Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Geschichte als Meinung; 2. Antwort auf Einwand (Lauf der Geschichte - Absicht des Einzelnen);

Kurzinhalt: In the context of this dialectical interplay between the two drives or principles, conceivably there could be a cumulative structure to the operations of societies and to history.

Textausschnitt: 6.4.2 The Schemes and Series of History and Society: Intersubjectivity and Dialectic

45/6 The claim of the next objection to conceiving history in terms of acts of meaning centers around the fact that no historical event or age would seem to correspond to any one person's act of meaning. People's intentions, insights, plans and projects are one thing. But the course of history is usually something quite different. If meaning is the term of a subjective act, then how are we to conceive history in terms of meaning when it is clear that historical patterns and structures would seem to be operative in historical ages whose subjects could not begin to think in terms of such patterns and structures?1 To meet this objection requires an excursus of some length which will involve the development of some of Lonergan's clues in Insight and the introduction of some insights of Gibson Winter's from Elements for a Social Ethic. But an initial outline of the final response to this objection might help the reader through this excursus. (181; Fs)

[...]


56/6 After this lengthy excursus, then, we can get back to the second objection that has been raised against a conception of human history in terms of operations of meaning. Again, this objection recognized the difference between individual acts of meaning and doing and the random or ordered interactions among such individual actions whose overall course or shape will most usually elude the grasp of acting individuals. From the perspective of this reconstruction of Lonergan's thought it is clear that such interactions do occur, that they constitute the shape or course of societies and of history and that they most often have a structure to their operation that is not understood completely by contemporaries of the society or historical age.23 But as human, history consists of human subjects performing distinctively human acts. And from Lonergan's perspective what is distinctively human about these acts is that their regulative principle is not to be sought in antecedent conditions and environmental schemes but in the schemes immanent to the subject and in the intelligibilities that emerge in acts of knowing, judging and deciding; intelligibilities that are spontaneously learned and routinely performed by successive generations of a society, a culture, an economy. Consequently aggregates and patterns of interactions among human subjects are to be understood in terms of the cooperative schemes that link individual acts. (185; Fs)

57/6 Furthermore there can be discerned a pattern to the emergence and development of such societal schemes that can be understood in terms of the dialectical interplay between the dynamic orientation of intelligent, responsible acts (or their biased orientation in groups where a form of bias prevails), and the spontaneous drive to expression and unification that brings and keeps subjects acting together. In the context of this dialectical interplay between the two drives or principles, conceivably there could be a cumulative structure to the operations of societies and to history. And while this overall, cumulative structure moves towards 'progress,' towards events building upon the shoulders of previous events and schemes, the fact that the structure of the movement is dialectical also explains the possibility and the fact of both short and long term 'decline.'24 (185; Fs) (notabene)
59/6 Thus there will be an overall intelligibility to the dynamic structure of intersubjective schemes. And there will be a further intelligibility associated with the pattern of emergence and development of such schemes. A concrete understanding of the schemes requires a grasp of the structure of cognitional acts and their dialectical interactions as well as a knowledge of the operative trends, skills and routines among the participating individuals. But while such intersubjective schemes and such patterns of development and decline will have an intelligibility, this intelligibility need not have been originated in the mind of one historical actor. (185; Fs)

60/6 One further note would seem to be in order here regarding the subjective genesis of meaning and the spontaneously emergent schemes of society and history. It might seem that this account of society and history, as probably emergent schemes and series, would contradict a conception of history in terms of acts of meaning, on the one hand, and a subjective account of the genesis of meaning, on the other. For if the schemes, and the dialectical structure to the development of the schemes of society and history can emerge independently of any one subject devising and implementing them, then how could one possible call this history human meaning if meaning is conceived as the term of a subjective act? (186; Fs)

(1) What is central to Lonergan's conception of history in terms of acts of meaning is the fact that the significant elements of human history are to be identified as humans performing distinctively human acts. Human life is overwhelmingly and inescapably mediated by language, by ideas, by symbols, by habits, skills, and by all the actions which require at least a minimal performance of operations or groups of operations of intelligence. It is in this sense that Lonergan affirms that the essentially constitutive events of human history are acts of meaning. (186; Fs)

(2) But the sufficiently frequent recurrence of appropriate sets of acts of meaning and intelligently mediated performance skills, all other things being equal, fulfills the conditions for a further emergent intelligibility to world process (the schemes and dynamic patterns of development and decline of society and history). The constitutive events of these schemes and series are acts of meaning. And so an account of the genesis of such acts of meaning remains an essential part of the explanation of the schemes and series. And furthermore, in Lonergan's view, the dynamic structure to the emergence of such schemes and series stands in a relationship of isomorphism to a subsequent act of understanding which would grasp and affirm (thus intelligently actuating) the intelligibility immanent in such schemes and series. It is this relationship of isomorphism in the probably emergent structure of world process and in the probably emergent structure to acts of knowing which explains why knowing can know being and why an act of knowing concretely approaches a relationship of isomorphism with an intelligibility immanent in being. (186; Fs)

(3) As intelligence expands its grasp of social and historical processes, more and more of human history comes within the regulative scope of human responsibility. For the dynamic schemes and series of history come to require, to a greater and greater extent, the understanding of such schemes and series as essentially constitutive elements of their regulation and finally their survival. When massive growths in human populations link the survival of larger and larger numbers of people to the survival of economic, industrial, political, social and cultural schemes, then it would seem that the human race has reached a point of no return. It is this awareness of the fragility of the current historical age, I would argue, which most powerfully dynamizes Lonergan's urgent plea to conceive human history as essentially constituted by acts of intelligence and responsibility.25 (186f; Fs)