Methodus --> Horizon

Methodus –> Horizon
Sku: 55400DTL060
Archival Number: A554
Author: Lonergan, B.
Language(s): Latin
Decade: 1960
Open 55400DTL060.pdf

Description:
2 handwritten schematic pp. Method, horizon, dialectic. Dated March 26, from spring 1963 course De Methodo Theologiae.

Transcription:

55400D0L060      Dated March 26

The discussion of method and horizon continues in these two pages. Data, then understanding both in and from the data are mentioned. The understanding can be descriptive or explanatory. If it is descriptive, it tells who, what, how, etc. Explanatory understanding can be comparative, complexive [I'm looking for a way to render complexiva in English], genetic, or dialectical. Comparative understanding is with regard to the data as they are given and insofar as they are attended to in relation to all the differences that appear in them. Complexive understanding with regard to the individual yields a psychological horizon, and with regard to the community a social horizon. Genetic understanding studies individuals and communities of different times with respect to cultural horizon, as the move is made from undifferentiation through differentiation to integration. Dialectical understanding discerns transcendental horizons in the individuals that have been investigated (A_i), in the communities that have been investigated (B_i), in the histories doing the investigating (E_ijk), and in the critical work doing the investigating (F_ij), in accord with the developing complexifications of each.

There is a problem of irreducible opposition and of transposition. Insofar as one has solved one’s own existential problem properly, not notionally but really, one knows what a transcendental horizon is, how it manifested, and what follows upon conversion. Insofar as one has developed culturally, so as to inhabit the differentiated worlds of the sacred, the intelligible, the interior, as distinct from the profane, the perceivable, and the external, one has in oneself the capacity through the negation of differentiation to reconstitute prior undifferentiated stages. And insofar as one understands psychology and society, one can proceed from the relations by which one lives to other matters, all of which form a directive part of method from above, while the described data form the part from below. For example, in physics, mathematics from above and the data from below yield the empirical laws.