Five principles to lead a good life

unreal intelligence service, alternative facts, wars of selection.

How do we live what’s existent, true — or even good — in an age where these principles are under threat every moment of every day?

Canadian Jesuit Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984) saw all of this coming. He devoted much of his life's work to understanding human consciousness.

"He wanted to identify how human beings naturally want to know the truth and want to do the good. He was basically arguing for that in a philosophical text called Insight which came out in 1957," said John Dadosky of Regis-St.Michael’s Faculty of Theology at the University of Toronto. He has studied and taught Bernard Lonergan’s work for decades.

Lonergan is considered to be one of the most prolific Catholic thinkers in history — his Collected Works run to 25 volumes. And, according to Dadosky, his philosophy will likely shape the world for centuries to come. It’s a bold statement to make, but as he points out, Lonergan’s talking about YOU.

So with you in mind, IDEAS offers five of Lonergan's precepts to keep in your pocket and follow.

We pay attention to the data of our experience and our consciousness. This is where curiosity begins, and where we gather the materials for insight. As we go through further steps in what Lonergan called the transcendental method, we may have to come back here to double-check or reexamine our data.

"To be intelligent means first of all to let the questions arise from within one’s natural wonder and curiosity,” writes Dadosky in his book, The Wisdom of Order: An Exploration of Lonergan’s Method in Theology.

These questions often take the form, “what is it?” It’s crucial for us not to engage in obscurantism, which is the shutting down or limiting of questions. To limit questioning limits our natural desire to know, and interferes with the pursuit of truth.

There are questions to be asked here too, but these take the deeper form necessary to prepare us for judgment. As opposed to the question “what is it?,” questions oriented around reasonableness sound more like “is it so?” This approach helps us avoid rash judgments and allows us to more deeply scrutinize the data of our experience.

We come now to the point where it’s time to do something with the knowledge we’ve developed. As Dadosky writes: “to be responsible pertains to the proper implementation of knowledge.”

If we’ve been truly attentive, intelligent, and reasonable all this time, the chances are that we will be able to take action in a way that reflects the good.

Being-in-love means caring for those in our families and communities, those to whom we are committed, even those we find difficult. But these loves point to a broader idea, an ultimate ground of being. Lonergan used the phrase “being in love in an unrestricted manner,” or the love of ‘transcendent value.’

For Lonergan, this was the Trinitarian God of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but he allowed that there are many understandings of transcendent value in a variety of religious and spiritual traditions.

“Once [being-in-love] has blossomed forth and as long as it lasts, it takes over. It is the first principle. From it flow one’s desires and fears, one’s joys and sorrows, one’s discernment of values, one’s decisions and deeds.” – Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology

This icon by William Hart McNichols, was commissioned in 2002 for the Lonergan Research Institute in Toronto by the late Robert Doran, SJ, who played a major role in the preservation and further development of Bernard Lonergan's work.

The angels represent the Holy Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, with the Spirit reaching its hand out to Lonergan, who bows before the transcendent. Note the Canadian flavour of the icon with the scattering of maple leaves on the ground; the background is inspired by Group of Seven artist, Lawren Harris.

Download the IDEAS podcast to listen to this episode.

*This episode was produced by Séan Foley.

Add some “good” to your morning and evening.

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