Consciousness and Self-Consciousness in Bernard Lonergan The Augustinian Background of the Problem of
Consciousness in the Western Tradition of Thought* By Dr. Boghos
Levon Zekiyan Professor of Armenian Language and
Literature, We certainly owe
to Augustine the first elaboration of a thorough theory of consciousness in the
history of Western thought. In this frame I shall take into consideration the
case of an outstanding North American philosopher of the 20th
century: Bernard Lonergan[1].
The question of consciousness, and of self-consciousness in particular, is a
corner-stone in Bernard Lonergan’s vision of
human understanding. Socratic Inwardness
The origins, in
the West, of the notion of
“consciousness” goes back to Greek philosophy, to the Socratic “gnôthi seauton”. This means in general
the necessity, for the thinking subject, of
an ontological and ethical reflection upon its own reality to reach
truth. This Socratic challenge for a new programme of wisdom determined the
evolution of philosophy from Plato through Plotinus. Augustine’s philosophical
programme - condensed in that major imperative he addresses to the searcher of
wisdom: “redi in te ipsum; in interiore
homine habitat veritas” (turn back into yourself, in the interior man
dwelt truth) - opened a new path in philosophy, if compared with the Socratic
challenge. The difference
between the two is already evident in the very formulation of both imperatives.
We can define the Socratic program as an “objective interiority” which makes of
the human person, acting as an intellectual and ethical subject, the main,
central object of man’s intellectual and moral search. Augustine’s challenge,
on the contrary, is an invitation addressed to the subject as such to be
itself, to rediscover itself as subject in its most inward reality. This is
also confirmed by the development of both imperatives as we know them. As far
as the Socratic principle is concerned, this is to be seen in the use that
subsequent philosophers, basically claiming Socrates’ spiritual heritage, made
of it, and in the way they understood it and they responded with to it. As far
as Augustine is concerned, we know the developments of his principle from his
own literary legacy. A brief outline of Augustine’s investment in this field is
necessary for an overall evaluation of Lonergan’s theory of consciousness and
of its relationship to Augustine. I tried to analyse what was new in
Augustine's approach in relation to that of Socrates in a study entitled L’interiorismo agostiniano (Zekiyan 1981). I can sum up the
conclusions reached in that work as follows. We can distinguish two basic
aspects in the Socratic “principle of inwardness”: the onto-noetical and the
ethical. These correspond to the two basic dynamics implied in that principle: a) to know man’s intellectual nature and
its fundamental requirements; b) to
act according to that nature and to those requirements. To these two basic
Socratic dimensions Augustine adds a new one: the “psychological” dimension.
Here lies the novelty of his approach. I must, however, immediately enter a
strong caveat for the use of the term “psychological” in the present
context. The primary meaning, in which I employ it, neither refers to an
experimental/empirical psychic reality as studied by modern psychology (not
even at that deeper stage which has been put into light and studied by the
various schools of psychoanalysis), nor is it simply the metempirical reality
of the existence and operations of the human soul as studied by classical
metaphysics. By the “psychological dimension” of the Augustinian inwardness
principle, I mean the fact that the thinking subject, the reflecting and
operating I, is studied, analysed,
regarded upon by Augustine precisely as a
subject, in its subjective entity, in its very being as a subject, and not
merely as an essence, a substance, capable of producing operations of a certain
kind and level. This is the deepest aspect of what the Confessions contain as an outstandingly singular witness to man’s
“psychological” dimension. They transfer into the unrepeatable concreteness of
the literary-poetical language the inmost core of Augustine’s metaphysical
reflection. Augustinian Inwardness
The centrality
that the subject as such, and the human subject in the given case, acquire in
Augustine and consequently, for the first time, in the Western thought has two
main effects: i) “The concrete form of human reality
penetrates with Augustine probably for the first time, in such an impetuous and
dramatic way, into the very plot of philosophical reflection” (Zekiyan 1981, p.
