Tuesday, July 02, 2013

Lonergan on authority

Lonergan defines authority as legitimate power and insists that legitimacy is
conferred by authenticity. Without authenticity, there may be power but the power
is not legitimate, and so there is no authority. In a similar vein, in the paper
"Religious Knowledge,"18 he asks about the source of genuine religious

much thinking
about authority reflects mythic consciousness.

Girard is the more complete thinker when it comes to the
constitution of mythic consciousness. If much contemporary thinking about authority is
still a matter of mythic consciousness, perhaps Girard even more than Lonergan has
alerted us to the danger that lies therein. For the danger is not simply in the order of
cognition. Mythic consciousness for Girard provides cover stories for human violence.


17 Bernard Lonergan, "Dialectic of Authority," in A Third Collection, ed. Frederick E. Crowe
(Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1985; London: Chapman, 1985),5-12.

18Bernard Lonergan, "Religious Knowledge," in A Third Collection, ed. Frederick E. Crowe
(Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1985; London: Chapman, 1985), 129-45.

Doran, Ignatian Themes in the Thought of Lonergan, Lonergan Workshop
19/2006   ,2006.

No comments: