Aesthetic Subjectivity and Generalized Empirical Method

Abstract

AESTHETIC SUBJECTIVITY AND GENERALIZED EMPIRICAL METHOD T HE GENERALIZED EMPIRICAL method proposed by Bernard Lonergan 1 e:ffects a mediation through self-appropriation of the subject's intelligent, reasonable, and responsible intentionality. More precisely, the work of Lonergan is a quite thorough maieutic of intelligent and reasonable consciousness, of what Lonergan would call the second and third levels of conscious intentionality,2 and a significant pointer to the other levels. The developing articulation of the dynamics of the fourth level, the level of responsible or existential consciousness, is currently the principal concern of many of Lonergan's students.8 What constitutes self-ap1 Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (New York: Philosophical Library, 1957); as applied to theology, Method in Theology (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972). 2 On the levels of consciousness, see Method in Theology, Chapter Oue. Lonergan there discusses four levels. Consciousness is so structured as to move by questioning from experience of the data of sense and of the data of consciousness (the empirical level) to insight into the experienced data and conceptualization and formulation of one's insights (the intelligent level), and then to reflection on the adequacy of one's understanding and to judgment in accord with the adequacy reflectively grasped (the reasonable level) , and finally to deliberation, decision, and action, i.e. to constitution of the world and of oneself (the responsible or existential level) . In the lecture, " The Subject" (A Seoond Collection, edited by William F. J. Ryan, S. J., and Bernard J. Tyrrell, S. J., Philadelphia: Westminster , 1974, pp. 69-86, cf. esp. p. 80), Lonergan adds a lower level of dr.eaming consciousness, and in Philosophy of God, and Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1973, p. 38), he adds a highest level of religious love. 3 Scholars Press is undertaking the publication of papers delivered at the annual Lonergan Workshops held at Boston College. The volumes, edited by Frederick Lawrence, will be entitled Lonergan Workshop·. Oue volume was published in 1978. Almost all of the papers in some way reflect concern with the mediation of existential subjectivity. Furthermore, an annual seminar at the American Academy of Religion meeting is devoted to the study of what Lonergan means by dialectic, a functional specialty in Lonergan's method that is correlated with the fourth level of consciousness. 257 258 ROBERT M. DORAN, S.J. propriation of the level of consciousness concerned with evaluation , deliberation, decision, and action? The present paper proposes to advance discussion of this issue. The core of my argument is to the effect that the selfappropriation of existential subjectivity depends on a maieutic of consciousness distinct from but complementary to that proposed by Lonergan, a second mediation of the subject as subject , a psychic mediation of one's dramatic artistry, of the aesthetic subjectivity whose concern is to make a work of art out of one's living:4 The aesthetic and dramatic dimension of our being attends the operations which occur at all levels of conscious intentionality . There is a drama not only to one's self-constitution as existential subject and to one's constitution of the world through decisive action but also to one's pursuit of intelligibility and truth.5 The drama is more than adverted to in Lonergan's •It is obvious, then, that I am employing the term, aesthetic subjectivity, in a manner quite different from the usage of Hans-Georg Gadamer (Truth and Method, New York: Seabury, 1975). For Gadamer, the term is pejorative, and designates an immediacy of taste that would empty the work of art of its distinctive claim to truth. In my usage, the term also designates an immediacy of feeling, but to a world already mediated and constituted by meaning. As such, it is not simply the immediacy of empirical consciousness to data of sense, but permeaks all of the levels of conscious intentionality disclosed by Lonergan. Thus, insights, judgments, and decisions are all dramatic events; permeating their quality as intentional operations is a dispositional character, a quality of feeling, of " mass and momentum," of energic compositions and distributions, without which "our knowing and deciding would be paper thin" (Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology , pp. 30-31). When...