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Authentic Subjectivity and Genuine Objectivity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Joseph A. Bracken
Joseph A. Bracken*
Affiliation:
Xavier University
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Abstract

Genuine objectivity, says Bernard Lonergan, is the fruit of authentic subjectivity. Certainly, the two are closely linked. In this essay, I propose that authentic subjectivity consists, not in overcoming the particularities of one's subjective standpoint in order to embrace a hypothetical universal viewpoint shared in common with other individuals, but in getting more deeply in touch with the unique particularity of one's own perspective in order better to appreciate both the similarities with and the differences from the standpoints of other individuals. Genuine objectivity, then, consists in recognizing that there neither is nor ever will be a universal standpoint. All standpoints by definition are particular. This is not to deny, of course, that at any given moment there is an objective state of affairs, quite apart from any one's subjective perception of it, but only to affirm that no one (not even God) has a totally objective grasp of that same state of affairs.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , Fall 1984 , pp. 290 - 303
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1984

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References

1 Lonergan, Bernard, Method in Theology (New York: Herder & Herder, 1972), p. 292.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., pp. 129-30. See also by the same author, Insight, 3rd ed. (New York: Philosophical Library, 1970), pp. 564–68.Google Scholar As the citation from Insight makes clear, Lonergan believes that a universal viewpoint is in principle attainable through sustained application of his own philosophical principles.

3 Scharlemann, Robert P., The Being of God (New York: Seabury, 1981), pp. 31–38.Google Scholar

4 Ibid., pp. 38-40.

5 Royce, Josiah, The Problem of Christianity (2nd ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), pp. 273–95.Google Scholar

6 Ibid., pp. 312-19.

7 Ibid., pp. 318-19, 340-41, 381-84.

8 Ibid., p. 346.

9 Whitehead, Alfred North, Process and Reality, ed. Griffin, David and Sherburne, Donald (New York: Free Press, 1978), p. 18Google Scholar (27). N.B.: The number in parentheses refers to the page number of the 1929 edition of Process and Reality, also published by Macmillan.

10 Ibid., pp. 19-20 (28-30).

11 Ibid., p. 34 (51).

12 Ibid., p. 167 (254).

13 Ibid., p. 34 (51).

14 The same principle seems to be operative in Process and Reality, p. 156 (236), although in the context of objectification, not objectivity, as noted above.

15 Ibid., pp. 342-52 (519-33).

16 Ibid., p. 350 (532).

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid., p. 351 (532).

19 As I see it, this is a variation on Heidegger's claim that in the West ontology has been subtly confused with onto-theo-logy. See on this point Heidegger, Martin, Identity and Difference, trans. Stambaugh, Joan (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), p. 54.Google Scholar See also Scharlemann, , The Being of God, p. 39.Google Scholar

20 See “Process Philosophy and Trinitarian Theology—I and II,” Process Studies 8 (1978), 217–30;CrossRefGoogle Scholar 11 (1981), 83-96. See also “Subsistent Relation: Mediating Concept for a New Synthesis,” Journal of Religion 64/2 (April 1984), 188–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 See Hartshorne, Charles, “Whitehead's Novel Intuition” in Kline, George, ed., Alfred North Whitehead, Essays on His Philosophy (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963), p. 23.Google Scholar

22 Finite actual entities participate in the common element of form for the universe at any given moment in an imperfect manner, i.e., according to the degree that they can positively prehend the universe in its myriad details (see here Whitehead, , Process and Reality, pp. 41–42 [66[Google Scholar). To the degree that they differ from one another in their prehension of the universe, they remain separate entities in a more or less cohesive societal relationship. Only the divine persons with their identical prehensions of one another and of the created universe are governed by a common element of form which is the same in every detail for all three of them. Hence they alone constitute the perfect society, i.e., a single unitary reality.

23 Lonergan, , Method in Theology, p. 247.Google Scholar

24 Ibid., pp. 130-32, 267-69.

25 Tracy, David, The Analogical Imagination (New York: Crossroad, 1981), p. 450.Google Scholar