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Article
Formal existential ethics in the thought of Bernard Lonergan and Ignatius of Loyola
UMI (2006)
  • Scott Kelley, DePaul University
Abstract
The underlying, operative question of my entire project concerns the formal relationship of ‘spirituality’ to ethics. I contend that spiritual experience is normative for ethics: one’s elected worldview orders feeling-values according to an appropriated scale of preference. To analyze the normative influence of spirituality on feeling-values, I begin by defining the term spirituality and then use an article written by Karl Rahner as a framework for identifying a particular form of ethics. I then examine the thought of Bernard Lonergan for an adequate account of subjectivity. With a viable anthropology in place, I examine Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises to help understand the normative function of spiritual experience. I conclude with a case study from Dorothy Day’s The Long Loneliness that illustrates the way spiritual experience is normative for moral-decision making.
Keywords
  • moral discernment,
  • ethical formation,
  • Bernard Lonergan,
  • Ignatius Loyola,
  • Karl Rahner,
  • Dorothy Day
Publication Date
May, 2006
Citation Information
Scott Kelley. "Formal existential ethics in the thought of Bernard Lonergan and Ignatius of Loyola" UMI (2006)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/scott_kelley/9/