and politics as much as art and religion, a magic that results from the spell cast by power on those who tacitly recognize its authority. By following the trail of a single work of art, Lahire interrogates the foundations on which our perceptions of value and our belief in institutions rest and exposes the forms of domination which lie hidden behind our admiration of works of art. (shrink)

_Transcendence and History_ is an analysis of what philosopher Eric Voegelin described as “the decisive problem of philosophy”: the dilemma of the discovery of transcendent meaning and the impact of this discovery on human self-understanding. The explicit recognition and symbolization of transcendent meaning originally occurred in a few advanced civilizations worldwide during the first millennium?.?.e. The world’s major religious and wisdom traditions are built upon the recognition of transcendent meaning, and our own cultural and linguistic heritage has long since (...) absorbed the postcosmological division of reality into the two dimensions of “transcendence” and “immanence.” But the last three centuries in the West have seen a growing resistance to the idea of transcendent meaning; contemporary and “postmodern” interpretations of the human situation—both popular and intellectual—indicate a widespread eclipse of confidence in the truth of transcendence. In _Transcendence and History_, Glenn Hughes contributes to the understanding of transcendent meaning and the problems associated with it and assists in the philosophical recovery of the legitimacy of the notion of transcendence. Depending primarily on the treatments of transcendence found in the writings of twentieth-century philosophers Eric Voegelin and Bernard Lonergan, Hughes explores the historical discovery of transcendent meaning and then examines what it indicates about the structure of history. Hughes’s main focus, however, is on clarifying the problem of transcendence in relation to historical _existence_. Addressing both layreaders and scholars, Hughes applies the insights and analyses of Voegelin and Lonergan to considerable advantage. _Transcendence and History_ will be of particular value to those who have grappled with the notion of transcendence in the study of philosophy, comparative religion, political theory, history, philosophical anthropology, and art or poetry. By examining transcendent meaning as the key factor in the search for ultimate meaning from ancient societies to the present, the book demonstrates how “the decisive problem of philosophy” both illuminates and presents a vital challenge to contemporary intellectual discourse. (shrink)

Jesuit philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan advocated a critical realism, in which scientific and theological knowledge are products of self-critical phenomenological analysis. Allying his thought with Thomas Aquinas in elaborating a cognitional theory to serve epistemology and metaphysics, Lonergan challenged reigning idealist and empiricist philosophies by understanding the human knower as ordered both to the known world and to divine providence. This paper will sketch four themes in which Lonergan constructs a methodical link between phenomenology and both contemporary (...) science and theology. Lonergan does not embody the frequently cited idea of a rupture in Catholic thought from pre-Vatican II to post-conciliar thought, notably in his treatment of science and religion. (shrink)

This dissertation explores the dialectic of thought and existence implicit in the human person's task of self-constitution as both a knower and a chooser. By way of comparative interpretation and critical analysis of the thought of Soren Kierkegaard and Bernard Lonergan, it argues for the complementarity of cognitional and existential praxis and adumbrates the possibility of an intellectualist existentialism. ;The Kierkegaardian polarization of thought and existence is situated within the context of a polemic against Hegelian holism and its (...) totalizing aspirations. Not only does Hegelian speculation attempt to reduce Christianity to a mere philosophical theory, it also absentmindedly yet oppressively neglects the ethical and religious exigencies of the concretely existing individual. ;In Lonergan's account of the dynamism of conscious intentionality , there is found support for Kierkegaard's critique of speculative aestheticism. There occurs not only a clear differentiation between knowledge and decisiveness, but also an affirmation of the primacy of conscience. In the full expansion of this dynamism, the cognitional is sublated by the existential; immanent exigencies of intelligence are preserved, yet knowing is to be contextualized within a wider horizon of concern for actualizing the good. Hence Lonergan's intellectualism offers the possibility of re-integrating thought and existence; it is an alternative both to anti-intellectual existentialism and to anti-existential rationalism. ;The task of self-appropriation, which is the core of Lonergan's philosophy, is complementary to the Kierkegaardian retrieval of existential subjectivity. Full self-appropriation involves both self-knowledge and self-choice. Yet self-appropriation, unlike Kierkegaardian and later existentialism, also reveals how objectivity is the fruit of authentic subjectivity. Lonergan avoids, as Kierkegaard's pseudonym Johannes Climacus does not, a denigration of objectivity and theoretical knowing. ;On grounds of performative self-contradiction, an objection is raised concerning existentialism's tendency to view objectivity in a merely pejorative manner. Theoretical knowing is more relevant to ethico-religious existence and to the actualization of personalist values than is commonly realized. A normative notion of objectivity is a necessary condition for the possibility of an ethics of historical authenticity. (shrink)

