Abstract

The transition from 'classical' to 'modern' culture has meant the disappearance of any normative, universal, and absolute culture in which all humanity is to be educated. But that, in itself, does not mean that there is now nothing 'transcending' culture that philosophy can teach humanity. I argue that Bernard Lonergan's analysis of the rational, self-conscious subject, as constituted by the conscious operations of experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding, provides a 'fixed base, an invariant pattern' as the condition for the possibility of educating humanity.