The task of this chapter is to introduce the notion of the universal viewpoint, as it actually occurs in Lonergan's own work, or, more particularly, as it occurs in Insight. The first section (A. Lonergan's Understanding of the Universal Viewpoint) will be simply expository, presenting first the necessary background notions, and then the definition itself. The second section (B. A Technical Precision), and indeed the only creative moment of the chapter, will deal with a technical precision this author feels should be added to Lonergan's own somewhat vaguer wording of the definition. The structure of the chapter will become clearer by reference to the outline in the table of contents.

As already mentioned, this section proceeds in two stages; the necessary background notions must first be sketched in, and then Lonergan's own definition presented. 1. Background Notions

Since the notion of the universal viewpoint is only introduced in Insight when three-quarters of the development has been completed,(8) a large number of background ideas are presupposed. It is imperative to understand thoroughly at least the following: insight, judgment, experience, the drive to know, genetic understanding, dialectical understanding, positions and counterpositions.(9) These notions will therefore be treated briefly in the following subsections.

No attempt will be made in this section to give an adequate explanatory treatment of these ideas, as this falls outside the scope of the undertaking. An effort will be made, however, to provide ample references to the pertinent passages in Insight.(10)

a. Insight. - Insight is the key moment in Lonergan's cognitional analysis, and, in many ways, the center upon which his whole philosophy pivots,(11) as may be gathered from the title of his major philosophical work. The act occurs so frequently as to be almost too banal to notice,(12) and yet it is the essential and central creative act in the encounter of the active human intelligence with reality, or the to-be-known. An insight may be defined as that mental act by which the mind grasps in imaginative presentations an intelligible unity, order or structure.(13) Insight often occurs suddenly, as a set of previously disparate elements falls into place as by an illumination or inspiration. As an intellectual act which grasps a pattern in sensitive or imaginative presentations, it pivots between the abstract and the concrete.(14)

To this notion of simple insight must be added, the further ideas of inverse insight and higher viewpoint. An inverse insight grasps that there is nothing to be understood; in some way an intelligibility was anticipated which in fact is not discovered. This does not mean that an act of n-understanding, or no act at all, has taken place. Rather there is a positive act of understanding, which however paradoxically grasps that an anticipated intelligibility does not exist - in other words, that the anticipation was ill-advised, the question itself and its presuppositions were somehow mistaken.(15)

To understand the notion of higher viewpoint it is necessary to see that insights do not occur merely in isolation. They may take place in relation to the same reality, and then they will tend to confirm, complement or challenge one another. Further, this expansion may be not only "horizontal," as more and more insights are added on the same subject, but "vertical," as one final insight unifies and binds together a whole series of individual insights, much as one algebraic expression may stand for an infinite series of numerical equations, or one scientific law unify and "explain" a vast range of astronomical observations. Then intelligence has moved to the new level of a higher viewpoint.(16)

b. Judgment. - The act of judgment follows upon insight, declaring it to be valid or invalid. It is a provisional terminus of intellectual process.(17) Precisely because it admits of various degrees - less probable, more probable, practically certain judgments - it constitutes an exigent responsibility for the knower page 15 who affirms.(18) As Thomas Aquinas, Lonergan insists that being becomes present in knowing only with the judgment,(19) and it is precisely his insistence on this activity within cognitional process which distances him from idealism in general and from Kant in particular.(20)

c. Experience. - The "imaginative presentations" mentioned already in the definition of insight(21) are systematically referred, to by Lonergan under the rubric of "experience,"(22) Experience supplies the materials upon which insight supervenes, thus preceding insight and providing the to-be-understood, or the potentially intelligible. Experience may be either of the external world by the senses ("outer" or "direct experience") or of the mental acts themselves ("inner" or "introspective experience"). Experience previous to insight is diffuse, vague, and equally significant in all its parts, since it is the function of insight to grasp pattern, organization and significance.

d. The drive to know. - Experience, insight and judgment are not unrelated to each other. From the preceding exposition insight clearly presupposes experience as the source of any potential intelligibility, while judgment in turn presupposes insight as the source of the to be-validated or -invalidated.. Similarly, experience demands to be complemented by insight, in order to be organized and unified., while insight calls out for judgment, lest it remain forever without validation. "Demands" and "calls out for" are naturally metaphors, but the point is that, since experience, insight and. judgment are activities within a dynamic and on-going cognitional process, and not just static realities, there must also be a source of movement within cognitional process which promotes mental activity from the level of experience to the level of insight, and from the level of insight to the level of judgment. This urge Lonergan variously terns "the desire to know" and "the Eros of the mind."(23) This drive, in fact, not only moves intelligence from experience through insight to judgment, but remains ever unsatisfied with the terminus of any particular line of inquiry in a particular judgment; it quests always new experiences, new insights, new judgments."(24) While impalpable, the drive to know is nevertheless quite real, and Lonergan does not hesitate to compare it to other natural urges such as hunger and sex.(25)

e. Genetic understanding. - Insights are of various kinds, which implies that there are differences also(26) in the to-be-understood's, or the potential intelligibilities. The normal, direct understanding (termed by Lonergan "classical")(27) has already been contrasted with the inverse insight. Lonergan further distinguishes the classical from the genetic insight."(28) The classical insight grasps static patterning, while the genetic insight grasps system- on-the-move. Classical insights are the basis of powerful laws within physical sciences, which allow accurate numerical predictions over long spans of time. Genetic insights are into growth, something living. Life possesses its own laws of development, its own "inner sense of intelligent purposefulness," as it were; but this order, this intelligibility do not lend themselves to accurate numerical predictions over long spans of time. Thus genetic is divided against classical understanding.

f. Dialectical understanding. - As the direct understanding of classical insight is opposed to the negative understanding of inverse insight, so there is also a negative grasp contrasting with genetic understanding. For besides growth there is decay; besides the simple line toward further development, there is the more complex pattern of two lines of growth which mutually threaten one another. This "inverse genetic insight" Lonergan terms the dialectical insight.(29) Unlike the simple inverse insight, it deals with growth rather than static system. But unlike the genetic insight, it grasps, not simple growth, but the principle of growth, the principle of decay, and their intelligible - if mutually opposed - relationship.(30)

g. Positions and counterpositions. - What peculiarly characterizes Lonergan's philosophical approach, vis-a-vis especially Thomas and more traditional neo-Thomists such as Maritain and Gilson, is that he begins with epistemology to end in metaphysics. Thus his cognitional analysis - the first half of Insight - acts as a hinge. On the one hand, it is firmly secured into ordinary and universally accessible cognitional experience.(31) On the other hand, it is from this cognitional structure that Lonergan patterns his metaphysics. This process must now be traced briefly, but in some detail.

The first step is the cognitional analysis, which concludes to a structure of knowing comprising the three elements of experience, insight and. judgment. The structure is given its unity and its dynamism by the drive to know.

The second step yields the basic positions, which flow directly from the cognitional analysis:(32)

1)the subject becomes known when it affirms itself intelligently and reasonably,
2)the real is being, and being is the object of the pure desire to know, and
3)objectivity arises within a pattern of judgments.

Opposed to the basic positions are the basic counterpositions, which contradict one or more of the three affirmations. As the basic positions flow directly from the correct cognitional analysis, so the basic counterpositions flow directly from a mistaken cognitional analysis.

In the third step the basic positions are expanded into a philosophical system."(33) A position, in a wider sense, is any philosophical affirmation coherent with the basic positions. A counterposition is any philosophical affirmation coherent with the basic counterpositions.

2. Definition of the Universal Viewpoint

Before the definition itself is treated, a word must be said on the context within which it occurs.

a. The context: hermeneutics. - Lonergan's discussion of the universal viewpoint arises within a very particular context, namely, his treatment of hermeneutics. Hermeneutics, of course, deals with the interpretation of texts. The problem may be envisioned as follows. Any text will have been written in the past by some particular author, with his own particular viewpoint and brand of common sense. The interpreter, however, will also have his own particular viewpoint and brand of common sense, very likely quite different from those of the author. The interpreter, finally, unless he is satisfied to enjoy solipsistically the fruits of his labors, must communicate the results of his interpretation to an audience. But that audience will in turn have its own particular viewpoint and brand or brands of common sense. Seemingly, then, every act of interpretation - every mediation between an original author and a particular audience - is unique.

