Lonergan, Natural Law, and the End of Relativism

How Bernard Lonergan’s Transcendental Method Reveals a Universal Moral Grounding Beyond Relativism

Introduction: Beyond “My Truth” and “Your Truth”

In our contemporary discourse, it’s become common to hear phrases like “my truth” and “your truth.” Moral norms are often portrayed as personal or cultural preferences rather than reflections of any objective order. This pervasive relativism— the idea that what is true or right varies entirely with each individual or society— can seem liberating at first. After all, it appears to promote tolerance and freedom. But is truth really something we invent, or is it something we discover? And if moral truth is real and discoverable, how do we explain the wild diversity of human beliefs without falling back into dogmatism? These questions press upon anyone seeking a solid footing in ethics.

Enter the idea of natural law, reimagined through the lens of 20th-century philosopher-theologian Bernard Lonergan. Natural law, in the classical sense, holds that there are objective moral principles “written” into human nature— principles we come to know by reason. Critics of natural law argue that it’s outdated or culturally narrow. Yet Lonergan’s insights offer a fresh approach: a way to understand natural law not as a static list of rules, but as the fruit of an unfolding, self-correcting process of understanding reality and the human good. In Lonergan’s view, every person, regardless of culture, participates in this dynamic discovery of truth through their very consciousness. In this article, we will explore how Lonergan’s transcendental method sheds new light on natural law and provides a principled end to relativism—not by ignoring cultural differences, but by explaining how genuine moral truth can be both universal and historically conscious.

Lonergan’s perspective is intellectually serious yet accessible. It does not float high above daily life in abstraction; rather, it helps us appropriate what we already do when we seek truth or make a moral decision. By understanding our own cognitional process (what Lonergan calls self-appropriation), we uncover a built-in compass pointing us beyond mere subjective opinion. This journey will be thoughtful and a bit demanding—Lonergan isn’t light reading!—but the reward is a clearer vision of why relativism ultimately fails and how we can reclaim a confident, yet humble, affirmation of moral truth.

So, let’s delve into this insight-filled approach. How exactly does Lonergan reframe natural law? How does he guide us from the fog of “everything is relative” to the solid ground of truths we can share? And why might this be the key to resolving the crisis of moral relativism in our times?

The Challenge of Relativism

Relativism, especially in ethics, is the doctrine that truth or morality is relative to the individual or culture—no universal truth, just perspectives. In a relativist view, what’s “right for me” might not be “right for you,” and there is no higher court of appeal beyond personal or communal preference. This view has gained popularity for several reasons. It recognizes the undeniable fact of pluralism: people believe very different things about God, morality, and life’s meaning. It also carries an appearance of humility: who am I to say my values should apply to everyone? We live in a world deeply aware of historical injustices done in the name of “absolute truth,” so many recoil at anything that smacks of imposing one’s truth on another. Relativism often presents itself as the antidote to arrogance and intolerance.

However, relativism comes at a steep cost. If taken to its logical conclusion, it undermines any possibility of genuine understanding between people. If all we have are isolated “truths” with no common ground, dialogue becomes futile—nothing more than an attempt to persuade or exert power. Moreover, relativism can be self-defeating. The claim “all truth is relative” is itself presented as universally true, which is a contradiction. (If the statement is only relatively true, one might ask: why should we take it seriously at all?) Philosophers have noted that radical relativism collapses under this incoherence: one cannot consistently deny objective truth without implicitly appealing to some objective norm of truth (Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies, Vol. 11, No. 2). In everyday terms, people who say “there is no truth” still expect their own assertions to be taken as true. This inconsistency hints that something is off.

Relativism also fails to give guidance when we need it most. In real moral dilemmas—when someone is faced with, say, a choice to lie or tell the truth, to exploit or respect another person—simply defaulting to “it’s all relative” provides no insight. We sense, at a deep level, that some options are truly better, more in line with what humans are meant to be, even if our philosophies sometimes deny we can say so. This is where the tradition of natural law attempted to offer an answer: it posited that reason can identify fundamental human goods and norms (like justice, honesty, courage) that hold true across cultures. Yet the classical approaches to natural law have been criticized for being too rigid or not accounting for historical change. How can we uphold objective moral truth without falling into a kind of moral absolutism that is blind to context and growth?

