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If the interpretation I am suggesting is valid, however, there is evidently an important ambiguity in what Bultmann speaks of as "the understanding of existence that is given with existence itself" (107; cf. 103). Insofar as "the 'right' philosophy" is philosophy only in its one, purely formal aspect as analysis of meaning; , and insofar as the task of "the 'right' philosophy," so understood, is to develop the understanding of existence that is given with existence itself in an appropriate conceptuality, this understanding of existence itself must be understood as purely formal, as the understanding we always already have, not of this particular meaning or that, but of meaning as such, and thus of all the different kinds of meaning, in their similarities to and differences from one another.

Of course, Bultmann's own way of recognizing philosophy in what I distinguish as its one aspect, as purely formal analysis of meaning, is to speak of it as "ontology," or "phenomenology," as distinct from philosophy in its other aspect, as indirectly "genuine proclamation," insofar as it calls us back to ourselves from our lostness in the "one," to resolution to exist as a self in face of death, etc. (GV, 3: 122). But this is hardly a problem for my interpretation of what he does, and does not, mean to say. On the contrary, in my view "ontology" (or, in my term, "transcendental metaphysics") is itself precisely a matter of purely formal analysis of meaning in all its different kinds -- its most completely general, and so foundational, kind being not merely "ontic," but "ontological," which is to say, "transcendental."

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