Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: 4 Stufen der Integration; Common Sense, geschichtliches Bewusstsein

Kurzinhalt: Unterscheidung

Textausschnitt: 2.2.1 Undifferentiated Common Sense
2.2.2 Differentiated Common Sense
2.2.3 Classicism and the Differentiation of Consciousness
2.2.4 Historical Consciousness

2.2 Four Levels of Integration

By my formulation of common sense I have provided myself with a general basis for distinguishing four levels of integration. (73; Fs)

2.2.1 Undifferentiated Common Sense

54/3 The first level of integration is undifferentiated common sense. Undifferentiated common sense characterizes the primitive. Here there occurs the same development of intelligence in all the members of the tribe or clan. Thinking is a community enterprise. The clan or the tribe may be fruit gatherers or gardeners or hunters or fishers. They will have developed skills, a language, some tools. They will have their art and their myths and their taboos. Tribes will differ from one another - there are enormous differences between the Eskimos and the pygmies or the bushmen - but in any given group there is a common intelligence. Common sense is common in the sense that it is common to many. (73f; Fs)

55/3 The relation between undifferentiated common sense and the idea that thinking is a community enterprise may have some connection with a phenomenon at the present time, the tendency of teenagers to conformism. An education whose ideal is adjustment does not proceed much beyond undifferentiated common sense. Conversely, if one's development is merely an undifferentiated common sense, people will have to conform.1. (74; Fs) (notabene)

2.2.2 Differentiated Common Sense2

56/3 The second level of integration is differentiated common sense, differentiation of common sense by the division of labor. We may associate this level of integration with Egypt, Crete, Sumer, Babylon, Assyria, the ancient high civilizations of the Indus Valley and the Hwang Ho Valley, of the Mayas of Central America and the Incas of Peru. In those civilizations there existed large-scale agriculture, there was a great differentiation of arts and crafts, there were writing, arithmetic, bookkeeping, engineering, surveying, astronomy. There was a social hierarchy and law. There was what Voegelin calls the 'cosmological myth.'3 The divine order, the ultimate realities, the gods, were, as it were, incarnated in the social order, so that at least in Egypt and to some extent in Mesopotamia - I don't know about the others - the king was the god or the son of god. In later stages in these civilizations there emerged another aspect of differentiated common sense in the form of a wisdom literature. This stage is illustrated, for example, in the book of Proverbs. And in the breakdowns of these civilizations there occurs the emergence of individualism. (74; Fs) (notabene)

57/3 So there is a differentiation of common sense by the division of labor; there are different kinds of common sense for people in different walks of life. This specialization leads to a high development of arts and crafts and practical sciences such as astronomy, engineering, and surveying. Building the pyramids, for example, was an extraordinary achievement in engineering. (75; Fs)

2.2.3 Classicism and the Differentiation of Consciousness

58/3 The third level of integration involves the differentiation of consciousness, the emergence of the intellectual pattern of experience. We will name it the pure development of human intelligence.4 This is what is meant by classicism in its best sense, the Greek achievement. (75; Fs)

59/3 We will consider first the general characteristics of this level of integration. The individual appeals to immanent norms, to what is true against the false, to what is right against the wrong, to what is good against the evil. The autonomy of the human spirit emerges. There is a development of argument, definition, science, the critique of gods, of myths, of magic, of taboos, of institutions and manners, of aims and values. These features are all exhibited in the Sophist movement of the fifth century B.C. and the philosophic movement of the fourth century B.C. in Greece. The individual asserts his freedom to be himself. He liberates aesthetic, intellectual, scientific, moral, and religious activity from traditionally restricted functions within the collectivity.5 Prior to this pure development of intelligence all of these features existed except science, but they were functional parts within the concrete totality. In the ancient high civilizations such as Egypt or Crete, there was differentiated common sense, where the integration comes through the concrete integration of the members of society. But there was not a theoretical integration beyond the differentiated common sense of individuals engaged in different tasks and leading different kinds of lives. (75; Fs)

60/3 The emergence of individualism, of critical thought,6 gives rise to what Marx called the superstructure. There are discussion groups, wandering teachers, the formation of academies, schools, libraries, universities, universalist tendencies in intellectual, political, and religious fields. There is the pursuit of wisdom and culture for their own sake. This pure development of intelligence is not practical; it is7 proudly useless; it is the enrichment of mind, the advance of knowledge, the ennobling of will, the rationalization of manners, all for their own sake. But it involves a tendency as well to be limited to a particular class, to classical models, the depiction of ideals, the per se, the legal. It offers tables of virtues and vices, settled art forms and literary genres, types of polity, all in static concepts, principles, systems. (75f; Fs)