7). This fact gives to Augustine’s thought its unique existential character, as
has been stressed by numerous authors of different attitudes. It goes without saying that
“existential” does not mean in any way a simple equalization to
“existentialist” as referred to the existentialist philosophies of the last
century. Hence the ethical dimension of the principle of inwardness acquires in
Augustine a strongly existential determination, so that we can define it as
“ethic-existential”7. ii) Introspection becomes in Augustine a
primary and ordinary method of philosophical inquiry leading him to a
profoundly original analysis of the psychic, phenomenological, and
transcendental contents of human consciousness. We can name this introspection
“psychological” in the very sense in which we have defined our contextual use
of this term. Thus “psychic”,
“phenomenological”, and “transcendental” indicate the three basic levels or
spheres that outline the horizon of the Augustinian introspection (for a deeper
exposition, see Zekiyan 1981, pp. 20-26[3]). The psychic level is given by all
those phenomena interweaving with man’s psychic life: pulsions, emotions,
passions, motivations, sensations and sentiments, reactions, impressions of
past and present, conscious and subconscious tendencies, dreams and projects
for the future, thoughts and cares that excite or depress. The phenomenological level of
introspection is determined by the fact that the inquiring attention is
centred, at this level, on what makes the subject a subject, and lays the
foundations of human inter-subjectivity: that is the I and You relationship.
Once again Augustine appears, in the history of Western thought, as the great
discoverer of the phenomenology of inter-subjectivity. Even more: such an
excellent interpreter of modern phenomenology as Ludwig Landgrebe considers
Augustine as the very discoverer of the priority of You with respect to I.
Furthermore he adds that the rediscovery of this priority by modern
phenomenology has been a return of the Western thought to its most genuine
substance (Landgrebe 1949, pp. 56 sq., 181-184). There
is, however, a difference between the two approaches: in Augustine, You laying the foundations of whatever
inter-subjectivity is the Divine Thou;
in modern phenomenology it appears as being a human You. With the third and
deeper step of Augustinian introspection we reach its metaphysical-transcendental level.
While the prior two levels develop on the plane of conceptual knowledge, this
third one develops, on the contrary, on
a plane of pre-conceptual knowledge. In fact what we have to deal with here are
not data appearing in the conscience or involved in some psychic experience,
but those a priori conditions that
make consciousness itself and conscious activity possible. Thus Augustine
reaches the expressed formulation of the notion of memoria sui and the implicit formulation of those of “Illumination”/illuminatio (Zekiyan 1987) 11
and of memoria Dei (Zekiyan 1987, part. pp. 402-405. I propose
in this paper an interpretation of the Augustinian illumination as memoria Dei). A distinctive feature of these notions is that they represent
an inner, immediate, total knowledge made of and by experience, or simply an
experience/knowledge which takes essentially place not as the normal perception
of an object but as the transparency of the subject to itself. We can define
this kind of knowledge a “subjectwise”
knowledge. This means “in a way exclusive to the subject”, that is “functioning
wholly as a subject”, and said in a still clearer way: “to know and to be known
in the same and unique function of subject”. In other words the knowledge in question is not, and cannot
be, objectified at all. Moreover it is an experience/knowledge, concomitant of
any other knowledge, of any act produced by the human soul, not belonging
therefore to the order of conceptual knowledge. It precedes - of course not in
a temporal sense - all concepts, judgements, reasonings. It is necessarily
pre-conceptual (Biolo 1969, pp. 80-107, 109-218; Zekiyan 1981, pp. 27-44, 1987,
pp. 405-419). It is a true knowledge,
although in an analogical sense, nor can
it be regarded as an “unconscious knowledge” without an inner contradiction
(Biolo, loc. cit; Zekiyan, 1981, p. 44, note 47, pp. 64-68). Memoria
sui is then the self-consciousness
of the knowing subject as pure presence to itself, as pure transparency to
itself in a pre-conceptual, inner, immediate, total experience/knowledge,
without any objectification. The Augustinian Specificity
Beyond any
controversial interpretation, there can be no doubt, I think, on the following
points: a. Augustine introduced a profoundly new
dimension into the tradition of Socratic inwardness; b. this new dimension is due, to a greater
