Book Description
Insight is Bernard Lonergan's masterwork. It aim is nothing less than insight into insight itself, a comprehensive view of knowledge and understanding, and to state what one needs to understand and how one proceeds to understand it.
In Lonergan's own words: 'Thoroughly understand what it is to understand, and not only will you understand the broad lines of all there is to be understood but also you will possess a fixed base, and invariant pattern, opening upon all further developments of understanding.'
The editors of the Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan have established the definitive text for Insight after examining all the variant forms in Lonergan's manuscripts and papers. The volume includes introductory material and annotation to enable the reader to appreciate more fully this challenging work.
Customer Reviews:
Insight: A Study of Human Understanding.......2007-06-27
As far as I have read this book, it is very informative and indepth study.
St.Thomas Aquinas' dialogue with Modern Age.......2005-10-03
Lonergan, a Thomistic philosopher,tries to explain the procedures of human mind,discerning a transcendental method capable to establish a fundamental pattern of every operation present in cognitional action."What am I doing when I am knowing?",that's the previous question Lonergan attempts to answer.This is possible integrating the operations "experiencing","understanding" and "judging",an INSIGTH which brings a startling unity to knowledge and to the pursuit of understanding in every field.
shared love of wisdom.......2001-07-02
If somebody loves you authentically so much so that you become better person than before, you can't help loving him dearly. It happens. And it can happen even through a book! In this incredable book called "insight", you are invited to a wonderland of a higly diffentiated intelligence, only to find that it is no other than your real self. At first you wonder, you ask, you think hard, and you get it! For the first time you come to know what is understanding. You begin to doubt, you reflect, and finally you judge that you are a knower! Now you are changed. Now you know you are consciously operating in your experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding. Now you know what knowledge is, what it means to you, and how it means to you. You become a living, knowing, acting subject. And you come to love Lonergan, since he introduced you to yourself. To "read" Insight may take a long time, years or decades. However when you finish it, you will begin to take another long trip to yourself, where no one had gone before...
Labour of love.......2000-09-10
This is the definitive text of Bernard Lonergan's most important work, Insight, with over 130 revisions, based on the meticulous labor of comparing three texts, line by line, word by word! All students of Lonergan's thought owe a great debt to Frs. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran for having executed their task with such thoughtfulness, perfection and devotion. Corresponding pages to the second edition of Insight, which has been the standard one, are given in brackets. My previous review was based on the second edition.
Knowing and Knower.......2000-04-10
Rev. Bernard Lonergan, S.J.(1904-1984), though still not commonly known, was, talent-wise, certainly one of the top thinkers of the 20th century. It takes time for his thoughts to be appreciated, developed and applied. There are already numerous web-sites and hundreds of books, articles and theses written on his ideas. He might be publicly acknowledged as one of the 100 most influential thinkers by the end of this century. For more than forty years, his works continue to nourish and challenge people, initially in seminary circles, and gradually in different universities. Boston College has been a key base for over 20 years in fostering studies of Lonergan's thought and stimulating dialogue with people in diverse fields. Insight remains one of the basic books that one needs to master if we want to reach up to Lonergan's mind, just as he reached up to the mind of Aquinas. One of the perennial issues underlying human differences is our assumptions about knowing and reality. What is it to know? Is it taking a look out there? Or do we presume that we cannot know reality? Lonergan proposed an arduous journey for all of us to become aware of what we are doing when experiencing, understanding, judging and choosing. The focus is on appropriating or gaining self-knowledge of our recurrent cognitional processes and structures in knowing. "¡Kit is essential that the notion of insight, of the accumulation of insights, of higher viewpoints, and of their heuristic significance and implications, not only should be grasped clearly and distinctly but also, in so far as possible, should be identified in one's own personal intellectual experience." (p.xx) "Thoroughly understand what it is to understand, and not only will you understand the broad lines of all there is to be understood but also you will possess a fixed base, an invariant pattern, opening upon all further developments of understanding." (p.xxviii) This is a difficult, painstaking and challenging task, not achieved just by reading from cover to cover (785 pages plus 30). Lonergan's examples from mathematics, physics, classical and statistical investigations might be a hurdle to those who don't have background in such disciplines. Insight is like the Zen master's finger pointing towards the moon. One must be careful not to get lost in the sweeping and erudite visions and constantly come back to appropriating one's own knowing processes. This is not a book for the faint-hearted. One easier introduction is Terry J. Tekippe's "What is Lonergan Up to in Insight? A Primer". Then one can go on to Flanagan's Quest for Self-Knowledge, and The Lonergan Reader, edited by the Morellis, and finally come to grapple with the full original and Lonergan's later works on Method in Theology and Macroeconomic Dynamics.
