Why is Bernard Lonergan’s ‘Insight’ so hard to read? Simple, it is irredeemably abstract and he tends to offer congeries of ‘places’ eg. in the 26th place. When you offer a generalised Empirical Method anything as a good Aristotelian/Thomist that which is generalised must have been abstracted from a number of instances. No actual instances are offered, you have to bring your own. This is not mnemonic, indeed it has a stultifying effect. Just saying, but I will continue to dip in here and there and get back to you.
I image Etienne Gilson, that master of clarity had trouble with him on the matter of Realism. The Critical Realism that seems to start with the mind was a bete noir of his:
“There is an empirical consciousness characteristic of sensing, perceiving, imagining. As the content of these acts is merely presented or represented, so the awareness immanent in the acts is the mere givenness of the acts”. (322-324 Insight)
‘Presented’ or ‘represented’ seems hedging or imprecision at best. ‘Content of the acts’ contrasted with the ‘mere givenness of the acts’. How is that done?
