Autor: Lawrence, G. Frederick

Buch: The Ethics of Authenticity and the Human Good: Beyond Left and Richt in Politics

Titel: The Ethics of Authenticity and the Human Good: Beyond Left and Richt in Politics

Stichwort: Werte, intentionale Gefühle; Dietrich von Hildebrand; Erfassung von Werten ("aprehension of values"); moralische Konversion; Werturteil (judgment of value)

Kurzinhalt: What allows feelings to reveal values? In agreement with Max Scheler and Dietrich von Hildebrand, Lonergan ascribes the ability of feelings to "see" values to whether or not ...

Textausschnitt: 15a Lonergan's account of value reached its most mature stage when he developed his theory of feelings and made explicit the transcendental notion of value by which he was able to expand his account of knowing to synthesize feelings. He distinguished feelings like tiredness and hunger as correlative to non-intentional states and trends from feelings that are intentional responses to objects, whether of pleasure and pain or of our highest aspirations. Among such intentional feelings he distinguished between those that do discriminate between what is truly good and what is apparently good, and those feelings that do not. In discriminating true from merely apparent goods, feelings as intentional responses "put themselves in a hierarchy" of the vital, social, cultural, personal, and religious values spoken of above.1 On what basis are these feelings as intentional responses capable of discriminating and discerning among values? What allows feelings to reveal values? In agreement with Max Scheler and Dietrich von Hildebrand, Lonergan ascribes the ability of feelings to "see" values to whether or not, and how, we are in love.2 (Fs) (notabene)

15b Situations demanding action or appreciative response are feeling-laden. In them there spontaneously arises within us the transcendental notion of value marked by the questions, Is this worthwhile? or What am I to do?1 These are questions for deliberation. They call for insights into the intentional feelings usually already being felt and evoked by the situation. Lonergan sometimes names such acts of understanding or insight in response to questions for deliberation 'apprehensions of value';2 and sometimes he suggests that the feelings themselves as intentional responses to values are already 'apprehensions of value.'3 At any rate, when deliberation occurs, intelligence and feeling come together in formulating possible courses of action, or in discerning just what the feelings and values at stake might happen to be. Deliberation needs an understanding and formulation of a possible course of action in order to ask the further question, Should I do it?, to arrive at a judgment of value, and to come to a decision. (Fs) (notabene)

16a What is of overwhelming significance in the full discernment of value is the existential orientation1 of the person doing the evaluating and deciding. For Lonergan this orientation is determined by whether or not one is morally converted.2 Prior to moral conversion, one's feelings as intentional responses do not care about the possible difference between satisfactions and values, or between what is truly or only apparently good. Once a person is morally converted, his feelings are under the sway of the transcendental notion of value, so that the questions, Is it worthwhile? and What should I do? do not reduce in egocentric fashion into, What's in it for me? or What's in it for our in-group? Instead they spur us on to self-transcendence. Beyond selfishness the calculus of pleasure and pain is broken wide open and feelings as intentional responses

become concerned with values: with the vital values of health and strength; with the social values enshrined in family and custom, society and education, the state and the law, the economy and technology, the church or sect; with the cultural values of religion and art, language and literature, science, philosophy, history, theology; with the achieved personal values of one dedicated to realizing values in himself and promoting their realization in others;3 and with the religious value of the transcendent mystery of love and awe.4

16b The morally converted person places feelings as intentional responses to value in the context of the notion of value where they become part of the process of deliberation, evaluation, decision, and action. This awareness marks the emergence of ourselves as personal, as existential subjects who freely and responsibly make ourselves who we are to be whenever we consciously intend the good in asking about values, about what is worthwhile.5 (Fs) (notabene)

17a Whenever we ask, What should we do? we deliberate. In the context of feelings as intentional responses to values we get insights that permit us to formulate alternative courses of action. Deliberation continues as we ponder whether we should do this or that. By means of feelings as intentional responses to values our reflective act of understanding discerns what course of action is good or better, and a judgment of value responsibly proceeds. For Lonergan value "is known in judgments of value made by a virtuous or authentic person with a good conscience."1 These judgments arise from a deliberative process which "sublates and thereby unifies knowing and feeling."2 The criterion of value is the happy or easy conscience of the good or virtuous or authentic person: "It is only by reaching the sustained self-transcendence of the virtuous man that one becomes a good judge, not of this or that human act, but on the whole range of human goodness."3