Education as Learning to Be Towards Understanding Bernard Lonergan's Transcendental Philosophy

It's true when they say that Philosophy is the process of being. One could look at a philosopher like a sage since he shows meaning to life and gives interpretations to many of our experiences. In short, they are full of wisdom.

According to Bernard Lonergan, Philosophy is what gives education its vision and direction for without which, philosophy loses its social influence. When we have education, we gain knowledge. And as humans, our knowing involves experiencing which then entails understanding on things. We need to understand in order for us to reason out. More over, our knowing makes us decide that is based on our experiences or our observations. But of course, there's more to just experiencing, understanding, reasoning and deciding. It is more important for us human beings to know how to act with the truths that we discover. We should be responsible as an active being. We must use our knowledge for good purposes and we should act with responsibility over our actions. It's very simple when you think about it but in today's world, it's very sad to know that many human beings hardly care about what may happen tomorrow. From religion to politics, environment to society, we just think of ourselves... of what will benefit ourselves ONLY.

In understanding transcendental philosophy, we must be aware of our consciousness and self-knowing. "We are free when we do things for a purpose" according to Bernard Lonergan. I believe that this is true as it is rooted in freedom. I remember my Christian living class back in high school when they used to teach us about authentic human freedom. Authentic human freedom is the capacity of a person to choose the good ALWAYS. And since doing things for a purpose is naturally good, then this is when humans are most free. This then allows us to reflect in the integration of knowing and acting.

Life has its ultimate meaning. There's more to the things that we see right now. From humans, we become persons. This basically means that we developed because evolution, earned wisdom because of the philosophers, became reasonable and brought about responsibility because of our self-awareness. Our education constitutes the practice of our freedom. We must promote the well-being of self for education is the authentic goal of the society. Knowledge from our education is needed to become conscious and self-aware on the philosophy of our lives.