Ideas The ultimate to-do list for living a good life
Apr 2, 2026
John Dadosky, a professor of philosophy and theology and Lonergan scholar, guides listeners through Bernard Lonergan’s ideas. He explores consciousness and a five-step pattern for authentic knowing. He discusses questioning as the spark of inquiry, different biases that distort understanding, and how authority, technology, and love shape personal and cultural development.
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Five Steps To Authentic Knowing
- Be attentive, intelligent, reasonable, responsible, and loving to cultivate authenticity in knowing and acting.
- John Dadosky lists these five steps as Lonergan's practical method for reliable truth and good decisions in everyday life.
Wonder Is The Engine Of Knowledge
- Questioning is the fuel of knowing: wonder initiates inquiry that leads from experience to understanding and judgment.
- Dadosky traces this back to Aristotle and says shutting down genuine questions is a form of obscurantism that blocks truth.
General Bias Eats Long Term Thinking
- Lonergan identifies biases that distort knowing: dramatic wounds, egoism, group bias, and the especially harmful general bias.
- General bias devalues theory and long-term cultural aims, reducing education to job training alone.