Startling Strangeness: Reading Lonergan’s Insight

In the introduction to Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, Bernard Lonergan writes of the ’startling strangeness’ that overtakes someone who really understands what the act of ’insight’ is all about. The present work is about that experience in the life of Richard Liddy as he wrestled with Insight in the 1960s. Liddy was Lonergan’s student in Rome during the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and in this work he recounts his encounter with Lonergan and with Insight. He includes memories of other Lonergan students as well as witnesses to the ’startling strangeness’ the reading of Insight engenders.

Richard M. Liddy is the University Professor of Catholic Thought and Culture and Director of the Center of Catholic Studies at Seton Hall University.