Chapter I : An Introduction to Lonergan's insight into insight

A. The Elements of Insight 3

Lonergan's basic tenet is that knowing is self-appropriation, a process of raising the question and searching for the unknown, a task that nobody can replace oneself in doing and which everyone should take great pain to achieve. Only then is it possible for the insight into the unknown to emerge, followed by the construction of a cohesive system of knowledge. Taking Archimedes' discovery as an illustration, Lonergan shows that insight comes first from attention to a definite question, namely, how to check the purity of a crown, which is linked to a certain image, the actual crown. This image becomes a thematic presence and inquiry in his consciousness, and thus creates tension and anxiety. With this disposition as basis, insight suddenly and unexpectedly comes as a result, not of outer circumstances like bathing, but of inner conditions, such as raising questions, inquiring and searching with patience so that the banal image and experience of bathing serves as a spark. What follows is that this insight pivots between the concrete and the abstract, from solving the concrete case to making primitive terms like mass and volume, to laying down definitions such as that of density, and finally to constructing the principles of displacement and of specific gravity; which can then be applied to further individual cases.

Insight will then lead to other insights. Lonergan takes positive integers as an example: the insight into addition tables leads to homogeneous expansion like multiplication, powers, subtraction, division, root, etc. However, when this system of knowledge encounters anomalies which cannot be subsumed into it, then the need of a higher viewpoint will emerge. The higher viewpoint includes new operations and rules. "They will be more symmetrical. They will be more exact. They will be more general." 4 In this sense, algebra represents a higher viewpoint of arithmetic.

What is described above is the progress and development of direct insight, which grasps the point or sees the solution. However, there is also inverse insight, corresponding to a more subtle and critical attitude, which denies the possibility of getting the point or solution, in other words, denies intelligibility. Lonergan uses the notion of the square root of two as an illustration of inverse insight, for it affirms the impossibility of obtaining its corresponding fraction. It is an irrational number. Therefore, the meaning of inverse insight grants us the boundary of asking relevant and right questions.

B. The Heuristic Structure

After explaining what insight is, Lonergan points out how to approach insight, namely, following a heuristic structure. "Heuristic is from the Greek word heurisko, to find. In Greek, the ending -ikon denotes the principle. So a heuristic is a principle of discovering." 5 It is a systematic and cohesive procedure of operation, based on what is known to approach the unknown target so that finally the truth can be grasped. Therefore, a heuristic structure is "that structure of concepts by means of which the inquirer gives a preliminary description of what is to be known, such as will serve to direct his inquiry." 6 In classical science, the heuristic structure is 'the nature of...', followed by classification and correlation. In classification, similars are similarly understood since 'the nature of ...' is the universal, not the particular. However, there are two kinds of correlation. The first is the similarities of things in their relation to us, while the second is in their relation to one another. Therefore, there will be two kinds of classification, followed by two kinds of understanding of 'the nature of ...' Thus, there is the nature of colour in its relation to us, in contrast to the nature of the wavelengths of light in their relation to one another. In this sense, the notions of nature, similarity, classification and correlation become the heuristic structure of classical science.

C. Levels of Consciousness

In the past, what was at stake was the objectivity of truth, which was self-evident as long as the conclusion was logically drawn from premises. A subject is needed to arrive at truth, but he is just supposed not to fail to grasp what is self-evident. Once truth is attained, it is beyond the subject as if it were non-spatial, atemporal, and impersonal. Only falsity can contradict it. No doubt, intentionally truth is independent of the subject, but ontologically it resides only in the subject because the latter, under definite psychological, social and historical conditions, must first go through a laborious process of investigating, coming to understand, marshalling and weighing the evidence in time and space before "the fruit of truth can be plucked and placed in its absolute realm." 7 This laborious process is, in fact, that of the self- transcendence of the subject, who is required to go beyond what he feels, what he imagines, what he thinks, what seems to him, in order to arrive what is so.

