Lonergan’s Theory of Historiography  and His Metaphysical Presuppositions
10.13125/CH/4193
This article focuses on the importance that Lonergan attributes to historical knowledge (historiography). After having traced the cultural and ecclesial climate that led him to take an interest in the question, this text presents the ambitious project by Lonergan denominated “transcendental method” and of the “functional specializations” in which he articulates this method. Then it analyses the functional specialty “History” and the various related themes: the presuppositions of his theory of historiography, historical objectivity and perspectivism, and the role of values in historical knowledge. In the conclusion, a critical balance is formulated starting from the aspects raised.
application/pdf
2533-1825
4193
2
en
urn:nbn:it:unica-26006
Giuseppe Guglielmi
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Critical Hermeneutics
Lonergan’s Theory of Historiography  and His Metaphysical Presuppositions
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch
3
Varia
2020-07-10
2020-07-10
2020-07-10
2020-07-10
195-222
1
Giuseppe Guglielmi
2019
10.13125/CH/4193
195
2533-1825
2
en
222
urn:nbn:it:unica-26006
Lonergan’s Theory of Historiography  and His Metaphysical Presuppositions
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch/article/download/4193/3797
3
Critical Hermeneutics, 3(2), 2019                        Received: 29/11/2019
Biannual International Journal of Philosophy               Accepted: 5/4/2020
http://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch/index                 Published: 10/7/2020
ISSN 2533-1825 (on line); DOI 10.13125/CH/4193




           Lonergan’s Theory of Historiography
          and His Metaphysical Presuppositions

                                Giuseppe Guglielmi


Abstract
This article focuses on the importance that Lonergan attributes to his-
torical knowledge (historiography). After having traced the cultural
and ecclesial climate that led him to take an interest in the question,
this text presents the ambitious project by Lonergan denominated
“transcendental method” and of the “functional specializations” in
which he articulates this method. Then it analyses the functional spe-
cialty “History” and the various related themes: the presuppositions
of his theory of historiography, historical objectivity and perspectiv-
ism, and the role of values in historical knowledge. In the conclusion,
a critical balance is formulated starting from the aspects raised.
Keywords: Historicity, historiography, metaphysics, perspectivism,
systematics, Vatican II




The name of the Canadian philosopher and theologian Bernard J.F.
Lonergan (1904-1984) is often associated to his main work Insight. A
Study of Human Understanding, (1953)1. Through this work, his in-
tention was to transpose the fundamental Thomistic acquisitions in
the cultural background of his time, characterized by scientific revolu-
tion and post-Kantian philosophy. He afforded the study of the insight
inasmuch as he intended both to find an invariant basis from which
all the different sciences depend and to favour knowledge integration.

1
    Lonergan 1992.
Giuseppe Guglielmi, Lonergan’s Theory of Historiography




      On 1953 Lonergan came back to the old continent to teach sys-
tematic theology at the Gregorian University in Rome up to 1965: it
was the same university where he had prepared his doctorate about
gratia operans in Thomas Aquinas a decade before (1940) 2 . This
change of place came out to be very favourable for his research, as
he encountered the continental philosophies, especially historicism,
existentialism and hermeneutics.
      He addressed his studies towards human historicity and histori-
ography. His interest for human historicity led him to recognize the
social and cultural influences on human consciousness, as well as to
acknowledge a cultural pluralism, in spite of the vision of a normative
and universal culture in which, according to him, the Catholic theolo-
gy had closed itself in the last centuries3. He deepened his reflection
on consciousness from a historical/cultural point of view in particular
through the notion of “meaning”, going beyond the mainly transcen-
dental analysis begun in Insight. His interest for historiography arose
from his knowledge of the XIX century German Historical School, af-
ter he read some XX century works on historicism and hermeneutical
philosophy4.


2
  Lonergan, 2000.
3
  Following the reflections of the German philologist Bruno Snell, Lonergan named
this cultural vision “classicism”. With this term he indicated the vision according to
which circumstances were something accidental, but a substance, a nucleus, a sta-
ble, fixed, immutable root rested beyond them. He stated also: “To confine the
Catholic Church to a classicist mentality is to keep the Catholic Church out of the
modern world and to prolong the already too long prolonged crisis within the
Church”; see “Doctrinal Pluralism” at 75 (in Lonergan, 1996b: 70–104).
4
  First, Lonergan read three classics of the historiographical method of the late XIX
century: the Historik (1857-1882) of Johann G. Droysen, the Lehrbuch der histor-
ischen Methode (1889) of Ernst Bernheim, and the Introduction aux études his-
toriques (1898) of Charles-Victor Langlois and Charles Seignobos. For historicism,
his interest was for Wilhelm Dilthey, and more marginally for Friedrich Meinecke
and Max Weber. For the interpretation of the historicism, he read mostly Karl Heus-
si, Erich Rothacker, Peter Hünermann, and Hans-Georg Gadamer. He gave great
attention to the French historian Henri-Irénée Marrou. For the English and American
historiography, one has to mention mostly Carl L. Becker, and Robin G. Colling-
wood, in the second place Arnold J. Toynbee, Eric Voegelin, and Christopher Daw-
son, to a lesser extent George P. Gooch, Bruce Mazlish, Patrick Gardiner, and Fritz



196
                                                       Critical Hermeneutics, 3 (2019)




     From this study, Lonergan reached the conviction that it was
time for theology to abandon the Neo-Scholastic Denkform to face
the historical critical research and its interpretation of the Christian
sources. In fact, the painful event of modernism seemed to be over
after Pio XII’s last remarks against the nouvelle théologie, while the
historical studies had invaded the theological knowledge thanks to
the forward direction of the Vatican II Ecumenical Council.
     Anyway, Lonergan was a “systematic” theologian. So, he had
understood the impossibility to proceed with the old speculative the-
ology style, but at the same time he did not want the theological
knowledge could get lost in the labyrinth of the historical and philo-
logical studies. His aim was to link and reconcile history and theology.
However, the relationship between history (exegesis, history of dog-
ma, etc.) and systematics (speculative theology) required a base
within a wider frame. He found such base at the end of his route from
Insight to the publication of Method in Theology twenty years later
(1972) 5 , a route undertaken with the aim of establishing what he
called a “transcendental method”, suitable to lay the foundations of
the single methods used in the different fields of knowledge. Lon-
ergan organized this method in some functional specialties. Among
them he described “History”, to which he gave the goal to establish
(through the rational judgment) the real development of the past
events. As regards this goal, one has to verify whether the fact, that
Lonergan found “History” on the metaphysical knowledge expressed
in Insight and in particular on the rational judgment, really allows to
ascribe his historiographical theory within the historiography of histo-




Stern. Lonergan also studied the contributions of the philologist Snell and the phi-
losophers Ernst Cassirer and Gadamer. On Lonergan’s approach on these authors
(see Guglielmi, 2015: 61–154).
5
  Lonergan, 2017b.



