Page History

SCANNED PDF

On Explanation and Explication as Two Modes ofSeeking of Seeking Intelligibility

Given the usual more restricted sense of "explanation" as empirical (or, at at 
least, factual) explanation, why not simply accept this usage and use the word solely word 
solely in this restricted sense?
Given the usual more restricted sense of "explanation" as empirical (or,at least, factual) explanation, why not simply accept this usage and use the word solely in this restricted sense?

Contra scientism, or positivism, however, one can insist that there is also the possibility, indeed, necessity, of explication, where one is concerned, not to explain one matter of fact by reference to another, but to make fully explicit what is necessarily implied by all of one's experiences or assertions. 

Clearly, metaphysics is explication in this sense if it is anything; or, alternatively alternatively, it is explanation only in a broader, less restricted sense of of "explanation." But the interesting question is whether this proposition is convertibleis convertible, so that one may also say, explication is metaphysics. For the present, I  I incline to question any such conversion. Christological assertions, for example, are  are explicative, as distinct from explanatory in the strict sense. But whether, or in what in what sense, they are metaphysical is not clear-unless being properly existentialproperly existential/existentialist assertions, they are metaphysical in a broad sense of the termthe term. 

29 August 1973; rev. 4 August 2002scientism, or positivism, however, one can insist that there is also the possibility, indeed, necessity, of explication, where one is concerned, not to explain one matter of fact by reference to another, but to make fully explicit what is necessarily implied by all of one's experiences or assertions. 2002