Higher and Lower Viewpoints and Beings in the Metaphysics of Bernard Lonergan

 

By

David Fleischacker

University of Saint Francis

Fort Wayne, Indiana

 

 

Lonergan’s notion of the generic relationship between any lower and higher viewpoints and lower and higher levels of being is a notion that enters into many of his writings. He sometimes varies the language depending on context, and speaks of the natural to the supernatural, the infrastructure to the suprastructure, or the sublated to the sublating, though he essentially means the same thing. As a notion, it is really part of a metaphysics, since it regards a generic intelligibility of being within our universe.  I think one of his best summaries of the relationship between higher and lower orders is found in Method in Theology, in the notion of sublation.  Lonergan’s definition of it is worth quoting,

 

I would use this notion [sublation] in Karl Rahner’s sense rather than Hegel’s to mean that what sublates goes beyond what is sublated, introduces something new and distinct, puts everything on a new basis, yet so far from interfering with the sublated or destroying it, on the contrary needs it, includes it, preserves all its proper features and properties, and carries them forward to a fuller realization within a richer context.[1]

 

From this quote, we can draw out all the conditions that need to be fulfilled in order to identify whether two sets of intelligibilities form a higher and lower relationship.  In sublation, “what sublates goes beyond what is sublated,” and one can affirm that this relation exists if the following conditions are fulfilled.

 

1.      Something new and distinct is introduced.

2.      What is new and distinct puts everything on a new basis.

3.      What is new and distinct does not interfere or destroy what is sublated (the lower level).

4.      What is new and distinct needs, includes, and preserves all the proper features and properties of the sublated.

5.      What is new and distinct carries the sublated forward to a fuller realization within a richer context.

 

Many illustrations of these five points arise through more than 45 years of Lonergan’s writings.[2]  His writings and discussions that include this relationship cross many boundaries from math to physics to biology to levels of human consciousness to economic and political orders to grace and freedom, and to conversion.  It truly reveals the overarching importance of this type of relationship.

 

I would like to draw your attention to four examples in order to illustrate the meaning of sublation: the relation of arithmetic to algebra; the relation of chemistry to biology; the levels of human consciousness; and finally, intellectual, moral and religious conversion.

 

The easiest in my judgment is the one which Lonergan starts with in Insight, chapter one, namely the relationship between arithmetic and algebra.  Some years ago, in a class I was teaching on Insight, we had worked through this, and so I will repeat much of the core of that discussion for you. I am going to give what might seem like undue attention to the obvious, points that seem so obvious that it is hardly worth noting, such as 1 + 1 and what it equals.  However, my intent is not to do math as such, but to highlight the cognitive side of math, to highlight it as a viewpoint, and to carefully identify the components of the viewpoint.  Thus, if it seems like we are returning to the beginning of our education, we are, but now as philosophers, examining the obvious in light of these philosophic questions about knowing and being.

 

I. Illustrating Sublation with Math

 

The Lower Viewpoint of Arithmetic

 

In Insight, Lonergan builds to the notion of a higher viewpoint in chapter one after he has developed an understanding of the cognitive meaning of clues, insights, concepts, questions, images, and definitions. A mathematical or scientific viewpoint is not merely a single definition, but a set of systematically related definitions and of the operations (the insights) that underpin both the definitions and their systematic relations. Thus, defining a circle, for example, is not a geometric or algebraic viewpoint, but it does arise out of a geometrical or algebraic viewpoint, and contributes to it. The same is true of the distributive or commutative properties of algebra, or the power rule of calculus. They do not constitute an entire mathematical viewpoint, but they are components.

 

So, what is the viewpoint of arithmetic and algebra? Lonergan presents a mathematical viewpoint as constituted by rules, operations, and numbers. Hence, it is not just questions, but includes a variety of insights, definitions, judgments, which unite to be able one to solve new questions or problems. The rules implicitly define the operations, and the operations implicitly define the numbers.[3] What does he mean by this?