ALTHOUGH THERE is no direct dependence of Bernard Lonergan upon Edmund HusserI in the manner, say, of Husserl himself upon Franz Brentano, there are nonetheless points of similarity and contrast between them. It would be possible to list these matching points singly on their own, such as Epoche and self-appropriation, Erlebnis and consciousness, monad and subject, Anschauung and affirmation. However, besides and beneath these individual points of similarity and contrast, lying as their basis, there is similarity and (...) contrast at the level of the fundamental conceptions of the two philosophers. Husserl and Lonergan share a common problematic: the structure of intentionality. If intentionality is the common problematic where Husserl and Lonergan meet, one might ask if and how various notions of theirs viewed in relation to intentionality are common or divergent. For the sake of comparison-confrontation, one might take the two central notions, Anschauung (intuition) in Husserl and affirmation in Lonergan, and inspect some of the implications they have for the two philosophers. Husserl calls intuition the "principle of all principles for his phenomenology." For his part, Lonergan conceives of affirmation as the culmination of the knowing process. Intuition and affirmation have analogous roles. For Husserl it is through intuition that cognition attains what is real, whereas for Lonergan it is through affirmation. The comparison-confrontation between Husserl and Lonergan can be summed up in terms of the three questions that Lonergan sets up to mark off the range of human knowing. First, what happens when one knows? Secondly, why is doing that knowing? Thirdly, what does one know when he does it? Husserl and Lonergan would seem closest in their approach to answering question one. However, they would part company in their answers to questions two and three, for here intuition and affirmation essentially determine what kind of an answer can be given. This paper will work within the brackets of these three questions. (shrink)

Although the question of human knowing and of being occupies a primary place in the history of human thought, it remains a controversial problem in philosophy. Any meanings that a thinker may assign to the three basic philosophic issues of knowing, objectivity and reality will eventually demarcate his school of thought, and fundamentally determine of cognitional theory, epistemology and metaphysics. Bernard Lonergan stands out as an innovative thinker who has handled this contentious problem in an expressive and methodical manner. (...) His philosophy of Self-Appropriation is a philosophic program that underpins the basic issues and disciplines in a way that is significant for all human inquiries. This work explores the original meanings and interrelations of the three basic philosophic disciplines of cognitional theory, epistemology and metaphysics. After a critical analysis of how the basic issues in philosophy have been handled in the course of history, it offers what are considered as the original meanings and methodical relations of these basic disciplines and issues. Cognitional theory the methodical basics of both epistemology and metaphysics. Since the human desire to know being is the parent of all human inquires, the consideration of the human conscious subject and his cognitional subject and his cognitional operations is prior to and is the ground of the metaphysical explorations. Epistemology is the critical phase that verifies and validates cognitional theory; and methaphysics is an enter-prise that deals with the character of the real. (shrink)

Decolonizing aesthetics requires a philosophical reexamination of art and cultural representation to address ethical conflicts and the legacy of colonial biases. This study explores the suppression and marginalization perpetuated by colonial aesthetics, with a focus on gender, race, and cultural diversity. Drawing on postcolonial theories, the research highlights the disparities and systemic exclusions within artistic traditions, advocating for decolonized practices that restore and celebrate suppressed cultural expressions. Case studies such as Indigenous Futurism and exhibitions promoting the art of formerly colonized (...) communities illustrate the practical application of decolonization efforts. Using primary data analyzed through Smart PLS software, the study examines correlations and causal relationships between decolonization initiatives and shifts in aesthetic valuation. The findings reveal both challenges and opportunities in dismantling colonial legacies, emphasizing the role of art education, public workshops, and community engagement in fostering awareness and inclusivity. Artists and institutions play a pivotal role in promoting decolonized aesthetics by addressing historical biases and amplifying marginalized voices. Decolonization emerges as an ongoing ethical and cultural practice aimed at dismantling colonial power structures in art and aesthetics, ensuring a more equitable representation of global artistic traditions. (shrink)

Resumen Paul Ricœur elabora una crítica a la postura hermenéutica de la escuela de la sospecha con el fin de complementar sus supuestos con la recuperación de una epistemología histórica. De esta manera surge una nueva comprensión hermenéutica según la cual han de analizarse los signos y símbolos diseminados en la historia. Bernard Lonergan asume esta empresa y profundiza en una epistemología trascendental que recupera la subjetividad, cuya forma de conocer será capaz de autoapropiarse y, con ello, instaurarse como (...) referente de validación en la comprensión de la significación hermenéutica.Paul Ricœur develops a critique of the hermeneutic position of the school of suspicion to complement their assumptions the recovery of a historical epistemology. Consequently a new hermeneutic understanding arises whereby the signs and symbols spreaded throughout history are to be analyzed. Bernard Lonergan undertakes this enterprise and delves into a transcendental epistemology which recovers subjectivity. This subjectivity’s way of knowing will be capable of self-appropriation, hence becoming a validation reference for the understanding of hermeneutic meaning. (shrink)

