DIALECTIC: towards the harmony among differences

INTRODUCTION
Dialectic derives from the Greek dialektikē which comes from dialegesthai, “to converse,” and was originally the “art of conversation.”(1) In philosophy, different philosophers apply the term differently. Back to the Ancient times sophists used dialectic as a mere instrument for winning a dispute. For example Protagoras claimed that he “could make the worse argument appear the better,”(2) such aim belongs rather to rhetoric than to philosophy, and this regress form of dialectic was called Eristic by Plato.(3) Eristic came to make deliberate use of invalid argumentation and sophistical tricks, like that of Zeno of Elea – regarded as the founder of dialectic and is known for his paradoxes. Socrates stands in contrast to sophists and professes to be seeking truth. His chief philosophical method for instance was that of elenchus,(4) eliciting and questioning of beliefs in order to establish truths and reveal inconsistencies. For Plato dialectic is a positive method, shaped to attain knowledge of the forms or ideas and the relations between them. To Aristotle on the other hand, reasoning becomes dialectical if the premises are opinions that are generally accepted by everyone or by the majority, but if the premises merely seem probable or if one has an incorrect reasoning, then it is “eristic.” Immanuel Kant gave the term Transcendental Dialectic(5) to his attempt to uncover the illusion of judgment that tries to transcend the limits of experience.(6) For G.W.F. Hegel, dialectic does not involve a dialogue either between two thinkers or between a thinker and his subject matter, as in that of Plato. Rather it is conceived as the autonomous self-criticism and self-development of the subject matter, of, e.g., a form of consciousness or a concept.(7)

Influenced by Kant and Hegel (also Heidegger, and Aquinas) Bernard Lonergan(8) offered his own insights on what dialectic is, and even devoted the whole Chapter 10 of his Method in Theology,(9) thoroughly discussing the issues, problems, structure, and method of Dialectic. Inspired by the man’s assiduous avarice of achieving unity of plurality, I intend to present us a thematic review of Lonergan’s fourth functional specialty - Dialectic, which primarily deals with conflicts. Although the process seem to be an illusory attempt to promote harmony among differences, lecture of the topic at hand is imperative because it presents the hopeful possibility of achieving unity despite differences, of coming into terms with each other without putting aside the individual’s uniqueness, precisely because the human person is attentive, intelligent, reasonable, and responsible. To Lonergan, the functional specialty dialectic manifests itself when investigators attend to and evaluate the basic elements in any human situation. They evaluate the data of research, the explanation of interpreters, and the accounts of historians. To ensure that all germane questions are met, they bring together different people with different evaluations with a vision to clarifying and resolving any differences that may appear. It attempt to balance different perspectives of people in history – to compare and evaluate conflicting views precisely because of our different experience of phenomena, to the unity of systematically organized concepts or ideas.

HORIZON
In its literal sense the word, horizon, denotes the bounding circle, the line at which earth and sky appear to meet. This line is the limit of one’s field of vision. As one moves about, it recedes in front and closes in behind so that, for different standpoints, there are different horizons. Moreover, for each different standpoint and horizon, there are different divisions of the totality of visible objects. Beyond the horizon lie the objects that, at least for the moment, cannot be seen. Within the horizon lie the objects that can now be seen.(10)

Horizons are the vantage points where we find ourselves in relation to reality. We live in a world. Our world-view, which blends in numerous opinions about this world, is to a colossal extent the thoughtful outcome of our interactions with the people and things that dwell in that world. In turn, our world-view affects our interactions with the world. Opinions grow out of differences of experiences, and opinions in turn influence - improve, diminish, or change in some way - the quality of experience. What or how we experience and the way we think may be different from each other but are still interdependent.What makes the differences in horizon, according to Lonergan, may be complementary, genetic, or dialectical. Horizon is complementary when there is the merging together of different horizon for the functioning of a communal world. Wherein horizon is seen as an individual’s field of interest, doctors, engineers, artists, educators come together for the improvement of everyone. Despite diversities and differences, there is a sense of peaceful co-existence. One can master his own world or field of interest, knowing that he can give or share it to others, and recognizing that in as much as he is good in his ‘own’ world and of little knowledge of that of others, or at least not as good as that of others, hence he also need the other.