 

1. The Deductive Expansion of Arithmetic (the first horizontal development in mathematics):

 

I think what Lonergan means by rules, operations, and numbers comes to light when one examines how the mathematical viewpoint expands.  Arithmetic starts with the mathematical operation of addition. One can add sheep or goats or troops in an army or persons inhabiting a town. The counting involves the operation of addition-- one plus one plus one, and so forth. It is an activity that “puts together” quantities or seriations. Once one moves from concrete objects to the more abstract meaning of the number, which is a unit that can be used in an arithmetic operation, then symbols are created, such as "1" or "I". Other symbols can be used to represent what one is doing when adding, such as the “+” sign.  Any number of symbols can be invented to represent operations (addition, subtraction, etc..) and numbers, some of which, Lonergan notes, are more conducive to the future development of mathematics than others because of their potential for leading to further insights. Numbers symbolized as Roman numerals, for example, are not as good as Arabic.  In order to simplify the ongoing definitions of numbers most cultures that developed mathematics introduced repeating schemes. Some introduced repetitions based on 30 or 60 (think of our clocks and watches). Our present system is based on repetitions of 10, so we developed a symbol for zero through nine, and then, once ten is reached, we add a place to the left indicating the number of "tens." Then once the tens reaches beyond the ninth position, we add the hundreds, then thousands, and so on.

 

From adding numbers we can develop, as Lonergan notes, a definition of the positive integers.

 

So,

 

1 + 1 = 2

2 + 1 = 3

3 + 1 = 4

etc., etc., etc..

 

Once the insight is gained, or in other words, when one understands what is meant by "etc., etc., etc." then one can continue to indefinitely define any positive number.  Remember, the point here is not this simple math, but philosophically, it is the question about the insight that underpins this math, and ultimately the formation of a viewpoint that emerges.

 

From this first expansion of an addition table that increases by one, one can create an entire deductive expansion of a viewpoint or horizon in arithmetic, and continue indefinitely to define the whole range of positive integers. One can thus construct mathematical tables using 2s, 3s, 4s, etc..

 

2 + 2 = 4 4 + 2 = 6 6 + 2 = 8 Etc., etc., etc..

3 + 3 = 6 6 + 3 = 9 9 + 3 = 12 Etc., etc., etc..

4 + 4 = 8 8 + 4 = 12 12 + 4 = 16 Etc., etc., etc..

ETC., ETC., ETC. (For the entire process)

 

 

Notice how all of the numbers in each of these tables are defined in terms of the operation of addition. It is the basic insight that grounds this operation that allows for the construction of an entire deductive expansion that creates a "world" or viewpoint, even if rather limited to that of the positive integers. It is a first, horizontal development of a horizon in mathematics.[4]

 

2. The Homogeneous Expansion (the second horizontal development in mathematics)

 

Lonergan then identifies a second expansion in arithmetic, which begins to add new operations. This emerges because the mathematical mind has become creative. One can begin to add a number to itself three or four or five or more times.

 

So,

 

1 + 1 + 1 = 3

1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 4

2 + 2 + 2 = 6

3 + 3 + 3 + 3 = 12

Etc., etc., etc..

 

And, instead of writing this with three 1's or four 1's or three 2's or four 3's, shorthand notation can be developed.

 

Instead of 1 + 1 + 1 = 3,       one writes       1 x 3 = 3

Instead of 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 4      one writes       1 x 4 = 4

Instead of 2 + 2 + 2 = 6       one writes       2 x 3 = 6

Instead of 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 = 12       one writes       3 x 4 = 12 

 

So, one introduces a different symbol, namely an "x" to indicate the number of times one is added to itself. Notice how this new symbol is still defined in terms of the old operation of addition. It means "adding" a number to itself so many times.  This is the rule and it defines the meaning of multiplication in relationship to addition. 

 

Creativity does not have to stop, and this is what this homogenous expansion is about. If we can add one to another, then what happens if we take something away. We had three sheep, sold one, and now are left with two. Thus subtraction is born. Again, one can develop tables of subtraction, just as with addition and multiplication. Likewise, just as one can reverse addition by removing something, so one can reverse multiplication by removing a number so many number of times. This of course, is division.

 

Hence, creatively constructing a viewpoint by introducing new operations represented by new symbols such as subtraction, multiplication and division, is a bit different than a deductive expansion because new symbols representing new modes of operating have been introduced.