                                                                                  197
Giuseppe Guglielmi, Lonergan’s Theory of Historiography




rians, or rather within a critical and epistemological philosophy of his-
tory6.


1. Transcendental method and functional specialties
The methodological question recurred up to Method in Theology, but
there through the more sophisticated project of the so-called “func-
tional specialties”, on which his transcendental method has been ar-
ticulated. He defines this method in these terms:


      It is a method, for it is a normative pattern of recurrent and
      related operations yielding cumulative and progressive re-
      sults. It is a transcendental method, for the results envis-
      aged are not confined categorially to some particular field or
      subject, but regard any result that could be intended by the
      completely open transcendental notions7.


      The starting point was the same of Insight: the analysis of all the
stages of the knowledge process. However, the increase of level
number of the formally dynamic structure of intentional conscious-
ness was a novelty.
      According to the Canadian philosopher, the individual person is
characterized by a stream of spontaneous self-arranged operations,
which constitute the intentional consciousness as a dynamic, norma-




6
  Here I will not focus on the question of the relationship between history and sys-
tematics in Lonergan’s thought according to the line of the speculative approach of
R.M. Doran (1990; 2012; 2005). Rather, I will adhere to a historiographical re-
search perspective. Thus, my study has a greater affinity with the works of Th.J.
McPartland (2001; 2010).
7
  See Lonergan 2017b: 17-8. Our author uses this adjective carefully to avoid
misunderstandings. He it therefore distinguishes the transcendental in the
scholastic sense that opposes the categorical, and the transcendental in a Kantian
sense that reveals the conditions of possibility of knowledge of an object. Of course
he connects here to the "transcendental" in the Kantian sense.



198
                                                Critical Hermeneutics, 3 (2019)




tive and invariant structure. In detail, Lonergan identified four levels
of consciousness.
    The first one, so called “experiential”, is made up by all the op-
erations the person follows in his sensory extroversion: feeling, pay-
ing attention, and imagining. Lonergan underlines that in this first
stage the person is present to himself as experiencing, and expresses
his intentionality by paying attention and selecting data.
    The data of sense, in turn, are a substratum for higher activities,
which spontaneously arise in the person urged by his need to investi-
gate data, find an intelligible connection and finally reach understand-
ing. Lonergan calls this second level “intellectual”, because it is the
result of questions for intelligence, such as “what is it?”, “why?”,
“how?”. Following these questions, the empirical data are investigat-
ed, examined, and definitions, postulates, conjectures, hypotheses,
and theories about them are formulated. So the intelligent individual
goes beyond the experiential individual, because through insight
grasps an intelligible connection in the data and among them. Then,
what is reached in the insight is expressed in concepts. These are the
final product of the intelligent individual’s activity (supposing, think-
ing, considering, grasping, formulating, defining) and in particular of
his insight, which is a key operation of the whole knowledge process.
    However, according to Lonergan, the individual is not satisfied to
formulate hypotheses, conjectures or concepts. In fact, human inves-
tigation does not stop at the questions for intelligence, but goes on
with the question for reflection: “is it true?”. This question expresses
the further intentional energy of the individual who wishes to over-
come imagination, idea, theory, concepts and systems, and asks him-
self whether what was carefully experimented and cleverly under-
stood is really true or not. So the third level of consciousness reveals
the rational individual who, avoiding the conflict among the under-
stood results, wants to be subjected only by the truth criterion, that



                                                                           199
Giuseppe Guglielmi, Lonergan’s Theory of Historiography




is to establish what is, or is not, real. In Longman’s opinion, a com-
plete knowledge is reached only by the rational judgment. Pretentious
ideas, brilliant theories, thorough thinking systems are not enough;
we need to judge the truthfulness and rationality of these thoughts.
Through the judgment, Lonergan insists, the individual grasps some-
thing, and such grasping is not a mere logical process, a mechanical
abstraction, but a new insight, by which the individual becomes con-
scious that there are no other relevant questions from which further
insights may arise to complete or modify the previous insight8.
       However, aside from experience, questions for intelligence and
concepts, questions for reflection and judgments, also questions for
deliberation do emerge in the human mind: this is the fourth level of
consciousness, the level of the existential individual who has to man-
age decisions, freedom, self-control, and the direction he wants to
give to his life. According to Lonergan, this fourth level gives man the
chance to reach a more complete self-transcendence compared to the
results of the previous levels. In fact, by passing from a level to the
next one the individual gets only a partial self-transcendence, while it
is only at this fourth level, the moral one, that he gets a real existen-
tial self-transcendence. By asking himself “what have I to do?”, “is it
worthwhile?” and performing the specific operations (conscious delib-
eration, reliable valuation, free decision, and action) outcoming from
these questions, the individual, Lonergan concludes, oversteps
knowledge opening himself to the universe of values and to the re-
sponsible action.
       In this way, Lonergan explains the intentionality of conscious-
ness as related to a variation of levels. The individual experiences and
realizes more and more his own subjectivity when he moves from the
simple sense operation (empirical consciousness) to intellectual oper-


8
    Cf. Lonergan, 1992: 309.



200
                                                        Critical Hermeneutics, 3 (2019)




ation (intelligent consciousness), to judgment on intellectual results
(rational consciousness), and to practice of his own freedom (moral
consciousness)9.
     Then, starting from his investigation of the human cognitive and
deliberative activity, the Canadian philosopher traced two sets of
“functional specialties”, each set with four specialties, with aims and
results similar to those of the four levels of consciousness (at this
point, we are interested to the first set). In fact, as the result reached
at the experience level consists in the discovery and collection of da-
ta, so the specialty “Research” (for example, textual criticism) pur-
sues the goal to search for pertaining data and make them available
to the students for their researches. And, as at the second level of
consciousness, that of the intelligence, one grasps the connection
among the discovered data, so “Interpretation” has to understand the
meaning that the author intended for a text made now available by
“Research”. Again, as the reason confirms, through judgment, the ex-
istence or not existence of truth, so the “History” specialty has to es-
tablish what had really happened in the past. Finally, as at the fourth
level, that of decision, the individual struggles with a practical choice
and with what this choice implies (values conflict), so “Dialectic”,
meant as evaluative history, has to recognize and highlight conflicts
about values, facts, meanings and experiences in view of their further
resolution10.