Next, horizons may differ genetically. They are parts, not of a single communal world, but of a single biography or of a single history. As Ruth Benedict has aptly phrased it: “The life history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community. From the moment of his birth the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behavior. By the time he is grown and able to take part in its activities, its habits are his habits, its beliefs his beliefs, its impossibilities his impossibilities.” (11)

Walls built between thought and action can be due to self-imposed presuppositions or "inherited" cultural presuppositions - perspectives we did not arrive at by our own thinking, but have adopted without criticism from our cultural milieu. Each individual has been born into, then conditioned into, the roles provided by his culture. His roles were given and defined, and he had “to define” himself into the roles and plays out the definition. His culture’s world-view became his, including its customs, values, history, myths, traditions, and – deepest of all – the unexamined assumptions upon which his culture’s world-view is grounded.

Thirdly, horizons may be opposed dialectically. What I find to be intelligible may be unintelligible to you. What you consider as false may be true for the other. What for him is good may be for her is evil, vice-versa. Horizons, finally, are structured resultant of past achievement and, as well, both the condition and the limitation of further development. [M p.237] All learning is not a mere accession of previous learning, but rather an organic growth out of it. New knowledge is a necessary consequence of the previous ones. Our horizons speaks about what we know, where we belong to, what we can be good at; but they also show the limits of our vision, where we do not ‘belong,’ things that we are deficient, at least in the present. Nevertheless, as horizon talks of the scope and limitation of an individual, it is also there where we try to extend the limits of our humanity. They are “points of view” from which the sensible world is interpreted. They structure human questioning in its dynamic search for an understanding of this world.

CONVERSIONS and BREAKDOWNS
he possibility that the movement into a new horizon involves an about-face; it comes out of the old by repudiating characteristic features; it begins a new sequence that can keep revealing ever greater depth and breadth and wealth. Such an about-face and new beginning is what is meant by a conversion. [M p.238]

For Lonergan the most radical differences result from the presence or absence of conversion, wherein he identified three principal types. Conversion may be intellectual or moral or religious. Although the three are connected with each other, still each is a distinct category of event and has to be considered in itself before being related to the others. Formulated principles are the products of minds shaped by an ambivalent heritage and lay bared to dialectic of opinions. These minds are shaped by personal commitments within intellectual, moral, and affective horizons. These horizons may complement each other; they may develop from earlier stages; or they may be dialectically opposed, as when people who articulates the same world-view attach different meanings to them, or when people espouse the principle but acts otherwise.

Intellectual conversion is a radical clarification and, consequently, the elimination of an exceedingly stubborn and misleading myth concerning reality, objectivity, and human knowledge. [M p.238] It is a process of liberation and discovery in the sense that the person is becoming aware of one’s own conscious operations and processing. The intellectually converted subject recognizes that knowing is not like looking and that the real human world we live in is constituted by acts of meaning.

Lonergan distinguished the world of immediacy from that of the world mediated by meaning. The former is what he considers as myth in the sense that “knowing is like looking, that objectivity is seeing what is there to be seen and not seeing what is not there, and that the real is what is out there now to be looked at,” like the world of an infant. The child responds only to objects present, to what is seen, heard, touched, and felt in the world of immediate experience. The world mediated by meaning on the other hand, is known “not by the sense experience of an individual but by the external and internal experience of a cultural community, and by the continuously checked and rechecked judgments of the community.” Accordingly, knowing is not just seeing but also experiencing, wherein these experiences are systematized and extrapolated by understanding and posited by judgment and belief. As such, intellectual conversion is a weapon against stupidity, obscurity, and silliness. It pulls out of “one’s own little world,” as the whole has consequences that transforms the whole itself, so that in a way, intellectual conversion is a process of self-transcendence. It plays a role similar to the center of Insight: the explicit self-affirmation of the knower, wherein “self-affirmation of the knower” means that the self as affirmed is characterized by such occurrences as sensing, perceiving, imagining, inquiring, understanding, formulating, reflecting, grasping the unconditioned, and affirming. (12)