 

Though notice how everything is still thought of in terms of addition. Subtraction is the reverse of addition. Multiplication is the addition of a number to itself so many number of times. Division is the reverse of that. And if one wishes to add powers and roots, they likewise can be defined in terms of addition. A power is the multiplication of number by itself so many number of times.  Then, one can break each of the multiplications into the sub-groups of addition.[5]  A "root" is the reverse of this procedure.

 

The Higher Viewpoint of Algebra

 

The homogeneous expansion of arithmetic has not introduced any new fundamental terms. One can define each of the new operations in terms of addition (or the reverse of addition). New kinds of rules and operations are only introduced when one starts "observing" patterns of the operations with variable numbers.  In arithmetic, one would create a rule that included specific numbers with the operations, but not variables.  So, one might say create an addition table of “2s” or “3s.” When one has made this shift to the patterns of the operations using variables, then one comes to understand characteristics of the operations as such. This initiates algebra (Lonergan notes that the image which leads to algebra is the doing of arithmetic). Lonergan notes that some problems in arithmetic began this shift to algebra.

 

What happens when one subtracts more than one had?

Or what happens when division leads to fractions?
Or what happen when roots lead to surds?

 

Each of these refers to various problems that emerge in the homogenous expansion. Their answer lies in grasping higher patterns. Questions emerge which ask, “what happens when one subtracts numbers, or adds numbers, or divides numbers, or adds powered numbers, etc.?” Today, these initial patterns are given such names as the commutative, distributive, and associative properties. The properties regard properties or intelligibilites of the arithmetic operations as such. Let us illustrate a couple of these laws.

 

The additive property of 0 is understood by having in insight into the following arithmetic pattern. 

 

1 + 0 = 1

2 + 0 = 2

3 + 0 = 3

etc., etc., etc..

 

The etc., etc., etc., again is introduced to gain the insight. A number added to zero results in that number. This insight can be symbolized and thus defined by creating a symbol that represents variable numbers.  Let that symbol for the variable be "A." Below is the definition of this pattern,

 

A + 0 = A

 

Another example is the multiplication of a number by 1.

 

1 x 1 = 1

2 x 1 = 2

3 x 1 = 3

etc., etc., etc..

 

Being able to continue the “etc., etc., etc.” requires that this simple insight has occurred, and it can be symbolized and thus defined.

 

A x 1 = A

 

The same is true with the various laws or properties (as they are actually called) mentioned earlier. The commutative property of addition states that A + B = B + A. The commutative property of multiplication states that A x B = B x A. The associative property states that (A + B) + C = A + (B + C). The associative property of multiplication states that (A x B) x C = A x (B x C).

 

You can practice this further by opening any algebraic text, and examining the numerous rules about addition, multiplication, division, powers, roots, addition of powers, multiplication of powers, multiplication of roots, and the inverses of each of these formulas (subtraction of powers and roots, division of powers and roots, etc..)  However, our concern is not in doing algebra and arithmetic, but in attending to the insights and the viewpoints as such, and then the relationships between these viewpoints.

 

So, with these new algebraic properties, notice how one is understanding the operations in a manner beyond that of addition. One begins to grasp, for example, that multiplying two negatives leads to a positive, that dividing a negative into a negative also leads to a positive and many other characteristics. These recognized patterns then begin to form new rules, which constitute the higher viewpoint called algebra. These rules guide one in solving problems, since they implicitly define how one is to carry out operations and define the new symbols of A's, B's, and C's, which represent variable numbers. The rules constitute a vertical expansion of the mathematical horizon.

 

So notice, how this illustrates the meaning of sublation mentioned earlier.

 

1.      Something new and distinct is introduced, namely the rules, operations, and variables numbers found in algebra.

2.      What is new and distinct puts everything on a new basis, namely the meaning of operations and numbers.  General features and properties of the operations are being understand and the numbers are casted into variables.

3.      What is new and distinct does not interfere or destroy what is sublated (the lower level). Hence, algebra does not interfere or destroy arithmetic.

4.      What is new and distinct needs, includes, and preserves all the proper features and properties of the sublated.  One still does arithmetic, in fact, needs to do arithmetic with its own sets of rules and operations when developing and verifying algebraic laws, or even solving algebraic problems.

5.      What is new and distinct carries forward the sublated to a fuller realization within a richer context.  One places the meaning of the arithmetic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, power, roots) into a fuller and richer context.

