Bernard Lonergan

Bernard Lonergan
Gravestone of Lonergan within the grounds of Loyola House, Guelph
Born	Bernard Joseph Francis Lonergan (1904-12-17)17 December 1904
Died	26 November 1984(1984-11-26) (aged 79)

Bernard Joseph Francis Lonergan, SJ, CC (17 December 1904 – 26 November 1984) was a Canadian Jesuit priest, philosopher, and theologian, regarded by many as one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century.

Lonergan's works include Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957) and Method in Theology (1972), as well as two studies of Thomas Aquinas, several theological textbooks, and numerous essays, including two posthumously published essays on macroeconomics. A projected 25-volume Collected Works is underway with the University of Toronto Press. He held appointments at the Pontifical Gregorian University, Regis College, Toronto, as Distinguished Visiting Professor at Boston College, and as Stillman Professor of Divinity at Harvard University.

Lonergan set out to do for human thought in our time what Thomas Aquinas had done for his own time. Aquinas had successfully applied Aristotelian thought to the service of a Christian understanding of the universe. Lonergan's program was to come to terms with modern scientific, historical, and hermeneutical thinking in a comparable way. He pursued this program in his two most fundamental works, Insight and Method in Theology.

The key to Lonergan's project is "self-appropriation," that is, the personal discovery and personal embrace of the dynamic structure of inquiry, insight, judgment, and decision. By self-appropriation, one finds in one's own intelligence, reasonableness, and responsibility the foundation of every kind of inquiry and the basic pattern of operations undergirding methodical investigation in every field.

He is often associated with his fellow Jesuits Karl Rahner, Emerich Coreth, and Joseph Marechal as a "transcendental Thomist", i.e., a philosopher who attempts to combine Thomism with certain views or methods commonly associated with Kant's transcendental idealism. However, Lonergan did not regard this label as particularly helpful for understanding his intentions.