Dalibor Renić

This article discusses three epistemological themes emerging from the writings of Ignatius of Loyola. Firstly, it examines the model of the voluntariness of belief implied in his vision of religious obedience through the lenses of contemporary theories of doxastic voluntarism. Secondly, it reconstructs the relationship between faith and reason in the writings of Ignatius in the context of recent interpretations of the religious sacrificium intellectus. Thirdly, it searches for the foundation for the ethics of belief in general which would be inspired by the Ignatian world-view presented in his Contemplation Ad Amorem and the Cardoner experience. The author argues that such a model of epistemic normativity can be successfully developed using the elements of contemporary virtue epistemology and B. Lonergan’s and K. Rahner’s transcendental method. Against the preconception of antagonism between religion and intellectual progress, the author indicates how religiosity can positively contribute to the growth of knowledge, being the leading motivation within intellectual life.

In this essay the author proposes that epistemology as a normative discipline finds its ground and direction in the virtue of epistemic responsibility of the epistemic agent. The life-narrative of the person provides the context for understanding of the value horizon of epistemology, but also for the evaluation of particular non-discursive epistemic abilities, such as phronesis and Newman’s illative sense. That proposal is illustrated and supported by the elements of the intellectual biography of John Henry Newman, and by his view on epistemology as expressed and applied in the writing of his Grammar of Assent.

Epistemology uses some concepts that are usually understood as normative and evaluative. In recent years a lively debate has unfolded about the nature of epistemic normativity. This book explores the role of ethical factors in Bernard Lonergan’s model of epistemic normativity in the categories and terminology of the contemporary debate. Author offers a reconstruction of Lonergan’s model of epistemic evaluation, epistemic value, and epistemic responsibility, and its interpretation in a critical dialog with the virtue–epistemological models of epistemic normativity. He argues that Lonergan’s model of epistemic normativity is in broad agreement with the virtue responsibilist model, and that they can share similar explanatory and defence strategies. He also indicates the relevance and the specific contribution of Lonergan’s cognitional theory and transcendental method for the study of epistemic normativity in general.

This article offers an introduction to the recent debate on the nature of epistemic normativity and its relationship to ethical normativity in analytic epistemology. The revival of that traditional epistemological theme has been mostly welcomed as refreshing in epistemological circles. The aims of the article are to acquaint readers with the questions and terminology of the debate, to indicate the basic positions in the debate and their respective problems, and to suggest some new clarifications for the relevant terms in the debate which are perceived as lacking. Without taking any specific position in the debate, this article hopes to show that the question of ethical elements in epistemic normativity is indeed relevant for epistemology and that it opens that discipline for the more traditional topic of the role of the subject’s responsibility in his or her intellectual life.