En 1657, Nicolas Poussin peint une Fuite en Égypte au voyageur couché. La toile disparaît ensuite pendant plusieurs siècles. Dans les années 1980, plusieurs versions du tableau réapparaissent, de grands experts mondiaux s'opposent, des laboratoires d'analyse et des tribunaux s'en mêlent et nombreux sont ceux - galeristes, experts, directeurs de musée, conservateurs, etc. - à vouloir authentifier et s'approprier le chef-d'oeuvre. L'une des versions sera finalement acquise pour 17 millions d'euros par le musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. De quoi nous (...) parle cette histoire aux allures d'intrigue policière? Pourquoi une telle débauche d'énergie, de controverses et d'argent pendant autant d'années? Qu'est-ce qui fait la valeur - économique, esthétique - d'une oeuvre d'art? Et d'où vient cette aura attachée aux créateurs et aux oeuvres? (shrink)

This dissertation studies how Aristotle understands and justifies his Rhetorical Art. It proceeds by explicating the Art in its intellectual context. Rhetoric emerges as a dynamic investigation of human affairs working through the "given" in speech and thought to a plausible account, while giving consideration to the opinions and characters of both speaker and audience within the horizon of a particular occasion. The basic dynamic determines a structure which is comparable to Socrates' requirements in the Phaedrus. That this is the (...) structure and dynamic is supported by considering the fundamentally contingent nature of human experience, understanding the inference types , common sense principles and starting points by which such experience is explicated, and placing such experience in three mutually exclusive genres. Aristotle's art is essentially the resulting plausible account while actual composition is supplementary. ;Aristotle limits the art by reference to dialectic and ethical life. When it is seen that Aristotle's Organon is not a science of logic and the Posterior Analytics is a rarely applicable mode of presentation, the point of dialectic becomes accessible. It too involves strenuous grappling with speech and thought, but its highest purpose lies in peirastic. Peirastic and sophistry are uses of dialectic which have a contrasting moral color. Peirastic aims at the discovery of ignorance and, at the same time, the difference between accident and essence and knowledge and opinion: Being educated is essentially knowing what one does not know. ;What Socrates only alludes to as political art, Aristotle attempts to expound as praxis perfected into phronesis. Even Aristotle does no more than suggest the nature of phronesis negatively as simultaneously a seeking, a finding and an act which is both self-determination and self-knowledge, and none of these separately; it is profoundly disruptive of existing opinion and most clearly to be seen in the rejection of the laws and rules upon which, as deliberation, it is dependent. The Art differs from Gorgias' rhetoric in its emphasis on the plausible and in its subordination to an ethical self-determination that gains the weight of experience appropriated by intelligence and virtue. (shrink)

This pioneering volume, for the first time, explores the extraordinary Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa and his relationship to philosophy. On the one hand, this book reveals Pessoa's serious knowledge of philosophy and playful philosophical explorations and how he has the gift of synthesizing, appropriating and subverting complex ideas into his art; and, on the other hand, the chapters shed new light on central aspects and problems of philosophy through the prism of Pessoa's diverse writings. The volume includes sixteen new essays (...) from an international group of scholars, analyzing Pessoa's multifaceted poetic work alongside philosophical themes and movements, from conceptions of time, ancient aesthetics, philosophy of language, transcendentalism, immanence, nihilism; to Islamic philosophy, Indian philosophy, philosophy of religion, neo-paganism, the philosophy of the self. The breadth of his work provides a springboard for new thinking on the aesthetic and the spiritual, the logic of value and capitalist modernity, and ecological thought and postmodernism. (shrink)

The Parthenon does not house the primitive cult statue of Athena, to which the rites and beliefs will always remain attached. It is therefore not a temple, but a sumptuous offering that presents an extreme image of the city’s patroness, through its grandeur and complexity. The votive character of the Parthenon is reinforced by its frieze, an unexpected self-portrait of the dedicators, in the form of selected scenes from the annual Panathenaea, Athens’ national festival, where the youth of the (...) city distinguish themselves in various ways. Yet this frieze does not have the unity of time and place of a news report: its coherence is aesthetic. It must be treated as a work of art in which mimesis is transcended by phantasia and reality transfigured by creative imagination. (shrink)

