Bernard Lonergan "General Transcendent Knowledge"

(0) [Introductory Paragraphs]

0.1 Connection with Chapter XVIII and the rest of the book. The necessity of both going beyond and conforming to previously considered types of knowledge if there is or if there is to be a higher integration of human living than what is provided by man's social relations.

0.2 Chief among basic characteristics of knowledge: the determination of a heuristic structure which determines in advance of knowing certain general attributes of the object of knowledge.

Comparison with empirical science.

General transcendent knowledge: knowledge that God is, not what He is.

1. The Notion of Transcendence

1.1 Transcendent vs. Immanence

Common view of knowing models it on looking.

Error is then a matter of seeing what is not there or not seeing what is there.

Correction is then only possible by other "super" looks that are subject to the same difficulty.

Knowing is immanent:

1. It occurs within the knower.

2. What is known is nothing but the content immanent within the act of knowing.

1.2 The argument for knowing-as-looking is not itself a looking, but rather an exercise of intelligence and reasonableness.

1.3 Transcendence as going beyond.

Present study has revealed a progression of "goings beyond."

Is human knowledge confined to the universe of proportionate being?

1.4 Transcendence: The elementary matter of raising further questions.

Chapter XVIII left us with man's incapacity for sustained development.

Is there a higher integration and a higher viewpoint corresponding to it?

If so, the necessary transcendence will transcend "hitherto considered procedures of transcendence.

1.5 For Chapter XIX (recalling 0.1), transcendence is a development in man's knowledge corresponding to a development in man's being.

Extrapolation: Its principles will govern the study of transcendent knowledge.

Man has in fact extrapolated from the past through the present to the future.

Can he extrapolate beyond proportionate being to transcendent being?

2. The Immanent Source of Transcendence

2.1 The detached, disinterested, and unrestricted desire to know is the immanent source of transcendence, the origin of all questions which drive the questioner beyond every given limit.

This desire is not only the operator of cognitional development, but also the opponent of attached and interested subjectivity and intersubjectivity.

2.2 The claim that the desire to know is unrestricted seems extravagant.

2.3 The claim does not mean that man's understanding is unrestricted, for unrestricted understanding would exclude the possibility of any desire to understand.

2.4 The claim does not mean that man's attainment of understanding will be unrestricted, for such attainment has conditions of which unrestricted desire is but one.

2.5 The claim does not mean that the desire to know everything entails a duty to know everything or an expectation that man will know everything.

2.6 Whereas restricted desire to understand opposes total obscurantism, unrestricted desire opposes every partial as well as total obscurantism.

2.7 Historically, there is no evidence that we are running out of questions to ask.

2.8 Logically, the pure desire to know is unrestricted, because its object, being, is unrestricted.

2.9 Doubt as to the unrestricted character of my desire to know proves that this desire is active, concerning itself with "what lies beyond a suspected limited horizon."

3. The Notion of Transcendent Knowledge

3.1 The range of possible questions is larger than the range of possible answers.

"The requirement is a critical survey of possible questions" for setting aside those that cannot be answered and limiting oneself to those that can.

3.2 A prior critical inquiry into possibility will itself require a grounding, and so will that grounding, etc., ad infinitum.

Only an appeal to fact can settle a question of what is possible.

Analytical principles—analytical propositions with terms that occur in judgments of fact—will alone be of use.

3.3 The fact of knowledge determines the possibility of knowledge.

3.4 Insight has four stages:

1. Cognitional activity as activity: Chapters I-X.

2. Cognitional activity as cognitional, determining positions on self-affirmation, knowledge of being, and objectivity: Chapters XI-XIII.

3. Positions and counterpositions dialectically opposed in accordance with the logic of self-affirmation (Chapter XIV). This in turn provides a basis for a metaphysics of proportionate being (Chapters XV-XVII) and an ethics (Chapter XVIII).

3.5 4. Chapter XIX begins the 4th stage. Being is whatever can be intelligently grasped and reasonably affirmed, proportionate if it lies within the domain of man's experience, transcendent if lies without.

3.6 This last stage "will contribute to a determination of the power of the human mind."

3.7 Because their accounts of proportionate knowledge are deficient, neither positivists nor Kantians can halt the attempt to demonstrate transcendent knowledge.

Positivism is a tissue of counterpositions.

Kantianism errs in not recognizing the constitutive role of the unconditioned in judgment, a role evident in Kant's schematism of the categories itself.