As Plato once reiterated, “Philosophy begins in wonder,” intellectual conversion is also connected to the starting point of philosophy. "Because philosophy is a quest for rational understanding of the most fundamental kind it brings into the open important questions about the nature of understanding and hence of enquiry and knowledge. It was out of philosophy that science was born. It is the same world that philosophy, science, and art are all exploring. All three confront the mystery of the world’s existence and our existence as human beings, and try to achieve deeper understanding of it."(13)

The unrestricted desire to know all that there is to know about all that there is, introduces the infinity into human life, unleashing the vast human capabilities to become. The term intellectual conversion could be applied to the great cultural break-through in the world of theory, like the Greek achievement in philosophy, and the growing movements of liberation theology. There is an intellectual conversion by which a person has personally met the challenges of a cognitional theory, an epistemology, metaphysics, and a methodology. The desire to know is an alertness of mind, an inexhaustible intellectual curiosity, spirit of inquiry, or active intelligence. It powerfully engages people of action to search solutions to problems or act shrewdly in situations. It is what absorbs philosophers and scientists in their inquisitions. The intellectually converted person’s desire to know is what becomes known correctly by finally understanding whatever it was that was in question. As we pursue knowledge, more becomes known, yet further questions always remain.

Lonergan relates such philosophy rooted in radical intellectual conversion to the need for moral conversion. There is a moral conversion by which a person is committed to values above mere satisfactions. Albert Schweitzer once reiterated:“Ethical affirmation of life is the intellectual act by which man ceases simply to live at random and begins to concern himself reverently with his own life, so that he may realize its true value. And the first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.” (14)

According to Lonergan, to speak of a morally good man is someone who is capable of reflecting and hence, recognizes not only his strengths so he may improve it or make it better, but also his weaknesses that he may eliminate it or transform it into a strength – to transcend horizontally to oneself and vertically towards the other. In dialogue it is opening oneself to other’s protests and criticisms, and willingly accept his mistakes, ready to break down one’s towering ego. Each of us has something to say, whether agreeable or not, no matter how simple or complicated it is. Each has a voice that deserves to be heard. You speak, others listen. Others speak, so must you listen also. Recognizing that you don’t know everything, you learn from others also in as much as they learn from you. “One has to keep developing one’s knowledge of human reality and potentiality as they are in the existing situation. One has to keep distinct its elements of progress and its elements of decline. One has to keep scrutinizing one’s intentional responses to values and their implicit scales of preference. One has to listen to criticism and to protest. One has to remain ready to learn from others.” [M p.240]

As intellectual and moral conversion, so also religious conversion is a mode of self-transcendence. “Religious conversion is to a total being-in-love as the efficacious ground of all self-transcendence, whether in the pursuit of truth, or in the realization of human values, or in the orientation man adopts to the universe, its ground, and its goal.” [M p.141] It is being grasped by religious love. When religious love enters the horizon of a human being, the entire horizon is transformed, for transcendent being has become the context for consideration of contingent being in the awareness. It is God’s gift of grace wherein the self becomes a different self because the horizon within which all reality is considered has been radically altered.

Lonergan has drawn a distinction between operative and cooperative grace. “Operative grace is the replacement of the heart of stone by a heart of flesh, a replacement beyond the horizon of the heart of stone.” It is being in touch and sensitive to ones feelings and that of others. Cooperative grace, on the other hand, is “the heart of flesh becoming effective in good works through human freedom. Operative grace is religious conversion.” From being ‘touched’ one is already moved to act. An action that promotes the fullness of humanity are thus necessary consequence of conversion, as there is the “gradual movement towards a full and complete transformation of the whole of ones living and feeling, ones thoughts, words, deeds, and omissions.”

