The Author of Transcendental (General Empirical) Method, Pedagogy, & the Transcultural Base

The Author of Transcendental (General Empirical) Method and Pedagogy

Bernard Lonergan was a philosopher, a theoretician, a methodologist, an economist, a theologian; and he was a teacher of the first order. Not one, but all. His genius, his unique and timely discoveries, his commitment to philosophy, theory, theology, the concrete human good, and to education in the broader sense mark his work as dynamic, unifying and central to the self-knowing and self-correcting process buried deep in the human endeavors we know as human being, culture, and history.

And still, in its comprehensiveness the work maintains its ground and critical source in your singular and intimate writ-small experience of raising questions, of having insights, and of the reflective processes of an individual human being involved in science, art, religion, and-or the wisdom of commonsense—in you and in me.

The present work, then, is pedagogy towards awareness, appropriation, and affirmation of that process as ground to both writ-small understanding and writ-large culture in history. Our pedagogy is based on the work of thinkers involved with the development of transcendental method. The audience for our pedagogy, then, is broad because the work itself and, thus, its pedagogy are aimed at concrete applications for any one person as an intimate-personal avenue of self-understanding and corrective.

Further, such self-understanding begins in an empirical-critical point of view, and is open at both ends to the mysterious unknown. The pedagogy for this philosopher's discoveries gains its broader import, and its historical sweep, by fostering your own intimate philosophical acumen and, over time, aims at nothing less than a paradigm shift beginning with Lonergan's basic insights circa mid-1900, and moving through into the early-to-mid 21st century, perhaps later. This pedagogy is a part of that movement. The potential shift is based on a self-corrective movement at the foundational level of all fields of study and, subsequently over time, of all of common discourse. Hence, the need for our distinction between fundaments and foundations comes into view.

In this way, at once Lonergan’s contribution to philosophy marks the beginning of a new corrective and self-corrective shift for many affected by "inherited" intellectual-philosophical derailments; for a new and creative set of insights and distinctions for others who are open to new developments in philosophical thought; and both for some others. And it marks a movement forward that will provide ground for definition and clarity in all further human knowledge. If so, and if Lonergan's basic insights continue to filter into other theoretical and common discourse, the shift will eventually constitute a new set of distinctions and a new, consciously appropriated attunement to pass down to those who will then receive philosophical assumptions in the "intellectual air" we know as intergenerational. Again, the attunement will be between our reflective philosophical stance (our foundations) and the actual given ground of that stance (our fundaments) as evident and affirmable in our personal writ-small and writ-large history.

Further, a study of Lonergan’s and others’ contribution to philosophy and education helps to reveal that ground as well as the ground of all other insights, knowledge, and paradigm shifts. The empirical ground can be found in an adequate understanding of the fundament of human consciousness—the given, basic, and discoverable structure and dynamism of your own mind, and in an adequate and critical interpretation of that fundament in the context of concrete history. Moreover, with the help of a clarified and working theory of knowledge, you can personally understand and verify that ground in the context of the history of science, of scientific method, and of the common procedures of ordinary discourse.

The Trans-Cultural Base

We refer to both cognitional theory and a theory of knowledge as transcendental or general empirical method. In his Method In Theology Lonergan also refers to the basic structure and method of consciousness in different language as a trans-cultural base. As far as all persons are conscious, the theory applies to all persons.

Again, this method and base hold within it the broad outlines of the self-corrective process writ-small and writ-large. And again, in its writ-large dimension, such understanding carries the potential to lead to a paradigm shift in the sciences and fields of study and application. The shift will consist, first, of correctives of old inherited assumptions; second, of new discoveries and, third, of a fuller and more unified understanding of the import of human thought, knowledge, faith, speech, and act in history.