 

Thus, algebra sublates arithmetic, and in doing so it forms a higher viewpoint to arithmetic.  As a note, one could go on to illustrate that this same kind of relationship exists between algebra and calculus, because in general, calculus explores relationships among algebraic equations, such as one finds in one of the first rules of calculus, the power rule.

 

II. Illustrating Sublation with Science

 

All of the natural and human sciences, as these historically differentiate from one another, form higher and lower viewpoints as well.

 

The following chart developed in an essay published in 1965 by Fr. Matthew Lamb gives a graphic illustration of these lower and higher viewpoints in the sciences which Lonergan first suggested in chapter 8 on “Things” in Insight.[6]

 

[7]						Cultural Anthropology
					Sociology	Social Anthropology
				Pscyhology	Social Pscyhology	Ethnopsychology
			Biology	Pscyhobiology	Biosociology	Physical Anthropology
		Geology	Ecology	Psychonomics	Socionomics	Human Ecology
	Chemistry	Geochemistry	Biochemistry	Psychochemistry
Physics	Physical Chemistry	Geophysics	Biophysics	Psychophysics

 

One might design this a bit different today, perhaps integrating quarks, sub-atomic elements, zoology, and a few more fields, but the general point remains, namely that these fields historically differentiate in manners similar to the emergence of algebra from arithmetic, as higher viewpoints from and still related to lower viewpoints.

 

I would like to exemplify one piece of this with a current example, taken from modern biology, namely the notion of the DNA molecule and its replication. This illustrates both a lower and a higher science, and lower and higher levels of being.

 

A century prior to Watson and Crick, Gregor Mendel, the Austrian monk, had linked phenotypic traits to some kind of hereditary unit, eventually called an allele of a gene.  The chemistry of the twentieth century helped to eventually identify this unit with greater precision, and it lead to a more powerful definition of a gene.  Notice that the “doing of the chemistry” lead to some new insights that made genetics relevant not just for heredity, but for understanding organic life in a new mode.  Chemistry forms the lower viewpoint, organic properties the higher.

 

The major breakthrough accomplished by Watson and Crick in the early 1950s arose when they were able to construct the DNA molecule, and it in turn was able to explain a number of experiments and as well, their work led to a variety of new developments. Watson and Crick (and there were others) had related this molecule to protein synthesis, and thus broke open the entire explanatory world of genetics and molecular biology. 

 

I would however like to draw attention to a later development, namely the discovery of DNA replication because I think it more clearly reveals higher and lower levels. During the process of mitosis, before cell division takes place and two like daughter cells emerge, the DNA molecules undergo replication.  This replication process includes rather complex chemical changes, much like takes place in the synthesis of RNA molecules and then proteins.  One can “follow” the chemical and physical changes that take place as the DNA is “unzipped” by a protein, which then matches nucleotides and integrates them into each proper half of the unzipped double helix.  This process was discovered entirely through physical and chemical methods.  Notice however that an insight emerges which is more than just chemical in the end.  It results in the replication of a molecule.  Hence, these “chemical changes” result not only in a new chemical, but in a replication as well. Replication, like reproduction, is an organic conjugate, not a chemical one. This organic form sublates the chemical processes.

 

So, notice, how this illustrates the notion of sublation, both on the side of viewpoint and on the side of being.

 

First on the side of the viewpoint:

 

1.      Something new and distinct is introduced.  Biological science of replication

2.      What is new and distinct puts everything on a new basis. It generates a new mode of exploring biology using this branch of DNA chemistry.

3.      What is new and distinct does not interfere or destroy what is sublated (the lower level). The tools and methods of the chemist are kept intact.

4.      What is new and distinct needs, includes, and preserves all the proper features and properties of the sublated.  The biologist needs, obtains insights from, and preserves the DNA chemist (of course these could be the same person).

5.      What is new and distinct carries forward the sublated to a fuller realization within a richer context. Chemistry has been taken to a fuller realization within a richer context.

 

Second, from the side of reality (or the object)

 

1.      Something new and distinct is introduced.  Replication that results in identitcal daughter chromosomes (DNA molecules)

2.      What is new and distinct puts everything on a new basis. Replication is an intelligibility that places the chemical processes in DNA replication into a new context.

