An Introduction to Bernard Lonergan - by Peter Beer (Paperback)

About the Book

Bernard Lonergan was a mid 20th century Canadian philosopher and theologian. This book aims to help form a basis for inquiry into Lonergan's

achievement in his new approach to the great philosophical questions.

Book Synopsis

Bernard Lonergan was a mid 20th century Canadian philosopher and theologian. This book aims to help form a basis for inquiry into Lonergan's achievement in his new approach to the great philosophical questions: what do I do when I know something? (cognitional theory), why is doing that 'knowing'? (epistemology) and what do I know when I do that? (metaphysics).

Lonergan deals with these questions somewhat more deeply in his major works, Insight (1957, 1992) and Method in Theology (1972, 2017). Here he invites one to discover in oneself the dynamic structure of one's own cognitional and moral being and in doing this, one finds an operative procedure that is not open to radical revision. In fact, Lonergan has unearthed a dynamic, conscious framework for creativity, a method that grounds all investigation that is intelligent and critical. It is a resource that is transcendental in that it is the concrete and dynamic unfolding of human attentiveness, intelligence, reasonableness and responsibility, and this unfolding occurs whenever one uses one's mind in an appropriate fashion.

This method, for investigators too, is new in its finding eight tasks that are distinct and separable stages in the single process from data to results and can be adapted to any subject in which investigations are responding to past history and are to influence future history.

Review Quotes

'In this highly original introduction to the philosophical thought of Bernard Lonergan, Peter Beer takes the Hitchcock film, Dial M for Murder, and by a sustained discussion of how the murderer eventually comes to be identified, and the implications of such an identification, gradually and effectively leads readers to recognise concretely and name in themselves the various operations discussed in Lonergan's cognitional theory and in his theory of evaluation and decision, and the conditions necessary for such operations to be objective'

Prof. Daniel Monsour

Regis College, University of Toronto

'This introduction to Lonergan's Insight draws on Peter Beer's years of successfully using these exercises with college students. By identifying with the Detective's experience of insight, readers are able to discover for themselves and understand what Lonergan describes in his monumental work, Insight'

Prof. Matthew Ogilvie

Director, Philosophy & Letters

University of Dallas

'It is the sign of a true master when the thought and insights of a philosophy as complex, prolific and dense as Bernard Lonergan's is presented in such a way as to captivate the reader and to make intelligible Lonergan's vast system. Peter Beer opens the door into Lonergan's world for those of us who otherwise would never appreciate its riches'

Thomas Riemer

Solicitor, Mallesons Stephen Jaques

Sydney

'I find this manuscript to be interesting, organised in a coherent fashion, accurate in what it claims about Lonergan's views and very helpfully illustrated with many rich and concrete examples'

Prof. Michael Vertin, Dept of Philosophy

St Michael's College, University of Toronto