But this immediately makes any scientific approach to hermeneutics impossible, since the unique and the particular is the nemesis of science,(34) This is the problem of & scientific hermeneutics: can some recurrent and universal aspects be discovered in the thought of any original author? Can some single, identifiable standpoint and a definite method be adopted by all interpreters? Can every audience be somehow invited to share in this single viewpoint and thereby grasp the unique interpretation of an author, which interpretation has been methodically arrived at?

b. The definition. - Lonergan's answer to the preceding questions is essentially contained in the notion of the universal viewpoint, which he defines as "... a potential totality of genetically and dialectically ordered viewpoints"(35) Lonergan speaks of a "totality," because the universal viewpoint is intended to be an appropriate tool for dealing with any past author. This totality is "potential," however, because it has not yet been achieved, as though the universal viewpoint provided. automatically an interpretation of the meaning of whatever anyone ever wrote. The universal viewpoint is only a method or a tool to that end, and the totality is consequently only heuristically envisioned and methodically anticipated. "Genetically" is said because authors do not write as isolated monads. One writer may build on the insights of his predecessors, and the eventual result is an on-going series of deeper and more extensive insights, which may be conceived of as a growth in knowledge by the human race as a whole. Such growth, however, is not without its ups and downs, its progressions and regressions, its long-standing tensions between different traditions of thought. Consequently the universal viewpoint cannot exclude the "dialectical" aspect included within the definition. Finally, the universal viewpoint is a totality of "viewpoints," insofar as every original author is conceived of as operating out of some viewpoint.(36)

Some explanation of how the universal viewpoint answers the questions raised, in the preceding subsection must be added.. The first question was whether some recurrent and universal aspects can be discovered in the thought of any original author. As with metaphysics, so in hermeneutics Lonergan's method will find. its basis in cognitional structure.(37) His conclusions should be clear. The presumption that every original author will have operated out of some viewpoint has already been mentioned. Further, the meaning of a text of any author must be some combination of acts of experience, insight and judgment.(38) If any stance at all is taken, implicitly or explicitly, on the basic philosophical issues of knowing, reality and objectivity, the meaning will also involve a position or a counterposition, or some mixture of the two. Finally, it will consequently stand, within the genetic series of the perennial positions, or fall partially or totally among the ever-recurrent counterpositions, necessitating a dialectical insight.

The second question was whether a single, identifiable standpoint and a definite method can be adopted by all interpreters. Obviously, Lonergan is offering the universal viewpoint as this standpoint and the key to the requisite method. The viewpoint is single, because based on the sole correct cognitional analysis. It is identifiable because this cognitional analysis may be verified in factual cognitional experience. The viewpoint is at least potentially universally accessible, because it maybe arrived at by any sufficiently cultured and developed knower. The method for arriving at the viewpoint can also be specified; the knower has merely to attend to his own cognitional experience and ascertain that it conforms to the proffered cognitional theory. Such a single and identifiable viewpoint can finally be the key to a method. For if two interpreters begin with the same cognitional theory, and approach the same author with the same set of expectations, the results should be largely coincident. And insofar as the results have been arrived at by an identifiable method, they should be comparable to each other, permitting corroboration and verification, if they concur, or at least the possibility of assigning reasons for discrepancies, if they disagree.

The third question was whether every audience can somehow be invited, to share in the single viewpoint and thereby grasp the unique interpretation of an author, as methodically arrived at. As with scientific discoveries, there remain many potential audiences, and the necessity of popular presentations of hermeneutical discoveries will hardly disappear. But again as in science, the person or audience who really wants to understand and grapple with the presentations of the expert may be invited to appropriate the viewpoint of the scientist or interpreter. And while this demands an extensive educational and cultural background - which would prove impractical in many cases - at least the method of arriving at the viewpoint may be specified. For it is the same method by which the interpreter himself arrived at the viewpoint - by attending to his own cognitional experience, and ascertaining that it corresponded to the proffered cognitional theory.(39)

Lonergan's definition, this author believes, could be stated more rigorously as follows: "By a universal viewpoint will be meant a viewpoint from which one may grasp a potential totality of genetically and dialectically ordered viewpoints." The underlined words have been added by this author. While it may seem overly obvious that the universal viewpoint is a viewpoint, the Appendix of the dissertation will show the utility and clarity of the addition. On the other hand, there may be those who feel that the addition changes the sense of what Lonergan wanted to say. Hence some justification should be given for adding the phrase.

The first point to be made is that the addition does nothing more than make explicit that the universal viewpoint is a viewpoint. For the addition begins with "a viewpoint," but a viewpoint is by force of the word the stance from which a subject grasps a certain reality.(40) Thus "from which one may grasp" adds nothing not already implied in "a viewpoint."(41)

In order to oppose this interpretation, then, one would logically hare to deny this explicitation - that is, to affirm that the universal viewpoint is not a viewpoint. This seems unacceptable for three reasons:

1) To state that the universal viewpoint is not a viewpoint is to do violence to the language, and would need a great deal of hermeneutical justification. As far as this author is aware, there is nothing in Insight which would tend to support that interpretation.

2) It seems in direct contradiction to some of Lonergan's later statements in the chapter. He speaks of the universal viewpoint "... envisaging subjects in their necessities."(42) But the basic metaphor of vision here is equivalent to that in "viewpoint." Lonergan replies to the objection that the universal viewpoint is only a particular viewpoint.(43) But the context makes it clear that he in turn objects not to the "viewpoint" but to the "particular." In another place both an interpreter and an audience are spoken of as grasping the universal viewpoint.(44) But to grasp a universal viewpoint is obviously to possess a viewpoint.

3) The latter part of the definition, "... a potential totality of genetically and dialectically ordered viewpoints," must be understood in either a subjective or an objective sense. If it is subjective, it means that potential totality as grasped by some mind. It is hard to see how that does not constitute a viewpoint. On the other hand, if it is to be taken as objective, it is hard to see what it might mean. The only possibility that occurs to this author is that it could mean universal history. For the totality of viewpoints, in their growth and contradictions, is contained in universal history. This totality could nevertheless be spoken of as potential, since it is not grasped by any human mind. It is the intelligible in potency as opposed to the object of an actual insight, what can be understood rather than what is understood. But this interpretation seems impossible. Lonergan says so in so many words, "The universal viewpoint is not universal history."(45) To read the rest of the chapter on interpretation while substituting "universal history" for "universal viewpoint" would make nonsense of most of it.

The task of this chapter, as stated at the beginning, was to present Lonergan's own understanding of the universal viewpoint. After certain requisite prior concepts were presented, and the definition's context (the problem of a scientific hermeneutics) was sketched in, the definition Lonergan gives was advanced. In a summary statement, the universal viewpoint is the viewpoint of an interpreter who has carefully appropriated his own cognitional structure, and thus possesses a correct grasp of the structure of all human, knowing. Operating from this basis, he may anticipate 1) that the author's meaning will be some combination of acts of experiencing, understanding and judging, 2) that he will have operated out of some particular viewpoint, and 3) that that viewpoint will be either a position or a counterposition. As he studies other of the author's works, and especially as he studies other authors, the interpreter will be able 4) to construct the genetic and dialectical sequence within which the author's viewpoint will find its place. Further, in communicating with an audience of those who similarly share the universal viewpoint, the interpreter will be able 5) to communicate reliably the original insights and judgments of the author, 6) to characterize his viewpoint, 7) to show it to be position or counterposition, and 8) to indicate its place in the genetic-dialectical series. Finally, insofar as he is able to uncover the author's explicit or implicit cognitional theory, he will be able 9) to scientifically and methodically assign for the benefit of the same audience the reasons why the author represents the position or is involved in a counterposition. The reason this is possible is that a counterposition, by definition, arises when a philosophical stance is taken that is out of keeping with structure of all human, knowing. Operating from this basis, he may anticipate 1) that the author's meaning will be some combination of acts of experiencing, understanding and judging, 2) that he will have operated out of some particular viewpoint, and 3) that that viewpoint will be either a position or a counterposition. As he studies other of the author's works, and especially as he studies other authors, the interpreter will be able 4) to construct the genetic and dialectical sequence within which the author's viewpoint will find its place. Further, in communicating with an audience of those who similarly share the universal viewpoint, the interpreter will be able 5) to communicate reliably the original insights and judgments of the author, 6) to characterize his viewpoint, 7) to show it to be position or counterposition, and 8) to indicate its- place in the genetic-dialectical series. Finally, insofar as he is able to uncover the author's explicit or implicit cognitional theory, he will be able 9) to scientifically and methodically assign for the benefit of the same audience the reasons why the author represents the position or is involved in a counterposition. The reason this is possible is that a counterposition, by definition, arises when a philosophical stance is taken that is out of keeping with the correct cognitional theory. When the interpreter finds that the author has gone awry in his cognitional theory, he will be able to assign that departure as the reason for the corresponding philosophical counterposition.

