Paul Kidder

This thesis demonstrates that the foundations of Lonergan's philosophy are neither primarily epistemological nor primarily ontological, but are evenly balanced between epistemology and ontology. The balance is achieved, not by compromise or conflation of the two standpoints, but by recognition of a fact about reality: that while being is knowable, and may therefore be specified through acts of knowing, knowing is itself within being, and therefore may be specified ontologically. This gnoseo-ontological circularity wherein knowing and being imply one another demands that epistemology and metaphysics complete one another. ;Lonergan's philosophy facilitates such a mutual completion. He develops a theory of cognitional operations as the basis and critical measure for philosophical thought, including metaphysics. He defines being heuristically, as the objective of the pure desire to know. And he defines the metaphysical elements of potency, form, and act as corollaries to the cognitional operations of experience, understanding, and judgment. But at the same time, his realist epistemology allows and encourages a repetition of cognitional theory itself from a metaphysical standpoint: the metaphysical elements are corollaries to cognition because they are principles of cognition; for, again, knowing is within being. ;The human task, on Lonergan's position, is not to overcome the gnoseo-ontological circle, but rather, one might say, through greater knowledge and fuller participation in being, to expand its compass. The circle is only overcome in God, whose knowing and being are thoroughly identical. ;Chapter one elaborates and defends the foregoing in general terms. Subsequent chapters follow the working-out of Lonergan's gnoseo-ontological approach in three major works. In Verbum, it is present in Lonergan's effort to identify a critical dimension to a psychology that Aquinas developed in an essentially metaphysical framework. In Insight, it is a basis for a new kind of metaphysical framework. In Method in Theology, it is present in his broadening of his philosophical program to include a wider range of existential and methodological issues

Despite being associated with different philosophical traditions, the philosophies of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Bernard Lonergan can be seen to possess a surprising number of fundamental and important points of intersection. Central among these is the conviction that the structure of interrogation provides not only the normative element in human knowing but also the principle clue for grasping the notion of being. From this confluence of ontological positions there follow a number of shared elements in the two thinkers’ approaches to basic questions in epistemology, philosophy of the person, and the philosophy of nature and natural science.

This article examines ethical themes in the works of the celebrated writer on urban affairs, Jane Jacobs. Jacobs' early works on cities develop an implicit, 'ecological' conception of the human good, one that connects it closely with economic and political goals while emphasizing the intrinsic good of the community formed in pursuit of those goals. Later works develop an explicit ethics, arguing that governing and trading require two different schemes of values and virtues. While Jacobs intended this ethics to apply to all forms of productive activity, it is particularly illuminating when applied to her own urban ideas and activism

Comparisons that have been made between the philosophies of Martin Heidegger and Bernard Lonergan on such topics as transcendence, authenticity, and the inadequacies of substance metaphysics are justified, but they must be understood against the background of a disagreement over the meaning and role of ontological difference. A reading of Heidegger that emphasizes the negative or recessive aspect of the ontological “lighting” or “clearing” in being puts this disagreement into sharp relief and forms a charge against Lonergan of “forgetfulness of being.” A response to the charge is offered in the form of three approximations, focusing, respectively, on the way that Lonergan uses the term, “intelligibility,” the role he gives to question, and the way he finds ontological significance in a particular range of intentional acts.