A
new book from Australian Jesuit Fr Peter Beer provides an insight into the philosophical
work of an influential 20th century philosopher and theologian.
Fr
Bernard Lonergan SJ was a Canadian philosopher and theologian who lived from
1904 to 1984. He taught at Jesuit universities in Canada,
the United States and Rome, and published two
books, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957) and Method in
Theology (1972),
In
An Introduction to Bernard Lonergan,
Fr Beer looks at the Jesuit philosopher and theologian's approach to
cognitional theory (asking the question: what do I do when I know something?),
epistemology (why is doing that knowing?), and metaphysics (what do I know when
I do that?).
Fr
Beer says Lonergan's work invites people to discover the dynamic structure of
their own cognitional and moral being.
In
a review of the book, Professor Daniel Monsour from Regis College, University
of Toronto, says the book is a ‘highly original introduction to the
philosophical thought of Bernard Lonergan'.
‘Peter
Beer takes the Hitchcock film Dial M for
Murder and by a sustained discussion of how the murderer comes to be
identified and the implication of such an identification, gradually and
effectively leads readers to recognise concretely and name in themselves the
various operations discussed in Lonergan's cognitional theory and in his theory
of evaluation and decision and the conditions necessary for such operations to
be objective.'
An Introduction to Bernard Lonergan is available from Sid
Harta Publishers, ISBN-13: 9781921642067, Price: $34.95. http://sidharta.com/books/index.jsp?uid=362.