A second part of the chapter attempted to specify further Lonergan's moaning in the definition by adding a technical precision. While the reason for making that precision may not as yet be clear, cogent hermeneutical arguments at least were advanced to show that the new wording did not in fact change the sense intended by Lonergan's own definition.

The reader at this point may feel that some rather heady notions have been developed in the course of the first chapter, and will want to pause to question them more critically. The role of this chapter will be to pose these questions and present Lonergan's answers to them. These answers will hopefully, besides explaining how Lonergan attempts to justify the universal viewpoint, give some further insight into the meaning and the implications of the universal viewpoint.

The problem here is perhaps not so much whether, once granted that the universal viewpoint exists, it might fulfill all the marvelous functions claimed for it. The prior question instead is: Is a universal viewpoint even possible? As mentioned already in the Introduction, the claim to possess a universal viewpoint, in an age of pervasive relativism, is at the least a bold one. Is Lonergan merely asserting such a viewpoint - and therefore in reality adding merely another particular viewpoint - or does he have some evidence to back his claim?

As it happens, this question has not escaped Lonergan's attention, and he poses it this way:

Fifthly, since what we hare named the universal viewpoint is simply a corollary of our own philosophic analysis, it will be objected, that we are offering not a universal viewpoint but simply the viewpoint of our own philosophy.(46)

He also gives an answer to the question, and it may not be amiss to quote him rather at length:(47)

On the other hand, we would contend that there is at least one particular philosophy that could ground a universal viewpoint. For there is a particular philosophy that would take its stand upon the dynamic structure of human cognitional activity, that would distinguish the various elements involved in that structure, that would be able to construct any philosophic position, by postulating appropriate and plausible omissions and confusions of the elements, that would reach its own particular views by correcting all omissions and confusions. Now such a philosophy, though particular, would provide a base and ground for a universal viewpoint; for a universal viewpoint is the potential totality of all viewpoints; the potential totality of all viewpoints lies in the dynamic structure of cognitional activity; and the dynamic structure of cognitional activity is the basis of the particular philosophy in question.

Finally, we would argue that the particular philosophy we are offering also is the particular philosophy that can ground a universal viewpoint. By this we do not mean that our views will not be improved vastly by more accurate accounts of experience, of insight and its formulation, of reflection and judgment, and of the polymorphic .consciousness of man. Rather our meaning is that such improvements will not involve any radical change in the philosophy, for the philosophy rests, not on the account of experience, of insight, of judgment, and of polymorphic consciousness, but on the defining pattern of relations that bring these four into a single dynamic structure. Again, it is the grasp of that structure that grounds the universal viewpoint since, once the structure is reached, the potential totality of viewpoints is reached. For more refined accounts of the elements in the structure modify, not the potential totality, but the accuracy and completeness with which one can proceed from the universal viewpoint to the reconstruction of particular contents and contexts of meaning.

The text makes clear that Lonergan's answer to his question proceeds in two steps: 1) there is a philosophy that could ground the universal viewpoint, and 2) that philosophy is my own. The reader will also have noted in the text the close connection between Lonergan's philosophy and his cognitional analysis, a point that has been stressed many times in the preceding chapter.

Taken in this sense, Lonergan's claims do not seem so inflated. If a correct cognitional analysis is postulated, then it is not difficult to see that one's own basic viewpoint will be correct, as has been seen.(48) Likewise, once a correct cognitional analysis is postulated, it does not seem overly difficult to claim an ability to evaluate others' basic viewpoints. Given sufficient data, one could establish that their basic set of judgments flows from the correct cognitional analysis, in which case they represent the position; or they flow from a mistaken cognitional analysis, in which case they are counterpositions. In other words, the universal viewpoint is essentially an evaluation of basic viewpoints; but basic viewpoints are simply judgments on knowing, reality and objectivity; and such judgments can be shown to flow directly from cognitional analysis.

The question of the justification of the universal viewpoint reduces rather easily, therefore, to a second question: Does Lonergan in fact possess the correct cognitional analysis? This question will be taken up in the subsequent part of the chapter, but first something about the question itself should be noted. It is a very factual, even empirical, question: Is human knowing like this or not? Thus a rather abstract, intellectual and philosophical question about a "universal viewpoint" has been reduced to a quite simple, factual one, to be settled by the data of inner experience. Lonergan claims as an advantage of his approach that in fact all philosophical questions can be reduced in this way to matters of cognitional fact.(49)

The pertinent question, therefore, is whether human knowing as men do in fact experience it to be is accurately reflected, in Lonergan's cognitional theory. The question may be re-expressed negatively: Is not Lonergan's account of knowing subject to revision? In the physical sciences, revision is not only possible but expected. No theory is to be considered more than probable, simply the best explanation possible at the time. Newton's theories were brilliant and led to many practical applications. But this did not prevent their revision by Einstein's work. Similarly, Einstein would have had no grounds for supposing that his work could not be revised by a new generation of scientists. Cognitional analysis, if as yet a science at all, is only in its infancy. What would lead Lonergan to suppose that his account of knowing is unrevisable? Is it not much more likely in fact that it will be revised by later work? And if it is revised, will it not then be shown to have been incorrect and inadequate, a poor basis for a universal viewpoint?

This question can only be dealt with by looking a little more closely at the meaning of "revision." What does revision generally mean? It ordinarily takes place in one of two ways. The first is the uncovering of new data. As an example in the history of science, when Galileo first observed the moons of Saturn through his newly invented telescope, the new data could not but force a revision of the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic theories of the structure and composition of the universe. Another way that scientific theories are revised is closer to the root meaning of "re-vision," re-seeing. An historical example is the Copernican revolution. Basically the data to be explained were the same as those covered by the Ptolemaic theory. But they could be organized in a new way by assuming that the sun, and not the earth, was the center of the universe. This new system was much neater and more compact, doing away with the necessity of the large number of epicycles in the Ptolemaic model.

Whether revision begins in the discovery of new data not covered by the old theory, or whether the old data are simply cast into a new perspective, the process of revision is not at an end. In either case, the scientist will want to be sure that the new theory does in fact fit all the available data, and continues to do so. He may perform further experiments to answer this question.

An analysis of the process termed revision will show that it begins with new data (experience) to lead to a new theory (insight). Or it begins with a new theory (insight) for the old data (experience). In either case, it is not simply accepted, but must be verified (judgment) by further experiments (experience). Thus the very process of revision implies the structure of experience, insight and judgment. It is therefore self-contradictory to engage in a process of revising experience, insight and judgment. But since Lonergan's cognitional theory consists essentially of those elements, it is not subject to revision. A point of clarification should be noted here. Lonergan does not rule out a further nuance and growth in sophistication of the analysis. What is ruled out is any basic revision of the structure of experience, understanding, judgment, as the text quoted above makes clear.(50)

Why is it that scientific theories can be revised, but Lonergan's explanation of knowing seemingly cannot? . Knowing has been presented as a dynamic structure of experience, insight and judgment. Further, it was seen that experience could be subdivided into "external" and "internal." External experience is that provided by the senses, or at least its prolongation and extension in the imagination. Internal experience is awareness of one's inner world of consciousness - the conscious, performing subject, his acts, the objects of those acts. Upon either "type of experience can arise insight and judgment. But there is a peculiarity about the knowing that arises upon internal experience. It is reduplicative. What is known is not "something else," as in the case of outer experience, but knowing itself. The experience, insight and judgment of this knowing are precisely of experience, insight and judgment. It is this peculiar, reduplicative pattern of cognitional theory which is the root of the above argument. A person cannot very well point to his experience to show the absence of experience. A thinker can hardly have an insight grasping how there is no such thing as insight. Nor can be very logically judge that there is no such thing as judgment. One cannot, in short, coherently know knowing as other than it is.(51)

What the above argument does is to take the process of knowing as implicitly formulated in scientific procedures and terms, and exploit them to turn up the agreement between their implicit formulation and Lonergan's explicit one. Thus the scientific method has at least implicitly a notion of revision in terms of theory, data and verification. Since this is just an example of experience, insight and judgment, it cannot coherently be used to deny them.