Since intellectual, moral, and religious conversion all have to do with self-transcendence, it is possible, says Lonergan, when all three occur within a single consciousness, to conceive their relations in terms of sublation. What sublates goes beyond what is sublated; religious conversion sublates moral, and moral conversion sublates intellectual. Not that it destroys the other or the lower level but to improve it, to carry it or push it forward to a fuller realization with a richer context, transforming them in the process. In this context, “higher level” refers to fullness, a mounting from a fixation with the world of immediacy to the world constituted and known by acts of meaning and value. Each level establishes the conditions for the subject’s continuing conscious activities, wherein the process has to do with the endeavor toward the authentic human functioning identified with knowledge and choice. A sense of this kind of telos commands respect for whatever naturally comes to be even if no immediate uses come to mind. Conversion seen within the dynamism of reality toward fuller being, links to the notion of development, as it requires openness to the unknown, to ‘another’ sphere of reality. As a dynamic process, conversion covers our concrete being as a human in dynamic integration on the organic, psychic, intellectual, moral and affective levels.

Besides conversion there are breakdowns. What has been built up so slowly and so laboriously by the individual, the society, the culture, can collapse. [M p.243] The reality of development involves historical sequence of notions about better and worse. We inherit moral standards, subtract what we think is nonsensical and append what we think makes sense. What we have inherited is likewise a sum of our previous generation’s inheritance, of what they eliminated from it and added to it. Any tradition, or moral tradition for that matter is essentially a sequence of moral standards, each linked to the past by a tainted inheritance and to the future by the bits added and subtracted by a present generation. As it is, not every tradition is a progressing sequence. The subject’s failure to attend to the transcendental precepts: Be attentive,(15) Be intelligent,(16) Be reasonable,(17) Be responsible,(18) justifies itself by becoming an ideology; and ideologies so procured degenerate the social good to the point of the cumulative decline of a culture. Lonergan termed such basic human disregard of the transcendental precepts as Alienation, and self-justifying alienation from one’s true self is the most basic form of ideology. Sin, is for Lonergan the alienation from authentic humanness – disregarding his own self-transcendence. “As self-transcendence promotes progress, so the refusal of self-transcendence turns progress into cumulative decline.” [M p.55] If one is not attentive, intelligent, reasonable and responsible, he may experience a situation and have an impulse to improve it but he does not, or will not spot what’s missing. One may express his oversight to others, making it out to be an insight. If the person lacks a critical “eye,” he takes the other at their word rather than notice their oversight. He may plan and put it into effect, yet discover later on the inevitable worsening of the situation. Hence, the odds of spotting ways to improve things decreases, owing to the additional complexity and cross-purposes of the anomalies. With each turn of the circle, the more things don’t make sense. Such is the nature of situations that worsen.

DIALECTIC: the ISSUE and PROBLEM
Lonergan offered the tasks of dialectic. First, it “has to add to the interpretation that understands a further interpretation that appreciates.” [M 246] Dialectic has to bring us to the kind of intelligibility that accounts for concrete historical growth and decline. It has to help historians and planners understand how any situation gets better or worse. We come to the second task of dialectic when there is an inadequacy that is revealed when further data are uncovered and a better understanding is achieved, although there is the opposing views that arises from the individuality of historians that results from perspectivism. Finally, the gross differences owed to the fact of historians attempt to make intelligible to themselves the same sequence of events, is the concern of dialectic. To Lonergan, the only remedy for perspectivism, which is a product of differences of horizons, is through conversion. Without conversion hostility towards the other may arise because when one is converted, he does not only try to understand himself but also of the other already. “If he undergoes conversion, he will have a different self to understand, and the new understanding of himself can modify his understanding of the thing, the words, and the author.” [M p.245] The problem arises when there is the absence or lack of intellectual, of moral, or religious conversion because it gives rise to dialectically opposed horizons. In dialectic Lonergan emphasized the importance of encounter. Although interpretation rests on one’s self-understanding, and the history one writes rests on one’s horizon, encounter is the one way in which self-understanding and horizon can be put to the test. “Encounter is meeting people, appreciating the values they represent, criticizing their defects, and allowing one’s living to be challenged at its very roots by their words and by their deeds.” [M p.247]

DIALECTIC as METHODThe structure of dialectic has two planes. Operators are classified on the upper level, whereas on a lower level are assembled the materials to be operated. The operator has to advance positions and reverse counter-positions wherein positions are statements compatible with conversion, developed by being integrated with new data and further discovery. Counter-positions on the other hand are statements incompatible with conversion and reversed when the incompatible elements are removed. The materials have to be assembled, completed, compared, reduced, classified, and selected before being operated. “Positions and counter-positions are not just contradictory abstractions. They are to be understood concretely as opposed moments in ongoing process” and are to be apprehended in their proper dialectical character. In dialectic, people meet people. Person meets person. This way the subject secure gains a higher system as integrator, and within the emerged system that open the door to a better and higher system as operator.

