Communication, Media and Images:

Deconstructionism and Post-Modern Theology

Knowledge, Hermeneutics, and Bernard Lonergan

Today there is an all but ubiquitous awareness that the modern era, ushered in by Descartes and The Enlightenment, is passing. That it has in fact passed in science, philosophy, literary criticism/hermeneutics, and theology is all but self-evident. "Qui Verbum Dei contempserunt, eis auferetur etiam verbum hominis" - "They that have despised the word of God, from them shall the word of man also be taken away." (C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength (NY: Collier Books) 1962, p. 351)

A discipline is a specialization of human interest directed toward the exploration of one sphere or dimension of reality, such as communication theory, subliminal power of images, etc. There is no disciplinary autonomy. Autonomy means "self-law" and stands in marked intellectual tension with post-modern Deconstructionistic hermeneutics.

Bare Essentials: Presuppositions of Knowing and Communicating. In what follows I draw heavily but selectively on the thought of F. Bernard Lonergan (see especially his Insight, pp. 63-86 and Method, pp. 101-3; also the bibliography at the end). Knowing is the activity of coming to the conclusion that such and such is so. The activity of knowing, however, as reflection by the reader or listener will verify, is not a single act; rather, it is a structured set of operations. It is not simply attending to the data of one's experience or to the data of one's consciousness. Nor is knowing the simple matter of having an insight into the data of one's experience. Insights, at least on some occasions, are "a dime a dozen;" they may or may not be valid. To be sure, if there is to be knowledge there must be insight. Understanding must intervene, catching the point, seeing the meaning, discerning the pattern in the data (egs. High Particle Physics or a given text). Yet attending to the data of experience and intelligently grasping the point do not of themselves constitute a complete instance of knowing. What is understood may or may not be true. Therefore, if to know is to posit that thus and such is so, there must be judgment--the evidence must be weighed and evaluated. To judge without understanding is presumption. To understand without judgment is to leave the questions of truth or reality undetermined.

Experience, understanding, and judgment are not automatic operations. They are intentional, highly personal acts of the conscious person. If one is to know one must be attentive to one's experience, one must make intelligent inquiry into that experience, one must make reasonable judgment visa-vis what is understood. An imperative of personal responsibility supervenes at every point in the knowing process. The four commandments to which all would be knowers are subject are: (1) Be attentive; (2) Be intelligent; (3) Be reasonable; (4) Be responsible.

PhenomenologicalLevels of Consciousness: Neo-Realism or Deconstructionism. Phenomenologically, there are four levels of consciousness involved in cognition. Each has appropriate activity and quality: (1) There is the Empirical Level. This pertains to some data of sense, as when we taste, smell, touch, see, or hear, or to some data of consciousness, as when we imagine or experience our own intellectual or emotional states in some fashion. (2) There is the Intellectual Level. In the data of sense or of consciousness, through inquiry, one sees some pattern, some clue, some definition, some significance. The basic question at this level is, "what is it?" (3) There is the Rational Level. What has been understood may or may not be the case. One must ask, "Is it so?" and arrive at a judgment by reflecting on the data, weighing the evidence, comparing what has been experienced with what has been understood. This structured progression from experience to understanding and judgment requires the willful collaboration of The Self. Hence, there is a fourth level of consciousness. (4) The Level of Responsibility and decision which transcends and sublates the other three. At this level the knower is concerned with his own operations, purposes and possible course of action. In short, one must decide whether or not to be responsible toward the 'norms inherent' in the structured set of operations we call knowing. Knowing is not only a self-directing process, it is also a self-transcending process. It wants to make true judgments, to specify what is so, then communication is possible between alternative perspectives. (cf. see my work. Mathematics and The Development of Science for critique of the concept of "intuition" or nondiscursive knowing process). In the history of mathematics there are examples of 'error' in the 'intuitive grasp' of mathematical truth. Therefore the mind transcends number theory or this discovery would be precluded).

This brief sketch of Lonergan's neo-realism must be contextualized within continental approaches associated with the Heideggerian school (contra more literal anti-continental approach of such literary critics as E.D. Hirsch). With a characteristically reflexive and dependent reading of Heidegger, Gadamer and Derrida, American biblical interpretation has fallen victim to one of two extremes: (1) a pro-continental approach that is hopelessly open-ended, resulting in an interpretative schematic lost in a sea of provisional readings claiming equal justification; and (2) an expressly counter-continental methodology that takes the opposite extreme of a literalism rejecting any but the "one authoritative interpretation." Both interpretation and communication must be re-grounded in terms of a horizontal hermeneutic that is grounded in the dominant cultural ethos of pluralism and democracy. All interpretation is "interpretations for another."

See the following works:

Giovanni Sala, S.J., "The Apriori in Human Knowledge: Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Lonergan's Insight," The Thomist 40 (1976): 179-221; for discussion of Lonergan's thought in relation to various modern and post modern thinkers including Dewey, Dilthey, Gadamer, Ricoeur, Heidegger, and Rahner, see Philip Meshane, ed. Language, Truth and Meaning: Papers from the International Lonergan Congress, 1970 (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1972); Matthew Lamb, ed. Creativity and Method; Essays in Honor of Bernard Lonergan, S.J. (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1981); B.J.F. Lonergan, A Second Collection, ed. W.F.J. Ryan and B.J. Tyrrell (Phil., Westminster, 1974); and I. Bockenski, Methods of Philosophy (NY: Harper, pb).

Also R. S. Corringtcon, The Community of Interpreters (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987); works of Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoeur and Derrida; Justus Buchler, Toward a General Theory of Human Judgment, 2nd rev. ed. (NY: Dover, 1979); Nature and Judgment (NY: Columbia University Press, 1955); his Metaphysics of Natural Complexes (NY; Columbia University Press, 1966 - for detailed analysis of 'orders and relevance').

Dr. James D. Strauss

Philosophy and Theology

Lincoln Christian Seminary

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