Formal existential ethics in the thought of Bernard Lonergan and Ignatius of Loyola

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.