Self-Appropriation in Lonergan and Voegelin—Part 1
by Thomas J. McPartland
Thomas McPartland is Professor and Chairman of the Whitney Young School of Honors and Liberal Studies at Kentucky State University in Frankfort. This essay is taken from his book, Lonergan and the Philosophy of Historical Existence, which appears in the Eric Voegelin Institute Series in Political Philosophy, and is available from the University of Missouri Press. This chapter appears in two parts, with permission of the publisher. The previous chapter, Noetic Science, has appeared here in three parts.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN to appropriate the self? Is the self somehow a "something" that can be "appropriated"? Is this mysterious appropriation something added on to the mysterious self coming from outside the self? Or is it an enrichment of the already present self? Or is it a fundamental constituent of the very being of the self? Indeed, if Kierkegaard is correct and the self is a relation that relates itself to itself, then perhaps self-appropriation concerns the very being of the self.1 Lonergan and Voegelin would, in fact, agree with Kierkegaard's assessment, each from his own distinct, but substantially equivalent, perspective, Lonergan highlighting more the role of mediation (and Intentionality) in the enterprise, Voegelin more the role of meditation. But, given their respective emphases on mediation and meditation, how can we speak of their equivalent positions? For the former conveys the image of scientific discourse, whereas the latter suggests the practice, if not the silence, of the mystic.
Lonergan's Reflective Subjectivity
Since self-appropriation is Lonergan's technical term, we can start first with his analysis.2
What, then, is the self? Interestingly enough, the self, for Lonergan, is a thing. But it is not a thing like an instance of the Cartesian res extensa or like a Kantian phenomenal object, both of which are "bodies" in the "already-out-there-now-real." No, the self is a thing simply because it is a unity, identity whole grasped in data as individual.3 Its unity, however, is a unity that marks it off from the unity of other kinds of things: it is a unity that is simultaneously intelligible and intelligent. To use Hegel's language, as does Lonergan, it is subject and not just substance. Thus, metaphysical categories, equally applicable to plants, animals, and humans, are not adequate to explore the being of the self.4
To say that the self is intelligent is to say that the self is the subject of conscious and intentional operations that spontaneously constitute a dynamic structure: the successive levels of experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding. Thus, we can equate self and subject and consciousness. It is furthermore an incarnate consciousness since it is a higher integration of otherwise coincidental manifolds of subatomic, chemical, organic, and psychic manifolds. It is thus conditioned by the lower, material manifolds but not determined by them. It is not only not determined by them but also oriented to something wholly beyond them. For, as Lonergan makes clear, the subject's performance of conscious and intentional operations is underpinned by the pure unrestricted desire to know and the all-encompassing unrestricted intention of the good neither of which will find rest save in the unrestricted being of the transcendent beyond. Although conditioned by the empirical residue, the self is not intrinsically conditioned. Thus, the self, so defined, is the central form of a concrete human being.5
Still, as we have seen above, the metaphysical category of central form is not sufficient to explore the dynamics — nay, even the seeming paradox — of the self. We can capture this dynamic by stating quite simply that the self is a process of self-transcendence. We can be selves as we can be subjects, by degrees, minimally when we are in deep sleep and maximally when we are deliberating and deciding. The entire movement and flow and direction of conscious and intentional operations are the tendency of questioning, and the entire process of inquiry is under the guidance of the existential level of consciousness, where we decide not just about X, Y, or Z but equiprimordially about who we are to be as we decide about X, Y, or Z.6 In deliberating about any course of action, we are also, at least implicitly in subsidiary awareness, asking about what we are, what we can be, and what we ought to be. And the context of the questions — where our selves are at issue — changes the "what" to "who." The self, then, is the tension of self as questioner and self as questioned, self as choosing and self as chosen.7 The self is the relation that relates itself to itself. The self is not therefore some pure "given," an "already-in-here-now-real."