3.      What is new and distinct does not interfere or destroy what is sublated (the lower level). The chemical process within DNA replication still operates as chemical conjugates.

4.      What is new and distinct needs, includes, and preserves all the proper features and properties of the sublated.  Replication would not take place without the DNA chemistry.  It in fact only takes place within this particular type of chemical change.  And, by means of replication and then mitosis, it ends up preserving this type of life in the future.

5.      What is new and distinct carries forward the sublated to a fuller realization within a richer context. The complexity of life with its great genetic and cellular diversity would not be possible without the chemical processes that take place within the DNA molecule.

 

Hence, DNA biology sublates DNA chemistry.  Really, this single instance of DNA replication emerges within an entire viewpoint of how DNA operates organically.  It is involved in not only mitosis, but as already mentioned, in protein synthesis. It also is involved in Meiosis, and the process of the replication of multicelluar organisms.  So, it has revolutionized the viewpoint of organic life and its replication.  Even more general is the way that biochemistry and molecular biology as a whole is revamping the “viewpoint of biology” and organic life.  Bio-chemistry thus forms the lower viewpoint that is sublated into the higher viewpoint of organic life.

 

 

III. Illustrating Sublation with the Levels of Human Consciousness.

 

Lonergan is probably best known for his working out of the levels of human consciousness, which emerge from one of his primary methodological starting points in almost everything he does.  These levels came to be discovered and formulated through an exploration of human interiority through intentionality analysis. As well, the reason he calls them levels is because they fulfill this pattern of higher and lower, and thus of sublation.

 

Experience to Understanding

 

In insight Lonergan speaks of experience largely as data, data of sense or data of consciousness.  Such data forms a lower level in which emerges insight, a higher level. It begins to emerge when questions for understanding are raised with respect to some experience or set of experiences.  This question is seeking to understand, and in order for it to reach its goal, it must pay attention to the data, expand that data, and that eventually, usually a bit unexpectedly, insight will emerge.  This insight is much different than the experience as such, yet it does not emerge without that experience.  It grasps a pattern within the experience much as algebra grasped patterns within arithmetic. Once this insight emerges, then one turns to define it, which largely consists of highlighting what was essential in the experience to receive the insight.

 

1.      Something new and distinct is introduced. Namely question for insight, an insight, and then a definition of the insight, which are not data or experience.

2.      What is new and distinct puts everything on a new basis.  The human subject or person becomes present to the world on a new basis, as one asking questions about the experienced world, then understanding something in it.

3.      What is new and distinct does not interfere or destroy what is sublated (the lower level). Experience still operates as experience, even when one is understanding.  The phantasm is still intrinsically following the laws of the imagination, and is intrinsically conditioned by the empirical residue (space-time continuum, particular place and time, individuality, coincidentality).

4.      What is new and distinct needs, includes, and preserves all the proper features and properties of the sublated. Insight needs phantasm to exist, it includes it, and it preserves it in all of its proper features and properties.

5.      What is new and distinct carries forward the sublated to a fuller realization within a richer context.  Insight is bringing about a fuller realization in a richer context the imagination.  Now the imagination is not just “replicating” or generating creative “sense objects” but it is participating in the emergence of something that transcends space and time continuums, particular places and times, individuality, and coincidentality (the empirical residue).

 

Hence understanding sublates experience, it is a higher level of being to a lower level of being.

 

Understanding to Judgment.

 

Questions for reflection begin with what is defined at the level of understanding, and then reflect back upon whether the insight really accounts or explains what is presented in experience.  And, this question will usually expand the experience or data in order to discover whether the insight is true or not.  Experience or data in this context now becomes evidence, and if enough is “gathered” one then grasps its sufficiency to affirm or deny the insight as valid.  Such an insight at the level of judgment is called a reflective insight, and once received, one can pronounce a judgment. In this relation, one can see all the facets of sublation.

 

1.      Something new and distinct is introduced.  Namely a question for reflection, evidence, reflective insight, and a judgment.

2.      What is new and distinct puts everything on a new basis. Now experience is not just data, but evidence, and thus experience has been put on a new basis.  Furthermore, the intentional subject becomes present to the universe in a whole new mode, namely to it as real.

