The "ins and outs" of religions love: Bernard Lonergan's pragmatics

Abstract

Recent interest in the growing field of pragmatics has inspired philosophers and theologians to rethink the problematic issue of method in connection with their own proper subject matter. Inasmuch as pragmatics deals with the relationship between language and its users, this level of reflection, particularly in its philosophical guise, evokes something more than the mere implementation or destruction of method. Indeed, I argue that one of its primary concerns is the function of method, raising questions like "How does method relate to its users?" or "To what end is method employed?" In this article I attempt to show what the benefits of such pragmatic questioning are in a climate that is not favorably disposed, by and large, toward the methodological. Moreover, I do so in connection with the thought of Canadian philosopher-theologian Bernard Lonergan (1904-84), whose emphasis on method and methodical rationality seems to disqualify him as a thinker concerned with the pragmatics of meaning.