4. Preliminaries to Conceiving the Transcendent Idea

4.1 To conceive heuristically the transcendent idea, we must first extrapolate from proportionate being.

4.2 Just as mathematics is more concrete than logic yet more abstract than physics, so the present extrapolation lies between mere conceptualization and empirical verification. We will, however, be able to verify certain elements of the extrapolation.

4.3 Being has been identified with the real. But what is being?

4.4 There are four clues:

1. Pure notion of being

2. Heuristic notion of being

3. Restricted acts of understanding, conceiving, and affirming being

4. The unrestricted act of understanding (UAU)

4.5 The pure notion of being is the pure desire to know. It is the ground of intelligent inquiry and critical reflection. It is called a "notion" because it is intelligent desire.

4.6 The heuristic notion of being is whatever is to be grasped intelligently and affirmed reasonably.

4.7 The pure desire to know, because it is reasonable, restricts itself to restricted attainments of knowledge. This yields only restricted acts of understanding being.

4.8 Only an UAU being knows the answer to the question, "What is [the essence of] being?," for only an UAU has the idea of being as its content.

4.9 The idea of being "assigns the limit to the whole process of going beyond" and is therefore absolutely transcendent.

4.10 The fact of extrapolation to transcendent knowledge proves its possibility.

Although man cannot enjoy an UAU, he can still determine heuristically a number of features of the answer to the question, "What is being?"

He can do this by a dual extrapolation:

on the side of the subject from restricted to unrestricted understanding, and

on the side of the object from the structure of proportionate being to the transcendent idea of being.

4.11 Since obscurantism is indefensible, "an extrapolation of the idea of being is necessary if one is to measure the power and the limits of the human mind."

5. The Idea of Being

5.1 An idea is the content of an act of understanding.

5.2 "Being is the objective of the unrestricted desire to know. Therefore, the idea of being is the content of an UAU."

5.3 The idea of being leaves nothing to be understood and so is absolutely transcendent.

5.4 Being "is completely universal and completely concrete. Therefore, the idea of being is the content of an act of understanding that grasps everything about everything."

5.5 The idea of being is the total range of intelligibility.

5.6 The idea of being is the idea of the good, because the good is the intelligible.

5.7 The UAU is one act.

5.8 The idea of being is one idea.

5.9 The idea of being is one, but of many; immaterial, but of the material; nontemporal, but of the temporal; nonspatial, but of the spatial.

5.10 What is possible for restricted understanding is not beyond the attainment of unrestricted understanding; and so 5.9 affirms no paradox.

5.11 The idea of being has a primary component and a secondary component.

The primary component is the principle by which the secondary is understood.

Inasmuch as there is a single act of understanding, there is a primary component.

Insofar as the primary grasps itself, the secondary is understood.

(Idea = intelligently grasping intelligibility + nonintelligent grasped intelligibility)

6. The Primary Component in the Idea of Being

6.1 The primary component in the idea of being consists in the unrestricted act's self-understanding.

The secondary component consists in the unrestricted act's understanding of everything else because it understands itself.

6.2 The duality of knower and known is not found in the idea of being.

Knowing is knowing being. Only relevant judgments can determine the difference between or identity of knower and known.

6.3 Ordinarily, "intelligibility" denotes what can be understood.

More profoundly, "intelligibility" denotes the primary component of an idea,

the intelligible that is also intelligent,

the generative insight itself as distinct from its issue,

"the ground or key or root from which results intelligibility in the ordinary sense."

To understand the primary component of an idea is to understand understanding; to understand the secondary component, it is not necessary to understand understanding.

6.4 For example, the generative principle of the series of positive integers is the insight without which one can do arithmetic, but not grasp the idea of positive integers. That is, positive integers are intelligible, but not intelligent. The insight into positive integers is an intelligent intelligible that makes the idea of positive integers possible.

Without some understanding of understanding, there can be no primary component of an idea and hence no idea.

6.5 The spiritual: intelligent intelligibility, intrinsically independent of the empirical residue.

As essence, as conceived, is abstracted from the empirical residue, but does not understand, and so is a spiritual product, not itself spiritual. A conceived essence is a secondary component of an idea.

6.6 The primary component of the idea of being = the UAU.

6.7 The UAU must understand itself, and so must understand itself as unrestricted; it must therefore, understand its content, its product, its issue, namely, the secondary component. The unrestricted act, understanding itself, thereby understands everything else.

6.8 The UAU is the insight which, if understood, grasps everything about everything else. Therefore, we are justified in calling that insight the primary component in the idea of being.

