{"id":277,"date":"2011-12-17T15:45:30","date_gmt":"2011-12-17T15:45:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/?p=277"},"modified":"2011-12-18T13:51:16","modified_gmt":"2011-12-18T13:51:16","slug":"var-_gaq-_gaq-_gaq-push_setaccount-ua-25646250-2-_gaq-push_trackpageview-function-var-ga-document-createelementscript-ga-type-textjava-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/?p=277","title":{"rendered":"<script type=\"text\/javascript\">    var _gaq = _gaq || [];   _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-25646250-2']);   _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);    (function() {     var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text\/javascript'; ga.async = true;     ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https:\/\/ssl' : 'http:\/\/www') + '.google-analytics.com\/ga.js';     var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);   })();  <\/script>  <\/heat> Horizons &#8211; The Way Our Worlds Are Related &#8211; Bernard Lonergan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;ve been following our conversations, one thing \u00a0is clear in our group and may be less clear online, we don&#8217;t all agree. \u00a0If you&#8217;re interested in learning why, coming to understand how our worlds relate can be a big help. \u00a0A cautionary note: Fr. Lonergan&#8217;s presentation below is at one and the same time very concrete but heuristic, by &#8220;heuristic&#8221; I mean that the categories of thought are given but the discernment of the content of those categories in each case has to be supplied by you and only you can do it.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the be most revealing of his categories is how he talks about horizons that are &#8220;dialectically opposed.&#8221; \u00a0Most noteworthy are the motives he identifies as being ascribe to someone whose world is &#8220;dialectically opposed&#8221; to ours. \u00a0&#8220;The other position is ascribed to wishful thinking, the acceptance\u00a0 of myth, ignorance or fallacy, blindness or illusion, backwardness or immaturity, infidelity, bad will or a refusal of God&#8217;s grace.&#8221; Do any of these words speak to you about those whom you truly disagree with? Would you be willing to share your thoughts?<\/p>\n<p>Reflecting on this one sentence may give us a clue as to why it is so hard to hear the other who really differs from us. \u00a0Paying attention to when we ascribe such motives to the other and then realizing what we are doing can become a\u00a0tool to help us rise to the level of our times.<\/p>\n<p>You can listen to Fr. Lonergan&#8217;s description of the notion of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/2011\/12\/Horizon.mp3\">Horizon<\/a>\u00a0or you can read the transcript.<\/p>\n<p>Horizon is the line where earth and sky apparently meet.\u00a0 It comes from the Greek &#8220;\u1f41\u03c1\u03af\u03b6\u03c9\u03bd \u03ba\u03cd\u03ba\u03bb\u03bf\u03c2&#8221; (<em>horiz\u014dn kyklos<\/em>), &#8220;bounding circle.&#8221;\u00a0 It recedes when we advance and closes in behind us.\u00a0 It divides objects into visible now and not now visible according to one&#8217;s standpoint.\u00a0 As one moves about one standpoint changes and the objects that are within one\u2019s horizon change.\u00a0 What\u2019s within one\u2019s horizon is now accessible to vision, what\u2019s beyond one\u2019s horizon one can\u2019t now possibly see.<\/p>\n<p>So much for the literal sense but besides the literal sense there\u2019s also a metaphorical or analogous sense.\u00a0 As the range of our vision so our interest and our knowledge are limited. Within our horizon, within the world of our interest and knowledge, there is all we care for, know about to some extent great or small.\u00a0 What\u2019s beyond our horizon is what we know nothing about and care less. Horizons may be compared in three ways.\u00a0 They may complement one another, they may be related genetically, they may be opposed dialectically.<\/p>\n<p>First complementary horizons, there are different interests, skills, knowledge, in workmen, foremen, supervisors, technicians, engineers, managers, doctors, lawyers, professors and so on.\u00a0 But each knows about the others.\u00a0 Each has some general idea what the other does.\u00a0 Each recognizes the need for the others.\u00a0 And no one is willing to take up the other fellows work and do it for him.\u00a0 Together they constitute a common world.\u00a0 Each compliments the other.\u00a0 Each knows something about the others.\u00a0 Together they work together within a common world.\u00a0 Yet the focus, the what is fully understood and fully a matter of interest varies from one man to the next.\u00a0 Their horizons are complementary.<\/p>\n<p>Genetic horizons are related to one another as successive stages in some process of development.\u00a0 The later includes the earlier but diverges from it, dropping some elements, changing others, adding still others.\u00a0 They\u2019re not complimentary because they&#8217;re not simultaneous.\u00a0 They are parts of the same biography or the same history.<\/p>\n<p>Horizons may be <strong>dialectically opposed.<\/strong>\u00a0 Then each has some awareness of the others but this inclusion is also a rejection and a condemnation.\u00a0 The other position is ascribed to wishful thinking, the acceptance\u00a0 of myth, ignorance or fallacy, blindness or illusion, backwardness or immaturity, infidelity, bad will or a refusal of God&#8217;s grace.\u00a0 Rejection may be passionate and then suggestion that one should cultivate openness makes one furious, But the rejection may also have the firmness of ice without an trace of passion except perhaps a wand smile.\u00a0 \u00a0Both genocide and astrology may be beyond the pale.\u00a0 But the former is excoriated, the latter is ignored or merely amuses. So we\u2019ve compared horizons in three different ways, as complementary &#8211; parts of a single world, as genetically related &#8211; one arises from the other but differs from it and as dialectically opposed.<\/p>\n<p>Horizons also differ in their structures.\u00a0 In the first place horizons are structured.\u00a0 Learning is not just an addition to an already acquired store but rather an organic growth out of what already is known.\u00a0 And so there is always context.\u00a0 Our intentions, our statements, our deeds all occur within context.\u00a0 And it is to context we appeal when we explain our deeds.\u00a0 What are you doing?\u00a0 What are you up to? When we clarify and amplify, qualify our statements.\u00a0 What I really meant I was this.\u00a0 And you appeal to the context within which you made your judgments.\u00a0 Or when you explain your goals you give a context.\u00a0 Husserl who did terrifically delicate analyses of everything practically said that to describe even a single perception without any mention of the comprehensive horizon of a world and its encompassing frame of reference was to give a mutilated account of the perception.\u00a0 All our acts of our intentional consciousness are within the context of their past in a movement towards their future.<\/p>\n<p>Further regulative of our learning is our interest.\u00a0 We take the trouble to attend and learn in accord with the values we respect and the satisfactions we prize.\u00a0 But the values that are respected and the satisfactions that are prized can vary from age to age, group to group, man to man, and within the lifetime of each one of us.\u00a0 So that the variation of horizons from the context from which they&#8217;re built up in learning and the influence above all of values, values and satisfactions are a great determinants horizons give rise to different structures in the horizons.\u00a0 You can have different scales of values, you can have different values highly prized and others ignored and so on.\u00a0 And that gives rise to enormous differences in horizons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;ve been following our conversations, one thing \u00a0is clear in our group and may be less clear online, we don&#8217;t all agree. \u00a0If you&#8217;re interested in learning why, coming to understand how our worlds relate can be a big &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/?p=277\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=277"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":281,"href":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions\/281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}