Here we first witness self-appropriation and mediation. For to choose the self is to appropriate the self. And to appropriate the self requires the mediation of an interpretation of what the self has been, what it can be, and what it ought to be. This mediation is obviously conducted for the most part in what Polanyi calls subsidiary awareness rather than in what he terms focal aware- ness, and it is usually expressed in a combination of nonthematic, or elemental, meanings and commonsense language. It takes place on the level of the cultural infrastructure, where meaning is spontaneously apprehended and communicated. Since moral deliberation typically involves commonsense insight in the self-correcting process of moral learning, this kind of self- appropriation and this kind of mediation may seem adequate to the task of selfhood.8
Nonetheless, this is not what Lonergan means by self-appropriation. There remains the Delphic imperative, "Know thyself." What ought the self to choose? Clearly, the true self, the authentic self. And what is the authentic self? The self-transcending self faithful to the transcendental precepts of being attentive, intelligent, reasonable, and responsible. Indeed, on the level of the cultural infrastructure there can be an "implicit intellectual conversion" that in a somewhat spontaneous and perhaps inchoate manner through commonsense understanding identifies true responsibility with the openness of questioning. Still, this identification can be a tricky business, especially since most people are not too attentive to the apparently fuzzy structure and dynamics of interiority and since common sense, not being reflective, can easily merge with common nonsense. Hence, in the hermeneutics of performance and interpretation, where past performance becomes data for present interpretation as the self relates itself to itself, it is easy for there to be an operative existential gap between the reality of authentic selfhood and the interpretations.9 Unfortunately, the misinterpretations can mediate future performance in a cycle of decline, whereas what is needed is increased lucidity about the authentic self that can foster progress.
Here we turn, then, to the meaning of self-appropriation and mediation in Insight. Lonergan's cognitional theory aims at adequate self-knowledge on the critical and reflective level of the cultural superstructure. It promotes an explicit intellectual conversion that defines cognitive and moral truth in terms of the norms ingredient in the process of inquiry. As Lonergan makes clear at the beginning of Insight, such self-appropriation places a premium on intelligence as the spring of progress and, in closing the existential gap, combats bias as the primal source of decline.10
We must emphasize that mediation in this project is not the mediation of some reified speculation. Mediation has two precise loci. On the one hand, mediation must always necessarily be carried out by the concrete person. Self- appropriation, Lonergan proclaims, issues in a decisive, personal act.11 It is not knowledge of an abstract self that is at stake; it is the experiment of one's self-consciousness taking possession of itself.
On the other hand, the self-appropriation of a sufficient number of persons can form the nucleus of a community in dialogue, a critical culture, a dimension of consciousness. What Lonergan calls "cosmopolis" can act through (nonpolitical) indirection, through example, through satire and humor, through critical historical scholarship, through plainspokenness about the truth, through addressing issues of maximum consequence for human welfare or human disaster — it can act through all these means precisely as a mediating force in society.12 It can mediate in an ongoing fashion in the hermeneutic of performance and interpretation through the functional cooperation of specialties in the cultural superstructure. It can criticize contemporary deculturation in light of the dialectic of progress and decline, guiding culture toward the openness of the basic horizon of inquiry. Lonergan is well aware of the ordinary mediating functions of tradition and belief through acculturation, socialization, and education in what he characterizes as the "movement from above downwards." To this he would add cosmopolis.
Like Plato's true polis, cosmopolis first and foremost resides in the souls of authentic inquirers, whether a sole representative figure, a small remnant, or, in more golden moments of history, a larger segment of the cultural superstructure.13 Cosmopolis, says Lonergan, can formulate statements about cognitive, moral, and spiritual reality—statements he would term "doctrines." Lonergan emphasizes, however, that these "doctrines," which can play a positive role of mediating self-appropriation, must themselves be mediated by self-appropriation in the foundational enterprise of appealing to the data of consciousness and the engendering experience of self-transcending inquiry.14
Although in insight Lonergan focuses on mediation, his post-insight work offers the prospect of forging links between meditation and self-appropriation.
Consider again the self. The authentic self performs within a self-assembling structure of cognitive and moral operations underpinned by the basic intentionality of unrestricted questioning. The self is located between lower, material manifolds and the beyond correlative to the unrestricted sweep of questioning. This creates a tripolar tension — tension below and tension above. The hallmark of this location, then, is the tension of limitation and transcendence.