6.9 The primary component in the idea of being is the primary intelligible and is identical with intelligence in act.

The secondary component in the idea of being is the (class of the) secondary intelligibles and are the primary's products, grasped inasmuch as the primary understands itself. Intelligible only in the ordinary sense: understood, but not understanding.

7. The Secondary Component in the Idea of Being

7.1 It seems that the nonsystematic component in this and other possible universes excludes the possibility of an unrestricted act.

7.2 But from the viewpoint of the unrestricted act, the nonsystematic vanishes.

7.3 Abstract laws can be concretely applied only in conjunction with further determinations which can be brought under a different, i.e., statistical, type law. Both recurrent patterns and diverging series of conditions are intelligible.

7.4 But their intelligibility does not lie on the level of abstract grasps of systems of laws: their intelligibility is that of the particular, and so is concrete.

Abstract-classical and concrete-statistical laws are mutually conditioning as well as complementary.

(a) Given information on all events + knowledge of all laws, one can find the concrete pattern

(b) Given information on the concrete pattern + knowledge of all laws, one can deduce all events

But (a)'s proviso is (b)'s conclusion, and (b)'s proviso is (a)'s conclusion.

7.5 Unrestricted understanding does not proceed this way, but rather "from a grasp of itself; it does not attempt the impossible task of relating through an abstract system the concrete patterns but grasps the lot of them inasmuch as it understands itself." It has no use either for deduction or prediction, since it grasps all events and all concrete patterns at once.

7.6 Deduction and prediction are

impossible for restricted understanding, because the manifold of concrete patterns of diverging series of scattering conditions can never be systematized.

impossible for unrestricted understanding, because it does not advance in knowledge: it is outside of all temporal sequence while grasping the totality of temporal sequences.

8. Causality

8.1 If we know what causality is, we shall be led to affirm that there is an UAU.

8.2 Basic division of causes:

Internal Causes (Chapter XVI)

Central (or "substantial") potency, form, and act

Conjugate (or "accidental") potency, form, and act

External Causes

Efficient

Exemplary

Final

External causes can be conceived in three ways:

a. In concrete instances: e.g., the erection of a bridge (efficient) according to a plan (exemplary) for a purpose (final).

b. In principle: establishing their universal validity and hence their applicability to the universe as a whole.

c. In their fullness: theism is the principles' fullness which has heretofore been only implicit. Its yield is a first agent, primary exemplar, and a last end of the universe of proportionate being.

8.4 Efficient, exemplary, and final causality are facts. Our present question is whether these facts are instances of a principle that can bear human knowing from the realm of proportionate being to that of transcendent being.

8.5 Being is intelligible.

What is apart from being is nothing.

Therefore, what is apart from the intelligible is nothing.

Matters of fact which admit of no explanation are unintelligible.

Therefore, matters of fact which admit of no explanation are nothing.

If existence or occurrence is a mere matter of fact, it is nothing.

Knowing and the known are nothing if they are mere matters of fact.

If one is tempted to flee to the counterposition on being, he must be reminded that it only invites reversal.

8.6 If human knowing is confined to the realm of proportionate being, then human knowledge is condemned to mere matters of fact. This confinement then strips human knowledge not only of transcendent knowledge, but also of proportionate knowledge.

8.7 Knowledge consists in a grasp of the virtually unconditioned, i.e., judgment.

But the virtually unconditioned is a conditioned state of affairs that only happens to have its conditions fulfilled.

This mere matter of conditional fact always invites the further intelligent and reasonable question, which positivistic philosophy seeks to shut out.

8.8 Every proportionate being (one known through experience, understanding, and judgment) is a virtually unconditioned: its conditions happen to be fulfilled.

Therefore, if a proportionate being is taken to be ultimate, i.e., without explanation, then either that proportionate being is not being (because unintelligible), or being is not intelligible (a counterposition).

8.9 This is the nerve of the argument.

8.10 The most fundamental question asks about existence.

Neither empirical science nor methodically restricted philosophy can adequately or at all handle this question, for they have to assume existence as a mere matter of fact, since its range is that or proportionate being.

8.11 The same also holds for occurrence.

8.12 The contingency of existence and occurrence penetrates everything that empirical science and methodically restricted philosophy are to know.

8.13 (1) Being is intelligible, and mere matters of fact are nothing.

(2) Proportionate being presents only mere matters of fact.

(3) Therefore, proportionate being might not be all the being there is; we cannot exclude transcendent being from consideration.