3.      What is new and distinct does not interfere or destroy what is sublated (the lower level). The experiences as evidence still operate according to the principles of experience.  One still has to look, or hear, or smell in according to the laws of these organs, and the neural processes in the motor-sensory and associative regions of the brain operate in the same manner.

4.      What is new and distinct needs, includes, and preserves all the proper features and properties of the sublated. The emergence of a question for reflection, a reflective insight, and a judgment, cannot take place without the insight as defined, nor without experiences that supply evidence. Furthermore, in reaching reflective insight and judgment, the “experience” and the “insight as defined” are included in the structure of this reflective insight and the judgment that then proceeds.  “It is true,” has meaning only because the “it” is the defined insight.

5.      What is new and distinct carries forward the sublated to a fuller realization within a richer context the sublated.  Experience has been carried forward to a fuller realization and a richer context.  It is not just representations of sense objects, nor is it a phantasm, but it has become evidence.

 

Hence, judgment sublates insight.

 

Practical Judgments to Decision

 

A practical insight about some possible course of action can be affirmed in a judgment as a real possible course of action.  Questions for deliberation start with these possible practical insights that are grasped as insights that can be truly implemented. But should they be? The process of deliberation takes place within an entire scale of values that weighs the good of such possible decisions.  Within this context, evaluation may result in an evaluative insight, an intentional response to value, which grasps what should be done.  This then allows for a judgment of value to be made, which then can be implement by a decision, and when such implementation takes place, something in ourselves or this universe has become transformed, moved from mere potentiality to act.  Thus, this practical insight that is a true possibility, known by a judgment, has now been sublated and become a reality itself.

 

1.      Something new and distinct is introduced.  Questions for deliberation, evaluation, evaluative insight, judgment of value, and decision. (as a note, one could argue that decisions sublate judgments of value, however in this particular example, I am simply showing how the judgment that affirms a particular practical insight as a real possibility is itself sublated by these higher operations).

2.      What is new and distinct puts everything on a new basis.  Real possible practical insights are put on a new basis when these are evaluated and then implemented. The human subject now becomes present to the world in terms of responsibility.

3.      What is new and distinct does not interfere or destroy what is sublated (the lower level).  The mode of operating in practical judgment follows the principle of judgment, and is not interfered with by deliberation and decision.

4.      What is new and distinct needs, includes, and preserves all the proper features and properties of the sublated. Decisions cannot be made without these practical judgments.  Furthermore the evaluation and decision include this practical judgment, since “it” is what is being evaluated and decided upon.

5.      What is new and distinct carries forward to a fuller realization within a richer context the sublated.  The practical judgments are carried forward to a fuller realization within a richer context when decisions are made.  Now these possible realizations take place, and thus transform this universe in some manner, thus shifting what takes place in this universe and what might take place in the future.

 

Thus, decision sublates practical judgment.

 

 

IV.  Illustrating Sublation with grace and freedom, or more generally, with religious, moral, and  intellectual conversion.  

 

In this final example, we turn to perhaps one of the originating problems that probably lead Lonergan to a notion of the higher and lower in the first place, namely the relationship between grace and freedom.  This example thus has roots in some of Lonergan’s earliest writings. I would like to refer you to Michael Stebbins who has explored this in a general way in the earlier writings of Lonergan.[8]  It is expanded a bit in Insight, chapter 20, when Lonergan addresses the problem of evil.  In the context of evil, human failure comes to be inescapable.  Within this context, the solution comes to be heuristically specified as some form of charity, faith, and hope that respects the lower conjugates of the will, mind, body, and emergent probability.  These theological conjugates come to sublate the natural bodily, intellecual, and moral levels of the human being and human history.  By the time of the writing of Method in Theology, Lonergan speaks of this general solution in broader terms, namely as conversion, specifically as religious conversion. It is in this context of conversion that he introduces the notion of sublation, and thus, we return to what started this essay. Just before defining sublation in Method, Lonergan wrote,

 

Because intellectual, moral, and religious conversion all have to do with self-transcendence, it is possible, when all three occur within a single consciousness, to conceive their relations in terms of sublation.[9]

 

Moral sublates intellectual, and religious sublates moral (hence also intellectual). 

