Objective Human Knowing

Lonergan acknowledges the fact that objective knowledge and contact with one’s own inner nature is not always either really desired or easily attained. In the first instance, Lonergan (1958) calls attention to the fact that there exists the possibility o f either raising or suppressing questions; there is also a pull between desiring to know the truth or fleeing from that possibility by refusing to raise issues and hence unwanted insights. If one does not want to attain objective knowledge, then, what Lonergan terms a “scotosis” (1958, pp.210- 211), - a blindspot - is employed which occludes any new avenues of understanding that may call into question the contrast between what one claims to be and what one is. In other words, if an insight appears to be challenging or threatening to the subject’s psychic security, this “blind spot” will ensure that it is rationalised away, ignored, or repressed.

In the second instance, Lonergan draws attention to a person’s context - what he calls their horizon. Both Lonergan and Taylor use the term “horizon” for the givenness o f the boundaries of what one knows and what one values. Each person’s horizon is limited and is only as large as one’s area of concern. Thus, in a situation of personal or social decline, possible remedies will be missed because o f the limitation of a particular horizon. In Lonergan’s (2001) forthright words, “they’ll be looking for all kinds of remedies and cures and ways o f fixing things up but the one thing necessary is what they’ll miss and they’ll miss it because their thinking is within the limitation o f a given horizon” (p.315). He considers that there is a real resistance to moving beyond the familiar and accessible, because to move beyond one’s horizon involves “reorganisation of the subject” and :

against such reorganisation of the patterns of the subject there come into play all the conservative forces that give our lives their continuity and their coherence. The subject’s fundamental anxiety, his deep distress is over the collapse of himself and his world; tampering with the organisation of himself gives rise to dread (1993, p.90).

To continue to equate what is true and real with one’s own concerns is to keep one from the fullness o f authenticity. Thus, a person - or an organisation - who finds themselves in a situation in which their horizon conflicts with that of society must explore the possibility of discovering the means of moving beyond their limited position. For Lonergan, this going beyond the limits of one’s horizon, the expansion of one’s interests and concerns coincides with the exigency o f authenticity. If a more truth-filled existence is to be achieved, horizons must be broadened and prior horizons must be subsumed, without being abolished.

While Lonergan considers objective knowing to be the starting point for authenticity, Taylor considers the starting point of authenticity to be contact with, and the discovery of, one’s own original way o f being. In Taylor’s (1991) words - “I am free when I decide for myself what concerns me, rather than being shaped by external influences (p.27). However, similarly to Lonergan’s notion o f moving beyond one’s comfort zone, one’s “horizon”, Taylor does contend that the question of being an authentic person cannot reside outside the context o f human relationships, and more specifically outside the community. For Taylor, a general feature of authenticity, properly understood, is its fundamentally dialogical character. As languaged beings, the self can never be properly understood outside the context of a dialogical relationship and the very definition of one’s identity, and hence one’s authenticity, one defines always in dialogue with, sometimes in struggle against, significant others in the

community. Hence, engaging with contemporary society and ever broadening one’s horizons, one’s social understanding, and one’s dialogical relations with others is crucial to a contemporary conception of authenticity.

Returning to Lonergan, neither the existence of blindspots nor the givenness of one’s “horizons” can negate fully what he terms the “unrestricted desire to know” (1958, p.350). In other words, there is an urge within towards the ideal which is objective knowledge. This innate desire to know is not satisfied until it has gone beyond what might be, what is one’s opinion, what it suits one to think, what could possibly be the case, to reach what really, truly and actually

is. For Lonergan, therefore, knowledge is more than a subjective, relative

opinion, as many in postmodern society claim. Rather, the component parts of a complete act of knowing - experience, understanding and judgement - assemble themselves into a full construct - a new piece of human knowing.

For Lonergan, objective knowing, as has been outlined above, is always at the service of something greater, i.e. human living. However, he considers that “without objective knowing there can be no authentic living” (1967(a) p.237). So, for Lonergan, objective knowing is the foundation stone of authentic living. Thus, truly objective knowing, which is not about power or equated merely with one’s own concerns, is what is required in relation to primary schools in contemporary Irish society as the first step in the Catholic Church’s quest for providing truly authentic Catholic education. For Lonergan contends that it is through the process of coming to know that the subject moves to a further dimension o f consciousness as “concern shifts from knowing being to realising the good” (pp.237-238).

For Lonergan (1958) authenticity is actuality and activity. To be truly authentic demands “consistency between what we know and what we do” (p.581). Thus, authenticity is realised when judgements of value are followed by decision and action - when knowing what is truly good leads to doing what is truly good. To know, to do and to choose what one comes to know as objective good is genuine self-transcendence -authentic living.

Lonergan’s (1985(b), p.82) definition of authentic living is to live according to the precepts - be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible. The fruit o f authenticity is progress - long-sustained attentiveness notes exactly what is going on. Intelligence repeatedly grasps how things can be better. Reasonableness is open to change. Responsibility weighs in the balance short- and long-term advantages and disadvantages, benefits and defects. The fruit of inauthenticity is decline; the absence of authenticity opens the way to a harshness o f human life that results from a ruthless exercise of power.

At this level o f authenticity, as “concern shifts from knowing being to realising the good”, Lonergan (1967(a) p.237) considers that people, or organisations, both constitute themselves and make their world. Lonergan is clear that there is a dynamic longing within the person for such authentic wholeness and completion, or in Taylor’s (1989) words - “an orientation to the good”, which resides in the question - what kind of person do I wish to be? Then, through one’s decisions and choices, one reveals oneself to others - reveals the type o f person one is at that moment; reveals the ideal that informs one’s way o f living;