The word being often sounds abstract or outdated—something buried in old metaphysics. But for Bernard Lonergan, “being” names something much more immediate: the objective of the pure desire to know. Whenever you ask a genuine question—What is this? Why does it happen? Is it really so?—your mind is already oriented toward being.

In this episode we unpack Lonergan’s account of the notion of being as the horizon of all inquiry. Being is not just a concept among other concepts; it is the all-inclusive objective of intelligent and reasonable questioning—everything that can be known through insight and judgment.

We explore how the desire to know gives rise to an unrestricted horizon of questions, why being is both completely concrete and completely universal, and how this notion functions as the core of meaning in all acts of knowing. We also situate Lonergan’s proposal within the broader philosophical tradition—from the medieval debates of Scotus and Aquinas to Lonergan’s own dynamic reinterpretation grounded in cognitional process.

By the end, the seemingly abstract notion of being becomes something far more familiar: the living horizon of every question you ask and every truth you affirm.

In the next episode we turn from the horizon to the standard of knowing itself: The Notion of Objectivity.

Chapters
00:00 — Why “being” sounds abstract
01:30 — Being as the horizon of inquiry
03:15 — The pure desire to know
05:05 — Being: all that is known and all that remains to be known
07:20 — Why the horizon of being cannot be limited
09:05 — Being as completely concrete and completely universal
11:10 — Catching the notion of being “in the act”
13:00 — Abstraction and the geometer’s circle
15:05 — Being as the all-pervasive heuristic notion
17:10 — The notion of being as the core of meaning
19:20 — Why empiricism about meaning fails
21:00 — The puzzling notion of being
22:10 — Scotus, Aquinas, and the unity of being
25:10 — Lonergan’s dynamic account of being
27:05 — Three questions to test your grasp of being
28:25 — Preview: The Notion of Objectivity

How do we recover meaning in a fragmented world?
Short reflections on consciousness, conversion, and responsibility.

Read the full essays at Mediated by Meaning: https://mediatedbymeaning.substack.com

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