Elizabeth Anscombe (1919–2001) was a significant figure in twentieth-century philosophy. Her work is characterized by the attempt to retrieve and deploy some of the insights of Aristotle and Aquinas in the light of the philosophical perspectives of her mentor, Ludwig Wittgenstein. Bernard Lonergan was also a twentieth-century thinker concerned to retrieve and develop perspectives from the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition in the context of modern and post-modern thought. This article attempts to initiate a critical dialogue between the thought of these two philosophers. (...) Anscombe’s philosophical views on topics such as self-knowledge, conscious intention, and the foundations of ethics are discussed and critically evaluated. The article also includes a critical reappraisal of the celebrated debate between Anscombe and C. S. Lewis. (shrink)

Alain Badiou is described as a post-continental philosopher to distinguish his work from that of thinkers such as Derrida and Foucault. Indeed he is critical of key strategies characteristic of genealogical and deconstructive critiques, since he wishes to reconnect with fundamental metaphysical and ethical preoccupations of the western philosophical tradition. In Badiou’s work metaphysical, ethical and socio-political concerns are interwoven. In this article Ioffer a critical evaluation of Badiou’s philosophy, moving from an examination of his writing on ethics to the (...) ontological positions which underlie his ethics and socio-political critique. In my critical evaluation I draw attention to the new work going on in metaphysics in analytical philosophy, but, more fundamentally, I draw upon Bernard Lonergan’s critical realist thought. (shrink)

This article attempts to show points of contact between current analytical philosophy and the philosophy of Bernard Lonergan. It does so by focusing on the philosophy of logic. Debates concerning the adequacy and/or completeness of the various logical systems which have been or are being elaborated are an important aspect of analytical philosophy today. Lonergan was also preoccupied with the foundations of logic. This is manifest not only in his 1957 Boston College lectures on the subject, but throughout his philosophical (...) writing. In the article we shall see how Lonergan's cognitional theory can throw light on issues in the philosophy of logic which are of importance to analytical philosophers. The discussion, which will be non-technical in nature, will examine contemporary debates on the principles of excluded middle and non-contradiction, and will also focus on Lonergan's unique contribution to a philosophical analysis of both the importance and the limitations of symbolism in philosophical argument. /// O presente artigo pretende mostrar a existência de pontos de contacto entre a Filosofia Analítica corrente e o pensamento de Bernard Lonergan. Em ordem a isso, o autor do artigo concentra a sua atenção na filosofia da lógica. Com efeito, os debates acerca da adequação e/ou completude dos vários sistemas lógicos já elaborados ou em processo de elaboração constituem um importante aspecto da Filosofia Analítica mais recente. Por seu lado, Bernard Lonergan também se preocupou com os fundamentos da Lógica. Isso é o que se pode ver não apenas mediante as suas conferências pronunciadas no Boston College em 1957 acerca desta matéria, mas ao longo de todos os seus escritos filosóficos. Neste sentido, o artigo pretende sobretudo demonstrar de que modo a teoria cognitiva de Lonergan pode projectar luz sobre diversos problemas candentes em filosofia da lógica, problemas esses que são de grande importância para os filósofos analíticos. Esta discussão, que aqui se apresenta sem recorrer a procedimentos técnicos, examina os debates contemporâneos acerca dos princípios do terceiro excluído e de não-contradição, chamando especialmente a atenção para o contributo de Lonergan para a análise filosófica quer da importância quer dos limites do simbolismo na argumentação filosófica. (shrink)

Generalized empirical method -- Knowledge and our limits: Lonergan and Williamson -- Aesthetics: insights from Eldridge, Aquinas and Lonergan -- Cartwright, critical realism, and the laws of science -- Scott Soames on meaning: a critical realist response -- Lonergan on meaning.

Cet article examine certains des éléments fondamentaux de la pensée de Bernard Lonergan sur l'éthique. Il y est proposé que le traitement des préceptes transcendentaux et des valeurs dans Method suggère une continuité avec sa position antérieure dans Insight. Cette continuité est exposée par l'examen de la manière dans laquelle Lonergan dérive les 'devoirs' des préceptes transcendentaux de 'l'être' de la structure de la connaissance. Cet approche, dessinée à grands traits, est appliquée à une analyse de l'éthique proportionnaliste. On suggère (...) en outre qu'une telle éthique se révèle incohérente. (shrink)

An introduction to the contemporary epistemology and philosophy of histography of Bernard Lonergan. A comparative analysis of Lonergan's perspective on objectivity in historical knowledge, perspectivism, and the deconstructionist approaches of metahistorians. Beards argues the relevance of Lonergan's contributions to current debates.

