Descartes Rationale

Whereas with Descartes I first provided a brief review of his philosophy (particularly the cogito), then explored secondary sources that posit Ignatian influence, I will here both briefly review Lonergan’s philosophy (particularly the “self-affirmation of the knower” ) and suggest traces of Ignatian influence. My rationale for focusing on the self-affirmation of the knower is that it contains the most traces of Ignatian influence, and it overlaps with Descartes’s cogito, thus allowing readers of this study to consider ways in which the two thinkers differently appropriate Ignatian ideas and practices. In service of this, I will also review Lonergan’s own assessment of Descartes.
Lonergan maintains that his account of the structure immanent
As Lonergan explains,
Against the self-affirmation of a consciousness that at once is empirical, intellectual, and rational, there stands the native bewilderment of the existential subject, revolted by mere animality, unsure of his way through the maze of philosophies, trying to live without a known purpose, suffering despite an unmotivated will, threatened with inevitable death and, before death, with disease and even insanity.
Lonergan encourages the reader to bracket these phenomena so as to fall wholly into the pure desire to know—more specifically, wholly into the intellectual pattern of experience. Lonergan acknowledges that “no one remains in [the intellectual pattern of experience] permanently,” but one can remain in it long enough to achieve the self-affirmation of the knower. In a way, the goal of Insight is to prompt the reader to discover “the self of our self-affirmation.” Such a self has distinguished and gained control over the biological pattern of experience, for the unconscious mixture of that pattern with the intellectual pattern produces “confusion and error on the notions of reality, objectivity, and knowledge.” This procedure has similarities to the overcoming of “inordinate attachments” that Ignatius calls for at the outset of the
The self-affirmation of the knower obviously takes place within the subject, but subduing the dramatic pattern implies that it should also take place in seclusion—another Ignatian theme. Interestingly, Lonergan himself seemed to thrive intellectually in situations of seclusion, such as during a 1933 summer vacation at Loyola Island, Kingston. Mathews reproduces a comment made by John Swain, who was lodging in the same location: “The area was marshy, the mosquitoes bad, so lights did not go on in the evening. But Bernie could be heard night after night typing through the twilight and into the dark.” At the same time, one finds the value of seclusion balanced in the later Lonergan’s statement, “In the main it is not by introspection but by reflecting on our living in common with others that we come to know