Having seen the key to the argumentation, the persistent reader might want to push the objection further. Science has its methods of revision and its understanding of what they mean; but might even science be basically wrong? Suppose, then, that "revision" is redefined to have a different meaning. Then quite possibly the above argument would no longer hold. What then?

The re-definition of words is an acceptable procedure, as long as it is not purely arbitrary. But to take a word with a perfectly good meaning and redefine it to mean something else, with no reason at all for doing so, would seem to be purely arbitrary.

Now the word "revision" has quite a clear meaning inn science, and the scientist can point easily to instances of it. To reject that meaning for no reason at all would be very arbitrary. The process might be justified however if the objector would point out that the basic meaning of the word ill accords with the instances the scientist has indicated., and at the same 11010 shows other instances where the word fits much better. Even were he to accomplish this task, however, the objector would at the end find himself locked in the same circle. For he has made a judgment (finding reasonable justification) that a new insight (meaning) fits better a larger experience (new instances).

Other evasions might be sought. Perhaps the process of definition could be other than it is. Perhaps the whole human experience of knowing is so vitiated that any proof is foredoomed to arrive at a false conclusion. Perhaps human knowing could be quite other than it is. Perhaps some day it may change drastically, and then it will become obvious what it truly is. But such suppositions go beyond the terms of the original question, which was framed in terms of human knowing as it is in fact encountered. Consequently, there is no need to pursue each of these will-o'-the-wisps.

To summarize briefly,(52) the original question was how Lonergan might possibly justify such a bold notion as that of a universal viewpoint. The answer was given in two steps. In the first, and perhaps easier, it was shown how the more abstract and philosophical question of justifying the universal viewpoint could be reduced to the more concrete and cognitional question of the correct theory of knowing. In the second step, it was shown how the reduplicative nature of the cognitional question doomed to incoherence from the start any attempt to reject the structure of knowing as experience, insight and judgment.

Lonergan's universal viewpoint, as has been sufficiently stressed, occurs in Insight in the context of hermeneutics. But the very idea of a universal viewpoint, with its implied answer to the problem of relativism, suggests that the ramifications of such a notion could not be limited merely to the interpretation of texts. The preceding chapter has also shown that the universal viewpoint makes no adventitious appearance in Insight; rather it is intimately bound up with the most basic elements of Lonergan's cognitional structure. This suggests that the universal viewpoint cannot but be related to other important ideas in Lonergan's thought. The purpose of this chapter, is to demonstrate that both these suggestions are valid. For the universal viewpoint, while not appearing under its own name, will be seen to be identified with (or at least closely parallel to) other significant operational viewpoints in Lonergan's thought system. The first implication of this connection between the universal viewpoint and other realities in Insight is that the universal viewpoint has applications beyond, the immediate field of hermeneutics. But the second implication is that the idea of "universal viewpoint" may and must be (without changing its essential structure) extended to fit the new contexts. Thus the chapter will conclude with a definition of a "generalized universal viewpoint," of which the universal viewpoint of the hermeneutical context will be merely one particular application.

Once again, it would perhaps not be out of place to recall the concept of "creative interpretation" that was presented in the Introduction. The affirmation of the chapter is not simply that some reality may be broadly defined as a generalized universal viewpoint so that it includes Lonergan's universal viewpoint as a genus includes a species. The thesis is rather that the reality of the universal viewpoint has been somewhat accidentally introduced in and limited to the context of hermeneutics; that basically the same reality is operative in other contexts in Insight; that this is not merely a whimsy of this author, but can be shown by careful exegesis of those contexts; and that the variety of contexts in which the basic reality operates practically forces a broadening of the definition that was framed in view of the hermeneutical context alone.

After a brief consideration in a first section of the other places in Insight where the universal viewpoint appears under its own name, the following three contexts will be considered in the next three sections: that of a dialectical history of philosophy, that of a philosophical method, and that of "cosmopolis." Finally, the last section will present a generalized definition of the universal viewpoint.

It has been argued that our metaphysics of proportionate being supplies a universal viewpoint, and now that that metaphysics has been transformed to include transcendent being, we must ask whether the universal viewpoint remains.... It follows that the universal viewpoint of proportionate metaphysics has been preserved yet expanded. For a viewpoint is universal in the measure that 1) it is one and coherent, 2) it raises issues too basic to be dodged, and 3) its analysis of the evidence is penetrating enough to explain the existence of every other view as veil as to establish its own.... If then the procedure of the present chapter in conceiving the nature and affirming the reality of God appears to be excessively laborious, complex, and difficult, it would be unfair to overlook the fact that our concern has been, not to select the easiest approach to the notion of God, nor to offer the simplest proof of his existence, but so to advance from proportionate to transcendent being that the universal viewpoint, attained in the earlier stages of the argument, might be preserved as well as expanded.(53)

The second occurrence is in chapter 20, where Lonergan is discussing the problem of evil, special transcendent knowledge, and man's collaboration in the dissemination and formulation of this knowledge. The brief text:

Again, because man can arrive at a universal viewpoint, there will be the collaboration that consists in conceiving and expressing the solution in terms of the universal viewpoint.(54)

The third appearance of the term is in the Epilogue, where Lonergan discusses the contributions his philosophy might make to theology. As the text may' be too long to, quote in full, the following quotes will suffice:

Finally, while the notion of the universal viewpoint was worked out on the level of a dialectical metaphysics of proportionate being, it is to be borne in mind that it receives further determinations from our final chapters on transcendent knowledge. For general transcendent knowledge is concerned with the ultimate condition of the possibility of the positions, and special "transcendent knowledge is concerned with the de facto condition of the possibility of man's fidelity to the positions.(55)

The relationship of philosophy to theology in Lonergan's thought, as veil as the type of argument present in chapters 19, 20 and. the Epilogue - whether philosophical or theological - will receive adequate treatment only in the ensuing chapters. Consequently the exact import of the above statements remains at the present time somewhat obscure. But the following implications are clear and seemingly indisputable. First, that the universal viewpoint spoken of here is the same as that introduced in chapter 17. This is explicitly mentioned in the first and third quotations, and the third quotation also seems to apply to the usage in the second. Second, that the universal viewpoint, since it occurs in the disparate contexts of the proof of (rod's existence (where there is even a move to re-define it more broadly), God's solution to the problem of evil, and the construction of theology, need not be rigidly limited to the context of hermeneutics.

True, an exigent critic might counter that in all these contexts, what is envisioned is simply the interpretation of texts: texts on God, texts on religion, texts on theology. And this objection does have a certain basis, since Lonergan in the various contexts does speak of the works of Aristotle, Aquinas, Schleiermacher, of a "good news" transmitted from generation to generation (evoking, at least, the idea of the Scriptures), and of Church documents. But this objection, it seems, can be answered. In the first place, the universal viewpoint in the above quotations seems to have a suppleness, a wider applicability that is hardly suggested in chapter 17 of Insight. In the second place, the first quotation includes a description of the universal viewpoint which in no way mentions a text to be interpreted. In the third place, a search of the contexts of the above quotations shows that in some cases at least the interpretation of unwritten meanings is envisioned. For example, when Lonergan speaks of God in relation to "... the hearth and the family, in the emphases of patriarchal and matriarchal arrangements, in the concerns of hunters and fishers, of agriculturalists, craftsmen, and nomads..." he is obviously referring, at least in part, to the pre-literate stages of human development.(56) The same is suggested, when he speaks of "pre-philosophic notions of the divine in the mythical."(57) The same reference is clearly envisioned when he writes of "... each of the successive situations of individuals, classes, national f) groups, and of men generally."(58) In the fourth place, Lonergan explicitly says that in the context of the later chapters the universal viewpoint is "... preserved yet expanded."(59) What precisely this means will be examined in later chapters; but it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the basic reality of the universal viewpoint is retained in the later chapters, while being somehow enlarged to meet the new contexts.

Before ending this section, mention may be made of one other case where the term "universal viewpoint" appears, in the Introduction to Insight.(60)

On the contrary, it must begin from a minimal viewpoint and a minimal context; it will exploit that minimum to raise a further question that enlarges the viewpoint and the context; it will proceed, with the enlarged viewpoint and context only as long as is necessary to raise still deeper issues that again transform the basis and the terms of reference of the inquiry; and clearly, this device can be repeated not merely once or twice but as often as may be required to reach the universal viewpoint and the completely concrete context that embraces every aspect of reality.

