Category: David Fleischacker

By David Fleischacker Four ideas about the generic relationship of horizontal and vertical finality stand out in Lonergan’s 1943 essay – “Finality, Love, and Marriage.” It is important to note that I have not passed much beyond exploring the first section of the 1943 essay, which makes general statements...

by David Fleischacker I have been enjoying Michael Behe’s book Darwin’s Black Box (first published in 1996, with an update in 2006).  It brings out a significant challenge in thinking through evolution and so it is worth reading. However, I do not agree with his ultimate conclusion or even his explicit...

… marriage is more an incorporation of the finality of sex than  of sex itself. (Finality, Love, Marriage, 45) On vacation, so this will be short.  Horizontal finality refers to the relationship of an initial potency to an unfolding of that potency both deductively and homogeneously on the same...

by David Fleischacker   Quick note on horizontal and vertical finality I am not going to say much on this today, simply because I am still trying to formulate my findings in a more precise manner.   In Insight, Lonergan is able to develop a formulation of horizontal and...

by David Fleischacker   As I was thinking about the meaning of a “conjoined union,” the key kind of potency in such a union is not merely finality, but a kind of realized finality. Realized because it is then sublated within the higher levels of being and/or consciousness.  The...

By David Fleischacker   In part two of this series, I mentioned that the “repetitive” element of the physical, vital, and sensitive spontaneity is differentiated into schemes of recurrence based on classical laws and statistical probabilities, and then schemes of development with one stage being not only an integrator...

By David Fleischacker Dedicated to Br. Dunstan Robidoux, OSB on his birthday Lonergan does discuss statistics within this 1943 essay, however, it is clear that he has not developed the notion of statistics to the level one finds in Insight 14 years later.  But it is not as far...

by David Fleischacker This is the second installment on a series that will give focused attention to statements and sections of Lonergan’s 1943 essay, Finality, Love, and Marriage. The focus in this blog is to highlight that fecundity and its realization belongs primarily to organistic and sensitive nature. The...

by David Fleischacker I have been re-reading “Finality, Love, and Marriage” written by Lonergan in 1943.[1] It is quite an interesting piece once you explore the details and interconnections of the work. Given the upcoming Synod of the Family in Rome, I would like to begin exploring what Lonergan...

On Holy Saturday morning at 10:30 am, we will be discussing INSIGHT, chapter 14, section 3 (Method in Metaphysics).  We will link it to METHOD IN THEOLOGY, chapter 1, section 1, as well as METHOD IN THEOLOGY, chapter 5, intro and section 1. As well, we will discuss a...