Bernard Lonergan’s work directly addresses this tension. He does so not by throwing out natural law, but by digging deeper into how we come to know anything, including moral truth. By examining the structure of human knowing and choosing, Lonergan provides a framework where truth is neither arbitrary nor static. It’s discovered through a conscious process that is common to all people, yet that discovery can happen gradually over time, in history. In other words, he offers a viewpoint in which universal truth and historical development are not enemies but allies. To understand this, we need to unpack Lonergan’s transcendental method and see what it says about our built-in capacity to know reality.

Natural Law: A Law We Discover, Not Invent

Before diving into Lonergan’s unique contributions, let’s clarify what we mean by natural law. In essence, natural law is the idea that there is an order or “law” inherent in nature—particularly human nature—that we do not create but discover. Classic thinkers like Aristotle and Aquinas suggested that by using reason to reflect on human life, we could discern certain basic ends or goods (like life, health, knowledge, community) and from them derive guidelines for right action. For example, seeing that humans thrive in community might lead to a norm against murder or a norm in favor of honesty, because society can’t function without trust. These norms are “natural” because they are based on facts about us (our social nature, our need to live and learn, etc.) rather than on mere convention or arbitrary choice. They are “laws” not in the sense of legislated rules, but in the sense of inherent principles that ought to guide our actions if we are to fulfill our nature.

Natural law theory thus holds that morality is in some sense objective: it’s about aligning with reality —with the truth of what a human being is and needs—rather than merely aligning with individual desires or cultural fashions. However, natural law has often been presented in a somewhat static way, as if the list of do’s and don’ts is unchanging and immediately evident. Critics point out that moral understanding has evolved. For instance, practices once deemed acceptable (and even “natural”) in some cultures, like certain forms of punishment or social hierarchy, are now seen as gravely unjust. Does this undermine the idea of an objective natural law? Were previous societies simply wrong, or did they only grasp part of the truth?

This is where a historically conscious approach is needed. If natural law is real, our grasp of it might be gradual and progressive. We might expect a trajectory where humanity learns more fully over time what truly promotes human flourishing. Such learning does not make truth relative; rather, it means our access to truth is dynamic. Think of it this way: the principles of geometry existed before Euclid, but it took time for mathematicians to formulate them clearly. Similarly, one could argue the fundamental principles of moral truth exist (grounded in human nature and the structure of reality), but humanity’s explicit recognition of them has grown through experience, debate, and yes, sometimes tragic mistakes.

Lonergan’s insights reinforce this understanding of natural law. He would agree that the moral law is something we discover. But he would shift the focus from looking only “out there” in nature or human biology, to also looking inward at the very process of knowing anything. In doing so, Lonergan helps explain why natural law is universal (because the process of knowing and valuing is common to all humans) and why our grasp of it can evolve (because that process is unfolding in history, and we often learn by trial, error, and new insights). Let’s turn, then, to Lonergan’s transcendental method—the heart of his approach—to see how it illuminates this path.

Lonergan’s Transcendental Method: Knowing from the Inside Out

Bernard Lonergan (1904–1984) was a Canadian Jesuit priest, philosopher, and theologian who spent a great deal of time asking a deceptively simple question: What are we doing when we are knowing, and why does it give us truth? In his masterwork Insight (1957) and later in Method in Theology (1972), Lonergan tackled the problem of knowledge in an age of skepticism. Rather than start with abstract arguments about ideas, he started with the knower — with us, the subjects who inquire and learn. He pioneered what he called a transcendental method, which examines the operations of consciousness that are present whenever we seek and attain knowledge. By analyzing these operations, Lonergan derived a set of fundamental guidelines or precepts that underpin all intelligent and moral activity.

Lonergan identified several levels of consciousness in human knowing and choosing, often enumerated as four: (1) experience, (2) understanding, (3) judgment, and (4) decision. To these he later added a fifth level related to love or faith, which need not concern us just yet. At each level, our consciousness performs a distinctive kind of operation:

• At the level of experience, we are attentive to data – the raw facts of our senses or the contents of our consciousness.

• At the level of understanding, we inquire and come up with insights – an “aha!” moment of grasping some pattern or meaning in the data.

• At the level of judgment, we reflect on whether our understanding is correct – we marshal evidence, ask further questions, and eventually make a yes-or-no decision: Is it really so? If our insight passes all the tests (no significant doubts remain unanswered), we affirm that insight as true. Lonergan calls this moment the act of reflective understanding or rational judgment.

• At the level of decision, we weigh values and motives and choose how to act. This is the domain of the will and freedom, guided by our grasp of what is truly good or worthwhile.

Corresponding to these levels, Lonergan articulated what are now famous as the transcendental precepts:

1. Be Attentive,

2. Be Intelligent,

3. Be Reasonable,

4. Be Responsible,

5. (And later, Lonergan would add: Be in Love, with the ultimate good).