9
  With other words, Lonergan wrote: “On all four levels, we are aware of ourselves
but, as we mount from level to level, it is a fuller self of which we are aware and
the awareness itself is different” (Lonergan, 2017b: 13).
10
   The primary interest of Lonergan is directed to the application of functional
specialties, derived from the transcendental method, to theology. In continuity with
the theological tradition of the auditus fidei and of the intellectus fidei, Lonergan
distributes this project in two distinct phases of the theological exercise. A first
phase “mediates” the past of the Christian tradition; a second phase, called
“mediated”, deals with formulating and applying the Christian message to the
present cultural context. In other words, the first phase assumes the task of using
all the resources of historical-critical and hermeneutical research to meet the
constitutive past of a particular religious tradition. The second phase undertakes to



                                                                                   201
Giuseppe Guglielmi, Lonergan’s Theory of Historiography




      Lonergan defined these specialties as “functional” because they
refer to the operations of consciousness, which every student per-
forms. However, even if each student of whichever field works at all
the four levels of consciousness (experimenting, understanding, judg-
ing, and deciding), the difference of the specialties is based on the
fact that each of them works to reach its own goal. For example,
Lonergan pointed out that in “Research” a textual critic works not on-
ly at the experience level, as if he ignores the other consciousness
levels, but has to choose the right method (decision level) to reach
the discovery (intelligence level) of what he may reasonably affirm
(judgment level) that it has been written in the original text (experi-
ence level). In other words, the textual critic works on all the four
levels, tough his aim is the end of the first level, that is establishing
the data11. Lonergan extended this argument to the other specialties,
as they are interdependent and alternating in a cumulative process:
“Interpretation” depends on “Research”, and vice versa; “History” de-
pends on both “Research” and “Interpretation”, and provides them a
context and prospects within which they can work; “Dialectic” de-
pends on “History”, “Interpretation”, and “Research” and, at the
same time, provides heuristic structures to “Interpretation” and “His-
tory”12.




elaborate a theological discourse capable of integrating itself fully into the present
of the believing community, and more generally of the culture. Because of this
double articulation, according to Lonergan, in theology there are not four, but eight
functional specialties. The first phase is ascending (from the connection to
experience to the connection to responsible choice); it is common to theology and
other human sciences: theology in oratione obliqua; it consists of the specialties
“Research”, “Interpretation”, “History” and “Dialectic”. The second phase is
descending (in an inverted order, from the connection to responsible choice to the
connection to experience); it is peculiar of theology: theology in oratione recta; it
consists of the specialties “Foundations”, “Doctrines”, “Systematics”, and
“Communications”. Cf. Lonergan, 2017b: 120–130.
11
   Cf. Ib.: 128.
12
   Cf. Ib. 134–135.



202
                                                 Critical Hermeneutics, 3 (2019)




2. Critical history
In his Method in Theology Lonergan got back the Insight transcultural
basis to provide a methodological groundwork to the varied world of
culture that, in his opinion, until then did not have a methodological
unification. Thus, this second work, even if it attests (in kulturges-
chichtlich terms) a number increase of research fields (meaning,
hermeneutics, and historiography), must be read in formal continuity
with Insight. On the other hand, this continuity is guaranteed by the
same epistemological and metaphysical system on which the histori-
ography theory of Method in Theology is based. As an example, we
may refer to the closeness of History to rational consciousness. A his-
toriography based on a reflective understanding, like Lonergan’s one,
must have the goal of establishing (judgment) what happened. But
even before going through this central aspect, we find the connection
with the knowledge doctrine presented in Insight in the distinction
between experience, intelligence, and historical judgment that opens
the § 2 “Historical experience and historical knowledge” of chapter
“History” in Method in Theology. As Lonergan thought that knowledge
was made up of experience, intelligence, and judgment, so he be-
lieved that the historical knowledge was the result of historical expe-
rience, historical intelligence, and historical judgment. Historical ex-
perience represents the first form of history, that is living or existen-
tial history, and extends also to a first and rudimentary objectifica-
tion, defined as “pre-critical history” by Lonergan himself. Historical
intelligence and historical judgment work the passage from existential
history to putting it to theme, and so represent the “critical history”.
    As for the first form of history, the existential history (res ges-
tae) or living tradition, which forms a community, it was defined by
Lonergan as “history that it is written about”. This existential history
is well expressed by the psychological time, that is the stream of acts




                                                                            203
Giuseppe Guglielmi, Lonergan’s Theory of Historiography




made by a conscious individual, which extends to the past through
memories and to the future through expectations13.
           Lonergan defined the objectification of existential history, the
historia rerum gestarum, simply as “history that is written”. It is this
kind of history that underlines the passage from the historical experi-
ence to history meant as a methodologically based knowledge of the
past. However, the passage into scientific history does not occur im-
mediately, but gradually. The first objectifications of existential histo-
ry, such as autobiographies (in the form of diaries or memories) or
biographies, are still simple and rudimental stories. Lonergan includ-
ed in pre-critical history also the narration of particular events 14 .
These have the aim to promote the knowledge and the identity of a
group. Lonergan did not define this kind of stories with other names,
but they can be led back to the category of Croce’s “pseudo-
history”15. In fact, in Lonergan’s opinion pre-critical history is charac-
terized by its intent to narrate (chronicle), persuade the reader, and
defend its own community from external detractors (poetic and ora-
torical stories) and so on.
           Unlike pre-critical history, critical history does not turn anymore
towards simple details or proof collection, nor does pursue apologetic
goals. According to Lonergan, the aim of critical history is to grasp
changes, processes, and developments (co-operations, institutions,
relations, values) which have caused a situation of standstill or, oth-
erwise, the decline or ruin of a group or nation16. Although this goal is
very different from the simple narration of chronicles, Lonergan add-
ed that a historian cannot fulfill his job by resorting to an abstract
logic, either theological (theology of history) or dialectic (philosophy
of history), but he always has to refer to real human individuals and

