Philosophy of Education 3:2

CD/mp3 196, second half of third Cincinnati lecture on philosophy of education. Corresponds to CWL 10: 65-97. Sponsored by Mark Miller, Redemptorist Bioethics Consultancy. The third differential is redemption. It can be conceived in many ways, but Lonergan is concerned primarily with redemption in Christ Jesus. Against sin as aberration, there is truth as a meaningful category. Against sin as a component in the social process, there is hope that enables us to resist the pressures and determinisms of sinning further. Against sin as a self-perpetuating chain reaction, there is doing good to those that hate us and the acceptance of suffering. Next, certain notes on the differentials. All three are intertwined. And there is sin in the church, and a penetrating criticism of sin outside the church. Again, the good is not apart from the true. The good is willing the true, and the true is not known without the individual becoming good. Again, the natural and the supernatural are really distinct, but in the concrete order of providence they are dynamically united. Finally, Christ is the way, the truth, and the life; and the account of the differentials gives some insight into that truth. The third main point on the good as object (after invariant structure and differentials) is levels of integration. We want a fundamental distinction between levels of integration. Lonergan begins with common sense and proceeds to a fourfold differentiation of levels of integration. First, then, there is a treatment of common sense as an accumulation of insights with regard to concrete behavior: undifferentiated common sense, and common sense differentiated by the division of labor. The third level involves the differentiation of consciousness and the emergence of the intellectual pattern of experience. It is what is meant by classicism in its best sense, the Greek achievement. And the fourth is historical consciousness. (This is not covered on the tape, which ends just before Lonergan got to this point.)

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