Accordingly, Lonergan discussed the differences between the person who has undergone conversion to that who has not yet undergone conversion, when the dialectic is implemented. The converted investigator will know from personal experience just what intellectual, moral, and religious conversion, making it easier for him to distinguish positions from counter-positions. The person who has not yet undergone conversion on the other hand may have only a notional apprehension of conversion, and so he might be whining that dialectic is a very murky procedure. As people bring to light the dialectical oppositions by developing positions and reverse the counter-positions, they cater one another with the evidence for a judgment on their personal achievement of self-transcendence. They bring into light the self that did the research, proffered the interpretation, studied the history, and overhauled the judgments of value. Such objectification of subjectivity may be efficacious, but it will equip the open-minded, the serious, the sincere with moment to ask themselves essential questions, first, about others but eventually, even about themselves, making conversion a topic and thereby promote it.

“Conversion commonly is a slow process of maturation. It is finding out for oneself and in oneself what it is to be intelligent, to be reasonable, to be responsible, to love. Dialectic contributes to that end by pointing out ultimately differences, by offering the example of others that differ radically from oneself, by providing the occasion for a reflection, a self-scrutiny, that can lead to a new understanding of oneself and one’s destiny.” (19)

Lonergan emphasized the importance of questioning our human questioning. In the introduction to Insight, he articulated the process of self-appropriation taking place, not publicly, but privately. The transformation takes place in the hiddenness of one’s presence to oneself and one’s flourishing knowledge to oneself. Nonetheless as he goes on to say in the same introduction, though the act is private, both its antecedents and its consequents have their public manifestation. As the human consciousness interacts with reality it is not an enclosed, self-contained entity, but entity-in-relation.

Lonergan admits the difficulty of accepting the view he is proposing, as it demands a momentous personal change. But then many of us would agree that many times we think we cannot do, or will never be able to do something, only to find out that we actually can. Conversion is a breakthrough, an act of self-transcendence that goes beyond what one thinks as the limit.

The DIALECTIC of METHODLonergan tells us that in dialectic, the strategy of an individual is “not to prove his own position, not to refute counter-positions, but to exhibit diversity and to point to the evidence for its roots.” [M p.254] In this manner, the basic idea of the method Lonergan is trying to develop takes its stand on discovering what human authenticity is and showing how it appeal to it – a powerful method, for man’s deepest need and most prized achievement. As he clearly put it:

“Human authenticity is not some pure quality, some serene freedom from all oversights, all misunderstanding, all mistakes, all sins. Rather it consists in a withdrawal from unauthenticity, and the withdrawal is never a permanent achievement. It is ever precarious, ever to be achieved afresh, ever in great part a matter of uncovering still more oversights, acknowledging still further failures to understand, correcting still more mistakes, repenting more and more deeply hidden sins.(20) Human development, in brief, is largely through the resolution of conflicts and, within the realm of intentional consciousness…” (21)

To live authentically is to be in constant process of becoming a better person; to be open to the possibilities of goodness and build from it, and also of the possibilities of evil but learn from it, precisely because he is consistent in the struggle to be attentive, intelligent, reasonable and responsible. This dodgy and ever-developing state rests on long and sustained steadfast to the transcendental precepts.

Now Lonergan emphasized that the more differentiated the horizon, the fuller, more precise, and more illuminating will be the talk. In fully differentiated consciousness there are four realms of meaning: the realm of common sense,(22) the realm of theory,(23) the realm of interiority,(24) and the realm of transcendence.(25) These four realms of meaning take place in the fully differentiated consciousness, which is the fruit of prolonged development. Switching from one realm of meaning to another occurs to the degree one’s consciousness is differentiated. For the differentiated consciousness, the realms of meaning exist together yet have their own “identity.” Each has value.

