Philosophy of education 8:1

CD/mp3 205, first part of eighth Cincinnati lecture on philosophy of education. Corresponds to CWL 10: 177-92. Sponsored by Gregory A. McCullough. The three basic types of philosophy are organized, respectively, about the level of experience, the level of intelligence, and the level of rational reflection. On the experiential level, there are materialism, empiricism, sensism, positivism, pragmatism, modernism; on the intelligent level, Platonism, idealism, relativism, essentialism; on the rational level, realism, where the real is what is known in true judgments. These differences radiate through the whole of life, as seen in Kierkegaard's spheres and Sorokin's societies. Positions are in harmony with the full implications of the three levels, while counterpositions involve a limited horizon. Lonergan then presents a series of variations on the basic philosophic differences. Galileo's distinction between primary and secondary qualities rests on the assumption that knowing is taking a look. This is contrasted with the Aristotelian and Thomist positions. Cartesian dualism and the subsequent developments of either side of Descartes (the rationalist and the empiricist) head to Kant, for whom what makes knowledge knowledge is experience, not a grasp of the unconditioned, not something that occurs in judgment. In all this development there is found the naive assumption that knowing is taking a look. The discussion moves to practical reason. To come to terms with the distinction of pure and practical reason, or of speculative and practical intellect, Lonergan speaks of the patterns of the flow of consciousness. Lonergan discusses also the survival of subjectivism in contemporary thought: in Heidegger, Sartre, Jaspers.

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Audio restoration by Greg Lauzon