13
     Cf.   “Time and Meaning” at 106-08 (in Lonergan, 1996a: 94–121).
14
     Cf.   Lonergan, 2017b: 171–173.
15
     Cf.   Croce, 1921: 11–45.
16
     Cf.   Lonergan, 2017b: 173–183.



204
                                               Critical Hermeneutics, 3 (2019)




to their specific actions. At the same time, critical history gives a
more complete vision of the past than the previous forms of history,
even if it refers to the roughness of life. Hence, this assertion opens
up the analysis of the theoretical nucleus of Lonergan’s historiograph-
ical reflection and of his metaphysical foundation.


3. Metaphysical structure and historiographical theory
In his Insight Lonergan worded metaphysics as the integral heuristic
structure of the being proportionate to human knowledge. In this
structure, Lonergan included and identified the act of knowing and
the known content; he affirmed that, while the “content” of a cogni-
tive action is still unknown until a specific knowledge is reached, the
same cannot be said about the general characteristics of the “act”
used for this knowledge. As a matter of fact, these characteristics are
known, and can provide a premise for the content that has to be
known. Therefore, Lonergan linked the metaphysical elements of po-
tency, form and act to the operations that cause knowledge (that is,
experience, insight, and rational judgment). Through this heuristic
and transcendental setting of metaphysics, Lonergan wanted to over-
come the dogmatic and fixed concept of metaphysics on which phi-
losophers like Cassirer had already worked, and to open it to a con-
frontation with science and common sense. The metaphysical
knowledge was no more conceived as an exclusive knowledge that
keeps out all other knowledge, but as taking over the results of the
other knowledge integrating them in a coherent view17.
        According to this premise, Lonergan affirmed that metaphysics
also gives the methodological and epistemological conditions of “His-
tory”. In fact, he confirmed his metaphysical vision also about histori-
cal knowledge. Beyond sensism, idealism, and naive realism, he be-


17
     Cf Lonergan, 1992: 418–419.



                                                                          205
Giuseppe Guglielmi, Lonergan’s Theory of Historiography




lieved, on one side, that the object is different from the subject and,
on the other side, that the object has the characteristics of the same
cognitive process of the subject. If, in general, the being represents
all that can be attentively “experimented”, cleverly “understood”, and
rationally “judged”, in the same way historiography, as a particular
knowledge within the wider metaphysical horizon, has to retrace the
same epistemological and ontological structure. So, according to Lon-
ergan, we can get a real historical knowledge only through the judg-
ment operation, because only through a factual judgment (“it is it re-
ally so!”) the subject can catch and recognize an object of thinking as
something belonging to the absolute realm of being. Then, historical
judgment is just a specific case of application of reflective under-
standing. By the judgment, the historical inquiry finally grasps the
actual evidence and the historian can determine what had happened
in the past18. Only within this speculative background it is possible to
understand why Lonergan insisted in thinking that “History”, even if
connected with the specialties “Research” (experience) and “Interpre-
tation” (understanding), has a higher aim as its goal: to present what
has happened, stressing on the rational judgment formulated after
having grasped a virtually unconditioned. And indeed, in Lonergan’s
system, this complete knowledge can be reached only at the third
level, by the rational judgment19.
        Hence, in Lonergan’s opinion, the historical judgment is an oper-
ation overcoming “Interpretation”, because – and this is a crucial
point of his theory – the task of the prior specialty “Interpretation” is
to settle, through the study of witnesses, what an author or a per-
sonality of the past meant (meaning), while it is only “History” that
properly knows, because only the historian, by weighing the testimo-



18
     Cf. Lonergan 2017b: 217.
19
     Cf. Ib.: 128.



206
                                                       Critical Hermeneutics, 3 (2019)




nial evidences,20 formulates the judgment on how the events of the
past had actually taken place. This historical judgment goes very over
the meaning found in “Interpretation”, because critical history discov-
ers something that, up to then, has been merely “experimented” and
“understood”, but not properly “known”21. By giving to the functional
specialty “History” a specific goal and result, Lonergan did not intend
to affirm that “History” only accomplishes the operations of the corre-
sponding consciousness level. Within every specialty, all the opera-
tions of the four levels of consciousness are in act22, but the opera-
tions of the other three levels have to be considered as functional to
the purposes of the specialty of the main level taken into account.
That is why the historian operates also at the second level, that of
intelligence (understanding), but the historical intelligence is here at
the service of the superior and specific goal: judging (rational
knowledge) how facts had really developed. Hence the same histori-
cal intelligence cannot be compared to the intelligence or understand-
ing proper of “Interpretation”. The goal of “Interpretation” is to un-
derstand what the authors meant, while the intelligence of “History”,
overcoming the intentions of authors, wants to understand the object
to which the sources referred.
     Lonergan recalled some meaningful points in order to clarify the
peculiarity of historical intelligence. First, it is necessary to identify


20
   Lonergan conceived the same reorganization of the testimonies as a simple re-
edition of the historical experience, and not as a historical knowledge. He believed
that only by this knowledge it is possible to grasp the evidence of the testimonies
and then to establish what was really happening (see Lonergan, 2017b: 175). How-
ever, arguing that by the only search for evidence the contemporary (or the histori-
an) produces a mere “re-edition” of historical experience, Lonergan seems not to
recognize the fact that the heuristic phase already represents a distance away and
an interpretation of the historical experience. Any contemporary (or historian) al-
ways selects the material according to personal interests.
21
   Cf. Ib.: 182.
22
   For example, Lonergan recognized that the interpreter also operates at the four
levels of consciousness, experimenting, understanding, judging, and evaluating;
nevertheless, the purpose of the interpretation, according Lonergan, remains to
understand the meaning of a text (see Ib.: 158).