Book Description
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Buried for more than forty years in a Latin text written for seminarian students at the Gregorian University in Rome, Bernard Lonergan's 1964 masterpiece of systematic-theological writing, De Deo trino: Pars systematica, is only now being published in an edition that includes the original Latin along with an exact and literal translation. De Deo trino , or The Triune God, is the third great installment on one particular strand in trinitarian theology, namely, the tradition that appeals to a psychological analogy for understanding trinitarian processions and relations.
The analogy dates back to St Augustine but was significantly developed by St Thomas Aquinas. Lonergan advances it to a new level of sophistication by rooting it in his own highly nuanced cognitional theory and in his early position on decision and love. Suggestions for a further development of the analogy appear in Lonergan's late work, but these cannot be understood and implemented without working through this volume. This is truly one of the great masterpieces in the history of systematic theology, perhaps even the greatest of all time.
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Book Description
A companion to Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964 (Volume 6 in the Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan series), this anthology contains Lonergan's lectures on philosophy and theology given during the later period of his life, 1965-1980. These papers document his development in the discipline during the years leading up to the publication of Method in Theology, and beyond to 1980 when he was more engaged in his writings and seminars on macroeconomics.
Philosophical and Theological Papers 1965-1980 is divided into five sections, forming units on the basis of dates. The three central sections are each a set of lectures respectively given at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Gonzaga University in Spokane, and Trinity College (University of Toronto). Although there is some repetition amongst the lecture sets and in relation to other more familiar works, this repetition displays occasional new turns of phrase that the careful reader will note. In at least one instance, familiar material suddenly opens out onto expressions not to be found anywhere else in Lonergan's work. Other very interesting developments regard the movement from speaking of the immutability of dogmas to their permanence of meaning and the permutations among 'real self-transcendence,' 'performative self-transcendence,' and 'moral self-transcendence.'
Book Description
Few theologians in history have matched Bernard Lonergan's range of learning. Fewer still have written on the "dismal science" of economics. Rooted so solidly in the concerns of this world, economics is not a discipline we associate with the more rarified pursuit of theology. In this long-awaited volume, Lonergan demonstrates the short-sightedness of this view.
This companion volume to For A New Political Economy (Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, Volume 21) continues the work of bringing together the various elements of Lonergan's economic thought. His economic writings span forty years and represent one of the most important intellectual achievements of the twentieth century. They have previously been inaccessible outside of the Lonergan research community as the majority of them have not been formally published, and exist only as a group of unfinished essays and material for courses on economics taught by Lonergan.
Lonergan's economic ideas track a different line of thought from that taken by contemporary economists.
Macroeconomic Dynamics: An Essay in Circulation Analysis represents the economic thought of Lonergan at the end of his career. His analysis, while taking a fresh look at fundamental variables, breaks from centralist theory and practice towards a radically democratic perspective on surplus income and non-political control, and explores more fully the ideas introduced in For a New Political Economy.
This work will be read not only by economists but also by liberation theologians, political theologians, and others inside and outside of religious organizations interested in social justice issues and alternative approaches to economics.
Book Description
Bernard Lonergan's economic writings span forty years and represent one of the most important intellectual achievements of the twentieth century. Unfortunately they have been inaccessible outside of the Lonergan research community as the majority of them have not been formally published, and exist only as a group of unfinished essays and material for courses on economics taught by Lonergan. The publication of For a New Political Economy, along with its companion volume, Macroeconomic Dynamics: An Essay in Circulation Analysis (Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, Volume 15), seeks to remedy this by bringing together the various elements of Lonergan's economic thought.
Lonergan's concept of economics differs radically from that of contemporary economists and represent a major paradigm shift. He takes a fresh look at fundamental variables and breaks from centralist theory and practice, offering a uniquely democratic perspective on surplus income and non-political control.
For a New Political Economy is a collection of drafts, notes, and essays written by Lonergan in the 1940s on various aspects of economics. This volume provides the intellectual underpinnings of ideas more fully explored in Macroeconomic Dynamics.
Book Description
Bernard Lonergan's De constitutione Christi was written to accompany a course being taught in Latin at the Gregorian University, Rome during the 1950s and 60s. This little-known treatise, volume seven in the series, is presented in English translation, accompanied by the original Latin text.