Some hermeneutical discussion is possible here &s to whether or not this usage is to be simply identified with that of chapter 17 and the context of interpretation; perhaps Lonergan is using the term here in a more general and not necessarily identical sense. Be that as it may, the minimal implication is that for Lonergan the term "universal viewpoint" is plastic enough to fit other contexts besides the narrowly-defined hermeneutical one. Indeed, in this case the context is so broad as to be "... the completely concrete context that embraces every aspect of reality."

In conclusion, the above texts show rather clearly that the idea of the universal viewpoint (or, in one case, at least the term) has ramifications that extend far beyond the problem of constructing a hermeneutical method for professional exegetes. Hence it should occasion no surprise if the same (or a closely associated) reality should appear in other areas of Lonergan's thought.

This section will proceed by defining Lonergan's project in regard to a dialectical history of philosophy, then showing that the universal viewpoint is operationally present, and finally examining the implications of its presence in this context.

1. Dialectical Method and Philosophy

Lonergan begins the proposal of a dialectical history of philosophy by saying there is a difference between the relation of scientific method to scientific results and philosophical method to philosophical results. Scientific conclusions are far more specific than the methods employed and consequently there is little danger that adopting the scientific method' will predetermine or bias the results. In philosophy, however, methods and results are on the same level. To choose a method is already in large part to choose the resulting philosophy. Consequently the philosopher, much more than the scientist, has to ask the prior question about what method to choose. This close connection between method and resulting philosophy, however, can also be a key to studying the range of philosophical systems. This can be done economically, Lonergan points out, by studying the range of philosophical methods. That Lonergan proposes to do in a brief historical sketch.(61)

To understand how this will be done, it may be well to quote the text:

It follows that difference in metaphysical positions can be studied, expeditiously and compendiously by examining differences in method. Moreover, such a study is not confined to tabulating the correlations that hold between different methods and different metaphysical systems. For there is only one method that is not arbitrary, and it grounds its explicit anticipations on the anticipations that, though latent, are present and operative in consciousness. Finally, besides the correlations between methods and systems, besides the criticism of methods based on the latent metaphysics of the human mind, there is the dialectical unfolding of positions inviting development and counter-positions inviting reversal. It is to this dialectic of metaphysical methods that attention now is to be directed, not of course in the full expansion that would be possible only in a survey of the whole history of philosophy, but in the articulation of its basic alternatives and with the modest purpose of indicating the outlines of a heuristic scheme for historical investigations.(62)

Not only, then, is there a direct connection between methods and results, but the methods may be compared to the conclusions of cognitional analysis. A close comparison may be found here to the derivation of the positions and counterpositions.(63) There the process was from cognitional analysis to basic positions and counterpositions to positions and counterpositions. Here the process is from cognitional analysis to correct method and mistaken methods to philosophical positions and counterpositions.

2. Presence of the Universal Viewpoint

The appeal to positions and. counterpositions, mentioned explicitly in the above quotation, is also the key to the functioning of the universal viewpoint, which should be a first indication that the same viewpoint is operative in sketching a dialectical history of philosophy. But a more rigorous demonstration results from a proof that the viewpoint utilized in the dialectical sketch fulfills the definition of the universal viewpoint.

The viewpoint adopted in the dialectical history of philosophy, then, envisions a "totality." For it embraces every possible philosophical method. If Lonergan's sketch does not exhaustively list them all, there is at least no indication that any one could on principle be excluded. The totality, however, is "potential," because the history is only a sketch, because each method, may lead to a number of philosophical systems, and because new philosophies will be written in the future. New methods may even be found. The totality is of "viewpoints" - the viewpoints proper to the individual methods. Lastly, these viewpoints will be "genetically and dialectically ordered" insofar as they pertain to the gradual elaboration of the correct method or the proliferation of mistaken methods.

3. Implications of this Presence

Lonergan's viewpoint in constructing his dialectical sketch of the history of philosophy is therefore by identity the universal viewpoint, since the former viewpoint fulfills perfectly the definition of the latter. What does this identification imply?

The objection raised once may seem to apply again. The meaning of "universal viewpoint" has not been expanded at all, since philosophy is generally written down. Hence "philosophical texts" are a subset of "texts," and the universal viewpoint has not been expanded, but, if anything, contracted.

An immediate answer is that, whether the universal viewpoint is expanded or not, the admission that it reoccurs in this context is itself significant. For one of the aims of this chapter is to prove that the universal viewpoint does reappear in other parts of Insight without being explicitly named. But in fact this context does in certain ways tend to expand the universal viewpoint, or at least bring out more clearly its original implications.

First, viewpoints have been associated with the coalescence of insights. But the construction of the dialectical sketch highlights the connection of the universal viewpoint with judgment as well. For its function here is not only to understand, the various methods and their implications, but to authoritatively discriminate between those which are correct and those which are false.

Second, the interpretation of texts generally evokes the past in which the texts were written. But a focus toward the future has become obvious in this application of the universal viewpoint. For the "potential totality" envisioned not only past philosophies but the possibility of new philosophies and even new methods of philosophy.

The format of the previous section will be followed again in this section.

1. Lonergan's Philosophical Method

Philosophical methods have been discussed, but here the question is Lonergan's own method. Since his method is not arbitrary, he claims that it finds its basis in a metaphysics latent in every human mind. The task then is to move from the state of latent to that of explicit metaphysics, and the philosophical method would undertake to guide that transition.(64)

The transition itself is a deduction. There is a major premise, a set of primary minor premises, and a set of secondary minor premises. The major premise is the isomorphism of knowing with the known. The primary minor premise concerns affirmations of cognitional theory. The set of secondary minor premises consists of reorientated science and common sense.(65) These last are presently of interest.

A quotation will show what Lonergan means by the reorientation of science and common sense.

The reorientation is to be effected in the field of common sense and of the sciences. On the one hand, these departments of the subject's knowledge and opinion are not to be liquidated. They are the products of experience, intelligence, and reflection, and it is only in the name of experience, intelligence, and reflection that self-knowledge issues any directives. As they are not to be liquidated, so they are not to be taken apart and reconstructed, for the only method for teaching valid scientific views is the method of science, and the only method for attaining common sense is the method common sense already employs. As metaphysicians neither teach science nor impart common sense, so they cannot revise or reconstruct either science or common sense. Still, this is not the whole story. For it would be excessively naive for the self-knowing subject to suppose that his scientific knowledge and his common sense are purely and simply the product of experience, intelligent inquiry, and critical reflection. The subject knows the polymorphism of his ova consciousness; he knows how it generates a dramatic, an egoistic, a group, and. a general bias in common sense; he knows how it intrudes into science confused notions on reality, on objectivity, and on knowledge. While, then, science and common sense are to be accepted, the acceptance is not to be uncritical. There are precise manners in which common sense can be expected to go wrong; there are definite issues on which science is prone to issue extrascientific opinions; and the reorientation demanded and effected by the self-knowledge of the subject is a steadily exerted pressure against the common nonsense that tries to pass for common sense and against the uncritical philosophy that pretends to be a scientific conclusion.(66)

Again, a parallel to the derivation of positions and counterpositions will be noted. Instead of the movement of cognitional theory - basic positions and counterpositions - positions and counterpositions, the process here is from experience, inquiry and reflection to correct and confused notions on reality, objectivity and knowledge to common sense and scientific knowledge as well as common nonsense and uncritical philosophy.

2. Presence of the Universal Viewpoint

The demonstration in this context may perhaps be effected most expeditiously by consulting the quasi-definition of universal viewpoint that Lonergan gives in chapter 19, as already quoted:

For a viewpoint is universal in the measure that 1) it is one and coherent, 2) it raises issues too basic to be dodged, and 3) its analysis of the evidence is penetrating enough to explain the existence of every other view as well as to establish its own.(67)

But the viewpoint in operation here is one and coherent. It is one, because the text on the reorientation clearly identifies the viewpoint as that of a subject who knows himself. It is coherent, because the subject is able to distinguish the various aspects of his cognitional experience and relate them intelligibly. Next, the viewpoint raises issues too basic to be dodged. Proper notions of knowing, reality and objectivity as well as distinctions of common sense from nonsense and scientific knowledge from uncritical philosophy are obviously rather basic issues. Finally, the viewpoint explains the existence of other views as well as its own, since it founds critically accepted common sense and science in the correct cognitional analysis, while assigning as the reason for common nonsense and pseudo-scientific philosophy an incorrect cognitional analysis and confused notions on knowledge, reality and objectivity.

