American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly

Volume 83, Issue 4, Fall 2009

Recovering Beauty in the Subject
Balthasar and Lonergan Confront Kierkegaard

This paper takes Balthasar’s critique of Kierkegaard’s aesthetics as a context for recovering the notion of beauty within the subject. Balthasar believed that Kierkegaard contributed to the loss of beauty by separating the aesthetic from the ethical and religious spheres. By viewing the spheres in terms of differentiations of consciousness, Lonergan’s theory of consciousness offers an interpretation of Kierkegaard’s stages in such a way that addresses Balthasar’s concern and retains the Danish thinker’s significant achievements.