These are the modus operandi of authenticity for a human being. In other words, to seek the truth and the good, one must pay attention to reality (rather than ignore inconvenient facts), use one’s intelligence to understand (rather than shun insight or cling to prejudices), be reasonable by judging fairly (rather than jumping to conclusions or refusing to question oneself), and be responsible in acting (rather than tossing aside moral commitments or the demands of conscience). As one Lonergan scholar summarizes, human consciousness “functions at five levels of awareness as it demands itself to be attentive, intelligent, rational, responsible and in love” (What is ethics? An answer from a Voegelinian-Lonerganian perspective. - Document - Gale Academic OneFile). These demands are built-in norms. We feel the tension when we violate them (for example, we feel guilt for being irresponsible, or anxiety when we suspect we’ve believed something foolishly).

Lonergan’s method is called “transcendental” not in the sense of “otherworldly,” but because it transcends (goes beyond) any particular field of study. It’s operative whether one is doing physics, history, or deciding on an ethical course of action. Whenever we genuinely know something, we have, implicitly or explicitly, followed these steps. Importantly, these steps constitute a self-correcting process. At each level, checks and balances are in place: our questions at the understanding stage check that we’ve made sense of the data; our reflection at the judgment stage checks that our understanding isn’t flawed or incomplete; our moral deliberation checks that our possible actions align with true values.

This method yields a view of objectivity that is quite profound. Rather than picturing objectivity as a cold, detached stance (as if a “purely objective” person has no personal involvement), Lonergan suggests that objectivity is the fruit of authentic subjectivity. When a knowing subject fully exercises attentiveness, intelligence, and reasonableness, the result (their judgment) is objective – it hits upon reality. In Lonergan’s words, genuine objectivity is achieved not by failing to be a subject, but by being a fully self-transcending subject (What is ethics? An answer from a Voegelinian-Lonerganian perspective. - Document - Gale Academic OneFile) (Love of the gods, of God, and the Capacity for self-transcendence. – Lonergan Institute). This means that the door to objective truth is within us, in the sense that by faithfully following the normative conscious process, any person can discover truths about the world and about right and wrong. It’s a “law” inscribed not on stone tablets, but in the very structure of our thinking and choosing.

Insight and the Notion of Being: Our Unrestricted Desire to Know Reality

At the core of Lonergan’s epistemology (theory of knowledge) is a startling claim: every human inquiry is driven by an unrestricted desire to know. We don’t just want isolated answers to this or that question; at root, we want to understand everything about everything. This drive is not always conscious in our minds (obviously, we focus on one thing at a time), but it manifests in the fact that whenever we get an answer, we can always ask a further question. Our curiosity is, in principle, limitless. Lonergan calls this drive the pure desire to know or the notion of being. By “being” here, he means everything that is, all that is real or could be real. Before we know any given fact, we have a kind of built-in hunger to know whatever is out there to be known. It’s “pure” because it is simply the desire for truth as such—before considering any particular practical advantage. This notion of being is not a specific idea in our mind, but rather a dynamism that underlies all our questioning. It’s the reason why we can ask intelligibly, “What is really going on here? What is this, truly?” and keep pushing until we hit bedrock.

In Insight, Lonergan dramatically illustrates this point by noting that we can even question imaginary or hypothetical answers. Suppose you are investigating a phenomenon and you come up with a theory; your mind won’t rest until you know whether that theory matches reality. And if it does, you might then wonder why that reality is the way it is, and so on. We are, by nature, intelligibly curious to an unlimited degree. As one commentator puts it, the pure desire to know is an unrestricted, spontaneous, all-pervasive notion of being, which “guides and directs us toward an object” — in fact, toward all that is real and true. Lonergan later refined this idea by distinguishing the transcendental notions of intelligibility, truth (being), and goodness, corresponding to understanding, judgment, and decision (Love of the gods, of God, and the Capacity for self-transcendence. – Lonergan Institute). But these are just the specification of that one primordial drive: the drive to make sense of things, to know what’s real, and ultimately to achieve what is worthwhile.

Why is this so important? Because the notion of being is the built-in guarantee that truth is not relative to our whims. Even the relativist, in declaring “all is relative,” is motivated by a desire to state what is the case (i.e., to say something true about being). Our hunger for being means that whenever we pretend that truth is nothing but a construct, we are actually fighting our own mental nature. Our questions betray us: we want to get at reality. If we truly didn’t, we would never be frustrated by deception or error, never care whether something is real or make-believe. But we do care; it’s nearly impossible not to. A scientist driven to understand the atoms, a judge seeking a just verdict, a child incessantly asking “why?” — all in their own way witness to this pure desire in action.