                                                                                  207
Giuseppe Guglielmi, Lonergan’s Theory of Historiography




authors and set them in their space and time, to study their environ-
ment, to verify which goals they had in their writing, who their read-
ers were, which their sources were and what use they did of them.
This is a step to the first goal of the historical intelligence, that is to
understand what the authors of the sources intended to do and how
they did it. From this result, it was possible for Lonergan to face the
proper object of the historical intelligence: “understanding the pro-
cess referred to in one’s sources” and so “determining [judgment]
what was going forward in the community”23. This passage from the
historical intelligence to the historical judgment occurs through a self-
correcting learning process: a combination of questions, intellections,
conjectures and images gives origin to further questions, to a more
accurate selection of the testimonial evidences and to further intellec-
tions resulting from the obtained historical discoveries. New connec-
tions and interconnected entireties come out gradually, the arrange-
ment process goes on more and more; intellections are no more vul-
nerable24 and the historical research comes to an end. If no further
questions are presented, the historian can “affirm” that, on the basis
of what turned out to him, the issue is closed. However, this assertion
occurs only by the operation of the rational judgment. Only the histo-
rian is able to detach himself from the personalities and their inten-
tions, in order to establish (historical judgment) what has happened
in a group or in a community. At this point, one of the cornerstones
of Lonergan’s theory comes out clearly: the difference between the
goal of interpretation and that of history, a difference that plunges its
roots in Lonergan’s epistemological theory that does not exchange




23
     Ib.: 177.
24
     On vulnerable and invulnerable insights, cf. Lonergan, 1992: 309.



208
                                                       Critical Hermeneutics, 3 (2019)




understanding (Verstand) with the faculty of judgment, but distin-
guishes understanding from judging25.
       From these Lonergan’s statements about historical knowledge
based on the rational judgment, it is easy to recognize the peculiar
influence of the Thomistic philosophy, in particular of the judgment
grasping the absolute and unconditioned aspect of an object of think-
ing (concept). Furthermore, we may consider the wider plan of the
functional specialties of Method in Theology, which also includes the
four    specialties   “Foundations”,      “Doctrines”,     “Systematics”,        and
“Communications”, all devised by Lonergan as specific cases of theol-
ogy26. At this point, we think that these last four specialties condi-
tioned the elaboration of the specialties of the first phase, those hav-
ing the task to meet the past and a value not only for the theological
matter. Actually, the theological concern to mediate the Christian
message into the present cultural context, that is the systematic and
pastoral perspective of theology, not only brought Lonergan to dupli-
cate the functional specialties when referring to the theological
knowledge, but also prevailed over the previous specialties “Re-
search”, “Interpretation”, “History”, and “Dialectic”, assigning them
concerns in some way opposed to their character and making the
positive knowledge connected to these specialties subordinate or ori-
ented to the theological reflection.
       But this is just the point: if “History” (like the other three spe-
cialties of the first phase) was just a regional area of interest within
the wider metaphysic horizon, Lonergan could not but set the histori-
cal knowledge within this specific architecture of knowledge. A mean-


25
   “Understanding grasps in given or imagined presentations an intelligible form
emergent in the presentations. Conception formulates the grasped idea along with
what is essential to the idea in the presentations. Reflection asks whether such un-
derstanding and formulation are correct. Judgment answers that they are or are
not.” (Lonergan, 1992: 300).
26
   See above, note 10.



                                                                                  209
Giuseppe Guglielmi, Lonergan’s Theory of Historiography




ingful validation on this matter can be found in an image used in
Method in Theology to define the task of “History”:


      In military terms history is concerned, not just with the op-
      posing commanders’ plan of the battle, not just with the ex-
      periences of the battle had by each soldier and officer, but
      with the actual course of the battle as the resultant of con-
      flicting plans now successfully and now unsuccessfully exe-
      cuted (Lonergan, 2017b: 168).


      We may transpose this statement in terms of the isomorphism
elaborated in Insight between the acts of knowledge and the ontolog-
ical structure of every kind of reality proportioned to the knowledge
process. Then, this statement means that, as through the judgment
the subject overcomes the data collected from experience (potency)
and the hypotheses of intelligence (form) in order to catch the reality
just like it “is” (act), so through the historical judgment we go beyond
“Research”, which collects the personal evidence of the soldiers and
the officials about the battle, and beyond “Interpretation”, which col-
lects the meanings intended and planned by each single chief, in or-
der to catch the “actual” development of the battle.
      The image of the battle unequivocally sets Lonergan’s theoretical
standing about historiography, and at the same time allows some
basic observations and objections. First of all, it reconfirms a well cir-
cumscribed idea of “Interpretation”, divergent from an ontological
idea of hermeneutics. Secondly, by insisting on the judgment that
catches the actual development of the battle, Lonergan seems to
wink just at the objectivistic idea of historiography, especially in its
positivist version, from which he had tried to distance himself. Finally,
having considered the metaphysical ground on which Lonergan based
the functional specialty “History”, we have to acknowledge that Lon-



210
                                                  Critical Hermeneutics, 3 (2019)




ergan’s historiographical theory involves an excess of the transcen-
dental over history, and so it moves towards an epistemological phi-
losophy of history rather than on the way of the historiography prac-
ticed by historians. Therefore, historians’ historiography seems to
move towards other directions compared to this epistemological phi-
losophy of history, which insists specifically on the rational judgment.
In general the historians deal with disciplinary epistemology (method,
approach to sources, historical knowability), even in its different ori-
entations. They are more interested in the interpretation criteria that
is the traceability of a reenactment. For this reason, historiography
generally puts in the focus the matter of criteria and procedures used
in the reenactment, which, in turn, must necessarily be visible to the
reader; it does not consider the historical interpretation subordinate
to the historical knowledge. In addition, it is just from this metaphys-
ical background that we understand the different historiographical
codifications so frequent in Lonergan’s works. For instance, think
about the organization of history in “autobiography and biography”
(objectification of living or experiential history), “pre-critical history”,
“critical history”, and “evaluative history”. It is an organization in
compliance with the four levels of consciousness on which Lonergan’s
transcendental method is based.


