Aesthetic Loneliness and the Heart of Science

Authors

  • Philip McShane SGEME

Keywords:

Bernard Lonergan, art and religion, aesthetics, self-appropriation, science and art

Abstract

The transcendental lift of Lonergan’s life was an incarnate leaning towards “a grasp of hitherto unnoticed or unrealized possibilities” (Method in Theology, 53), and the blossoming of that transcendental—so neatly identifying “being intelligent” on that page—seems to have been grossly missed by generations of his followers. The what-question in its fullness is a reach for what might be, and Lonergan’s final great leaning pulled together in a gentle global way the fragmentary present seeds of finitude’s lust for unity of purpose: “the end of the divine mission is not attained without the cooperation of human beings” (CWL 11, 485). And what a Cosmopolitan Cooperation he envisaged! And what a shambles his disciples have made of his hope of a communal advance within “an adapted and specialized auxiliary ever ready to offset every interference with intellect’s unrestricted finality” (Insight, 747)!

 

 

Author Biography

Philip McShane, SGEME

Philip McShane, President of The Society for the Globalization of Effective Means of Evolving (SGEME) is a frequent contributor to JMDA, editor of Bernard Lonergan’s For a New Political Economy and Phenomenology and Logic, and the author of numerous books, most recently Bernard Lonergan: His Life and Leading Ideas (with Pierrot Lambert) and Method in Theology: Revisions and Implementations.  His many essay series can be accessed at http://www.philipmcshane.ca.

 

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Published

2011-08-17

Issue

Vol. 6 (2011): Aesthetics

Section

Articles