At a time when religion and science are thought to be at loggerheads, art is widely hailed as religion's natural spiritual ally. Philosophy, Art, and Religion investigates the extent to which this is true. It charts the way in which modern conceptions of 'Art' often marginalize the sacred arts, construing choral and instrumental music, painting and iconography, poetry, drama, and architecture as 'applied' arts that necessarily fall short of the ideal of 'art for art's sake'. Drawing on both history of (...) art and philosophical aesthetics, Graham sets out the historical context in which the arts came to free themselves from religious patronage, in order to conceptualize the cultural context in which religious art currently finds itself. The book then relocates religious art within the aesthetics of everyday life. Subsequent chapters systematically explore each of the sacred arts, using a wide range of illustrative examples to uncover the ways in which artworks can illuminate religious faith, and religious content can lend artworks a deeper dimension. (shrink)

Wittgenstein, in his characteristic way of indirectly bringing us to see an important feature in human life, said: ‘… art shows us the miracles of nature… We say: “Just look at it opening out!” This essay discusses how works of art ‘blossom’ and thus elicit an imaginative human response. Its various parts focus on the connected theme that some sensible component is essential to the production and comprehension of art. Each part, however, investigates a different aspect of the theme and (...) could stand on its own. What will be argued about this aesthetic factor in art will also be shown to cast light on our understanding of certain narrative texts and ceremonial acts of religion. (shrink)

Primarily because of recent studies , there has been a revaluation of Kierkegaard’s view of art and the aesthetic. This article distinguishes between the ethical aesthetics of the pseudonym B in Either/Or and Kierkegaard’s theological aesthetics. It will show that, while imagination and appropriation are core concepts in both forms of aesthetics, that Kierkegaard’s view of radical transcendence – the qualitative distinction between God and human beings – is the norm only for his theological aesthetics. As a central anthropological (...) category, imagination ensures the necessary condition that art is important regardless of the stage of life . Kierkegaard is not an iconoclast; it is not the image that is at issue but the use to which it is put . Hermeneutically, the relationship between the work of art and the public has to do with appropriation, with response. Radical transcendence is the norm for the use of the imagination and art in the Christian religion and also determines indirect communication by connecting it to Christology. (shrink)

My scientific field is theoretical physics. My philosophical orientation is phenomenology, especially hermeneutical phenomenology, as modified and extended under the influence of Bernard Lonergan's cognitional theory. In fact, I was already deeply under the influence of Bernard Lonergan's workbefore I went to Louvain/Leuven to study phenomenology as a propaedeutic to my preparation in the philosophy of science. The specific topic of this paper is one close to the center of Philip's interest, namely, to articulate the right balance among (...) theory, experiment, and what Husserl called 'die Sache selbst' or the 'givenness' of scientific objects as experienced and understood. The method I shall adopt is that of Husserl's phenomenology of perception, as modified by Lonergan's method of 'self-appropriation.' I will be concerned then with the 'constitution' of experimental data in science - any science. (shrink)

Bernard Lonergan devoted much of his life's work to developing a generalized method of inquiry, an integrated view which would overcome the fragmentation of knowledge in our time. In Topics in Education Lonergan adapts that concern to the practical needs of educators. Traditionalist and modernist notions of education are both criticized. Lonergan attempts to work out, in the context of the human good and the 'new learning,' the rudiments of a philosophy of education based on his well-known discovery of (...) norms in the unfolding of intelligent, reasonable, and responsible consciousness. He explores how the scientific revolution has changed ways of understanding reality, and examines the implications of this revolution for education. Topics in Education, the first publication of his 1959 lectures, follows Lonergan on his early explorations of human development, studies the theories ofJean Piaget and others, and concludes with his own original ideas in the realms of ethics, art, and history. Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984), a professor of theology, taught at Regis College, Harvard University, and Boston College. An established author known for his Insight and Method in Theology, Lonergan received numerous honorary doctorates, was a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1971 and was named as an original members of the International Theological Commission by Pope Paul VI. (shrink)