4. The question of values in history
If, through the self-corrective and cumulative learning process, “His-
tory” reaches what Lonergan elsewhere calls the “universal view-
point” 27 compared to the fragmented data and various interpreta-
tions, therefore establishing the way past events actually occurred,
could the wide Lonergan’s project be considered as concluded? Not
properly. Recalling and explaining some statements of Meinecke and


27
     Cf. Lonergan, 1992: 587-591.



                                                                             211
Giuseppe Guglielmi, Lonergan’s Theory of Historiography




Becker,28 Lonergan carried on his thought wondering if history, in ad-
dition to determine what had happened in the past (judgments of
fact), should also give judgments of value about the same events.
Actually, with this question related to the values within historiograph-
ical research, Lonergan did not intend to merely take part in the dis-
cussion raised by historicism, but rather to close the wider project
begun with the previous functional specialties. “Research”, “Interpre-
tation”, and “History” aimed at an encounter with the past, and did
not set moral, social, or cultural goals, at least in a direct way. How-
ever, as, according to Lonergan, the difference between judgments of
fact (rational level) and judgments of value (moral level) is already
operative in the subject (while the decision justified by value is not an
arbitrary operation, because it is based on the spontaneous and
structured relationship between rational and existential conscious-
ness), the historian himself cannot stop his work at the only critical
history (rational judgment), but he rather goes beyond the mere as-
certainment of facts, up to the evaluation of facts (value judgment).
Therefore, the meeting with the past cannot be complete if, in addi-
tion to history that understands the events, this one will not be fol-
lowed by a history that could evaluate the results, distinguishing the
good from the evil. “Research”, “Interpretation”, and “History”



28
   “Friedrich Meinecke has said that every historical works is concerned both with
causal connections and with values but that most historians tend to be occupied
principally either with causal connections or with values. Moreover, he claimed that
history, as concerned with values, ‘… gives us the content, wisdom, and signposts
of our lives’. Carl Becker went even further. He wrote: ‘The value of history is … not
scientific but moral: by liberating the mind, by deepening the sympathies, by forti-
fying the will, it enables us to control, not society, but ourselves – a much more
important thing; it prepares us to live more humanely in the present and to meet
rather than to foretell the future’” (Lonergan, 2017b: 230–231). Lonergan refers
here in particular to the essay of F. Meinecke, Kausalitäten und Werte in der Ges-
chichte (1928), that he read in the English translation of F. Stern (1956: 267–288).
Regarding Carl L. Becker, Lonergan takes up here a statement quoted by Ch. W.
Smith (1956: 117). For the writings of Becker, Lonergan refers to their collection
edited by Ph.L. Snyder (1958).



212
                                                 Critical Hermeneutics, 3 (2019)




    approach but do not achieve an encounter with the past. They
    make the data available, they clarify what was meant, they nar-
    rate what occurred. Encounter is more. It is meeting persons,
    appreciating the values they represent, criticizing their defects,
    and allowing one’s living to be challenged at its very roots by
    their words and by their deeds (Lonergan, 2017b: 232).


    According to Lonergan, we can only realize this operation by a
further integration represented by the evaluative history actualized
by “Dialectic”, which examines the vagueness of the human process-
es, both of the past human beings and the historians themselves.
Therefore, all the specialized fields of the historical studies have to be
employed in a continuous and always unfinished endeavor of media-
tion of the universal history. “Research”, “Interpretation”, “History”,
and “Dialectic” take part to the development of the historical life (his-
toricity) and, in particular, “critical history” and “evaluative history”
operate a critical and evaluative objectification and mediation of the
original vital and dramatic history. So, Lonergan could affirm the rel-
evance of the evaluative history within the scientific history just on
the basis of an ontological concept of history, which deepens its roots
in the metaphysical position according to which the being is at the
same time intelligible, true, and good. Ontology of history and meta-
physical reflection let Lonergan put in succession judgment of fact
(rational) and judgment of value about the events and the personali-
ties of the past. Therefore, the evaluation did not appear an intrusion
operated by the historian, because it corresponds both to the onto-
logical structure of reality with its transcendental peculiarities (verum
et bonum) and to the relationship between the human being’s good-
ness (reality) and the historian’s judgment of value.




                                                                            213
Giuseppe Guglielmi, Lonergan’s Theory of Historiography




5. Historical objectivity between perspectivism and universal
viewpoint
Difference between interpretation and history; peculiarity of the his-
torical intelligence; unconditioned character of judgment; need of an
evaluative history: weren’t all these characteristics overabundant to
be conferred to historiography? Going on in our reading of Method in
Theology, especially chapter nine entitled History and the Historians,
it doesn’t seem risky to assume that Lonergan himself asked this
question. In these pages, in fact, we can feel a kind of awareness of
how problematic and incomplete was the historical knowledge. This
might be the reason that brought Lonergan to report in these pages
all the issues which had been discussed in the Methodenstreit, started
in Germany between XIX and XX century and of which he interpreted
the event through the reading (but not only) of authors such as
Rothacker and Heussi. In particular, Lonergan adopted from Heussi
his debate about the positivists’ tendencies, the ascertainment of the
limitedness and complexity of history, as well as of the historian’s
conditionings (language, education, environment), which determined
a rule of perspective (point of view) in the historical survey29.
        By examining such problems, Lonergan came to a more deter-
mined ontological conception of history, interpreted as a great pro-
cess within which the historian’s very personal development is inte-
grated. According to Lonergan, the general process of history and the
individual historian’s development give origin to a series of different
points of view, from which different selective processes are clarified.
In turn, different histories take shape from the different selective
processes; such different histories, even if they are not contradictory,
do not provide a complete knowledge and explanation of the histori-
cal facts, but only incomplete and approximate portraits of a tremen-


29
     Cf. Ib.: 203–204.



214
                                                       Critical Hermeneutics, 3 (2019)




dously complex reality. 30 In this way Lonergan, on one side, em-
braced an ontological concept of history as an ongoing process, a
kind of space from which the historian himself comes and to which
relates himself, but, on the other side, he also did not define this pro-
cess idealistically, because he did not mention an intellect able to
bend and direct the tangible historical flux to the fulfillment of a re-
condite sense. However, it is also true that the uncertain outcomes of
perspectivism, more in detail the Sinngebung as subjective ascribing
of meaning, put Lonergan in precarious balance in relation to his con-
cept of objective knowledge of the past. So he had to clarify:


     In saying that historian cannot escape his background […] I
     am not retracting in any way what previously I said about
     the “ecstatic” character of developing historical insight,
     about the historian’s ability to move out of the viewpoint of
     his place and time and come to understand and appreciate
     the mentality and the values of another place and time.
     Finally, I am not implying that historians with different
     background cannot come to understand one another and so
     move from diverging to converging views on the past
     (Lonergan, 2017b: 206)31.


