Cross-Horizon Encounter
Discussion
Charles McKelvey:
"when we seek to understand, we proceed within a particular social context, which includes a coherent set of values, facts, and assumptions concerning the world. Stressing that this worldview is rooted in a particular social place, Lonergan calls it our “horizon,” analogous to a place from which we view a physical landscape. He wrote, “As our field of vision, so too the scope of our knowledge, and the range of our interests are bounded. As fields of vision vary with one’s standpoint, so too the scope of one’s knowledge and the range of one’s interests vary with the period in which one lives, one’s social background and milieu, one’s education and personal development.” This field of vision or “horizon” shapes one’s knowledge and interests. “What lies beyond one’s horizon is simply outside the range of one’s knowledge and interests.”
The word “horizon,” therefore, refers to the cultural boundedness of the process of knowing. Horizon defines the boundary beyond which the person cannot see. Beyond horizon lie those relevant questions that, if the subject were aware of them, would modify or even transform understanding. What lies beyond the boundary is beyond one’s orientation or comprehension. Accordingly, what is sensible, good, or true from the viewpoint of one horizon can be nonsensical, evil, or false from the viewpoint of another horizon. Horizon, therefore, is an obstacle to knowledge, because it blocks relevant questions from consciousness.
Lonergan maintains, however, that we can overcome the limitations imposed on understanding by horizon. What is required is personal encounter with persons who live in social positions different from our own, whose horizons are different from our own. Personal encounter involves “meeting persons, appreciating the values they represent, criticizing their defects, and allowing one’s living to be challenged at its roots by their words and their deeds.”
Just as a person who desires to understand will move beyond hypothetical formulation to the search for relevant questions and to probable judgment, so a person who desires to understand will also ask if there possibly are questions beyond his or her horizon that are relevant to the issue at hand. If this possibility exists, and if the subject places the desire to understand above the interests of his or her social groups, the quest for understanding will drive the subject to search for relevant questions beyond horizon. The person who desires to understand will journey to other social contexts to meet persons, with an orientation of respect for their values, thereby permitting their own understanding to be challenged and possibly transformed.
Accordingly, the limitations imposed on human understanding by horizon can be overcome through personal encounter with persons of different horizons. I have coined the term “cross-horizon encounter” to refer to this process. Cross-horizon encounter provides the foundation for attaining an understanding of particular issues that transcends the subject’s natural social and cultural context, an understanding that reflects an intercultural journey with respect to particular issues."
(https://charlesmckelvey.substack.com/p/the-cognitional-theory-of-bernard?)