MARINA PAOLA BANCHETTI-ROBINO is Associate Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Florida Atlantic University. Her areas of research include phenomenology, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, and zoosemiotics. Her publications have appeared in such journals as Synthese, Husserl Studies, Idealistic Studies, Philosophy East and West, and The Review of Metaphysics. She has also contributed essays to The Role of Pragmatics in Contemporary Philosophy (1997), Feminist Phenomenology (2000), and Islamic Philosophy and Occidental Phenomenology on the Perennial (...) Issue of Microcosm and Macrocosm (2006). She co-edited Philosophies of the Environment and Technology (1999) and is currently working on a book-length project entitled The Birth of Science Out of the Spirit of Myth: A Historico-Phenomenological Re-Examination of the Crisis of the European Sciences. BERNARD BOXILL was born in Saint Lucia, West Indies where he received his primary and secondary education. He studied philosophy at the University of New Brunswick, Canada and at the University of California, Los Angeles where he was awarded a doctorate in philosophy in 1971. He has published numerous articles, a book, Blacks and Social Justice (1992), and is professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. ED BRANDON was born and educated in England, studying philosophy and linguistics at The University of York, England, and later philosophy at The University of Oxford with the late John Mackie. After teaching in Sierra Leone and briefly in England, he went to teach philosophy of education at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica in 1978. From 1992 he has been attached to a policy unit of the Vice-Chancellery, based at the Cave Hill campus in Barbados, where he has been assisting since 2000 with a new major in philosophy. His academic work can be accessed from http://cavehill.uwi.edu/bnccde/epb/personalpage.html CAROLYN CUSICK is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. She is a founding member of the Phenomenology Roundtable. Her research focuses on feminist epistemology, Africana philosophy, and phenomenology. LEWIS GORDON is President of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. He is Laura H. Carnell Professor, the most distinguished chair, at Temple University, where he holds appointments in philosophy, religion, and Judaic studies and directs the Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought and the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies. He is also Ongoing Visiting Professor of Philosophy and Government at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica. He is the author of several books, including the award-winning Her Majesty's Other Children: Sketches of Racism from a Neocolonial Age (Rowman and Littlefield, 1997), Disciplinary Decadence: Living Thought in Trying Times (Paradigm, 2006), An Introduction to Africana Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), and co-editor of A Companion to African-American Studies (Blackwell, 2006) and Not Only the Master's Tools: African-American Studies in Theory and Practice (Paradigm, 2005). CLEVIS HEADLEY is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at Florida Atlantic University, director of the Ethnic Studies Certificate Program, as well as director of the Master's in Liberal Studies. Professionally, he serves as the Vice-President and Treasurer of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. Professor Headley has published widely in the areas of Critical Race Theory and Africana philosophy. He has also published in Analytic philosophy, focusing specifically on Gottlob Frege. PAGET HENRY is Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Brown University. He is the author of Caliban's Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy, Peripheral Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Antigua, and the co-editor of C. L. R. James' Caribbean. Professor Henry also serves as the editor of the C. L. R. James Journal, and has published numerous articles on the political economy of the Caribbean as well as on African, African-American, and Afro-Caribbean philosophy. ESIABA IROBI is Associate Professor of International Theatre/Performance Studies at Ohio University, Athens. His groundbreaking book: A Theatre for Cannibals: Resisting Globalization on the Continent and Diaspora since 1441 will be published by Palgrave Macmillan, London, in 2007. He has been invited to be an External Resident Fellow at the prestigious Dartmouth College Humanities Institute for the 2007-2008 academic year. CHIKE JEFFERS is a graduate student in the Ph.D. program of the Philosophy Department at Northwestern University. His interests are in Africana philosophy, social and political philosophy, ethics, philosophy of religion and aesthetics. He is originally from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. CATHERINE JOHN is Associate Professor of African Diaspora Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Oklahoma. Her book Clear Word and Third Sight: Folk Groundings and Diasporic Consciousness in African Caribbean Writing was co-published by Duke University Press and UWI Press in 2003. She has published several articles on Caribbean literature and culture and her current book project is entitled The Just Society and the Diasporic Imagination. She spends her summer working in Woodside, St. Mary, Jamaica helping with a summer school for children and participating in the community's emancipation celebration. KENNETH KNIES is a doctoral student in philosophy at Stony Brook University. His areas of focus are phenomenology and ancient philosophy. He is also a contributing editor for Political Affairs magazine. EDIZON LEN is a photographer and coordinator of the Fondo Documental Afro-Andino at the Universidad Andina Simòn Bolivar in Quito, Ecuador. In 2006, he was