     This position is very revealing of the concept of historicity to
which Lonergan had come during his career; this concept did not
involve the declaration of a radical finitude of the human being, of a



30
   Each historian, performing his researches starting from his own context, raises
questions different from those of other historians, and describes the results of his
investigation (historical narration) in a different way. Thus, according to Lonergan
history remains an open cumulative process; by its gradual advancement, the con-
text within which events have to be understood widens. In turn, by the progressive
enlargement of the context, the perspectives also change (see Ib.: 179-180).
31
   Ib.: 204-205.



                                                                                  215
Giuseppe Guglielmi, Lonergan’s Theory of Historiography




distrust in the possibility to reach an objective knowledge. 32 From the
theoretical premises of the historicity of thought and action, Lonergan
inferred


      1) that human concepts, theories, affirmations, courses of
      actions are expressions of human understanding, 2) that
      human      understanding        develops      over   time   and,   as   it
      develops, human concepts, theories, affirmations, courses
      of action change, 3) that such change is cumulative, and 4)
      that cumulative changes in one place or time are not to be
      expected to coincide with those in another (Lonergan, 2017b:
      302)33.


      Nevertheless, this description of historicity did not base an idea
of perspective subjectivity, to which the search of regulative criteria
for the development of historical world and of knowledge (judgment)
of the past is precluded. On the contrary, Lonergan’s perspectivism
was not as much the statement about the historian’s inability to come
out of his ideas, as the awareness that the objectivity of knowledge
has to be reached through personal paths34.
      The discussion about perspectivism was also an indirect chance
for Lonergan to self evaluate his proposal. In fact, if historiography is
dealing with time defined individualities (institutions, places, per-
sons), Lonergan had to admit, as he actually did, a series of problem-
atic elements. First, it was necessary to consider the choice at the
base of the historian’s work. This operation, originating from the
spontaneous development of common sense and intelligence while
being influenced by the historian’s personal background, could not be

32
   On the question, see Beards, 1994.
33
   See also “Natural Right and Historical Mindedness” at 170-75 (in Lonergan,
2017a: 163-76).
34
   Cf. Lonergan, 1996b: 75-6.



216
                                                         Critical Hermeneutics, 3 (2019)




explained in its starting conditions nor in its effective realization, but
had only to be recognized in the results it produced. Consequently,
the results of historiography could not be expressed in a well-defined
system.
     Furthermore, the evolution of the historical research had to be
intended as the achievement of a deeper comprehension of particular
realities and not as the enlargement of a wider and wider system.
Therefore, if the scientist looks for a complete explanation of phe-
nomena through laws and structures that can include other phenom-
ena, the historian cannot tend to this kind of explanation because he
is dealing with particular facts that are not included in a general law.
     Finally, Lonergan had to recognize not only that the historians’
works could raise many doubts, but also that historiography itself did
not offer any other verifications except that of doing the work again.
Thus, these reflections convinced him to moderate the pretensions
conferred to critical history and to admit that, even if directed by a
method, history does not realize the method properties in the same
way as science35.


6. Some critical considerations
Purposing an essential presentation of Lonergan’s historiographical
theory, we opted for a reconstruction of the basic theoretical cruxes
of his thought. Obviously this implied not only a deeper care to his
main works, but also a lack of space for the comparison he estab-
lished with some of the most representative historians of the last two

35
   It should be remembered the definition of “method” proposed by Lonergan: “A
method is a normative pattern of recurrent and related operations yielding cumula-
tive and progressive results” (Lonergan ,2017b: 8). However, in relation to the his-
tory Lonergan wrote: “Finally, while it can be said that history is a science in the
sense that it is guided by a method, that that method yields univocal answers when
identical questions are put, and that the results of historical investigations are cu-
mulative, still it has to be acknowledged that these properties of method are not
realized in the same manner in history and in the natural and the human sciences”
(Ib.: 207). See “The Philosophy of History” at 56-7 (in Lonergan, 1996a: 54-79).



                                                                                    217
Giuseppe Guglielmi, Lonergan’s Theory of Historiography




centuries. But, if we do not want to be attracted to lock his theory in
an abstract cage, we consider worthwhile, at the end of this work, to
recall some questions Lonergan expressed in Method in Theology,
from which we may perceive how he felt the limit of his theory.
      His observations about the complexity of a reconstruction of his-
torical events, about the individuality of history that cannot be easily
turned into what we could see as a new mathesis universalis, mostly
raised doubts and induced Lonergan to resize his ambitious project of
a universal mediation of the past.
      This impression strengthens if we also reflect on the architecture
of Method in Theology. It arouses curiosity the fact that a well-
organized work, which seems not to leave anything hanging (thanks
to Lonergan’s analytic style), which up to “History” develops coher-
ently by assigning a singular specialty to each chapter, all at once
breaks its harmonic rhythm to introduce a piece not properly ex-
pected: History and Historians. Lonergan, in fact, had just finished
the chapter about “History” and it would have been congruent to ex-
pect a chapter about “Dialectic”. Why, then, a further chapter about
History and Historians? Mere editorial choice, or rather a warning that
the “assault on the citadel”36 would not be so feasible, because the
historical knowledge raises more questions than solutions? And, more
specifically, why did Lonergan insist on distinctions, acknowledge
some difficulties, declare the inexhaustibility and complexity of the
problems raised by the historical knowledge?
      This uncertainty became even thicker in the following years.
Within a series of lessons held in 1976 at the Queen’s University
(Kingston, Canada) on the topic “Religious Studies and Theology”,



36
   In a conference at St. Paul’s Seminary of Pittsburgh (1968), Lonergan enthusias-
tically affirmed: “Transcendental method is the assault on the citadel: it is posses-
sion of the basic method, and all other methods are just so many extensions and
adaptations of it”. See “The Future of Thomism” at 46 (in Lonergan, 2016: 39–47).