Although conflicting views, interpretations, beliefs arise between people engaged in dialectic precisely because of differences of horizon and sphere of being, Lonergan expressed his hope for humanity in achieving unity of plurality – that behind this multiplicity there is a unity that comes to light – if only one is willing to heighten his consciousness because such a heightening bring into light not the subject as object but the subject as subject. As Lonergan puts it:

“…this heightening of consciousness proceeds to an objectification of the subject, to an intelligent and reasonable affirmation of the subject, and so to a transition from the subject as subject to the subject as object. Such a transition yields objective knowledge of the subject just as much as does any valid transition from the data of sense through inquiry and understanding, reflections and judgment.” (26)

To understand this, Lonergan offered two quite disparate meaning of the term object. There is the object in the world mediated by meaning wherein answers refer to objects because they are answers to questions intended, understood, affirmed, and decided. There is also the world of immediacy wherein the meaning of the object is already, out, there, now, real.(27) As there are two meanings of the word object, so too there are two meanings of the word, objectivity. Lonergan tells us; in the world of immediacy the mandatory and adequate case of objectivity is to be a functioning animal. But in the world mediated by meaning, objectivity has three components: the experiential, normative and the absolute. Objectivity is absolute when it is the product of combining the givenness of the data of sense and the data of consciousness in the experiential objectivity, with the fulfillment of the needs of intelligent and reasonable operation in the normative objectivity. While it is in experiential objectivity that conditions are fulfilled, conditions are linked to what they condition in normative objectivity. Combined they yield a conditioned with its conditions fulfilled. In knowledge, this is a fact, and in reality, this is a contingent being or event. The idea of being in its totality is absolutely transcendent. To apprehend it, we would need to be capable of an unrestricted act of understanding, and its possibility of knowing it arises from an unrestricted intention that intends the transcendent. Knowing is recognized in the process of self-transcendence that reaches the transcendent, for the intention directs the process to being. As Lonergan beautifully relates:

“Objectivity is simply the consequence of authentic subjectivity, of genuine attention, genuine intelligence, genuine reasonableness, genuine responsibility. Mathematics, science, philosophy, ethics, theology differ in many manners; but they have the common feature that their objectivity is the fruit of attentiveness, intelligence, reasonableness, and responsibility.”(28)

REFLECTIONS and CONCLUSION
Opinions, presuppositions, and perspectives comprises jumble of things and experiences. We have perspective about ourselves, of other people, of our surroundings, society, and culture, not disregarding the fact that we also have our own opinions about our "relationship" to these discrete parts of our world. We have views of how government and institutions ought to administer, how people should conduct, how children ought to be raised, what one is like and what s/he wish to become, whether a person is candidly loved or surreptitiously exploited, whether life is worth living at all, whether compassion matters, whether television, cell phones, or other technologies are beneficial or damaging, et cetera.

The multiple possibilities of interactions and relationships are infinite as there are various possible ways of interacting with each person or thing in our world, having peculiar manner of relating to people, artifacts, and nature. We are also selective as one has his or her own preferences and biases - liking some things and people more than others. The entirety of our relationships is an intricate web. To a great extent, our opinions are influenced by these likes and dislikes, positive and negative relations. Our presuppositions reflect the attitude we have worked out in interaction and interdependence with a real world.

Despite multifarious diversities basically because of our different experiences, horizons or sphere of being, Lonergran expresses his hope of achieving the unity of plurality through dialectic. That behind this multiplicity there is a basic unity that comes to light fundamentally because we are an insight-full being. “We can inquire into the possibility of fruitful inquiry. We can reflect on the nature of reflection. We can deliberate whether our deliberation is worth while.” [M p.111]

The key towards understanding Lonergan’s vision of unity and harmony among diversity is to take into account the human person’s capacity of self-transcendence, wherein to Love is considered to be its authentic manifestation, and conversion is the necessary condition, the ladder, the bridge as it were for one to be able transcend him/herself by loving. Lonergan offered an analysis of love to show how it functions to reverse the dynamics of decline brought about by people’s failure to engage in an authentic dialogue.