curator of the photo exhibit "The Color of the Diaspora" presented at the Cultural Center of the Catholic University of Ecuador and the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He is currently completing his doctorate at the Universidad Andina Simòn Bolivar with a focus on Maroon thought. REKHA MENON is Associate Professor of Art History at State University of New York, Buffalo State. She is the author of Seductive Aesthetics of Post Colonialism (forthcoming). Her area of research focuses on current philosophical investigations in colonial and neocolonial aspects of Indian art, artistic/cultural practices and philosophies and their relationship to Western arts and philosophies. Her manuscripts under review are: Ashamed of Our Nakedness, Is There Ever a Naked Body? Ambivalence in Contemporary Indian Expressive Aesthetics and Insatiable Desire. MICHAEL R. MICHAU is a Ph.D. candidate in the Philosophy and Literature Program at Purdue University, and during the 2006-2007 school year, a lecturer in the Department of Comparative Studies and Department of Philosophy at Ohio State University. He is the co-founder and co-secretary of the North American Levinas Society. CHARLES W. MILLS is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He works in the general area of oppositional political theory, and is the author of numerous articles and three books: The Racial Contract (Cornell University Press, 1997), Blackness Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race (Cornell University Press, 1998), and From Class to Race: Essays in White Marxism and Black Radicalism (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003). MABOGO P. MORE is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He has published articles on African philosophy and social and political philosophy in a number of academic journals, such as South African Journal of Philosophy, Dialogue and Universalism, Alternation, Theoria, and African Journal of Political Science. MARILYN NISSIM-SABAT, Ph.D., M.S.W. is Professor Emerita and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, Lewis University. Dr. Nissim-Sabat is also a psychotherapist in private practice. She is the author of numerous book chapters and papers in the fields of philosophy (Husserlian phenomenology), psychoanalysis, feminism, and critical race theory. Citations of her works can be found on her website: marilynnissim-sabat.com. FREDERICK OCHIENG'-ODHIAMBO is a Senior Lecturer of Philosophy and Coordinator of the discipline at The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados. His major research areas are African philosophy and social philosophy. He has published several articles on philosophic sagacity. IVAN PETRELLA is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Miami. He is author of The Future of Liberation Theology: An Argument and Manifesto (SCM Press, 2006) and editor of Latin American Liberation Theology: The Next Generation (Orbis Books, 2005) as well as co-editor of the series Reclaiming Liberation Theology (SCM Press) RICHARD PITHOUSE is a research fellow at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. He is editor of Asinamali: University Struggles in Post-Apartheid South Africa (Africa World Press, 2006). SATHYA RAO is Assistant Professor in French translation at the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies, University of Alberta, Canada. His research fields include: theory of translation, continental philosophy, postcolonial studies, discourses on Africa, and Francophone cinema and literature. He has published articles in various peer-reviewed journals and written chapters in several collective books such as: De l'Ecrit Africain a l'Oral le Phenomene Graphique Africain, Simon Battestini (Ed.) (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2006) and Thèorie-rèbellion. Un Ultimatum, Gilles Grelet (Ed.) (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2005). He has a co-edited a book on Francophone African cinema L'Afrique fait son cinema (Montreal: Memoires d'encrier, forthcoming). Sathya Rao is vice-president of the International Non-Philosophical Organisation (INPhO), member of the Canadian Association of Translatology (CATS), coordinator of the research team Poexil, and Secretary of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. He is co-founder of an online journal Alternative Francophone. CATHERINE WALSH is Professor and Director of the doctoral program in Latin American Cultural Studies at the Universidad Andina Simon Bolivar in Quito, Ecuador. Her research interests include the geopolitics of knowledge, interculturality and concerns related to the Afro-Andean Diaspora and the production of decolonial thought. Among her recent publications are Pensamiento crìtico y matriz colonial (Quito: Abya Yala, 2005), "Interculturality and the Coloniality of Power. An 'Other' Thinking and Positioning from the Colonial Difference," in Coloniality of Power, Transmodernity, and Border Thinking, R. Grosfoguel, J.D. Saldivar, and N. Maldonado-Torres (Eds.) (Durham: Duke University Press, forthcoming) and "Shifting the Geopolitics of Critical Knowledge: Decolonial Thought and Cultural Studies 'Others' in the Andes," Cultural Studies (forthcoming). KRISTIN WATERS has published widely in the areas of race and gender. Her anthology Enlightened Conversations: Women and Men Political Theorists (Blackwell, 2000) challenges political theorists to be more inclusive of race and gender in their research and teaching. Her book Black Women's Intellectual Traditions: Speaking Their Minds, co-edited with Carol Conaway (University of Vermont Press, forthcoming), addresses the varied intellectual traditions of black women's thought that spans more than two hundred years in North America. She is currently Professor of Philosophy at Worcester State College and Visiting Research Associate at Brandeis University. (shrink)