Lonergan also talks about the notion of thing in Insight. A “thing,” in common sense, is a stable object in our experience (like this chair, that tree). In Lonergan’s analysis, our understanding of “things” is one of the products of insight. We experience a barrage of sensory data, and we wonder “what is that?” When insight comes, we unify the data into an intelligible object—a “thing”—which we then can name, classify, etc. But our notion of being goes beyond just things we immediately encounter. It includes every possible aspect of reality, even abstract ones like justice or beauty, and unseen ones like the interior of atoms or the existence of God. It’s literally unrestricted: if something were real, our desire is oriented to finding that out. Thus, far from imprisoning us in subjective bubbles, our very consciousness launches us out of ourselves toward the whole universe of being.

This orientation is why Lonergan can claim that objectivity and truth are rooted in our nature. We are made for truth in this cognitional sense. The frightening aspect of relativism is the idea that perhaps our minds are so conditioned by culture or language that we can never reach reality as it is; Lonergan responds by pointing to this deeper level of the mind that is always geared toward being, no matter what culture we come from. Different cultures and individuals raise different questions and have different insights, of course—but the power to question and to attain genuine insight into reality is universal. It is part of the natural law of the mind. And respecting that “law” of the mind (the normative pattern of inquiry) is essential if we want to escape the whirlpool of relativism.

From Insight to Judgment: The “Virtually Unconditioned” as Key to Truth

So far, we have seen that we have the capacity to experience and question (be attentive and intelligent) and that this process is driven by a desire for true being. But how do we know when we’ve arrived at truth? How do we go from a bright idea (which could be wrong) to a sure knowledge of fact or principle? Lonergan’s answer revolves around what he terms the reflective insight that leads to judgment. This is often the most overlooked part of knowing. It’s tempting to think that once you understand something, you automatically know it to be true. Lonergan, following a long tradition (going back to Aristotle and Aquinas), insists that knowing the truth requires a further step: a yes (or no) of the mind, an act of judgment that the idea we’ve grasped indeed matches reality.

Judgment doesn’t happen blindly; it has its own built-in criterion. Lonergan famously analyzes this in terms of conditions. Every possible statement or theory has conditions under which it would be true. For example, the statement “this seed will grow into an oak tree” has conditions: the seed must indeed be an acorn, it must be alive, it must have the right environment, etc. Before judgment, these conditions might be unknown or only probable. We gather evidence: we check the seed’s type, we examine if it germinates, and so on. If all the relevant conditions are satisfied, then the conditioned statement (“it will be an oak”) becomes what Lonergan calls virtually unconditioned (What is ethics? An answer from a Voegelinian-Lonerganian perspective. - Document - Gale Academic OneFile). In plain language, that means: we have no further pertinent questions or doubts; we have everything we need to reasonably say “Yes, this is true.” At that moment, our understanding is not just a clever idea—it is an insight into reality, and we affirm it as such. We make a judgment of fact.

Lonergan defines the virtually unconditioned as “a conditional (proposal) whose conditions have been met” (What is ethics? An answer from a Voegelinian-Lonerganian perspective. - Document - Gale Academic OneFile). It’s “conditional” because it depended on evidence and could have turned out false; it’s “virtually unconditioned” because once all the evidence is in, it has, for all practical purposes, no conditions left hanging. This is the key to objectivity: our knowledge is objective when our judgments meet this standard. Note, this is not a relativist account nor an arbitrary one; it doesn’t say “true for me if I feel it” — it says true on the evidence, when all questions have been satisfied. And because the evidence and relevant questions are not just a personal matter (they are about the world, which anyone else could also investigate), the truth we reach is in principle available to any knower who follows the same process. In this way, Lonergan concretely explains what it means to say we “conform our mind to reality.” We do so by exigent reflection, by not resting until the knowable reality in question has revealed itself sufficiently.

