Word: thinker
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...Karl Marx blueprinted the political upheavals of the 20th century in the reading room of the British Museum; Soren Kierkegaard's fiery polemics, scorned by the sturdy burghers of Copenhagen, are the foundation of existentialism. Today, a number of Roman Catholic intellectuals believe that a little-known thinker of commensurate stature has been patiently laying some philosophical land mines for the future. He is Canadian Jesuit Bernard Joseph Francis Lonergan, 60, whose followers assert that history may reckon him a mind to rank with Aquinas and Newman...
...Nature of Knowing. Lonergan is not an easy thinker to appreciate. His dense, elliptical prose, studded with references to Thomas Aquinas and modern physics, makes its points in a methodical and mind-wearying manner. One typical passage hammers home a conclusion with: "In the thirty-first place . . ." Another problem is Lonergan's disinterest in hurrying his ideas into print, or giving them wide circulation. Many of his most important lectures exist only in Latin mimeographed notes made by his students; like the late Ludwig Wittgenstein of Cambridge, his reputation rests on the memories and convictions of his peers...
...nature of human insight, how it relates to its various forms of expression, whether in the formulas of the physicist, the word pictures of the poet, the concepts of the philosopher. Insight, say Lonergan's followers, spells out the possibility of a transcultural philosophy that would allow thinkers from different traditions-Thomists and logical positivists, for example-to understand one another by paying attention first to each other's basic cognitional activity: how one unifies data, why he does so in a particular fashion. To understand someone else, says Lonergan, a thinker must first understand...
...spread beyond the seminary. He has widened the horizon of some of the best priestly minds of this generation. He has even made converts on the faculty of the Greg, and one doctoral student there says: "Not since Robert Bellarmine have so many been influenced by one Roman thinker." But if Lonergan does turn out to be one of the memorable shapers of Christian thought, it will take another generation of thinkers exploring his insights to prove it. As another of his students puts it: "He's still 38 years ahead of his time...
...concern with morality carries him into the religious realm, Hammarskjold becomes infinitely more interesting, both as a thinker and as a man, for it soon becomes clear that the former Secretary-General was a throughgoing mystic inclined toward asceticism. Although his outlook will hardly appeal to all readers, those who can accept the tenets of Hammarskjold's faith-they are not accessible to reason-will respond strongly to his observations on selflessness and love...