This neglect of the subject is also due to the notion of the soul. The human soul seems to be as objective and universal as the soul in plants or animals, no matter whether the person is awake or asleep, a saint or a sinner, lazy or responsible. In other words, the study of the human soul in its essence, potencies, and habits has little to do with the study of human consciousness whose operations are the centre of the subject. The implication of this neglect is an anti-historical immobilism. 8 Human knowledge is no doubt expressed in concepts which, however, are abstract and immobile, standing outside the spatio-temporal world of change. Human understanding, subject to its limited yet expandable horizon, changes in different historical contexts. So, while concepts do not change on their own, still they are changed as the mind changes which forms them. 9

An existential subject is a subject by degrees. It discerns different levels of consciousness. In a dreaming state, we are only potentially a subject without freedom to think or act. However, we become experiential subjects, capable of perceiving and feeling the sensible world when we are awake. When we follow our desire for intelligibility and go on to inquire into our experience by raising relevant questions, to understanding its possible meanings and implications, we arise to the level of an intelligent subject. Then the rational subject sublates the experiential and rational when it desires to check if its understanding is correct, marshals the evidence pro and con and finally judges it to be or not to be. Being able to judge what is true means to reach the virtually unconditioned, i.e. all the necessary conditions for making a judgement are fulfilled. Finally, the rational consciousness is sublated by the responsible one when the latter follows the intention of the good, the question of value, to deliberate, decide and act on what is truly worthwhile. Reaching this level means the objective value is embodied into subject. Therefore, a study of the subject looks into the different operations on these levels and their mutual relationships. 10

Here, Lonergan wants to tell us that, first, knowing is a compound of many operations, not a single uniform property. Objectivity in experiencing the immediate world is attained by sensing and intuition, yet it is not the only mode of knowing. In the mediated world of meaning, objectivity is approached by questioning, which governs the exigencies of human intelligence to investigate and understand, and of human reasonableness to judge in its virtually unconditioned. What is grasped in understanding or judging is not some further datum added on to the data of sense. In fact, it is unlike all data but consists in an intelligible or reasonable unity.

Secondly, apart from being a thinker, the subject is also a doer who deliberates, chooses and acts as a free and responsible agent making of himself. If knowing is for the sake of being, acting is for the sake of value. Value here not simply means particular good but ordering goods for the sake of the truly good. Being and value are both transcendental notions, i.e., their entirety is beyond the reach of the subject, yet they are always present in the activities of knowing and acting and guide the subject towards their greater fullness. Just as we can only have limited knowledge of being by knowing this and that and other beings, the actualization of value can only be found in this or that act of a good person. 11 Therefore, what is finally at stake is the subject who, by the effect of self-transcendence, attains objectivity in his knowing and becomes the principle of goodness in his decisions and actions.

Lonergan insists that this pattern of operations in our consciousness is transcendental and normative, i.e. it is valid for any kind of knowing and not open to revision. 12 In this sense, in order to understand better the insight into interior knowledge in the Spiritual Exercises, it is pertinent to see how Ignatius goes through his own appropriation in the first place, an experience and paradigm which is destined to be pedagogical and inspirational for his spiritual sons and daughters.

3. Cf. Bernard J.F. Lonergan, Insight (New York: Philosophy Library, third edition, 1970), 3-25

4. Ibid., 16.

5. Bernard J.F. Lonergan, Understanding and Being (New York & Toronto: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1980), 74.

6. Hugo A. Meynell, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Bernard Lonergan (London & Basingstoke: MacMillan Press, 1976), 173.

7. The Achievement of Bernard Lonergan, 71.

8. Bernard J. F. Lonergan, A Second Collection, ed. by William F.J. Ryan, S.J., and Bernard J. Tyrell, S.J. (London: Darton, Longman & Todd), "The Subject", p.69-86.

9. This difference can be further illuminated by Marcel's categories of problem and mystery. A problem is something like x-1=3: when x is solved, the problem is no longer followed up on or attended to. However, in our mediated world of meaning, love, faith, freedom, etc. belong to the realm of mystery. Mystery carries us to an unending journey of discovering ever deeper and wider truth.

10. Second Collection, 79-81.

11. According to Aristotle, "Virtue...is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean, i.e. the mean relative to us, this being determined by a rational principle, and by that principle by which a man of practical wisdom would determine it." (Nicomachean Ethics, II, iii,4; 1150b 5-8) So, there is no definition of virtue without its embodiment in a virtuous person.

12. Cf. Method in Theology, 19.