Let’s illustrate this in a general way (without a specific example, but you can imagine any scientific or common-sense inquiry). Suppose a person has an insight: “Maybe X is the cause of Y.” This is at the level of understanding — a hypothesis. They then test or investigate: is X present when Y occurs? If they find consistent evidence, they might form a virtually unconditioned: “All the conditions for X causing Y are fulfilled (and no alternative cause explains it better). Therefore, it is true that X causes Y.” By contrast, a relativist might say, “Well, in my view, X causes Y, but who really knows?” Lonergan would respond: if you have honestly checked and there are no further relevant doubts, then any rational person should affirm the same (barring some oversight that would open new questions). If you haven’t reached that point, then the correct stance is not “truth is relative,” but “I don’t yet know” (and keep investigating). Relativism often arises from impatience or despair in the face of complexity—people take the easy route of saying “you have your view, I have mine,” instead of doing the hard work of together investigating and reasoning to find which view (if any) has its conditions met.

This pattern applies to moral truth as well. Moral judgments are not identical to factual judgments, but Lonergan sees them as analogous. At the level of decision (value judgment), one similarly asks: Is this truly good? Is this action really worthwhile, all things considered? We gather insights about the likely consequences, we take into account moral principles, we consult our empathy and conscience. If the proposal withstands our reflection—if, for instance, it violates no moral principle we know to be true and truly promotes well-being—then we might judge it as authentically good and decide to act on it. Here too, Lonergan speaks of a kind of reflective insight, sometimes called a judgment of value, which grasps the worthiness or unworthiness of a proposed action or way of life (Love of the gods, of God, and the Capacity for self-transcendence. – Lonergan Institute). The process is more complex because it involves not just facts but also values and feelings, yet it remains a rational evaluation aiming at truth: the truth about the good in this situation.

Crucially, Lonergan holds that to dodge that reflective moment is to abandon objectivity. If we skip the step of critical reflection—if we allow bias or whim to prevail—our “truth” indeed becomes merely subjective. But the failure here is not in the existence of objective truth; it’s in our fidelity to the process of knowing. When one is attentive, intelligent, and reasonable to the best of one’s ability, relativism has no leg to stand on. Different people in different contexts can collaborate and verify insights, correct each other’s oversights, and converge upon the same truths. Human history is replete with such convergence: consensus that the earth is spherical and orbits the sun, for example, or near-universal recognition that gratuitous cruelty is wrong. Those did not come about by one group imposing its will, but by inquiry, experience, and often painful reflection proving certain things beyond reasonable doubt.

Self-Appropriation: Discovering the Knower Within

Lonergan often emphasized the importance of self-appropriation. This is the personal, inward flip of the whole discussion: it’s one thing to talk about experience, understanding, judgment, decision in the abstract; it’s another to catch yourself in the act of performing these operations. Self-appropriation means attending to and understanding one’s own interior processes of consciousness. Why is this important? Because knowing about knowing fortifies our ability to trust the process and detect where it can go wrong. In a time where skepticism and relativism nibble at the roots of our confidence, Lonergan believed that only a direct inspection of our conscious operations would suffice to uproot the irrational doubts.

For example, a relativist might claim, “All knowledge is biased by the subject, so we can never know objective truth.” A person who has appropriated their own knowing process can respond, “I have examined how I (and others) actually come to know, and I find that when I follow the transcendental precepts, I can and do arrive at truth. I have experienced the moment when an insight clicked and every relevant question I could think of was answered, and I made a true judgment. I have also experienced the pain of error when I skipped a step or let bias in. Therefore, I have inward evidence that knowing truth is possible—conditional and painstaking, yes, but possible and actual.” In short, self-appropriation turns the table: instead of assuming that knowing is impossible (an assumption often made without evidence, or on the back of other people’s theories), one looks at the empirical reality of one’s own mind in operation.

Through this method, Lonergan aimed to transform the knowing subject. It’s somewhat “existential” in that sense—the knowing individual comes to a new self-understanding and self-possession. One not only understands a particular scientific or moral issue; one also understands how one is understanding it. This heightened consciousness makes it easier to spot when we are being inattentive, unintelligent, unreasonable, or irresponsible—those moments when we deviate from the transcendental precepts. It also fosters a sense of intellectual humility wedded paradoxically to intellectual assurance. Humility, because we see how easy it is to err or to stop too soon; assurance, because we know that if we put in the work and remain authentic to our cognitional yearning, we will eventually hit bedrock (or at least get closer and closer to it).

In relation to natural law, self-appropriation brings out something vital: the norms of natural law (do good and avoid evil, respect human dignity, etc.) are not arbitrary edicts but are grounded in the very structure of our knowing and choosing selves. We discover, for instance, that treating others unjustly causes a dissonance in our consciousness—we know it’s wrong because, were we fully attentive and reasonable about the situation, we could not rationalize such harm. Our conscience is, in Lonergan’s terms, the voice of the transcendental precepts within us, urging us to be honest about what we know of the good. Relativism often flourishes where people fail to appropriate this inner moral compass and the normative consciousness behind it. Instead, morality gets reduced to external rules or to emotion alone. Lonergan’s approach asks us to dig deeper: to find in our own moral deliberation the same pattern of inquiry and truth-seeking that marks our intellectual pursuits.

