Understanding and Being lecture 10:1

CD/mp3 159, first part of tenth and final Halifax lecture on Insight. Corresponds to CWL 5: 225-37. Sponsored by Mary Kierans, in the name of Hugh Kierans. There are three levels of the good: the good as the object of appetite, the good of order, and value. The three levels correspond to experience, understanding, and judgment. Knowledge of itself does not settle a course of action. Knowledge grounds different possible courses of action. Will is potency, willingness is habit or form, and willing is act. The act of will is free. The cognitional process of itself has no immanent term in the field of action. Nor do lower levels determine the higher, but simply provide material conditions. The freedom of the will brings us to a fourth level of consciousness, rational self-consciousness, where what is at issue is fundamentally myself. There follows a discussion of essential freedom and effective freedom and of moral impotence. Choice is also a determinant in objective process. It results in the actual functioning or malfunctioning of the good of order. There is a distinction between the positive and the negative aspects of ethics. The negative is much easier to develop. Positive ethics is the concern of the subject with regard to self and the actually functioning good of order on all its levels. It entails reflection on history. Lonergan concludes the lecture with his understanding of history: progress, decline, redemption.

Database and descriptions © Copyright 2017 by Robert M. Doran

 

Audio restoration by Greg Lauzon