extent, to Augustine’s methodology of psychological introspection, in the sense
in which we have defined the contextual meaning of the qualification
“psychological”; c. Augustine produced a comprehensive and
subtle theory of human consciousness. This is expressed mainly by the notion of
memoria sui; d. In any way it may be interpreted, the
Augustinian notion of illumination implies an immediate pre-conceptual
experience/knowledge of the eternal truths and values. Lonergan’s Use of Augustine
Now, if we draw
our attention to Bernard Lonergan’s work, we see that his idea of consciousness
is patently Augustinian. Although the
question of consciousness, and of self-consciousness in particular, is a
corner-stone, as I said, in Bernard Lonergan’s vision of human understanding and it makes a major
issue of his entire philosophical production, there are, however, some titles
in Lonergan’s literary production that are either wholly dedicated to or treat
extensively of the question: the author himself explicitly refers to them in
later works as main landmarks (1959, P. 5; 1972/1979, p. 7, note 2). To this
respect two of his books hold, in my opinion, a privileged position: one is De Constitutione Christi ontologica et
psycologica, one of his earliest and fundamental works, published in Rome,
by the Press of the Pontifical
Gregoriana University, in 1956; the other is
Insight, doubtlessly the most
important of all Lonergan’s works. In this latter one, chapter XI is entitled “Self-affirmation of the knower”, and
it is the first chapter of Part II, entitled “Insight as knowledge”. This
chapter is an overall and penetrating exposition of Lonergan’s vision on the
issue. I believe it will not be useless, at this point, to summarise this
vision. To do so, Lonergan himself can be our best guide, as he too did a
similar operation at the beginning of his Method
in Theology. In the sentences that follow, which are almost literal
quotations from this book (pp. 7-9), we find the substance of Lonergan’s thought
on consciousness. i. “He [the reader] will have to evoke the
relevant operations in his own consciousness”; ii. “... by the operation one becomes aware of
the object. The psychological sense is what is meant by the verb, intend, the
adjective, intentional, the noun, intentionality”; iii. “The operator is subject not merely in the grammatical
sense ... He also is subject in the psychological sense that he operates
consciously”; iv. “The operations then not only intend objects. There is
to them a further psychological dimension ... by them the operating subject is
conscious ... they make the operating subject present to himself”; v. “... the presence of the object is quite
different from the presence of the subject. The object is present as what is
gazed upon, attended to, intended. But the presence of the subject resides in
the gazing, the attending, the intending. For this reason the subject can be
conscious, as attending, and yet give his whole attention to the object as
attended to”; vi. “I spoke of the subject experiencing himself
operating. But do not suppose that this experiencing is another operation to be
added to the list, for this operation is not intending but being conscious ...
It is that very operation which, besides being intrinsically intentional, also is intrinsically conscious”; vii. “Just as we move from the data of sense through
inquiry, insight, reflection, judgement, to statements about sensible things,
so too we move from the data of consciousness through inquiry, understanding,
reflection, judgement, to statements about conscious subjects and their
operations. That, of course, is just what we are doing and inviting the reader
to do”; viii. “... different levels of consciousness and
intentionality have to be distinguished. ... There is an empirical level on which we sense ... an intellectual level on which we inquire ... the rational level on which we reflect ... the responsible level on which we are concerned with ourselves ...”. As a conclusion I
would like to express my hope that these considerations may represent a modest
contribution to better understand: a) why such a great philosopher as Karl
Jaspers has considered Augustine, beside Plato and Kant, as one of the “fortzeugenden Gründern des Philosophierens”
(Jaspers 1957, 107, 109-111), one of the “seminal founders of philosophical
thought”; b) what an intellectual affinity linked
Bernard Lonergan to Boghos Levon ZEKIYANPontifical Institute of
Oriental Studies,
Ca’ Foscari University, Venice QUOTED BIBLIOGRAPHY: Biolo 1969 ̶ ̶ Salvino BIOLO, La coscienza nel “De Trinitate” di S. Agostino, (Analecta
Gregoriana, 172), Libreria Editrice dell’Università Gregoriana, Roma, 1969. Jaspers 1957 ̶ ̶ Karl JASPERS, Die großen Philosophen, R. Piper & Co. Vrl., vol. I, München, 1957, pp. 231 sq. - Engl.
