Insight and Analysis

Andrew Beards is Reader in Philosophy and Director of the Philosophy Programme at the Maryvale Institute, Birmingham, UK. He is the author of Objectivity and Historical Understanding (Ashgate, 1997) and Method in Metaphysics: Lonergan and the Future of Analytical Philosophy (University of Toronto Press, 2008).

• Preface; Part 1. Knowing and Consciousness; 1. Self-refutation and Self-knowledge; 2. John Searle and Human Consciousness; 3. Maclntyre, Critical Realism and Animal Consciousness; Part 2. Philosophy of Language; 4. Obersicht as Oversight: Problems in Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy; 5. Anti-Realism and Critical Realism: Dummett and Lonergan; Part 3. Continental Thought; 6. Badiou's Metaphysical Basis for Ethics; Part 4. Ethics; 7. Moral Conversion and Problems in Proportionalism; Part 5. Philosophy and Theology; 8. Christianity, Interculturality and Salvation; 9. Rahner's Philosophy: A Lonerganian critique; Concluding Remarks.

"I find this an enormously impressive work. It appears to me that there are few tasks that are more important than bringing Lonergan's thought to bear on the myriad problems of our culture to which it is relevant. Beards does more effectively than any other author known to me the work of relating Lonergan's philosophy and theory of knowledge to the preoccupations and concerns of contemporary analytical philosophers; but he seems equally at home in 'continental' thinking. His attitude, invariably appreciative yet critical, is ideal for the task in hand; his erudition is formidable. His style, serene, limpid and unpretentious, is a model for philosophical exposition." -- Hugo Meynell, Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies, the University of Calgary, Canada. 'This book will be controversial. Yet despite its penetrating analysis, Beards always shows a deep respect for his interlocutors. It is this that makes this wide ranging collection applying Lonergan's thought to various philosophies well worth the effort.' -New Blackfriars