Transcendental Philosophy and the Study of Religion 11

CD/mp3 491, part 1 of sixth lecture in the 1968 Boston College Institute. Sponsored by Lynn Lonergan Doyle. The lecture turns to an analysis of meaning, and begins with the elements of meaning: sources, acts, and terms. Acts and terms are distinguishes into potential, formal, full, active or performative, and constitutive. Attention then turns to the various exigencies: systematic, critical, methodical, and transcendent. The section on functions had not yet been written, but Lonergan indicates he will treat formative, communicative, cognitive, effective, and constitutive functions. The next chapter concerns religion. The question of God arises out of the very structure of conscious intentionality: from inquiry into inquiry, reflection on reflection, deliberation about deliberation. God cannot be an object in the Kantian or empiricist sense, but one can affirm God's existence, and in that sense God is an object. The lecture concludes with comments on God and verification and on the relation of the God of the philosophers and the God of religion.