Review of Philip McShane, Interpretation from A to Z
Authors
William Zanardi
St. Edwards University
Abstract
A subtitle for this book could have read “A Revolution Betrayed.” The author begins by criticizing conventional ways of reading and interpreting the works of Bernard Lonergan, ways that remain at the level of common-sense meanings. However, Lonergan’s purpose in Chapter 17, Section 3 of Insight and in Chapter 7 of Method in Theology was to start a revolution in ways of reading and interpreting. Why have his followers failed to make the radical changes he proposed? No doubt academic inertia has played a role. The changes are difficult to make, remote from inherited pre-scientific practices, and perhaps too futuristic for those settled into familiar scholarly routines.
Author Biography
William Zanardi, St. Edwards University
After retiring from teaching for over forty years at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas, William J. Zanardi is continuing to write articles and books about functional specialization. A six-volume co-authored series on the third and fourth specialties contains multiple experiments in testing their worth in diagnosing and evading contemporary intellectual impasses. The most recent volumes are The Education of Liberty: Fantasies about the Future, Comparing Philosophical Methods: A Way Forward (with R.G. Aaron Mundine and Clayton Shoppa) and Rescuing Ethics from Philosophers.