218
                                                          Critical Hermeneutics, 3 (2019)




Lonergan spoke about an “end of the age of innocence” 37 . The
acknowledgement by the modern thought of the complex net of
thoughts, passions, actions, interests, religious options, social pres-
sures and dialectic contrasts, which make up the subject in his histor-
ical condition, was the symptom of the sunset of the concept of man
as master of himself and author of his destiny. Furthermore, accord-
ing to Lonergan the historical consciousness itself had caused a clear
awareness of the historicity of the human life, of the plurality and di-
versity of the existing cultures, and of the differences between the
present cultures and the past ones. Nevertheless, he concluded that,
even if historicism and hermeneutics had freed the human spirit from
dogmas and preconceptions of the past, they had not been able to
orient human judgments and choices, imposing, in this way, the
ghost of relativism.38 Therefore, it is easy to understand why the Ca-
nadian philosopher insisted on the rational knowledge and on the
need to formulate judgments able to budge from the spiritual lethar-
gy where scholarship and hermeneutics had closed the human spir-
it39.
        These statements reveal the mood of a no longer young scholar.
If, on one side, Lonergan still believed in the metaphysical and tran-
scendental foundation of the specialties in which he had included the

37
   “The end of the age of innocence means that authenticity is never to be taken for
granted” (Lonergan, 2017a: 151).
38
   “[...] if individual subjectivity is understood to mean the subject as correlative to
the world of immediacy, then [...] individual subjectivity, so far from offering a se-
cure foundation, gives rise to serious doubts and well-founded uneasiness [...]
shortcomings of individuals can become the accepted practice of the group [...
which] can become the tradition accepted in good faith by succeeding generations
[...]” (Ib.: 145–146).
39
   Already in the previous decade (1965), on a conference held at the Marquette
University of Milwaukee, Lonergan declared: “But the vast modern effort to under-
stand meaning in all its manifestations has not been matched by a comparable ef-
fort in judging meaning. The effort to understand is the common task of unnum-
bered scientists and scholars. But judging and deciding are left to the individual,
and he finds his plight desperate. There is far too much to be learnt before he could
begin to judge. Yet judge he must and decide he must if he is to exist, if he is to be
a man.” See “Dimensions of Meaning” at 244 (in Lonergan, 1988: 232–245).



                                                                                     219
Giuseppe Guglielmi, Lonergan’s Theory of Historiography




positive knowledges, on the other side, this solution does not seem to
make him free from any doubt. Anyway, it is true that he could not,
nor had to, travel until the end and analyse the rifts impressed on his
system by the historical consciousness. He could not, because he was
already losing his forces; he had not to, because he had reached a
“cultural synthesis” just in the middle of that general mood of disor-
der and discussion where the Catholic theology had entered in the
twenty years period after the Vatican II Council.




References
Beards, A. (1994). “Reversing Historical Skepticism: Bernard Lon-
ergan on the Writing of History”, History and Theory 33: 198-219.
Croce, B. (1921). Theory and History of Historiography, tr. by D.
Ainslie, London: George G. Harrap & Company.
Doran, R.M. (1990). Theology and the Dialectics of History, Toronto:
University of Toronto.
Doran, R.M. (2005). What is Systematic Theology?, Toronto: Univer-
sity of Toronto.
Doran, R.M. (2012). The Trinity in History: A Theology of the Divine
Missions, Toronto: University of Toronto.
Guglielmi, G. (2015). L’incontro con il passato. Storiografia e filosofia
della storia in Bernard Lonergan, Trapani: Il Pozzo di Giacobbe.
Lonergan, B. (1988). Collection: Papers by Bernard Lonergan, ed. F.E.
Crowe and R.M. Doran, CWL 4, Toronto: University of Toronto.
Lonergan, B. (1992). Insight. A Study of Human Understanding, eds.
F.E. Crowe and R.M. Doran, CWL 3, Toronto: University of Toronto.
Lonergan, B. (1996a). Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-
1964, eds. R.C. Croken, F.E. Crowe and R.M. Doran, CWL 6, Toronto:
University of Toronto.
Lonergan, B. (1996b). Philosophical and Theological Papers 1965-



220
                                                Critical Hermeneutics, 3 (2019)




1980, eds. R.C. Croken and R.M. Doran, CWL 17, Toronto: University
of Toronto.
Lonergan, B. (2000). Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the
Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, eds. F.E. Crowe and R.M. Doran,
CWL 1, Toronto: University of Toronto.
Lonergan, B. (2016). A Second Collection, eds. R.M. Doran and J.D.
Dadosky, CWL 13, Toronto: University of Toronto.
Lonergan, B. (2017a). A Third Collection, eds. R.M. Doran and J.D.
Dadosky, CWL 16, Toronto: University of Toronto.
Lonergan, B. (2017b). Method in Theology, eds. R.M. Doran and J.D.
Dadosky, CWL 14, Toronto: University of Toronto.
McPartland, Th.J. (2001). Lonergan and the Philosophy of Historical
Existence, Columbia: University of Missouri.
McPartland, Th.J. (2010). Lonergan and Historiography. The Episte-
mological Philosophy of History, Columbia: University of Missouri.
Smith, Ch.W. (1956). Carl Becker: on History and the Climate of
Opinion, Ithaca: Cornell University.
Snyder, Ph.L. (1958). Detachment and the Writings of History: Essay
and Letters of Carl L. Becker, Ithaca: Cornell University.
Stern, F. (1956). The Varieties of History: from Voltaire to the Pre-
sent, New York: Meridian Books.




                                                                           221
Giuseppe Guglielmi, Lonergan’s Theory of Historiography




222
