Monday, January 15, 2007

Site Section: TRANSCENDENTAL METHOD as THEORY

Transcendental Method as Theory

DESCRIPTION
Here, as Lonergan might state it, we invite you to develop the dialogue that would help explore transcendental (general empirical) method and help move reader-participants from latent, through problematic, and into explicit metaphysics (1958 & 2000).

This section provides explorations and interpretive studies of transcendental method , commonsense, ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, and surrounding thought as well as new thinking and conceptual developments about theoretical-philosophical issues generated from and with an explicit reference to a core understanding of transcendental method and its unique (to post-modern philosophy) call to personal and critical self-knowledge.

GOALS

TO bring together and continue to develop new thought surrounding the study of insight--taking transcendental method and an understanding of metaphysics as the "conception, affirmation, and implementation of the integral heuristic structure of proportionate being" as its starting point (1958, p. 391 & 2000, p. 416).

TO bring forward transcendental method and related theoretical explorations as general philosophical theory and as trans-cultural ground for further theoretical dialogue and development. (This includes further development of the functional specialties developed in Lonergan's Method in Theology.)

TO explore theoretical aspects of the formative relationship of the mind's reality to all other fields of study and human concerns, writ-large (institutions, cultures, groups, etc.) and writ-small (person).

TO provide a dialogue, critique, self-corrective foundation, and new unification for the disparate fields and sciences: "There is then a rock on which one can build" (Lonergan, Method in Theology, 1972, p. 19).

(Examples of subject matter: Functional specialties, the virtually unconditioned, the biases and the attitudes (Piscitelli, 1985), commonsense, the meaning of cosmopolis, Lonergan's treatment of myth, different "levels" and conversions, e.g., Doran's "psychic conversion," etc.)

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