Masochism for over-achievers

2003-06-24 - 11:56 p.m.

To dull the pain of losing so much writing, I've decided to plunge into some light summer reading, and so am now reading a book from a course that Pookie took last year, called "Method in Theology," by Bernard Lonergan. I may have mentioned it a couple of times last year, and it's kind of the inspiration for what I hope to do when I eventually go back to university, which is developing a "Method in Social Change" or "Method in Activism".

Method in Theology is Lonergan's attempt to develop a method, uh, for theology. Basically, he wants a "normative pattern of recurrent and related operations [that yeild] progressive and cumulative results." Just as scientific method provides a generic tool for people to learn about the world (observe, hypothesize, experiment, repeat), Lonergan is attempting (or attempted - he died years ago) to create a similar tool for theologians, but also to develop a more abstract method of looking at...er...method.

Okay, so if you think that I'm bonkers, here's an excerpt from the book:

"To apply the operations as intentional to the operations as conscious is a fourfold matter of (1)experiencing one's experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding, (2) understanding the unity and relations of one's experienced experiencing, understanding, judging, deciding, (3) affirming the reality of one's experienced and understood experiencing, understanding, judging, deciding and (4) deciding to operate in accord with the norms immanent in the spontaneous relatedness of one's experienced, understood, affirmed experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding." (p15)

The whole book is written like this, so far as I can tell.

And maybe I'm a masochist, but I'm really enjoying this, even if that paragraph gives me a headache. Try it! It's fun!

Cheers,

The Magus

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