Conversion as Transformation: Lonergan Mentors and Cinema

The process of human transformation is complex and ongoing. This book presents a framework for understanding human transformation through the insights of Bernard Lonergan. The reader will be introduced to terms such as the turn to the subject consciousness subjectivity and intersubjectivity. It will explore terms such as horizon feelings values self-esteem sublation conversion dialectic and religious experience. The book explores transformation through the way mentors have authored their own lives told their own stories and taken possession of their interiority. Transformation is illustrated through the lives of saints and ordinary men and women who did extraordinary things such as St. Augustine Dag Hammarskjold Vaclav Havel Franz Jaggerstatter St. Therese of Lisieux Fredrich Nietzsche Katherine Ann Power and Marie Cardinal. Transformation is also illustrated through the medium of cinema: Babettes Feast The Mission As It is in Heaven Romero Dead Poets Society Ordinary People The Godfather trilogy Three Color trilogy The Lord of the Rings trilogy Dial M for Murder and Twelve Angry Men. While the book treats religious moral affective intellectual and psychic conversion as moments of transformation it argues that ecological conversion requires all of these so as to meet the most serious moral challenge of our time.