3. Implications of this Presence

Again, "the viewpoint involved, in reordering science and common sense has been shown "bo be identical to the universal viewpoint. What are the implications?

In this case, at least, it is clear that the universal viewpoint cannot be limited to the interpretation of texts. If scientific conclusions are usually formulated in written treatises, common sense certainly evades the printed word. While it may find a limited expression in aphorisms, it remains essentially incomplete until complemented by a further insight in an immediate situation. Further, common sense exhibits many brands and varieties. Even within one culture, it is never possessed whole and entire by any one person, but is parceled out among various individuals, thus making an exhaustive cataloguing impossibly burdensome.(68) In the reorientation of common sense, consequently, the universal viewpoint focuses not on texts but on the broader stream of human meaning in general.

As in the last context, the association with judgment is obvious as the self-knowledge of the subject effects a neat discrimination between sense and nonsense, pseudo-science and. science.

1. The Meaning of "Cosmopolis"

Certainly one of the stranger ideas in Insight is that of "cosmopolis." Like Melchisedech in the book of Genesis, it seems to appear without antecedents or consequences. Perhaps because it occurs so early in Insight, before many central ideas are defined., it seems to find little clear definition or explanation. Lonergan is better at saying what it is not than what it is.

The context within which it occurs, however, is clear. The question posed is: Who will be the agents for social and historical progress, and what methods will they use? Every individual, every group has its own interests and biases; thus every revolution seems to result in a new bureaucracy and a new order of injustice. While individual and group biases may cancel out in the long run of history, there remains what Lonergan calls general bias - the human proclivity to attend to immediate problems and results while neglecting long-range implications and planning. But beyond bias there is a further problem. Even were an individual or a group found who possessed only selfless ideas and ideals, the problem would be to communicate those ideas to other men. Should he or they do so by force? But such force as likely as not will be met by a mindless counter-force. The truth is that force cannot be the ultimate answer; hence it is incoherent to use force to communicate that truth. Still, who will listen to an idea that is not backed by force?

Lonergan's answer is cosmopolis. It is a source of ideas and judgments, a source which stands above personal or party interests and is too pure to be enticed by "practicality." At the same time, it is effective enough to be able to communicate by persuasion rather than force. To quote Lonergan himself:

Still, what is cosmopolis?... First, cosmopolis is not a police force.... Secondly, cosmopolis is concerned to make operative the timely and fruitful ideas that otherwise are inoperative.... Thirdly, cosmopolis is not a busybody. It is supremely practical by ignoring what is thought to be really practical.... Fourthly, as cosmopolis has to protect the future against the rationalization of abuses and the creation of myths, so it itself must be purged of the rationalizations and myths that became part of the human heritage before it came on the scene. If the analyst suffers from a scotoma, he will communicate it to the analysand; similarly, if cosmopolis itself suffers from the general bias of common sense in any of its manifestations, then the blind will be leading the blind and both will head for a ditch. There is needed, then, a critique of history before there can be any intelligent direction of history.(69)

2. The Presence of the Universal Viewpoint

This subsection will proceed in two steps, shoving that cosmopolis is a viewpoint, and that that viewpoint is identical or very similar to the universal viewpoint.(70)

a. Cosmopolis is a viewpoint. - While discussing the problem of the agents of historical progress, and before he explicitly introduces his specific solution of cosmopolis, Lonergan clearly states that his solution to the problem will be some viewpoint.

There is the major principle of general bias, and though it too generates its own corrective, it does so only by confronting human intelligence with the alternative of adopting a higher viewpoint or perishing.(71)

And again,

On the contrary, there is a convergence of evidence for the assertion that the longer cycle [of general bias] is to be met, not by any idea or set of ideas on the level of technology, economics or politics, but only by the attainment of a higher viewpoint in man's understanding and making of man.(72)

Lonergan also specifies what kind of viewpoint this will be:

As there is evidence for the necessity of a higher viewpoint, so also there is some evidence on its nature.... The needed higher viewpoint is the discovery, the logical expansion and the recognition of the principle that intelligence contains its own immanent norms and that these norms are equipped with sanctions which man does not have to invent or impose.(73)

In this context of the problem of historical progress, the immanent norms of intelligence allow a standpoint which can "distinguish between social achievement and the social surd."(74) For while detached and unbiased intelligence is the principle of historical progress, bias and especially general bias is the principle of an incoherence introduced into the social process itself. As Lonergan explains it,

But concrete living has become the function of a complex variable; like the real component of such a function, its intelligibility is only part of the whole. Already we have spoken of an empirical residue from which understanding always abstracts; but the general bias of common sense generates an increasingly significant residue that 1) is immanent in the social facts, 2) is not intelligible, yet 3) cannot be abstracted from if one is to consider the facts as in fact they are.
Let us name this residue the social surd.(75)

In any case, there is little doubt that cosmopolis is a viewpoint. If the above texts do not sufficiently prove the point, there is a text in the last part of Insight (the notion of cosmopolis recurs only fleetingly after its introduction) which explicitly speaks of it as a viewpoint.(76)

b. Identified with the universal viewpoint. - Cosmopolis would seem to be closely related to the universal viewpoint. As a first approximation, a parallel may be noted to the preceding contexts. The original pattern was cognitional analysis - basic positions and counterpositions - positions and counterpositions, and this pattern has been found to have an equivalent in the contexts of a dialectical history of philosophy and of the method of philosophy. Here the equivalent movement would seem to be from the immanent norms of intelligence to social achievement and social surd to the intelligent and critical, as opposed to short-sighted and "practical," critique and control of history.

A closer parallel may be established by appealing again to the definition of the universal viewpoint. In this context, the "totality" would refer to the meaning imbedded, in each of "the sum total of human actions in history. The totality would be "potential" because human history is as yet incomplete, and even more potential because the task of cataloguing all of those human meanings is both incomplete and probably impossible. The totality is of viewpoints - the viewpoints of all the agents, witting or unwitting, of history. These viewpoints are finally "genetically and dialectically ordered" insofar as the agents of history are intelligent, biased, or some incoherent mixture of the two, and their meaning-actions(77) contribute consequently to social progress or the social surd.

3. Implications of this Presence

Strong reasons, then, call for the identification of cosmopolis with the universal viewpoint. What would be the implications of this identification?

In the first place, the expansive tendencies of the universal viewpoint as already noted are confirmed. Cosmopolis concerns not just insight into history but judgment of history, as it offers to discriminate between social achievement and social surd. Again, cosmopolis concerns not only the past - the critique of history - but obviously the future as veil - the control of history. And more than ever, it is not historical texts that are in mind, but the interpretation of human history as such.

In the second place, the present context effects a notable new expansion of the universal viewpoint. Up to now, the universal viewpoint has largely been associated with the written or spoken word, or verbal meaning. In texts the written word is present, as in the formulations of philosophers or the treatises of science. Even common sense, while never exhaustively written down, is often spoken in aphorisms or teaching. Here however something else seems to be suggested. There is a meaning not only in what men say, but in what they do. There are meanings implied in the existential decisions they make and in the institutions they create. In the present context the universal viewpoint seems to embrace the meanings that are "embodied" in human action and institution-construction.(78)

The universal viewpoint may be found to be operationally present under other names in parts of Insight other than the treatment of hermeneutics. This the author believes to have been sufficiently demonstrated in regard to each of the contexts treated above. But a further point might be noted here: there is a confluence of evidence. As all the contexts are taken together, they mutually support one another. The cumulative evidence makes it even more indisputable that the universal viewpoint cannot be limited in its relevance to the interpretation of texts or the construction of a methodical hermeneutics.

But there is a further cumulativeness. In each context the universal viewpoint was expanded in some direction. In any individual case that may have been minor, but when all the contexts are taken together the universal viewpoint is seen to have been significantly extended. In the course of this process a principle intended to aid in the understanding of texts written in the past was found to have relevance to judgment, to the future, and to nontextual and even non-verbal meanings. As a result, the original definition of the universal viewpoint is too restrictive and must be reformulated to embrace the new contexts. For the universal viewpoint of the hermeneutical context must be substituted a "generalized universal viewpoint."