Lonergan’s perspective on dialectic aims to help people; the historian, planner, researchers, politicians, and et cetera, to understand how any situation gets better or worse, to have a comprehensive viewpoints, to seek some single or set of related bases from which it can proceed to an understanding of the character, the oppositions, and the relations of the many exhibited conflicting viewpoints since not every viewpoint is coherent, and “not every reason is a sound reason.” Dialectic aims ultimately at a comprehensive viewpoint, and proceeds toward that goal by acknowledging the differences, seeking their grounds, and eliminating superfluous oppositions.

if only we don’t limit ourselves with our individual identity, like isolating ourselves from other races, then everything becomes One (black), wherein boundaries between people are abolished. We are like the different colors having a beauty of its own, identity of its own, and unique from that of others but if we are willing to transcend ‘this’ individual identity to a collective identity then we can all work together toward the harmony among difference. Now this doesn't necessarily mean abandoning it, as I don't know if that is possible, but to incorporate a new layer, not on the surface but as a foundation. That foundation is the willingness to go an extra mile, to respond to the call of transcendental precepts to be intelligent, reasonable, responsible, to love. Yes we are a product of our background as much as our heredity, and as much as the thoughts we have cultured in ourselves. Ones awareness is how one exists, so it is wherever one is. But the point is that if we honor the idea that the whole is our self, this provides us an opportunity to improve the community where we belong to, because in so doing we are also improving, transcending ourselves. When we are sick we look for medicines or does things to eliminate the pain that we are feeling, which holds the same with our society.

“We belong to a world, a world that we share together,” yet in studying beings we must pay attention to context, to situation, to environment, i.e., to horizon of being. What we are is not an isolated datum. We are a combination of individual temperament, environmental influence, and our cultural backgrounds. We are the result of an active interaction with the world. Briefly, we are not outsiders with relation to the world; we are organically attached to it. The world and the individual are "dancing partners," as it were. The danger however is when we limit ourselves only to what we believe “is” and disregarding what may be there or the other. A community’s heritage is a mixed bag of sense and nonsense and so one has to have a thorough assessment of the concrete situation, hoping that it will bring us an intuition of what seems best. Dialectic attempts to mediate the differences, to bridge the gap between people. In a way, we are a collection of people as diverse as the cells in the human body. When my cells work well, I’m hardly conscious of their individual presence. What I feel is the composite of their activity known as Anabelle Luya Abordo. My body, composed of many parts, is one. When seen in the microscope or in books, individually the cells seem puny and oddly designed, yet these invisible parts cooperated to lavish me (us) with the phenomenon of life. Dr. Paul Brand and Philip Yancey explored the same analogy in their beautifully reflective book, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made.(30) Every second our smooth muscle cells modulate the width of our blood vessels, gently push matter through intestines, open the close the plumbing in our kidneys. When things are going well-ones heart contracting rhythmically, the brain humming with knowledge, the lymph laving tired cells – and we rarely give these cells a passing thought. But these cells in our body, I believe, teach us about larger organisms: families, organizations, communities, nations. Imagine what would happen if our sense of sight fails for instance? Or what if our sense of touch, or sense of taste, or our speaking or hearing capacity fails? If one part of our body refuses to “cooperate” for the good of all, devastating things eventually comes out.

Again, a color on a canvas for instance, can be beautiful in itself yet the artist stands out not by using one color across the canvass but by positioning it between complementary or contrasting hues. The original color in a painting then derives richness and depth from it being combined to different colors. A rainbow composes different colors yet they are pleasingly beautiful in our sight because they are harmoniously contrasted to other colors. Just like in dialectic, we compare and evaluate conflicting views and in the process one keeps developing one’s knowledge of human reality and potentiality in an existing situation as s/he keep distinct its elements of progress and decline, keep scrutinizing one’s intentional responses to values and their implicit scales of preference, listening to criticisms and to protests, and always ready to learn from others. To Lonergan, what guarantees the truthfulness of ones arguments/beliefs/perspectives is the way things are able to bring transformation to the individual. That is, on how they are becoming a better human person in relation to others.
*************************

