Burrell on Lonergan on Aquinas on Sin as Intellectual Inconsistency
This post is for Mr. Bacon primarily, though anyone willing to follow along will be rewarded I venture. I was reading every mention of Lonergan in Burrell's oeuvre, to see whether it was possible to read Lonergan in a postfoundationalist light. Turns out it is, but at any rate, I came across this dicussion of the will, and I thought of Jeremy. The main line here is that will is an act of the intellect, so that love points to intellectual consistency and sin to intellectual inconsistency.
I will include the extended quote as the first comment on this post. I find it relevant to the function of a blog community committed to the practice of self-abnegation. So far naming our sins as sins has been a theme here. If we can't be intellectually consistent, at least we can help each other be intellectually intelligible. I think Burrell's discussion of this matter might illuminate, or at least describe, what has been going on here at JOHN 3:30.
Again, see comments.
I will include the extended quote as the first comment on this post. I find it relevant to the function of a blog community committed to the practice of self-abnegation. So far naming our sins as sins has been a theme here. If we can't be intellectually consistent, at least we can help each other be intellectually intelligible. I think Burrell's discussion of this matter might illuminate, or at least describe, what has been going on here at JOHN 3:30.
Again, see comments.
3 Comments:
From David B. Burrell, Aquinas: God and Action (Notre Dame: UNDP, 1979) 158:
'As complete understanding not only grasps essence and in essence all properties but also affirms existence and value, so also from understanding's self-expression in judgment of value there is an intelligible procession of love in the will' ([Lonergan,] Verbum, 201). While knowing the good does not of itself suffice for doing the good, it follows that recognizing a good as the good for me suffices to incline me towards it.
What Lonergan calls a judgment of value represents a step beyond mere understanding to a reflexive grasp of this particular good as my own good (or inversely, of my own good as congruent with this good). . . . A judgment of this sort does suffice to incline me towards that good, for 'the will is related to intellectual things as natural inclination to natural things' ([Contra Gentiles] 4.19.3). While the faculties differ and the mode of immanence varies from similitude to inclination, nevertheless love adds to knowing only a further consequentiality. This is the consistency Socrates demanded, asking not just that one's thoughts hang together, but that a person's action also match his thought.
An ideal, no doubt, for the discrepancy in faculties offers critical space for the failure we call sin. Yet it remains a constitutive ideal. For it is precisely this 'necessity of intelligible procession from intellect to will,' Lonergan reminds us, that drives a sinner 'either to seek true peace of soul in repentance or else to obtain a simulated peace in the rationalization that corrupts reason by making the false appear true that wrong may appear right' (Verbum, 202). In other words, failure to align our performance with what we judged to be right and good is understandable enough. But it must be acknowledged as a failure. An attempt to offer any other kind of explanation lands us squarely in self-deception. This inescapable fact forces us to regard the inclination of love arising out of a judgment of value as a further 'spelling out' of what we understand to be the case, albeit in a different way: in actions rather than words.
To render this description of will as an intellectual appetite (and love as an intellectual inclination) more plausible, consider how we protect ourselves from situations we sense we are 'unable to deal with.' Characteristically, we refrain from spelling them out in detail, and content ourselves with vague descriptions. By glossing over . . . we manage a tenuous peace. . . . We do our best to mask the situation in such a way that we will not be placed at odds with ourselves.
The language here is borrowed from intellectual consistency precisely because actions should follow statements with the same consequentiality that links propositions into a cogent argument. Nor is this 'should' a special moral 'should' for Aquinas; it is simply constitutive of an intellectual nature: 'from an intelligible form there must follow in one who understands an inclination to his proper operations and his proper end.' And 'this inclination in an intellectual nature is the will' ([Contra Gentiles] 4.19.2). So the will represents for Aquinas not an independent faculty alien to understanding, but simply the inclination natural to an intellectual nature. Of course willing differs from the understanding, as inclination differs from likeness; as an activity, however, willing cannot be understood independently of understanding.
4:12 AM
Yeah. Basically, an act of understanding is necessary but not sufficient for an act of will. Understaning and will are different, but not independently functioning, faculties.
We can only separate understanding from will if we assume that "is" (understanding) does not imply "ought." However, like Newbigin points out, there's no reason that "is" cannot include purpose (despite the last 400 years of philosophy). When it does, this purpose implies an "ought" that can lead us to a "judgment of value."
I don't know how necessary it was to say all that. What I find much scarier is the fact that will can, in turn, affect the understanding. Like the quote says, either we are honest with ourselves about our sin or we evade, rationalize, etc. The more we sin, the more we distort our faculty of understanding, which makes us less and less capable of grasping "the good" in any particular instance. Surely this figures into the "slavery to sin" that Paul describes in Rom. 6-8. The best our intellect can do in this fallen situation is admit that it can't find its own way out. Without the work of the Holy Spirit, we will never be able to sort out our web of self-deceptions.
Given this interplay between intellect and will, I think the search for truth and the effort to live morally are the exact same path. Moreover, we need grace for the former just as much as for the latter.
P.S. Lonergan does believe there are foundations for knowledge. However, these foundations are not propositions, but the very mental acts by which we form (and revise) propositions. These mental acts are universal throughout the human race, and the very act of questioning them presupposes their use. Thus they form a stable starting place for knowledge. I'm sure that's not enough discussion to really get the idea across. I would try some more, but I'm intimidated by Lonergan's warning at the beginning of Insight (which is some 750 pages) that ploughing through Insight (or some difficult mental exercise like it) is the only way to really grasp it.
12:42 PM
...
Jeremy,
We're having a Lonergan discussion at http://thomerica.com/fidesetratio/ and you are more than welcome to help us out if you have the time.
I'll post more here soon, but now I must watch The Life Aquatic with a beautiful woman.
...
7:58 PM
Post a Comment
<< Home