Images
“Proofless, purposeless laughter can dissolve honored pretence; it can disrupt conventional humbug; it can disillusion [humans] of [our] most cherised illusions, for it is in league with the detached, disinterested, unrestresticed desire to know.” Bernard Lonergan, Insight, CWL 3, 649.
“We relate personally when our wonder is lifting us beyond the present, when it makes the present mysterious and freshens it with hidden needs and green capacities. Critical thinking is a rescuing of that present and presence: it poises you to hear freashly your friend’s voice, your friend’s capacities, your friend’s needs and your own.” Philip McShane, Introducing Critical Thinking, 123.
“What is the (extreme) importance of symbols and images in promoting a cultural ethos that appreciates and cherishes our natural openness to mystery, to the known unknown, to the secret wonders in the cosmos that await our questions and glimpses of understanding as we reach for the glory of creation’s intelligibilities?” FuSe 12, “Interpretation’s Future and the End of Lonerganism,” 15.
“In this life we are able to understand something only by turning to phantasm; but in larger and more complex questions it is impossible to have a suitable phantasm unless the imagination is aided by some sort of diagram. Thus, if we want to have a comprehensive grasp of everything in a unified whole, we shall have to construct a diagram in which are symbolically represented all the various elements of the question along with all the connections between them.” Bernard Lonergan, The Ontological and Psychological Constitution of Christ, CWL 7, 151.