edition: The Great Philosophers. The
Foundations, transl. by Ralph Manhein, ed. by Hannah Arendt, Harcourt,
Brace & World, Inc., Langrebe 1949 ̶ ̶ Ludwig LANDGREBE, Phaenomenologie und Metaphysik, Hamburg, 1949. Lonergan
1959 ̶ ̶ Bernard LONERGAN, Divinarum
Personarum conceptionam analogicam (evolvit Bernardus Lonergan), editio altera, Ad usum
auditorum, Apud Aedes Pontificiae Universitatis Gregorianae, Romae, 1959. ̶̶̶̶ ̶
̶̶̶̶ ̶
̶̶̶̶ 1972/1979, Method in Theology,
Herder and Herder , Inc., 1972, 2nd ed. 1973, Seabury Paperback ed. 1979. Zekiyan 1981 ̶ ̶
Boghos L. ZEKIYAN, L’interiorismo
agostiniano. La struttura onto-psicologica dell’interiorismo agostiniano e la
“memoria sui”, (Filosofia Oggi, 14), Studio Editoriale di Cultura, Genova,
1981. ̶̶̶̶ ̶
̶̶̶̶ ̶ ̶̶̶̶ ̶ 1987,
“Illuminazione e «Memoria Dei» in S. Agostino”, in Congresso Internazionale su S. Agostino, Congresso Internazionale su S. Agostino nel XVI Centenario della
Conversione, Roma, 15 -20 settembre 1986, Atti, (Studia Ephemeridis
“Augustinianum”, 25), vol. I, Institutum Patristicum “Augustinianum”, Roma,
1987, pp. 395-400, 415. * This an abridged and in some
parts newly elaborated version of a paper read at the XXXI Meeting of Searchers
of Christian Antiquity (XXXI Incontro di studiosi dell'antichità cristiana,
Roma, May 2-4, 2002) and published in Studia Ephemeridis Augustinianum, 85,
Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, Roma 2003, pp. 659-673: Consciousness and self-consciousness in Augustine and Lonergan: the Augustinian background of the problem of consciousness
in the Western tradition of thought
from Augustine's Confessions to Lonegan's Insight). I refer to this
article for a wider framework of the question and for larger bibliographical
information. [1] I am honoured to have attended his courses at the Pontificia
Università Gregoriana in [2] At a first glance one might have the impression that “Introspection” is not a term that Lonergan likes (cf. Method in Theology, Herder and Herder , Inc., 1972, 2nd ed. 1973, Seabury Paperback ed. 1979, p. 8: “it suggests an inward inspection. Inward inspection is just myth”). A more attentive lecture, however, will show that Lonergan’s objection regards the use of the term for consciousness. Since consciousness is in no way some sort of cognition that may have an “object” as to attend to or to gaze upon, as we shall see, “inward inspection” is non sense as applied to consciousness. But Lonergan adds immediately after the quoted passage: “However, «introspection» may be understood to mean, not consciousness itself but the process of objectifying the contents of consciousness”. It is in this very sense that I apply it to Augustine’s philosophical methodology. [ BWW Society Home Page ] © 2011 The Bibliotheque: World Wide Society |