The "generalized universal viewpoint," then, is a viewpoint - based unrevisably on cognitional analysis - in aid of understanding and judging any human meaning, whether past, present or future, whether written, spoken or acted out, by ascertaining the basic viewpoint of the author of the meaning.(79)

The meaning of the definition should be clear enough from all the foregoing. "A viewpoint" recalls the technical precision made in chapter 1. "Based on cognitional analysis" is said because the universal viewpoint, as well as the viewpoint involved in each of the other contexts considered, was seen to rest ultimately on Lonergan's cognitional analysis. "Unrevisably" refers to the critical grounding sketched in chapter 2. "In aid of" intends the potential element that Lonergan stresses in his definition. The generalized universal viewpoint does not affirm that the universal task of interpretation has already been accomplished, or even that it ever will be. This is particularly true in regard to future meanings. A meaning obviously cannot be adequately interpreted until it is written, spoken or acted out. What can be known of future meanings is only what can be established by heuristic anticipation.(80) "Understanding and judging" makes clear that the implications of the universal viewpoint go beyond insight alone. Especially as taken together with "by ascertaining the basic viewpoint," the inclusion of judgment i-fa the definition reflects the fact that the universal viewpoint operates by distinguishing positions and counterpositions, which corresponds to the "genetically and dialectically ordered" of the original definition. "Any human meaning" bespeaks the expanded "totality" of Lonergan's definition, while recalling that the original context was one of interpretation. "Whether past, present or future" obviously formulates the extension from past to future (thus allowing for the intelligent control of history), while "written, spoken or acted out" formulates the shift from textual to non-textual and non-verbal meanings. "By ascertaining the basic viewpoint of the author of the meaning" recalls that in the original definition the totality was one of "viewpoints," and the original context that of understanding authors' meanings.

The chapter gradually assembled the evidence that the reality of the universal viewpoint, as introduced by Lonergan in the context of hermeneutics, was identical with or at least closely related to the operative viewpoint of a number of other contexts. In the process of this demonstration the universal viewpoint was extended in its implications and the range of its applicability. The dimensions of this expansion were explicitly formulated in a definition of a generalized universal viewpoint. This generalized universal viewpoint will function as a tool in the second part of the dissertation.

The task of this chapter, as has already been made clear, is to pose a question: What is the relationship between the philosophical and the theological viewpoint? The chapter will have two sections. In the first, the necessary background notions will be assembled. The second section will pose the question itself.

Since the genre of this study is creative interpretation, the assembly of the background notions will be a specification of the meaning Lonergan gives to the concepts needed to pose the question. The first subsection will supply remote background by clarifying what Lonergan means by "philosophy" and "theology." The second subsection will present the more proximate background of the meaning of "philosopher's viewpoint" and "theologian's viewpoint."

The section which poses the question is also subdivided. The first subsection will not only state the question but show that it leads rather directly to a paradox. The second subsection will consider briefly the novelty of this method of posing the question.

What should be noted in relation to the background of the question-to-be-posed is that the presentation is heuristic rather than complete. Chapter 6, in answering the question of the relationship of the philosophical and theological viewpoints, will at the same time contribute to a sharper and more accurate idea of what those viewpoints are. This in turn should illuminate the meaning of "philosophy" and "theology." Since this accuracy and this illumination are intended as products of the dissertation as a whole, it would be neither desirable nor feasible to seek to present them in this chapter. Consequently no exhaustive or exceedingly rigorous definitions are here intended. Rather "philosophy" and "theology" will be specified to the extent necessary to clarify the meaning of "philosophical" and "theological viewpoint." These in turn will be defined only enough to make it possible to pose intelligently the question of their relationship.

1. Meaning of "philosophy" and "theology"

a. Philosophy. - There seem "to be three main usages of the word "philosophy" in Lonergan's writing.

1) Probably the most frequent is the meaning that the concept takes on in Lonergan's own particular approach.(81) A common expression of this usage is a definition of philosophy in terms of the three questions:(82) What am I doing when I know? Why is doing that knowing? What do I know when I do it? These three questions Lonergan identifies as those (respectively) of cognitional theory, epistemology, and metaphysics. While at first this may seem to limit the meaning of "philosophy" to a small number of the questions or areas traditionally associated with that discipline, on a second consideration that is not necessarily the case. Lonergan would probably admit that "metaphysics" could be taken in a sense wide enough to include ethics, theodicy, philosophy of religion, etc. What this use of the word "philosophy" certainly does do however is to put unmistakable emphasis on Lonergan's special approach. The priority of the "psychological" over the "metaphysical" in his system has already been stressed. In the above enumeration, the first two questions obviously deal with psychological issues, while only the third takes up the metaphysical aspect.

2) In his later works Lonergan gives a specialized meaning to philosophy which he signalizes in the words "philosophy of...." A "philosophy of..." he characterizes as typically determining basic terms, basic correlations, and a basic orientation.(83) These may be verified in a "philosophy of..." nature, history, education, the state, man, science, etc.

3) At other times Lonergan uses the word "philosophy" as referring to the sum total of philosophical efforts in history. This would obviously include diverse approaches, many different or in contradiction to Lonergan's own. The word in this sense may be used absolutely or in a qualified sense, as in "existential philosophy."(84)

Since the effort here is to interpret Lonergan, the first usage of the word is obviously the most appropriate, and "philosophy" will be used from now on, unless otherwise noted, in that sense.(85)

b. Theology. - There seems to be no significant division of basic uses of the word "theology" to correspond to those of "philosophy," perhaps because Lonergan is not so concerned in this case to defend a particular notion of theology against other contenders. As a first approximation, then, the meaning of "theology" in Lonergan seems largely to correspond with the meaning of the word in the Christian tradition.

As a second approximation, this author's definition might be adopted, since it seems to synthesize Lonergan's thought on the matter. "Theology is the thematization of Christian experience."(86) Thematization is a gradual process of conceptualization and systematization, what Lonergan is referring to when he speaks of "the displacement towards system, die Wendung zur Idee."(87) "Experience" includes both the personal experience of the theologian and the larger experience of his co-believers both contemporary and in past history, as this is delivered in the Christian tradition. "Christian experience" does not intend to imply that there is a special corner of life in which this peculiar type of experiences takes place. Rather the words refer to the human experience as read in the light of the Christian fact.

This definition of theology is broad enough to include the reflection of the ordinary Catholic who asks himself such a simple question as, Why should I go to Sunday Mass? (This is an advantage of the definition since it presupposes a continuum between the simplest such question and the most arcane theological speculation, thus tending to make a necessary re-integration of academic theology into ordinary Christian living.) Ordinarily however the word is used in a more restricted sense to refer to a disciplined body of knowledge in which such questions are asked methodically and with the greatest possible explicitness and generality. "Theology" will be understood here more in the second, restricted sense.

As a third approximation, Lonergan in his interest in methodology is not so likely to ask, What is theology? as, What does the theologian do? Here there may be noted a growing sophistication in his thought. In the De Deo Trino period there is a threefold division of the theological process into textual work, doctrinal determination, speculative thought.(88) In the later work are distinguished eight steps: research, interpretation, history, dialectic, foundations, doctrines, systematics, communications.(89)

Another aspect in which there has been a gradual shift in Lonergan's thought is the tendency to name theology a "science." Three stages may be distinguished. In the first, he seems satisfied with Thomas Aquinas' adoption of Aristotle's notion of science.(90) Gradually he comes to realize that this is inadequate, and attempts to relate theology to "science" in the modern sense of the term.(91) In the third and very recent phase he feels uncomfortable with speaking of theology as science at all, preferring the more general term "scholarship."(92) This whole movement in Lonergan's thought may be broadly characterized as a shift from the "universal and necessary" to the "contingent and historical."

Whatever the nuances of Lonergan's use of "theology," however, the meaning of the word in his usage will be sufficiently specified, for present purposes in the first, second and third approximations given above.(93)

2. Meaning of "philosophical" and "theological viewpoint"

a. The "philosophical viewpoint." - Perhaps it is already fairly clear that the viewpoint of the philosopher, if philosophy is taken in the sense adopted above, is identical to the generalized universal viewpoint. If it is not obvious, a consultation of the definition of the generalized universal viewpoint should demonstrate the fact. For that viewpoint has been defined as offering to understand and judge, every human meaning. But within that totality of human meanings is included the subset known as "philosophical meanings."

