Timothy P. Muldoon

In this essay, I shall use Hadot’s critical framework for considering the uneasy modern relationship between philosophy and the Christian spiritual tradition, rooted as it is in the ancient forms of spiritual exercise. I will begin with a brief sketch of this relationship, paying particular attention to some ways that Christian spirituality influenced philosophy in early modernity. From there, I shall turn to the work of Bernard Lonergan in order to develop a proposal for a contemporary spirituality of discernment as a philosophical practice. Lonergan, a Jesuit trained in the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, built his philosophical project on the template of those exercises, inviting people to practices of self-appropriation for the purpose of exploring how discernment in a community can transform societies, reversing decline and promoting patterns of growth. Lonergan’s method, I shall argue, offers a way of coming to understand the spirituality of discernment as a form of philosophical practice that heals the problems that Hadot diagnoses in modern philosophy.

At various points in his writings, Bernard Lonergan invoked the work of historian Arnold Toynbee, and paid particular attention to the latter’s notion of a “creative minority” that evokes historic change in the world. In his essay “Healing and Creating in History,” he notes that a creative minority, and the creative process that their insights yield, lead to social progress. Conversely, Lonergan attends to the problems of the social surd, as well as the shorter and longer cycles of social decline. Insights dry up; the creative minority becomes, in his words, “merely the dominant minority.” Social decline follows. In this paper, I will explore the notion of a “healing minority,” a group whose function is to reverse the effects of social decline and promote social progress. The notion of a healing minority is not named per se in Lonergan’s writings, but is implicit in two ways. First, in his descriptions of the prerequisites for social progress, he identifies groups that understand the inevitability of the social surd and nevertheless commit themselves to social progress by embracing the dialectical attitude of overcoming evil with good. Second, he invokes those groups whose explicit mission is to promote the goods of community life. This paper will show that the healing minority is a critical element in Lonergan’s understanding of social progress in history.

This essay will draw from the classical Greek notions of cosmopolis and cosmopolitanism—world citizenship—as a heuristic for contemplating the question of contemporary participation in a wholly good global society. The first part of this paper will explore how the ancient notion of cosmopolis offers contemporary thinkers a compelling hermeneutic for considering cultural growth over history. Then, in part two, it will focus on spirituality, returning to the ancient Greek world through the lens of Pierre Hadot’s work on philosophy as spiritual exercise. Finally, this essay will engage Bernard Lonergan’s suggestion that cosmopolis as a heuristic is fundamentally oriented toward reversing the kinds of decline that emerge from shortsightedness and various forms of bias.

This article seeks to explore the challeges raised by Germain Grisez to Karl Rahner’s theory of fundamental option. Dr. Grisez holds that Fr. Rahner misunderstood the Tridentine teaching on justification, and posited the inaccessability of fundamental option to reflection. After reviewing Dr. Grisez’ position and the Tridentine doctrine of justification, the article will explore Fr. Rahner’s writings on fundamental option, and form conclusions regarding the conversation between Karl Rahner and Germain Grisez.