By Schubert Ogden
On the Distinction between On the Distinction between "Critical" and "Speculative" Philosophy Wiki Markup
(W. A. Christian)
On the Distinction between "Critical" and "Speculative" Philosophy (W. A. Christian)
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1. Philosophy My inclination is to say that CISC's distinction between "critical" and "speculative" philosophy does not correspond exactly to my distinction between the "critical-analytic" and the "constructive-synthetic" aspect or function of philosophy. (My distinction seems somewhat closer to the distinction he makes when he says, "we need to construct \[si£Jsic\] general theories of meaning and truth applying to all types of discourse, includingincluding moral discourse, scientific discourse, esthetic discourse,and religiousreligious discourse" even while "at the same time Wewe need to explore more thoroughly e~cheach of the particular domains of human experience and discoursediscourse" (MIR, 8). CIS C's distinction seems, rather, to be not unrelated to the distinction I have sometimes made between "transcendental" and "categorialcategorial" metaphysics. I.e., trans~epde~~~l transcendental metaphysics undertakes to determinedetermine the purely formal logical type distinctio~s that any and all our uses of "reality" and related terms such as "truth," etc. necessarily presuppose. This it does by way of an attempt to construct "regional ontologiesontologies" on the basis of a critical analysis of the constitutive concepts and assertions of the several different "domains of truth," as well as the "fundamental ontology" of human existence as such. Withal, the sole concernconcern of a transcendental metaphysics is to abstract from everything materialmaterial--from any and all values of the various variables--to identify the strictly formal necessary condition(s) of the possibility of all our experienceexperience and thought, and hence the strictly first principles of reality as such. A cat~<2..Lial metapl:lysicscategorial metaphysics, by contrast, undertakes an in~e:..~r...e:..~~i.<2..1l. interpretation of these strictly formal princlplesprinciples in some mat:erlalLeLUI\!'jmaterial terms, Itt It::J..lll\~ u\[some in terms of some of the concepts or categories of our thought and experience in the 2severalseveral domains of truth. For various good reasons, the most adequate categorial metaphysics will be the metaphysics whose interpretive scheme is derived from the "fundamental ontology" provided by an existentialist analysis of our ow-.:1own existence. But even that kind of an existentialist, or psychicalist, categorial metaphysics is still the attempt somehow to fill in the purely formal scheme of transcendental metaphysics with some material contents, which can be done, obviously, only by means of analogyanalogy. |
2. Therefore, a categorial metaphysics is, in the nature of the case, "speculative" in a
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way in which a transcendental metaphysics is not.
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The question is relevant, then, why there is, or has to be, speculative as well as
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critical philosophy, categorial as well as transcendental
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metaphysics.
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On the face of it, it would appear that the answer of
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Nygren and others, that there is a religious interest behind
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speculative philosophy (or categorial metaphysics) ought not to be rejected out of hand. (The argument that must be carried against Nygren is that there not
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only can but must be such a thing as a critical, "scientific," because
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transcendental metaphysics.)
3. A related insight is that there is an important difference
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between the assertions of transcendental metaphysics and even the
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metaphysical (as distinct from the existential) aspect of religious, theological,
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or categorial metaphysical assertions.
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So, e.g., there is a difference
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between the transcendental metaphysical assertion that God is the
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integral or universal individual and the categorial metaphysical (or
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religious.
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or theological) assertion that God is the supreme person.
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Even though the assertion that God is a person may appear to be the same kind of
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an assertion as the assertion that God is an individual, it is really
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very different, in that it is at one and the same time the assertion that
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we ourselves are given and demanded to be persons and to act as persons
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in all our relationships.
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(W. A. Christian)
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