A more rigorous proof might be constructed, by examining the method. Lonergan proposes for his philosophy. That method, it will be recalled,(94) was formulated as a deduction. The major premise is the isomorphism of knowing and known. The primary minor premises are "a series of affirmations of concrete and recurring structures in the knowing of the self-affirming subject."(95) The secondary minor premise consists of re-orientated science and common sense. As already seen, the viewpoint involved in the reorientation of science and common sense is a particular application of the generalized universal viewpoint. The primary minor premise is clearly nothing else than the unrevisable cognitional analysis on which the generalized universal viewpoint is based. And the movement in the major premise from knowing to known is parallel to and in fact strictly identical with the movement from cognitional analysis to heuristic anticipation of meaning, as may be verified by a comparison of Lonergan* s definitions of "knowing" and "meaning."(96) Consequently, the viewpoint of the philosopher in Lonergan's thought world must be identified. with the generalized universal viewpoint.

b. The "theological viewpoint." - In keeping with the heuristic character of these definitions, as already discussed, the viewpoint of the theologian will be no further defined than that it is the viewpoint of the person doing "theology" in the sense specified already.(97) The only supposition here is that the theologian operates out of some viewpoint, and that supposition is minimal. A viewpoint has been broadly characterized as an intellectual standpoint from which a person is able to grasp a certain field, or area of reality.(98) But theology clearly claims to be dealing with some area or field of reality, and if it pretends to be a disciplined body of knowledge at all there must be some coherent viewpoint out of which a theologian operates.

In the light of all the assembled background, the central question of the dissertation may now be posed in the following way: What is the relationship between the generalized universal viewpoint and the viewpoint of the theologian? The generalized universal viewpoint, developed. in the first half of the study, is obviously being used here as a highly refined tool to press the question of the relationship of philosophy and theology.

A brief consideration of the question will show that it leads rather directly to a paradox. On the one hand, the viewpoint of the theologian can not very well be explained as a higher viewpoint than the philosopher's. The very term "universal viewpoint" seems to make impossible that it be transcended. This intuition is given explicit justification if the proposal of a viewpoint higher than the universal is examined. The force of the metaphor "viewpoint" would, seem to imply that a higher viewpoint is correlative to a wider range of vision. But the range of vision of the universal viewpoint is that of being itself.(99) Beyond being however there is nothing, and so a wider range of vision is nonsensical. But if there is no wider range of vision there can be no higher viewpoint.

Lonergan himself seems to carefully avoid calling the theological viewpoint a higher viewpoint.(100) Further, Lonergan's Introduction, as has already been seen,(101) has correlated the universal viewpoint with the completely concrete context that includes every aspect of reality. Finally, if all that is not enough, the following statement of Lonergan is quite explicit:(102)

But it is possible to reach a higher viewpoint only within the framework of inquiring and. critical intelligence; there is not, in human knowledge, any possible higher viewpoint that goes beyond, that framework itself, and. replaces intelligent inquiry and critical reflection by some surrogate; and the viewpoint of metaphysics is constituted by nothing less than inquiring intelligence and. critical reflection.

Thus it seems impossible to relate the two viewpoints by making the theological a higher viewpoint. On the other hand., it seems equally inconvenient to simply identify the generalized universal viewpoint with the theological viewpoint. While certain of Lonergan's texts would seem to point in this direction (this problem will be taken up later(103)), such an identification would, contradict a distinction honored within the Christian tradition in very clear and. explicit fashion since at least the 13th century,(104) and formulated in no uncertain terms in the decrees of the First Vatican Council.(105) Given Lonergan's constant appeal to that decree,(106) it is unlikely that he would be contradicting it so flatly. Further, Lonergan continues even in the later works to explicitly distinguish philosophy and theology.(107) In fact, he continues to insist on the need. for a supernatural-natural distinction,(108) in spite of the fact that this has become somewhat unpopular in contemporary theology. If attention might be shifted for a moment from speculative to practical considerations, the identification of the philosophical and theological viewpoints would imply a call to amalgamate the philosophy and theology departments of a university such as Fordham. Is Lonergan really demanding such a radical re-structuring?

Hence the paradox: on the one hand, it is hard to see how the theological can be a viewpoint higher than the philosophical, while, on the other hand, it is inconceivable that theology should be simply collapsed into philosophy. The question remains; How can the generalized universal viewpoint of Lonergan's philosophy be related to his theology?

A satisfactory answer to that question will clearly necessitate a carefully nuanced statement. That nuance will be made possible only if other notions in Lonergan's thought are presented and refined in the next chapter. Only in chapter 6 will an attempt be made to answer the question raised above.

2. The Novelty of the Question

Before terminating this chapter, a note must be added on the novel form that has been given to the traditional question of the relationship of philosophy and theology. In view of what has been said already, that may be done rather briefly.

Stress has already been placed on a salient characteristic of Lonergan's philosophical approach, namely, that it represents a shift from the "metaphysical" to the "psychological." Whether called the "turn to the subject," a "breakthrough into inferiority," whether associated with the typical thought-forms of Descartes, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Newman, Husserl, Marechal, Blondel, Rahner or Coreth, it is a movement that is largely associated with modern rather than medieval thought. That same shift marks the novelty of the question raised above.

For the question has been raised in terms of viewpoints. But viewpoints can be defined in terms of conscious, psychological experience. Lonergan in fact does this, beginning with the simple experience of insight, then showing how insights may coalesce, until finally a crowning insight links together a whole development of thought and. permits a survey of a certain field of reality.(109)

To point up the contrast with more traditional thought two texts from Thomas Aquinas will be analyzed. A full survey of the history of Christian thought on the philosophy-theology distinction is obviously beyond the scope of this study, but Thomas' thought, given especially his strong and in many ways unique influence upon subsequent Catholic theology, may at least serve as an illuminating example.

The texts are taken from the very first question of the Summa Theologiae, where Thomas is dealing with what are actually methodological questions. The first text responds to the question of whether any body of knowledge beyond philosophy is necessary, while the second affirms that God is the subject matter of theology.

Videtur quod non sit necessarium praeter philosophicas disciplinas aliarndoctrinam haberi.... Doctrina non potest esse nisi de ente; nihil enim scitur nisi verum, quod cum ente convertitur. Sed de omnibus entibus tractatur in philosophicis disciplinis, et etiam de Deo;unde quaedam pars philosophiae dicitur theologia, sive scientia divina, ut patet per Philosophum in VI Metaph. Non tuit igitur necessarium praeter philosophicas disciplinas aliam doctrinam haberi.... Respondeo. Dicendum quod necessarium tuit ad humanam salutem esse doctrinam quandaia secundum revelationern divinam praeter philosophicas disciplinas, quae ratione humana investigantur. Primo quidem quia homo ordinatur ad Deum sicut ad quendam finern qui comprehensionern rationis excedit, secundum illud Isaiae lxiv; "Oculus non vidit Deus absque te, quae praeparasti diligentibus te." Finern autem oportet esse praecognitum hominibus, qui suas inten-biones et actiones debentordinare in finern. Unde necessarium tuit homini ad salutem quod ei no"ba fierent quaedam per revelationem divinam, quae rationern humanam excedun-fc....Ad secundum. Dicendum quod diversa ratio cognoscibilis diversitatem scientiarum inducit. Eandem enim conclusionern demonstrat astrologus et naturalis, puta quod terra est rotunda; sed astrologus per medium mathematicum, idest a materia abstractum; naturalis autem per medium circa materiam consideratum. Unde nihil prohibet'de eisdem rebus, de quibus philosophicae tractant secundum quod sunt cognoscibilia lumine naturalis rationis, et aliam scientiam tractare secundum quod cognoscuntur lumine divinae revelationis. Unde theologia quae ad sacram doctrinam pertinet, differt secundum genus ab ilia theologia quae pars philosophiae ponitur.(110)

Respondeo. Dicendum quod Deus est subiectum huius scientiae. Sic enim se habet subiectum ad scientiam, sicut obiectum ad potentiam vel habitum. Proprie autem illud assignatur obiectum alicuius potentiae vel habitus, sub cuius ratione omnia referuntur ad potentiam vel habitum, sicut homo et lapis referuntur ad visum inquantum sunt colorata, unde coloratum est proprium obiectum visus. Omnia autem pertractantu