Tuesday 23 September 2008

Philosophy and theology

I am working on my paper for Yercaud on the topic, a new relationship between philosophy and theology.

At the back of my mind is the suggestion or admission by Lonergan - or perhaps it was McShane - that, after his method in theology, the way of doing philosophy would itself have to undergo a change.

Lonergan has, of course, the 3 lectures that were subsequently published under the title, Philosophy of God, and Theology.

My reading so far has corrected one particular assumption of mine: where I thought all philosophy would have to be hermeneutical in the sense of 'mutual self-mediation through a tradition' or Research - Interpretation - History - Dialectic - Foundations, it would seem now that philosophy would remain cognitional theory - epistemolgy - metaphysics, with perhaps the addition of existential ethics. Of course, Fred Lawrence holds that this itself is a hermeneutical appropriation of cognitive interiority. Something to be verified or falsified from the data...

It is clear, at any rate, that Lonergan wants philosophy to move from functioning on the basis of pure reason in statu naturae purae, to becoming an existential, concrete affair - being-in-the-world type of thing, I guess.

How did (Catholic) philosophy end up becoming the abstract affair, antiseptically separated from theology and based on pure reason? What is that story?

Intriguing here is the fact that Heidegger removed some of the fetters from reason, but not all. So he went from Husserl to being-in-the-world in the direction of greater concreteness, but he conflated finitude with fallenness, as Lawrence says. He attributed to finitude what people like Augustine had attributed to fallenness. So Heidegger moves away from philosophy done on the basis of pure reason in statu naturae purae, but he does not really move into Dasein in its fallen state. There is an ambiguity there which, according to Lawrence, is properly dispelled only in Lonergan.

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