Broad in its geographic scope and yet grounded in original archival research, this book situates the inception of modern aesthetic theory – the philosophical analysis of art and beauty - in theological contexts that are crucial to explaining why it arose. Simon Grote presents seminal aesthetic theories of the German and Scottish Enlightenments as outgrowths of a quintessentially Enlightenment project: the search for a natural 'foundation of morality' and a means of helping naturally self-interested human beings transcend their own (...) self-interest. This conclusion represents an important alternative to the standard history of aesthetics as a series of preludes to the achievements of Immanuel Kant, as well as a reinterpretation of several canonical figures in the German and Scottish Enlightenments. It also offers a foundation for a transnational history of the Enlightenment without the French philosophes at its centre, while solidly endorsing historians' growing reluctance to call the Enlightenment a secularising movement. (shrink)

Can art, religion, or philosophy afford ineffable insights? If so, what are they? The idea of ineffability has puzzled philosophers from Laozi to Wittgenstein. In Ineffability and its Metaphysics: The Unspeakable in Art, Religion and Philosophy, Silvia Jonas examines different ways of thinking about what ineffable insights might involve metaphysically, and shows which of these are in fact incoherent. Jonas discusses the concepts of ineffable properties and objects, ineffable propositions, ineffable content, and ineffable knowledge, examining the metaphysical pitfalls involved in (...) these concepts. Ultimately, she defends the idea that ineffable insights as found in aesthetic, religious, and philosophical contexts are best understood in terms of self-acquaintance, a particular kind of non-propositional knowledge. Ineffability as a philosophical topic is as old as the history of philosophy itself, but contributions to the exploration of ineffability have been sparse. The theory developed by Jonas makes the concept tangible and usable in many different philosophical contexts. (shrink)

Expert nurses, as described by the work of Patricia Benner, are at the peak of clinical nursing practice and vitally important in ensuring the best possible patient care and clinical outcomes. The development of Benner's theory and its relationship with the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition provides context for understanding the progression necessary for expert development. Contemporary healthcare challenges present implications to the development of advancing levels of nursing practice. Engagement has been identified as critical to achieving expert practice. I (...) propose the incorporation of the philosophical framework of self‐appropriation from Benard Lonergan as a strategy to develop internal engagement in nurses to facilitate expert practice. I outline the synergy between Benner's theory and the work of Lonergan, which provide overlap and opportunity to overcome barriers to developing expert nursing practice. In the challenging climate of healthcare, there is an obligation to promote engagement and facilitate expert nurse development, necessary for patient outcomes as well as clinical role models, preceptors, and leaders to guide future nurses. (shrink)