8.14 A transcendent being relevant to our problem; that is, such a being

(1) must not be contingent in any respect as this would only reproduce the problem, and

(2) must ground the explanation of everything else, or the problem would remain.

8.15 Proportionate being exists and exists contingently, i.e., it is known by a grasp of the virtually unconditioned.

Therefore, proportionate being is not ultimate.

Therefore, some other being is ultimate and is not contingent, and is therefore formally unconditioned because it has no conditions at all.

This other being must be self-explanatory and capable of explaining everything else, thereby relieving proportionate being of its apparently brute facticity.

8.16 We need only formulate correctly the facts of external causality.

8.17 The formally unconditioned, which the pure desire to know anticipates, would be the truly efficient cause of proportionate being, because it would be capable of grounding the conditions of everything else. Neither chains of infinite regress or cycles of recurrence are so capable.

8.18 The formally unconditioned efficient cause must also be the exemplary cause of proportionate being, because that cause would ground the intelligibility in the pattern in which the conditions are fulfilled. Without such an exemplary cause, the conditions are fulfilled at random, which is unintelligible.

8.19 The formally unconditioned efficient and exemplary cause must also be the final cause of proportionate being, if being is the intelligible and the intelligible is the good. The actual order of the universe of proportionate being must be a value whose selection is due to rational choice.

8.20 (Review of 8.5 through 8.19)

8.21 As the final cause of proportionate being, the formally unconditioned is the ground of value and overcomes contingency at its deepest level.

Contingent, proportionate being must be a reasonably realized possibility:

Its possibility lies in the exemplary cause.

Its realization lies in the efficient cause.

Its reasonableness lies in the final cause.

8.22 Thus the demand of 8.4 has been met.

8.23 An "anthropomorphic" solution? No, for it is pure intelligence while man's intelligence is in tension between pure and other desire. But this tension is not foreign to the universe, which is the objective of man's pure desire to know.

9. The Notion of God

9.1 We have already conceived the unrestricted act of understanding (UAU. Now we will work out its implications for arriving at a notion of God. (26 Points)

9.2 First

The UAU is the primary intelligible (see 6.9)

9.3 Second

To grasp the unconditioned is an act of reflective understanding.

The UAU grasps itself as unconditioned.

(The unconditioned as grasped by reflective understanding is truth)

Therefore, the primary intelligible is the primary truth.

9.4 Third

What intelligence and reason knows is being.

The primary intelligible understands itself.

Therefore, the primary intelligible is the primary being.

Also: Primary being = the intelligent + the intelligible = the spiritual.

9.5 Fourth

The primary being is perfect. Unrestrictedness is perfection, and the primary being is an UAU. Imperfection is a restriction. Therefore, if the UAU were imperfect, it would grasp restriction in itself. This is impossible.

9.6 Fifth

The good is the intelligible.

Therefore, the primary intelligible is the primary good.

9.7 Sixth

Perfection of the spiritual requires, not only that the intelligible also be intelligent, but also that affirmable truth be affirmed and that the lovable be loved.

Therefore, the UAU = the perfect act of affirming the primary truth = the perfect act of loving the primary good.

These three acts are identical: separateness would imply imperfection.

9.8 Seventh

The primary intelligible = the self-explanatory or it would not be a perfect act of understanding.

9.9 Eighth

The primary being = the primary intelligible = the formally unconditioned

Therefore, the primary being = the formally unconditioned.

9.10 Ninth

The primary being = the self-explanatory = noncontingent.

Therefore, the primary being is either necessary or impossible.

(That is, the primary being cannot be merely possible, depending upon conditions, for the primary being is the formally unconditioned. Therefore, if the primary being is not impossible as well noncontingent then, necessarily, the primary being is a necessary being.)

9.11 Tenth

There is no necessity for more than one primary being.

If there were more than one primary being, then either there would be or there would not be more than one UAU.

If there were not, then some primary beings would be restricted acts of understanding, which is impossible.

If there were, then there would be more than one UAU differing from each other only empirically, which is impossible.

Therefore, there can be only one primary being.

9.12.1 Eleventh

The primary being = the UAU = perfect affirmation = perfect loving = the primary intelligible = the primary truth = the primary good.

Therefore, the primary being is simple.

9.12.2

Primary being does not share an order with other beings: it is simply a single act.

Therefore, primary being does not admit the compositeness of central and conjugate forms.

9.12.3

Primary being = spiritual being beyond all development.

Potency is the capacity to develop. It is the materiality or the empirical residue from which the spiritual abstracts. Therefore, primary being does not admit the compositeness of potency and form.

