Collection: Volume 4

by Bernard J.F. Lonergan, Frederick E. Crowe (Editor)

Collection contains short works that span Lonergan's work from 1943 to 1965. The papers deal with scientific, mathematical, theological, and philosophical questions, including discussions of such topics as the proper foundation of metaphysics, the form of inference, the nature of love and marriage, and the role of the university in the modern world.

Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984), a professor of theology, taught at Regis College, Harvard University, and Boston College. An established author known for his Insight and Method in Theology, Lonergan received numerous honorary doctorates, was a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1971 and was named as an original members of the International Theological Commission by Pope Paul VI.

348 pages, Paperback

First published November 10, 1993

About the author

Fr. Bernard Joseph Frances Lonergan, SJ, CC (Ph.D., Theology, Gregorian University (Rome), 1939; B.A., University of London, 1930), was an ordained Roman Catholic priest of the Jesuit order. As an economist and philosopher-theologian in the Thomist tradition, he taught at Loyola College (Montreal) (now Concordia University), Regis College (now federated within the University of Toronto), the Pontifical Gregorian University, Harvard University, and Boston College. He was named by Pope Paul VI one of the original members of the International Theological Commission.

He is the author of Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957) and Method in Theology (1972), which established what he called the Generalized Empirical Method (GEM). The University of Toronto Press is in process of publishing his work in a projected 25-volume collection edited by staff at the Lonergan Research Institute at Regis College.

"Lonergan is considered by many intellectuals to be the finest philosophic thinker of the 20th century."
—TIME Magazine

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Has a great selection of articles that do a lot to explain both Insight and Method, both in terms of the thought-processes that preceded each work and in terms of clarifying what seems more technical in each of those works. For example, the article on Cognitional Structure does a great deal to very simply summarize the basis of Insight while the article "Dimensions of Meaning" provides an inside view of some of the shifts that led to Method and how Lonergan thought them through.