It’s worth noting that Lonergan does not claim any individual will do this perfectly, nor that bias and cultural distortion are trivial. On the contrary, he devoted a lot of thought to the sources of bias (individual egoism, groupthink, dramatic biases born of trauma, etc.) that block insight and warp judgment. The point is, however, that bias can be detected and overcome precisely because we have a normative core in our conscious desire for the true and the good. If everything were completely relative, we would have no way even to identify something as a bias or a deviation—because there’d be no norm to deviate from. Lonergan firmly situates that norm within: not a specific content, but the invariant structure of conscious inquiry and evaluation.

Lonergan’s Transcendental Method vs. Relativism: Why Relativism Ultimately Fails

With the pieces now on the table, we can directly address how Lonergan’s thought spells the end of relativism in principle. By “end” we mean both a termination (exposing relativism’s flaws) and a telos or goal (offering something beyond relativism for which we are aiming). Lonergan provides a refutation of the relativist mindset at a foundational level:

1. Performative Contradiction: As mentioned earlier, the relativist stance refutes itself. To assert relativism meaningfully, one has to claim a truth (even if it’s “there is no truth”). Lonergan would classify hardcore relativism as a counterposition, meaning a viewpoint that contradicts the very conditions of its own possibility. In simpler terms, it’s like sawing off the branch on which you sit. If a person says “no viewpoint is objectively better than any other,” we can ask, “Is that statement objectively better than its negation?” If they say yes, they’ve abandoned relativism; if no, then we have no reason to listen (since by their own account it’s just their subjective bias talking). Our conscious intentionality, oriented by the notion of being, just doesn’t operate on a relativist basis. It keeps pushing for solid ground. Even those who espouse relativism usually do so because they think it’s true or at least more sensible than the alternatives – which is to say, they think it is better, and that is already a little transcendence beyond pure relativism.

2. The Universal Structure of Cognition: Lonergan’s analysis shows that all humans inquire in fundamentally the same way. There is a common nucleus across all cultures: people observe, wonder, reason, and conclude. The content of their beliefs indeed varies, but the structure by which they arrive at beliefs and test them shares a human sameness. This is a huge point of contact on which to build mutual understanding. It means that relativism’s picture of disparate bubbles of meaning is overstated. Different cultural or personal perspectives are not airtight silos; they are more like different experiments in understanding the same reality. When communication happens and data is shared, people can and do correct each other and learn from each other. In fact, history can be seen as a grand dialogue (sometimes a violent one, sadly) in which humanity inches toward truths that stand up to cross-examination and cross-experience. Relativism would predict we could never agree on anything universal – yet we have global agreements on many scientific truths, and even in ethics there are near-universal principles (care for children, value of honesty, etc.), suggesting there is a common core of human understanding. Lonergan explains why: we all have the same desire to know being, and when that desire is not truncated, it tends to find the same objective points of reference.

3. The Notion of Being as Transcending the Relative: Since the notion of being is unrestricted, it provides an inherent orientation to all that is objectively real, not just what is “real for me.” It’s true that each person’s access to being is mediated by their standpoint and culture, but the intended horizon is limitless. Think of it like many hikers climbing the same mountain from different sides; each has a different view, but the peak they seek is the same. The peak is being or truth itself. Relativism, in this analogy, would be like saying there is no mountain, only separate hills that cannot be compared. Lonergan would respond: the very fact that we can correct errors and surprise each other with discoveries shows that we are in fact oriented to something beyond our current viewpoint (the mountain was there all along, even if mist shrouded the summit). When one culture’s medical knowledge, for instance, turns out to cure people in other cultures, it wasn’t just a local “truth”; it was a truth about the human body that anyone could verify. Similarly, if there is a moral truth (say about human dignity), one culture might realize it more fully at one point, but that realization can spread and appeal to human reason in others.