Here, Lonergan tackles the metaphysical and psychological questions raised by the unique makeup of Christ, who is both fully human and fully divine, according to traditional Christian theology. His analysis falls into two parts: ontological and psychological. In dealing with the ontology of the incarnate Word, Lonergan explores the notion of person, and in doing so provides an interesting treatment of the existential question of personal authenticity raised by Kierkegaard and treated by Lonergan under the heading of Existez. Moving into his psychological analysis, he argues that consciousness is not a matter of introspection, a perception of oneself as object, but rather an awareness of oneself as subject. He then applies this understanding to the self-awareness of Christ, with particular reference to the question of Christ's knowledge of himself as both human and divine.
This book is a foundational text in critical areas of contemporary theology; however, it was never widely circulated and has remained effectively unknown to contemporary scholars. With this translation the work will finally be made accessible.
Book Description
Bernard Lonergan (1904-'984) was a noted Canadian philosopher and theologian. He devoted his life to articulating a generalized method of inquiry and its implications, not only for the human and natural sciences, but also for a better world and a higher quality of human life. His own clear vision showed him the need to overcome the terrible fragmentation of knowledge and life in our time. The struggle to achieve an integrated view is the theme that unified the body of his work.
In the history of that struggle, Understanding and Being plays a central role. Published a year after his profound and complex Insight, it is the edited transcription of some thirty hours of Lonergan's lectures on that seminal book. Understanding and Being serves as a guide to the very challenging terrain of Insight, or, as one commentator put it, if Insight is the Everest in the range of Lonergan's works, Understanding and Being is the approach through rolling foothills.
aThis edition, the second, incorporates more of the historical setting in the text and adds a wealth of explanatory notes, as well as previously unedited discussions that followed the lectures.
Book Description
Bernard Lonergan's theological writings have influenced religious scholars ever since the first publication in the 1940s of the series of five articles which make up Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas. These articles first appeared in Theological Studies and were subsequently republished in book form in 1967 under the present title. This volume contains a new preface by the editors and full translations of all Latin texts.
Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas is a product of Lonergan's eleven years of study of the thought of Thomas Aquinas. The work is considered by many to be a breakthrough in the history of Lonergan's theology and a foundation upon which his later contributions were constructed. Here he interprets aspects in the writing of Aquinas relevant to trinitarian theory and, as in most of Lonergan's work, one of the principal aims is to assist the reader in the search to understand the workings of the human mind.
Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas is a vital component of Lonergan's oeuvre, and of continuing relevance to trinitarian theology, Aquinas studies, and inquiries into human cognition
Customer Reviews:
Reenvisioning Aquinas - review by Br. Dunstan Robidoux OSB .......2006-03-04
This new edition of Bernard Lonergan's Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas is meant for readers who are not too familiar with Latin but who can now easily read Lonergan's lengthy quotations of Aquinas in English. The work had been written originally in the 1940s to correct a mistaken theological tradition which had spoken about acts of human understanding in terms of forming concepts and definitions. To understand was to articulate words that one speaks or writes. But, in Lonergan's carefully researched analysis of both Aquinas and Aristotle, understanding presents itself as a preconceptual event which is not really produced by the human intellect, but is in fact received by the human intellect as apt images suggest intelligible relations which are grasped by acts of the mind. Lonergan's analysis of Aquinas on human understanding reveals how Aquinas's theology cannot be properly understood if a scholastic, conceptualist notion of understanding is retained as one's primary hermeneutic.
Review by Br. Dunstan Robidoux OSB
from cognitional theory to metaphysics in St. Thomas.......2002-04-25
"To perfect the old by means of the new" Lonergan took the task of determining what the old really was. 'Verbum' is the result from the long years reaching up to the mind of St. Thomas. Not to the concepts used by St. Thomas but to the acts of thinking in him to revive his thinking mind again for today.
Intelligence and reason are proper capacities of human being in Greek tradition. Understanding and Judgment are unique characteristics of imago Dei in christian tradition. 'Verbum'(inner word) is the key to the self-understanding of human being. Who am I as a human being? Grasp the acts of understanding and judgment! Then you will know what truth is, what being is, and what metaphysics is all about.
Those who wish to know what the old key in Thomistic tradition was, read 'Verbum' and 'Grace and freedom'. Those who wish to know how we can add to and perfect the old by means of the new, read 'Insight' and 'Method in Theology'. These two couples show separately old things and new things in the order of nature and supernature.