 

Now, to back up a bit, religious conversion refers to the state of being in love with God.  It pertains to the entire capacity for human self-transcendence, a capacity that is potentially unrestricted because it is comprised of questions for understanding, for reflection, and for deliberation, and these questions have no internal limit. That capacity becomes actuated when there is a total directedness to it, and this takes place when one is in love with an unrestricted answer to this capacity. 

 

Moral conversion regards a shift in the criterion of one’s mode of deliberation and evaluation.  Instead of criterion of pleasure and pain, one moves to value, and does so within an ascending scale of values, a scale that responds to increasing meaning and worth. 

 

Intellectual conversion refers to a shift in what one considers as real or true.  Instead of the sensate as being the avenue to truth, one turns to the compound of experiencing, understanding, and judging.  Thus what is real is not limited to that which is “out-there-now-real” but to that which is, which can be affirmed in judgment.

 

So, how does the sublation of these three take place? Lonergan’s own words articulate this best. First on how moral sublates the intellectual.

 

(1) So, moral conversion goes beyond the value, the truth, to values generally.  (2) It promotes the subject from cognitional to moral self-transcendence.  It sets him on a new, existential level of consciousness and establishes him as an originating value.  (3) But this in no way interferes with or weakens his devotion to truth. (4) He still needs truth, for he must apprehend reality and real potentiality before he can deliberately respond to value.  The truth he needs is still the truth attained in accord with the exigences of rational consciousness. But now his pursuit of it is all the more secure because he has been armed against bias, and (5) it is all the more meaningful and significant because it occurs within, and plays an essential role in, the far richer context of the pursuit of values.[10]

 

I have put into parenthesis the five points that explain sublation which have been used throughout this essay.  Hence, one concludes, moral conversion sublates intellectual.

 

Second, religious conversion likewise sublates moral, as Lonergan continues to write,

 

(1) Similarly, religious conversion goes beyond moral. Questions for intelligence, for reflection, for deliberation reveal the eros of the human spirit, its capacity and its desire for self-transcendence.  But that capacity meets fulfillment, that desire turns to joy, when religious conversion transforms the existential subject into a subject in love, a subject held, grasped, possessed, owned through a total and so an other-worldly love. (2) Then there is a new basis for all valuing and all doing good.  (3) In no way are fruits of intellectual or moral conversion negated or diminished.  (4 and 5) On the contrary, all human pursuit of the true and the good is included within and furthered by a cosmic context and purpose and, as well, there now accrues to man the power of love to enable him to accept the suffering involved in undoing the effects of decline.[11]

 

Again, I have put into parentheses the points of sublation that are fulfilled. Thus, religious conversion sublates moral (and intellectual).  It forms a higher viewpoint to moral.  And one could go on, beyond conversion, to the entire human person.  Within the human subject, as a being, religious conversion forms a higher level to the lower moral, intellectual, sensate, organic, chemical, sub-atomic, and sub-sub-atomic levels of being.

 

 

V.  Conclusion: The Sublation of higher and lower as a metaphysic intelligibility

 

Hopefully, the scope of the examples above reveals the wide expanse of the notion of higher and lower through all facets of this universe.  One could go on to explore further properties of higher viewpoints and orders to lower, such as how increasing degrees of intelligibility result in increasing types of freedoms or interiority within the order of beings. Further, one could grasp the general character of an entire ascending order of beings within this universe and the implications this has on the order and unity of this universe as a whole.  Many other properties and features could be discovered as well, all of which belong to the science of metaphysics. The meaning of higher and lower thus comes to regard a principle of being, or at least proportionate being (being which can be known by the natural powers of the human mind).  Thus, in addition to potencies, forms, and acts, some forms are related to others as higher and lower, and such a relation of higher and lower forms is one of sublation.  The lower forms provide the “material” to be informed by the higher. The higher give a new intelligible order to these “materials.”  In addition to becoming a metaphysical principle of being, of “that which is,” it also becomes a methodological principle for any discipline, from physics to theology.  The examples above illustrate this point.  It helps to reoriente and build bridges between the various scientific disciplines, and to create a heuristic for understanding both how new sciences come to be differentiated in history, and how existing sciences are related to others. The consequences are enormous.[12]