4. Transcendental Precepts as Normative and Universal: The precepts “Be attentive, Be intelligent, Be reasonable, Be responsible” can be seen as the core of natural law in Lonergan’s view. They are certainly universal – no society admires people for being obtuse, irrational, and irresponsible. We might disagree on who is being rational or not in a particular case, but the values of careful attention, sound reasoning, and responsibility are upheld at least implicitly wherever communication and community exist. If someone violates these (say, they refuse to look at evidence, or they make a decision knowing it’s terribly unjust), we immediately recognize the wrongness of it. Why? Because it violates that transcendental structure we all share. This gives a very basic kind of moral insight: that it is good to pursue truth and goodness, and wrong to deliberately thwart that pursuit (whether in oneself or by misleading/manipulating others). From this vantage point, relativism appears not as a champion of tolerance, but as a kind of abdication of this fundamental moral duty. It says, “Don’t worry about being reasonable or responsible beyond your own preferences,” which is essentially telling people to disengage from the full pursuit of truth. Lonergan would argue that such advice is dehumanizing, diminishing what we’re meant to be.

5. Historical Consciousness without Relativism: Lonergan was keenly aware of history. He knew that our expressions of truth change and that we often only gradually eliminate errors. His own work emphasized that understanding is an ongoing process and that our formulations of doctrine (in theology, for example) could develop. But acknowledging development is not the same as endorsing relativism. Lonergan distinguished between development (which has continuity and directionality, like a growing tree) and mere change or flux (which relativism tends to emphasize). Through conversions—intellectual, moral, and even religious—individuals and communities can transcend earlier partial views and biases. This is not automatic; it requires effort and often humility to admit past mistakes. Yet, the very possibility of learning from the past implies that later we know more or better than earlier – which is a claim of objective improvement, not just difference. For example, we might say modern society understands human rights better than ancient civilizations did. That’s a comparative value judgment that assumes an objective scale (even if we articulate it with caution). Lonergan’s framework supports making such judgments responsibly: we can actually explain why something is an advance (more attentive to human experience, more intelligent synthesis of ideas, more reasonable resolution of contradictions, more responsible application – in short, more faithfully following the transcendental precepts).

In summary, relativism fails because it cannot account for the self-transcending capacity of the human mind. It cannot do justice to the fact that we do, at times, genuinely escape our subjective limits and touch something universal. Lonergan doesn’t deny that knowing is an internally experienced process (we don’t get outside of our minds to see reality from God’s-eye view). But he shows that going deeply into our mindful process, we paradoxically go out toward reality. By fully being knowers, we are no longer trapped in mere appearance or opinion; we achieve contact with “what is” in what Lonergan calls the “unity identity whole.”

Toward a Universal Yet Historically Conscious Account of Moral Truth

What does all this mean for moral truth and natural law today? It means we can approach moral questions with neither the arrogance of a false absolutism nor the paralysis of relativism. Instead, we take a stance of what might be called critical realism (Lonergan’s term) or transcendental empiricism – a trust in our ability to know real moral truths through attentive experience, intelligent insight, reasonable judgment, and responsible deliberation, combined with an awareness that this process often unfolds over time and in community.

Lonergan’s transcendental method provides a framework for ongoing dialogue. People from different backgrounds can come together and discuss moral issues by appealing to shared experiences, offering insights, examining reasons, and challenging each other to eliminate inconsistencies or biases. In doing so, they are effectively practicing a natural law method, even if they don’t call it that. They are trying to get at what is truly good for human persons, given the reality of what humans are. The more they approximate the ideal of being attentive/intelligent/reasonable/responsible, the more we expect them to converge on truths. Where they don’t converge, it flags that there are still open questions or unresolved conditions – not that “truth doesn’t exist.” The solution is more inquiry, better understanding, perhaps more compassionate listening (being attentive to aspects of human experience that were initially overlooked).

Because Lonergan situates moral truth-finding in this empirical yet normative process, moral principles are both objective and open-ended. For instance, one might derive a general natural law principle like “respect the dignity of the human person.” This is not just one culture’s idea; it emerges from a long process of seeing what promotes authentic human flourishing (and that process can be traced: from religion to philosophy to political movements, etc., all converging on the inherent value of the person). However, what exactly respects or violates dignity can involve further debate (e.g. some ages had to learn that dignity forbids slavery or racial discrimination). We don’t throw up our hands and say “well, dignity is relative”; instead, we use the transcendental method: get all the empirical facts (What are the effects of slavery on persons? What do history and psychology tell us?), employ intelligence (Can we make sense of those effects in terms of our understanding of human good?), be reasonable (Is there any justification that holds up to scrutiny for treating some humans as lesser? Are there counterarguments that haven’t been answered?), and be responsible (Are we perhaps clinging to an advantage or bias that prevents us from admitting the truth?). Following that process, one eventually realizes that practices like slavery are gravely in conflict with human good. That outcome wasn’t just a shift in taste; it was a moral discovery, however gradual. It was a victory of truth over bias.

