An Introduction to Bernard Lonergan: Exploring Lonergan's approach to the great philosophical questions

Bernard Lonergan was a mid 20th century Canadian philosopher and theologian. This book aims to help form a basis for inquiry into Lonergan's achievement in his new approach to the great philosophical questions: what do I do when I know something? (cognitional theory), why is doing that 'knowing'? (epistemology) and what do I know when I do that? (metaphysics).

Lonergan deals with these questions somewhat more deeply in his major works, Insight (1957, 1992) and Method in Theology (1972, 2017). Here he invites one to discover in oneself the dynamic structure of one's own cognitional and moral being and in doing this, one finds an operative procedure that is not open to radical revision. In fact, Lonergan has unearthed a dynamic, conscious framework for creativity, a method that grounds all investigation that is intelligent and critical. It is a resource that is transcendental in that it is the concrete and dynamic unfolding of human attentiveness, intelligence, reasonableness and responsibility, and this unfolding occurs whenever one uses one's mind in an appropriate fashion.

This method, for investigators too, is new in its finding eight tasks that are distinct and separable stages in the single process from data to results and can be adapted to any subject in which investigations are responding to past history and are to influence future history.

Peter Beer SJ is Director of the Lonergan Centre, Canisius College, Pymble, Sydney, New South Wales. He joined the Jesuit Order, graduated in arts at Melbourne University, was ordained to the priesthood and pursued doctoral studies at the Catholic University of America in Washington, graduating in 1972. He was awarded a travelling scholarship for postgraduate research at the Lonergan Center at Regis College, Toronto, in 1974-75 where he studied Lonergan's seminal works, Insight and Method in theology. After teaching at the diocesan seminary in Melbourne, in 1976 he was appointed to the Union Theological Institute of the Sydney College of Divinity, where he taught systematic theology and methodology until 1998. He has published a number of articles applying Lonergan's transcendental method. In 1979, he invited Professor Frederick Crowe, of Regis College, on a lecture tour to the Australian capital cities. After this successful tour, he invited others to join with him in setting up a Lonergan workshop that meets regularly for the presentation of papers and discussion.