Another word for this tension is anxiety. To carry out self-appropriation requires that we come to grips with this permanent existential mood. If we become, in Kierkegaard's language, pupils of possibility in the curriculum of anxiety, then we must engage in something like existential meditation.15
There is also the task of negotiating with the psychic depths in the twofold manner described by Ricoeur, namely, the archaeological retrieval of repressed unwanted materials, largely vital urges of image and affect, and the teleological conscription of psychic energy supporting the process of inquiry. Lonergan speaks of a self-appropriation of the sensitive psyche involving "genuineness," which brings to light unconscious components of development that need integration with the life of intelligence. Genuineness might then bring about a kind of psychic conversion. Particularly in the case of the teleology of the psyche, this would seem to entail a type of psychic meditation on the symbolic and affectively charged anticipations and virtualities of higher living.16
Finally, and perhaps most important, the self has a relation — perhaps an intrinsic relation — to divine presence. Lonergan in his later writings, we must underscore, focuses on three dimensions of interiority: not only on the structure of cognition and on the basic Intentionality driving it but also, third, on the existential state of being-in-love that engulfs the directional tendency and the structured operations. As the desire to know and the intention of the good are unrestricted, so the existential state that engulfs them is unrestricted. The unrestricted state of being-in-love is the experience of divine presence, the consciousness of divine presence as object (the object of the unrestricted desire to know and the unrestricted intention of the good) and of divine presence as subject (the experience of participation in divine reality analogous to vital intersubjective union).17 The experience of divine presence is the existential condition for sustained moral commitment and for the effort of cognitive self-appropriation.18 Meditative practices of the most traditional sort not only can be woven into the fabric of the originating experiences but presumably can also assist materially in the task of self-appropriation of spiritual consciousness. In other words, meditation on religious experience can assist the project of fides quaerens intellectum, which, among other things, would mediate, or objectify, spiritual interiority. 
[Part 2 of this chapter will appear next week. Read the last installment of the related previous chapter. Noetic Science, Part 3]
NOTES
1. Kierkegaard, Sickness unto Death, 13
2. Insight, 13-17; Method in Theology, 95,262; Understanding and Being, 3-23, 261-66, 270-74, 297-99, 381-83.
3. On definition of a "thing," see Insight, 271; contrast to Cartesian or Kantian object-as-extroverted, 275-79.
4. On self as intelligible and intelligent, see ibid., 538-43. On self as subject not substance, see Method in Theology, 96; Understanding and Being, 11-12, 297-98; "Philosophy of History," 71; Topics in Education, 80-81; Verbum, 3-11; and Collection, 222-24. On inadequacy of metaphysical categories applied to the self, see Method in Theology, 95-96, Verbum, 4-6; Topics in Education, 209-10; and Second Collection, 72-73.
5. On self as conditioned by lower manifolds, see Insight, 494ff; on basic intentionallty of self, 539; on self as not conditioned intrinsically by empirical residue, 541; on self as central form, 460-63, 542-43.
6. On degrees of selfhood, see Collection, 222; and Second Collection, 80. On self-constitution, see Method in Theology, 121-22; Collection, 223-24, 229-30; and Second Collection, 79-80, 83.
7. See Chapter 1, n. 20, above.
8. Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, vii, 55-56. On the cultural infrastructure, see Insight, 594-95; Method in Theology, 86-90, 97-99, 272-73; Collection, 236; and Second Collection, 91, 102. On commonsense inquiry, see Insight, 196-204, 311-12, 314-16.
9. On the transcendental precepts, see Method in Theology, 20, 53, 104, 302; and Collection, 227ff. On common nonsense, see Insight, 4; on the "existential gap," see "Horizon and History," in Notes on Existentialism, 13.
10. On intellectual conversion, see Method in Theology, 238-40; on self-appropriation and progress, see Insight, 8.
11. Insight, 13.
12. Ibid., 263-67, 647-49; see Chapter 6 above.
13. On tradition as mediating from above, see Third Collection, 181. Lonergan invokes Toynbee's ideal-type of the "creative minority" (16, 103-4, 214).
14. On doctrines, see Method in Theology, chap. 12; on foundations, chap. 11. The issue of authenticity regards both the authenticity of the tradition and the authenticity of the person within the tradition (78-80; Collection, 227-28). The criterion of authenticity is self-transcendence. See n. 9 above.
15. On the tripolar tension, see Insight, 749; on the tension of limitation and transcendence, 497-99. On anxiety, see Chapter 8 above; and Kierkegaard, The Concept of Dread, 139-43.
16. On Ricoeur, see Chapter 1, n. 27, above. On genuineness, see Insight, 499-504. The term psychic conversion is that of Robert Doran (see Psychic Conversion and Theological Foundations: Toward a Reorientation οf the Human Sciences and Theology and Dialectic of History, 8-9, chap. 2). For Lonergan's positive reference to Doran's idea, see "Reality, Myth, Symbol," 36-37. On psychic process as anticipation of higher living, see Insight, 482.
17. On being-in-love, see Method in Theology, 104-7; and Third Collection, 171-75. On religious experience as an analogue of intersubjective union, see Method in Theology, 101- 3, 105-7.
18. Method in Theology, 237-43
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