By viewing natural law through Lonergan’s lens, we also see that natural law is not a closed code. It’s a set of fundamental but broad orientations—like signposts that say “this way lies human flourishing.” The specifics may require adaptation and creativity. Lonergan’s emphasis on being in love in the fullest sense (which includes, for him, the love of God and others unconditionally) suggests that the highest fulfillment of the transcendental precepts is not merely a cold pursuit of duty, but a passionate commitment to value. The truly ethical person is one who not only knows the good abstractly but values it deeply and chooses it. This is where the fifth level (“Be in love”) comes into play. It reminds us that knowing the good isn’t enough; we must also embrace it, something which involves the will and heart. Relativism often has easy sway over those who have not experienced a conversion to value or love—because if you don’t deeply care about transcendent value (goodness itself), it’s easier to say “well, whatever, to each their own.” But once one falls in love with the good (be it through faith, or humanistic conviction, or moral conversion), relativism loses its charm. One sees it not as a harmless live-and-let-live philosophy, but as an obstacle to both truth and genuine love. If you love people, you want what is truly good for them, not just “whatever they happen to want right now.” If you love truth, you cannot contentedly shrug that “maybe justice is just a bias.” Love, in Lonergan’s sense, crowns and motivates the whole enterprise of knowing and living the truth.

Finally, Lonergan’s approach gives us hope. It reassures us that while individuals and societies may wander, there is a compass inside, always ready to recalibrate. The end of relativism doesn’t mean everyone suddenly agrees on everything—that’s unrealistic. It means we finally recognize that relativism is not the solution to our differences, but an abandonment of our shared participation in and responsibility to the human community. The real solution is more difficult yet more promising: commitment to genuine dialogue and inquiry, patience in working out disagreements, and trust that our shared human capacity for truth can lead us forward. This is a hopeful message for a fractured world. It says that unity in truth is possible, not by coercion or ignoring differences, but by fully allowing every perspective to contribute through the rigorous, earnest exercise of inquiry.

Conclusion: The Ongoing Discovery of the Moral Law

In the end, Lonergan helps us see that the moral law is something we are continually discovering. It is “written on the heart,” as the old adage goes, but not as a complete list of rules handed to us without effort. Rather, it is written in the sense that our very minds and souls are oriented to seek it out. Each person, by striving to be attentive, intelligent, reasonable, and responsible, is capable of coming to know the truths of natural law — truths like the value of justice, honesty, respect, and care. These truths are not abolished by cultural diversity or historical change; instead, they gradually emerge more clearly as humanity reflects on experience. We learn, for example, more about what justice requires as we grapple with injustices; we learn about human dignity as we confront the horrors of treating people as objects. With each hard-earned lesson, the picture of natural law gains detail and accuracy.

Relativism, with its appeal to tolerance, ironically undercuts the very dialogue and self-correction that make real tolerance and understanding possible. Lonergan’s transcendental method offers an antidote: it invites us to trust our built-in desire for truth and to hold ourselves accountable to it. It assures us that doing so is not an exercise in domination (as some fear objective claims are) but an exercise in common humanity. When we acknowledge a moral truth, we’re not saying “my truth wins”; we’re saying I have been won over by truth, and I am willing to conform to it. This stance, far from being oppressive, is liberating—because it frees us from the fickle dictates of mere preference or the coercion of majority opinion. It grounds us in something more solid: the reality of what is true and good, which ultimately benefits everyone.

Is the era of relativism over? Perhaps not yet. But with Lonergan’s insights, we see why it ought to be, and how we might help bring about its end by patiently, diligently living out the process of discovery. The natural law is there—an orienting presence—like a melody in the human heart that can be drowned out but never completely silenced. By attuning ourselves to that melody through self-appropriation and adherence to those transcendental precepts, we gradually learn to play it together. In doing so, we move toward a world where moral disagreements can be resolved not by force or concession to nihilism, but by a common gaze toward truth. That is the law we discover, and in discovering it, we find not the suppression of freedom, but the very basis for its meaningful exercise.

The journey is ongoing. The responsibility is ours. And the invitation stands: to seek what is, to find the law within our consciousness that leads to the law above relativism — a law not of coercion, but of truth grasped in freedom. This, ultimately, is how relativism ends: not with a shout, but with an insight, followed by a judgment, followed by a commitment to live in the light of the truth we have seen.