Understanding and Being: The Halifax Lectures on Insight, Volume 5

Bernard Lonergan

Sept 1990 · Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan Book 5 · University of Toronto Press

About this eBook

Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984) was a noted Canadian philosopher and theologian. He devoted his life to articulating a generalized method of inquiry and its implications, not only for the human and natural sciences, but also for a better world and a higher quality of human life. His own clear vision showed him the need to overcome the terrible fragmentation of knowledge and life in our time. The struggle to achieve an integrated view is the theme that unified the body of his work.

In the history of that struggle, Understanding and Being plays a central role. Published a year after his profound and complex Insight, it is the edited transcription of some thirty hours of Lonergan's lectures on that seminal book. Understanding and Being serves as a guide to the very challenging terrain of Insight, or, as one commentator put it, if Insight is the Everest in the range of Lonergan's works, Understanding and Being is the approach through rolling foothills.

This edition, the second, incorporates more of the historical setting in the text and adds a wealth of explanatory notes, as well as previously unedited discussions that followed the lectures.

About the author

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 member of the International Theological Commission by Pope Paul VI.

Elizabeth A. Morelli is an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy, Loyola Marymount University.

Mark D. Morelli is a professor in the Department of Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University. He is author of Philosophy's Place in Culture: A Model. He co-edited the first edition of Bernard Lonergan's Understanding and Being and collaborated on the more recent augmented and revised edition.