Humans are always the same in their natural potencies. Internal acts are always something like "?" then "!" then "..."
We ask, we understand, we conceptualize what we understand. we reflect, we judge, and we assert that it is so. We deliberate, we love, and we will act.
There are some books to help us to act properly. And 'Verbum' is surely one of them.
Book Description
Grace and Freedom represents Lonergan's entry into subject matter that would occupy him throughout his lifetime. At the same time it is a manifestation of the thinking that has made him one of the world's foremost Thomist scholars.
The volume is in two parts. Part One is a new edition of "Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St Thomas Aquinas", four articles written by Lonergan in 1941-42, first published in book form in 1971. This edition includes new notes and indices. Part Two is Lonergan's doctoral dissertation, "Gratia Operans", submitted to the Gregorian University, Rome, in 1940. Published here in full for the first time, the dissertation provides important context and background for the articles in the first part. Lonergan's thesis is that, from the sixteenth century onwards, commentators on Thomas Aquinas lacked historical consciousness, raised questions that Thomas had never considered, and obfuscated the issues. Lonergan's achievement consists in having retrieved the actual position of Thomas by adopting a historical approach that has reconstructed his intellectual development on grace. The majority of contemporary theologians now agree with the implementation of the historical method. What Lonergan also adds is a unique diagnosis of the mistakes made by the modern scholastic authors in their treatment of grace. Throughout this work, Lonergan discovers in Thomas a mind in constant development, displaying radical shifts on fundamental questions. Together the two parts not only reveal an essential step in Lonergan's own development, but also make an impressive contribution to Thomist studies.
Customer Reviews:
a key insight.......2007-01-20
This was Lonergan's doctoral dissertation. It focuses on the relationship between divine activity and human responsibility, between grace and freedom. To what extent are our good works our own, and to extent, or in what way, are they the product of God's grace? This issue is of fundamental importance for Christian theology. A deeply theoretical problem, its practical implications can be seen in the difference between the theological ethics of such thinkers as John Courney Murray and Reinhold Niebuhr.
I have found the first chapter in particular to be helpful. It traces the history of the development of the theoretical category of nature. Nothing in this world is purely natural; all is a mixture of nature, sin, and grace, but having the neutral term of nature allows theologians to avoid extremes that view humanity (including culture) as either absolutely fallen and thus totally helpless, or completely redeemed, and thus able to achieve anything on its own. Lonergan compares this to the theory of gravity: nothing actually falls at 9.8 meters per second squared, but this abstraction makes for some clear thinking about actual, concrete falling bodies, and thus, is indispensably helpful for very practical problems (such as, Is scripture the only source of truth? What is the relationship between church and state?)
The rest of the work focuses on Thomas Aquinas's treatment of the relationship between grace and freedom (our will and choices). It's very complicated, exploring such distinctions as actual and habitual grace, operative and cooperative grace, healing and elevating grace, their interrelations, and their relations with the will, merit, the theological virtues, etc. By a historical treatment of Thomas's thought, Lonergan seeks to present Thomas free from the ahistorical readings of decadent scholastic Thomists.
A great secondary source for this work is Michael Stebbins' "The Divine Initiative."
Worth the read..........2007-01-12
Anyone who buys this book knows what they're getting since it's certainly not for a mainstream audience. But as far as an entry point into Lonergan's appreciation of Aquinas the book is a must have. The editors of the collected edition have done an excellent job. Latin quotations from Aquinas have been translated afresh into English in the footnotes and there is a ready guide to Lonergan's latin in the back. An excellent index also helps the student of Lonergan and of course, of Aquinas. The addition of Lonergan's PhD thesis as well as the previously published edition was a masterful stroke since it gives a little more detail on Lonergan's thinking. I for one, found the dissertation far easier to read and comprehend than the previously published work which I had labored over for some time before getting my hands on this copy.
As far as the content of the work, it demonstrates Lonergan's mastery of his subject and the viability of his method - attend to the data before judging people!
The student of Lonergan will already own this. The student of Aquinas should seriously consider picking it up.
Book Description
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.
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General
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| Nonfiction
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| Books
Method in Theology
Bernard Lonergan: An Introductory Guide to Insight
What Is Lonergan Up to in Insight?: A Primer (Zacchaeus Studies: Theology)
Foundations of Christian Faith
Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St.Thomas Aquinas (Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan)