NOTES
1 The Blackwell Philosopher Dictionaries: A Hegel Dictionary, (UK: Blackwell Reference, 1992, p.8)
2 The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. & The Free Press, vol. II, 1967, p.386)
3 Ibid.
4 Diané Collinson, Fifty Major Philosophers: A Reference Guide, (London: Croom Helm, 1987)
5 Kant entitled the second division of his transcendental logic “Transcendental Dialectic” in his Critic of Pure Reason.
6 See for instance The Blackwell Philosopher Dictionaries: A Kant Dictionary, (UK: Blackwell Publishers, 1995)
7 See The Blackwell Philosopher Dictionaries: A Hegel Dictionary, a helpful reference about the subject.
8 Bernard Joseph Francis Lonergan (1904-84) is a Canadian philosopher and theologian who approached the problems of philosophy by inviting us to attend to the mental act in which we engage when we come to know anything.
See also Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (London and New York: Routledge, vol. 5, 1998), and the ‘Introduction’ in Elizabeth and Mark Morelli’s The Lonergan Reader, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997).
9 London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1973.
10 Method, p.235-236.
11 James L. Christian, Philosophy: An Introduction to the Art of Wondering, (New York: CBS College Publishing, Third Edition, 1981, p303)
12 In this entire analysis I am paraphrasing and abbreviating a massive amount of material in Lonergan’s thought. For Lonergan’s own compendious treatment of these materials, see Insight: A study of Human Understanding, (New York: Philosophical Library, 1965) for further exhaustion of the topic.
13 Byan Magee, The Story of Philosophy, (London: Dorling Kindersley, 1998, p.9)
14 Philosophy: Introduction to the Art of Wondering, p.337.
15 Attentiveness leads the subject to discern data from that of sense and that of consciousness. The first grounds the subject in the world of immediate experience while the latter directs the subject to heed to the world of interiority, to discern what is happening as one processes sense data or the data of consciousness.
16 Intelligence brings in the subject into investigation or inquiry, and if not blocked by bias, the questioning goes on unrestricted.
17 Reasonableness calls for conclusions; it is the questioning of whether something is so as one understand it.
18 Responsibility posits the question of merit, of value. It urges for prioritizing in lieu of choice, of decision and action.
19 Method, p. 253.
20 To Lonergan, sinfulness is distinct from moral evil, as it is the privation of total loving, or a radical dimension of lovelessness. It is a state wherein “the absence of fulfillment reveals itself in unrest, the absence of joy in the pursuit of fun, the absence of peace in disgust – a depressive disgust with oneself or a manic, hostile, even violent disgust with mankind.” More than what you do to other people, sin is a violation to oneself as there is now an element of self-denial, closing down oneself, and it’s like saying “no to tomorrow” or “no to the good that I can do” already.
21 Method, p. 252.
22 It is the realm of persons and things in their relations to us. It is always concerned with the particular and the concrete, where meaning is expressed in everyday or ordinary language. Thus it fails to see a need to discern the intelligible from the absurd in human situations and so will naively crank out insights that leave the absurdities untouched and thereby add even more absurdity to an already absurd situation. In short, common sense is not enough common.
See also Tad Dunne, Lonergan and Spirituality: Towards a Spiritual Integration, (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1985, p. 97-100).
23 The realm of theory is where meaning is expressed in technical language, as in science. Common sense does not step beyond our relation to things in the manner that science does. When a person functions from the realm of theory, insights are accumulated and self-corrected with tools of precision associated with science.
24 It is where meaning rests upon self-appropriation, attending not merely to objects but also to the attending subject in his acts.
25 The realm of transcendence is where meaning transpire through the language of prayer and relation to divinity.
26 Method, p. 262.
27 It is already as it is given prior to any questions about it. It is out for it is the object of extraverted consciousness. It is there as sense organs, so too sensed objects are spatial. It is now for the time of sensing runs along with the time of what is sensed. It is real for it is bound up with one’s living and acting and so must be just as real as they are.
28 Method, p. 265.
29 Philosophy Professor, Saint Louis University, Baguio City Philippines.
30 Michigan: OMF Literature Inc., 1980