9.12.4

Primary being's "form" or "essence" (primary intelligible/being/good) =

Primary being's "act" or "existence" (unrestricted act of understanding/affirming/loving)

Therefore, primary being does not admit the compositeness of distinct form and act.

If the primary being exists, then it does so necessarily: its act is not the realization of a mere thought.

9.13 Twelfth

Continuous time presupposes the empirical residues and materiality.

The primary being is spiritual and does not develop.

Therefore, primary being is timeless.

9.14 Thirteenth

Eternity is timeless existence. Therefore, primary being is eternal.

9.15

We shall now consider secondary intelligibles.

9.16.1 Fourteenth

Secondary intelligibles are understood if the primary intelligible is understood.

Therefore, secondary intelligibles are conditioned.

9.16.2

Therefore, secondary intelligibles are distinct from the primary intelligible.

9.16.3

Knowing is not a looking at something else.

The primary object is perfect.

Therefore, secondary intelligibles need not be distinct realities.

9.16.4

Secondary intelligibles may be mere objects of thought.

9.17 Fifteenth

Primary being would be imperfect if it could not ground a possible universe as a reality.

Primary good would be imperfect if it could not originate any other instance of the good.

But primary being/primary good is perfect.

Therefore, primary being is the omnipotent efficient cause.

9.18 Sixteenth

Primary being is the idea of being which grasps the intelligible order of every possible universe in every detail.

Therefore, primary being is the omniscient exemplary cause.

9.19 Seventeenth

Secondary intelligibles are conditioned in their being.

As conditioned they cannot be necessitated.

As being they cannot be arbitrary.

Therefore, secondary intelligibles, if they exist, exist in virtue of the freedom of unrestricted understanding, perfect affirming, and perfect loving.

Therefore, primary being is free.

9.20.1 Eighteenth

Primary being does not develop.

Therefore, understanding, affirming, and willing, unlike in man, do not being increment and change in the primary being when it understands/affirms/wills contingent being.

9.20.2

Certain conclusions follow which depend on the distinction between

grammar: words and sentences

logic: concepts and judgments, and

metaphysics: enumeration of realities on the supposition that some judgments are true.

9.20.3 Corollary I

Every contingent predication about God [first occurrence of "God"] is also an extrinsic denomination.

God is the same whether or not He understands, affirms, wills, or causes this or that universe to be.

9.20.4 Corollary II

The extrinsic denominator is temporal, but the contingent predication can be eternal.

9.20.5 Corollary III

Divine efficacy:

X's existence or occurrence is a metaphysical condition:

(1) God understands/affirms/wills X's existence or occurrence; and

(2) X exists or occurs as God understands/affirms/wills it.

9.20.6 Corollary IV

Divine necessity does not impose necessity upon its consequents.

The necessity of the deduction of X's existence/occurrence from God's knowing X is not a metaphysical necessity, but rather the conditioned necessity that the logic of knowing governs.

9.20.7 Corollary V

Scientia media: God knows Corollaries I-IV.

God knows that whatever world order He wills would be willed down to the last detail.

Some of those details are exercises of free will.

Therefore: "God knows exactly what every free will would choose in each successive set of circumstances contained in each possible world order."

9.20.8

Scientia media rests on "Aquinas' familiar contentions on the immutability of God and the conditioned necessity of what God knows or wills or causes."

9.21.1 Nineteenth

God's efficient causality would not depend upon the unexplained existence of some matter. Nor would He be limited to fashioning and ordering this matter.

Therefore, God would be the creator of the universe.

9.21.2

God's creative decision accounts for the empirical residue, so there is no need to consign the universe to the category of the unexplained.

The empirical residue grounds the manifold of the potential good, standing under the good of world order, thereby possessing value accruing to the contingent through the reasonableness of the freedom of God.

9.22 Twentieth

God's efficient causality is being exercised as long as the universe or any of its parts exists.

"A cause B" means "B is emerging into intelligible dependence upon A."

It does not refer to an "imaginable 'influence' occupying the space intermediate between A and B."

Every contingent being is in intelligible dependence upon self-explanatory being.

Therefore, God would be the conserver.

9.23.1 Twenty-first

Only the cause of the order of the universe can be the sufficient ground for the occurrence of any event (or development or emergence).

Therefore, God would be the first agent of every event.

9.23.2

God applies every contingent agent to its operation, because He is the first cause of every occurrence of the fulfillment of that operation's conditions. This is because He is the cause of the order of the universe. Those occurrences take place in harmony with that order.

9.23.3