PHILOSOPHY as HISTORICAL, COMPREHENSIVE, CRITICAL

Philosophy as Historical, Comprehensive, and Critical

My work here is fundamentally pedagogical method, not for Lonergan the man or for a specified one-concept theory, but for what Lonergan discovered and gave theory to in his journey through the greater philosophical project known as the love of knowledge. So in the present work we find ourselves ensconced in a philosophical tradition.

Further, to be critical in and of that tradition, we must first look backwards to that tradition to gauge ourselves in it; but then self-consciously move forward carefully with our new questions to envision, and then create anew, our future. We are then, in fact, involved here with philosophy as a part of an historical emergence, hopefully, of greater and fuller understanding of history and of ourselves as a part of that history.

At the beginning of the 21st century, the study of philosophy and the overt development of reflective and self-reflective habits are unfortunately uncommon fare in many cultural pockets and even in some institutions known as “academic.” This is so for many reasons, some of which we will explore in our earlier chapters.

Also, for all of their good, modern communications and technology have sped up our already too-fast and too-busy lives. At present, we can say that many among us are only vaguely aware of the state of our own philosophical landscape and our potential towards greater thought, if at all, or of our own various philosophical biases that might already inform the thought that we do have. We can say that many endorse reflective practice but fail to live it; that many frown on self-reflection, in turn taking for granted the influence of others’ past reflection on their own lives; and many have discarded any study of foundations, oddly, as groundless—but on what grounds, or for what reasons, they do not say--and I suppose we are not supposed to ask that question. Many even assume they have no biases, while at the same time loudly regretting bias in others. And many live in a fictive bubble, assuming no such area of import on their own or others’ thought—like living in a house where we are unaware of either the basement below or the wide view from the windows upstairs. Need I mention Plato’s rendition of education as an often-unwelcome journey from a cave and out into the blinding light.

Further, we can say that many are unaware of the possibility that becoming aware of our own biases holds the potential for a thoroughly enlivening transformation or, again, for an attunement of our assumptions with how our spirit of inquiry actually works.

If some or all of the above is true, for many of our young people, education in quasi-Western cultures has failed by its philosophical forgetfulness—might I say ignorance--and through fragmentation of and derailments in the academy. That is, we have failed by overlooking and-or dismissing the liberating elements in education that have for centuries been central to the thrust of many Eastern and Western cultures. In the West, this oversight or dismissal is grounded in wrongly broad-brushing the entire thrust of Western culture, philosophy, and education with the political and moral color of their few real failures.

For instance, in the later years of the 20th century, and perhaps even now, some dismissed all that is good about the Western tradition because of its “Euro centric,” white-male bias; or because Western culture has been fraught with intellectual and moral relativism, or been interpreted as merely another word for capitalism, or been identified with stone-like ideological “meta-narratives;” or been thought of as truncated and distorted by “secular humanism,” etc., etc.

Unfortunately, the critique has some truth to it. For instance, from the classical meta-narrative view, Western-style education has often fostered naïve and colonial assumptions with vast political implications, e.g., that no other adequate views or people existed; or, if others do exist, that they are somehow less qualified or even less human, and as if they are unimportant and have no cultural, ethical, or political voice in their own comportment. Of course, these “other” folks need to be governed—by Those Who Know Better. In a word, Western education and social polity has often fostered a provincial arrogance that, in a whole-person view of the fundamental purpose of a liberal education, perhaps marks Western education’s most fundamental failure.

To the extreme argument for completely dismantling what European intellectual geography gave us: First, such cultural critique has its feet sunk deep into Western thought-soil that, at its best, produces institutions and people that are quite able and free to take it upon them selves to raise critical questions about the same culture that produced us. We cannot afford to throw out the whole Western tradition because some of it has been short-sighted, wrongly developed, wrongly understood, wrongly exclusive, wrongly practiced, and wrongly imposed. We want to cut the disease out, and not kill the entire tree.

