The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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Existentialist Analysis, Metaphysics, and Religion 

If existentialist analysis, as Bultmann says, talks about existence without objectifying it to worldly being, the same is true of a proper metaphysics, which, including existentialist analysis, is simply integral intellectual self-understanding. I.e., it is nothing other than the clear and methodical explication of the understanding of existence or of ultimate reality given with existence itself.

But, then, metaphysics must be indirect address_,_ in the sense in which theoretical reflection on one's self-understanding necessarily is. Although it directly makes clear what existing as such and in general means, it indirectly issues the imperative to each individual thus to exist, thus to understand one's own unique existence, and so to exist authentically—authentic existence being existence that understands itself realistically, in accordance with things as they really are, and so as to imply a true metaphysics as well as a just morality. 

A religion, by contrast, is direct address—even, indeed, when it communicates a factum instead of a faciendum—and only indirectly certain credenda and agenda implying a metaphysics and a morality respectively. Thus, while a religion very definitely implies a metaphysics as well as a morality, it explicitly issues the call for a certain faciendum as the only appropriate response to a certain factum, or so communicates a certain factum as to give and demand a certain faciendum. 

n.d.; rev. 4 August 2002

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