To what extent do aesthetic taste and our interest in the arts constitute who we are? In this paper, we present a series of empirical findings that suggest anAesthetic Self Effectsupporting the claim that our aesthetic engagements are a central component of our identity. Counterfactual changes in aesthetic preferences, for example, moving from liking classical music to liking pop, are perceived as altering us as a person. The Aesthetic Self Effect is as strong as the impact of moral (...) changes, such as altering political partisanship or religious orientation, and significantly stronger than for other categories of taste, such as food preferences (Study 1). Using a multidimensional scaling technique to map perceived aesthetic similarities among musical genres, we determined that aesthetic distances between genres correlate highly with the perceived difference in identity (Study 2). Further studies generalize the Aesthetic Self Effect beyond the musical domain: general changes in visual art preferences, for example from more traditional to abstract art, also elicited a strong Self Effect (Study 3). Exploring the breadth of this effect we also found anAnaesthetic Self Effect.That is, hypothetical changes from aesthetic indifference to caring about music, art, or beauty are judged to have a significant impact on identity. This effect on identity is stronger for aesthetic fields compared to leisure activities, such as hiking or playing video games (Study 4). Across our studies, the Anaesthetic Self Effect turns out to be stronger than the Aesthetic Self Effect. Taken together, we found evidence for a link between aesthetics and identity: we are aesthetic selves. When our tastes in music and the arts or our aesthetic interests change we take these to be transformative changes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:738 BOOK REVIEWS tical ruin, for what is required is a proper legal response to their illegal acts and a properly political response to their political acts. Burtchaell is usually close to the truth in his ethical judgments, hut one is often uneasy with these judgments either because of some glaring inconsistencies or because they do not seem grounded on a solid theoretical basis. He is possessed of some (...) remarkably clear insights and a powerful rhetorical style, hut these suffer from his inability to string these insights into a consistent outlook on these critical biomedical issues. University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, Illinois ROBERT BARRY, O.P. Image and Spirit in Sacred and Secular Art. By JANE DILLENBERGER. New York: Crossroad, 1990. Pp. 217. $29.95. In the quarter century since the close of Vatican II, it is surprising how few Catholic seminaries in this country have followed the Council mandate that called for the study of sacred art by candidates preparing for ordination. On the contrary, the preconciliar ambivalence toward the arts in general, and the visual arts in particular, has been superseded by an incipient iconoclasm that has flourished hand in hand with the liturgical renewal. In the exuberance of throwing out the vestiges of preconciliar culture, hasty reformers have unwittingly embraced new art forms that are all too often lacking in aesthetic or spiritual value. Their untrained eyes predictably gravitate toward the insipid, the garish, and the gaudy. Much of what has been lauded as Catholic art in the past two decades finds itself as hopelessly outdated as the burlap banner. Catholic culture has devolved into Catholic kitsch. It is ironic that the most eloquent voice for the study of art in American seminaries today belongs not to any priest or prelate, hut to a Protestant woman, Jane Dillenherger, who has established a long and distinguished career teaching in theological seminaries. These include: Drew Theological Seminary, San Francisco Theological Seminary, the Pacific School of Religion, and the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley. The Harvard-educated Dillenherger is the author of numerous hooks and articles dealing with art and religion. That she foresaw a career dedicated to rebuilding bridges between these two long-estranged fields of study was evidenced early on when she sought an inter-disciplinary doctoral degree with a dissertation committee that would include the theologian Paul Tillich alongside the eminent art historian Erwin Panofsky. The innovative proposal was denied. Undaunted, Dillen· BOOK REVIEWS 739 berger later went on to establish at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley a doctoral program of studies in the Arts and Religion, the only one of its kind in the United States, where theologians, artists, and art historians collaborate in the education of future church leaders. Jane Dillenberger's latest book, Image and Spirit in Sacred and Secular Art, is fitting testimony to a career that has stretched over five decades. The hook is a compendium of essays and lectures addressed to "the inquiring, intelligent adult who has little or no formal background in the visual arts." The offerings include such diverse subjects as "The Image of Evil in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Art" (what would have been her dissertation topic under Tillich and Panof· sky), "Picasso's Transformations of Sacred Art," "The Appearance and Disappearance of God in Western Art,"" Lucas Cranach, Reformation Picture-Maker," and "Images of Women in American Art." Al· together, ten essays have been included in this Crossroad publication which is generously filled with 133 reproductions of works discussed in the text. The overarching theme of this hook is to look at visual images and analyze how they have changed through successive cultural eras. In doing so the author makes every attempt to connect art and religion with everyday life. In her introductory essay, "Looking for Style and Content in Christian Art," Dillenberger calls on all viewers to discard their private prejudices as they gaze upon artworks: "Nothing less than a kind of self-abdication is demanded of us by a great work of art. It asks us to see it, if only for a few moments, in terms of the vision that it represents and expresses." Only by placing biases in check can the... (shrink)

In recent metaethical debate over ways to justify the notion of intrinsic natural value, some neopragmatists have challenged realist conceptions of scientific and moral truth. Holmes Rolston defends a critical-realist epistemology as the basis for a metaphysics of "projective nature" and a cosmological narrative--both of which set up a historical ontology of objective natural value. Pure ecological science informs the wilderness experience of Rolston's ideal epistemic subject, the "sensitive naturalist." The author argues that Rolston's account of the relation between knowing (...) and valuing can be clarified and strengthened by appropriating Bernard Lonergan's transcendental method. Conversely, Lonergan's view of moral self-transcendence can be developed further in light of Rolston's virtue epistemology, which is embodied in the figure of the sensitive naturalist. (shrink)

This volume is an edited version, recreated from tapes and auditors' notes, of the ten lectures that Canadian Jesuit, Bernard Lonergan, delivered on his Insight.

This essay examines the songwriting art of Bob Dylan as a vehicle for exploring and clarifying elements in Bernard Lonergan’s analysis of art. The elements focused upon include Lonergan’s treatment of symbols and symbolic meaning as the communicative medium of art, and, at greater length, Lonergan’s account of art’s capacity for what he calls “ulterior significance,” its ability to suggest depths of meaning—including divine or ultimate meaning—that we surmise to lie beyond our comprehension. Examining songs from the full range (...) of Dylan’s fifty-year career, the essay shows that from his early songwriting in the “folk” tradition and his breakthrough achievements of the mid-1960s, Dylan’s best art has been characterized by an unusual concision and power in its use of symbolic imagery, as well as by a recurrent ability to evoke, with artistic originality and effectiveness, mysteries of “ulterior significance.” These analyses are then brought together in a discussion of the religious, often eschatological, character of some of Dylan’s most significant work. (shrink)