And, second, the Western tradition produced theory and the scientific revolution made theory systematic--and we would be unwise to throw that out, even if we could, and even though we cannot overlook the harms that have flown into human history on the powerful wings of those who would misinterpret the theoretical enterprise and its effects, who would systematically divorce that enterprise from ethical questions, or who would use it for ignoring, excusing, and doing evil. It stands that the introduction of theory alone, and the differentiations that accompany it, mark the Western tradition as an instance and watershed of human and cultural development unparalleled in human history—a true revolution of the reflective and critical spirit.

Like philosophy itself, then, we should not throw out the baby—theory and its critical method as the great contributions of Western thought that they are--because of the dirty bathwater that came along with it, i.e., its accompanying cultural and philosophical distortions.

Furthermore, though Lonergan’s and the present work flow in and from the Western tradition, neither is merely or wholly Western in its sweep. That is, from the point of view of theory, and of critical method, and only from those views, this work identifies and sets up the condition to verify a trans-cultural base in every human being regardless of development, cultural background, or world view.

Thus, Lonergan recovers and employs what remains authentic at the core of the Western tradition—theory and empirical method--and brings it home to the personal domain, thereby setting up the conditions to complete what began as a revolution--scientific--and what can become another true renaissance. On the other hand, we can still distinguish theory and the empirical sciences from their broader context of culture that both emerged from, and from the search for religious meaning:


. . . modern sciences are defined by their methods and their fields and, clearly enough, the same method cannot be employed both in investigating what lies within human experience and in investigating what lies beyond it. (Lonergan, 1985)


We also need to consider fundamental sets of assumptions; various transformative insights that take into consideration vastly different but related data; the horizon-development of the person using the methods on several “levels” of living; and the fact that, in human sciences and history, we are not only studying how the future might turn out, but that we are somewhat involved in creating it.

Further, despite its many failures, the Western tradition is built around a clear identification with intelligence and excellence as twin driving forces that tend to subordinate to them familial identities and orders, kingship, unquestioned ideologies, or mere personality worship. Further, such identities extend into theory, method, knowledge, truth, secularity, rule of secular law, and our post-World War II notions of human rights. And all come into tension with the love of family, community and country, and with our love of the divine and worship of a mysterious deity, however we view it. It is no accident that much of the above identifications emerge from now-received foundational philosophical elements that produce, underlie and maintain vibrant republics and democracies (Piscitelli, 1986; & King, 2003c).

These elements are tensional and dynamic and already inform Western-democratic civilization’s thrust towards individual and cultural well-being, of balances and transparencies of power, and of free dialogue and expression. Further, the tradition enfolds within it a basic trust in the wisdom of an educated and viable body of “The-People” and, moreover, of increasing our knowledge and excellence within that dialogue, expression, and wellness of being. These notions go beyond what is “merely Western,” as they are all essential elements of the 21st century--if we are to create and live in a humane world together.

Our study, again, is not a prescribed adventure coming “down” from set ideological or classical "first" principles, self-evidence, or from presumably divine doctrines. Rather, in our study we will find that our theoretical development of the human mind, and our verifiable discoveries about ourselves, ground and frame, in critical-theoretical fashion, but do not fully define, the meaning that emerges, and that has already emerged, in such 21st century political movements.

Furthermore, as sticky as the notion might be at present, truth is a common personal and political foundation for democracies, and is an essential element in any understanding of philosophy and of our foundations. For you are a “people,” and your recognition of a fiction, a falsehood, or a lie depends on your prior embrace of being able to recognize what is probably, most likely, or really true—or not.

In this way, the pursuit of truth is also an essential element in the health of a democratic body-politic, for the fundamental hope is that truth, as diverse and as hidden as it can be, will rise from the freedom a democracy affords to human thought, speech, assembly, and the press.

Moreover, if the foundations of knowledge and truth have become fuzzy in our present political climate, we can still develop a new and clear foundation for understanding both; and we can come to know the fount where these foundations live in a moment of critical self-reflection and identification afforded in the present work. Such reflections can serve to critique and clarify what knowledge and truth actually mean to us in our everyday lives.