Preface -- What is this thing called "philosophy" -- The process of coming to know -- Knowing in common sense, science, history, and art -- Positions on the theory of knowledge -- Metaphysics : what philosophy can tell us about reality -- A short introduction to ethics -- Philosophy of religion and the question of God -- Concluding remarks.

The widespread influence of skeptical and relativist philosophies has led to an abandonment of empiricist accounts of objectivity in historical investigation. Can one do justice to the historical conditionedness of the historian without totally denying objectivity in historical judgments? This article introduces Bernard Lonergan's answer to this question. Lonergan contends that one can avoid both the Scylla of naive empiricism, fostering the myth of some simple backward gaze at the facts of the past, and the Charybdis of total relativism. He (...) proposes a form of perspectivism which, he believes, does justice both to the belief of the majority of working historians that they are gradually increasing our knowledge of the past, and to the points brought out by writers on historiography, such as the "metahistorians," concerning the impossibility of ascending to some god's-eye view of the historical process.Lonergan's perspectivist position is built upon a prior philosophical account of cognition and epistemology, which I outline here. I will then move on to some immediate concerns of working historians, such as value judgments in history, the relationship of historical data to the facts the historian claims to know, and the criteria of selection used by the community of historians. In treating these issues I will highlight some of the areas of convergence and divergence between Lonergan's work and that of other philosophers and historians who have written on historiography. (shrink)

In this article I have highlighted what I take to be some salient deficiencies in Rahner's basic philosophical position, and I have argued that Lonergan does provide arguments which can be validated on the basis of the data of self-consciousness. Rahner's metaphysics of knowing often appears as a catena of simple assertions derived, it is claimed, from St Thomas' philosophy. There are occasional attempts to justify positions taken against the possible objections of contemporary philosophy but these attempts are sporadic at (...) best. It is Lonergan, rather than Rahner, I contend who is able to deploy St Thomas' insights in a fruitful way in the domain of contemporary thought, and that is due to the expeditious method he adopts. Characterizing an essential aspect of that retrieval of the tradition so as to be at the level of our own philosophical times, Lonergan writes: «The fact is that my aim is vetera novis augere et perficere. Nor is my procedure haphazard. Basically it is a matter of deriving basic terms and relations from the data of consciousness, of accepting traditional metaphysics in the sense that it is isomorphic with these basic terms and relations, and of rejecting traditional metaphysics in any sense that is not the to-be-known of human cognitional activity». (shrink)

Les philosophes analytiques contemporains ont contribué à une bonne compréhension de la logique des arguments auto-réfutants. Cependant, bien que Mackie fournisse une analyse perspicace des divers types d'auto-contradiction logique, il échoue dans son appréciation de la signification que revêtent bon nombre d'arguments en vue d'une analyse de l'intentionnalité humaine. L'A. de l'article montre que l'analyse de J. Hintikka surpasse celle de Mackie dans la mesure où elle donne un exposé plus complet de la signification épistémologique des arguments auto-réfutants. Il complète (...) cette analyse avec certaines découvertes propres à B. Lonergan dans ce domaine. (shrink)

For both G. E. Moore and Bernard Lonergan, the question of the good provides a fundamental heuristic indicating its irreducible and thus transcending nature. In Lonergan’s later work, the focus is primarily on the good as manifest in intentional responses to values. But the fundamental metaphysics of the good is never absent from this perspective, and it re-appears explicitly in some later writing. Moore’s anti-reductionist metaethics played a central role in the debates to follow in analytical philosophy in the decades (...) after the appearance of Principia Ethica. In this article, I explore possible convergences between these two avenues of speculation, which in their way both witness to the abiding significance of the scholastic notion of the good as a transcendental. It is argued that the wider purview offered by Lonergan’s analysis of the good, sought in questions as implying metaphysical and theological dimensions, assists in rendering cogent the objectives to which Moore’s question of the good points. (shrink)