By Schubert Ogden
Wilfrid Sellars distinguishes helpfully between "the 'manifest imageimage—' \-or our pretheoretical, ordinary conception of the world\[-Jand the 'scientific image'\[--\]or the world as science tells us it is" (so Lynch, _True to L(/i::_ _75). But metaphysics, correctly understood, is concerned with neither-unless, of course, "scientific" is used in a very broad sense that includes metaphysics as well as science proper (as it is used, e.g., in Scholz's title,_ _A1elaphysik al....' strenge WissenschaJi,_ _or in Heidegger's statement that ._ _'e....'_ _gihl_ _notwendig zwei Urundmiiglichkeiten von Wi,...·senschl\!ji: Wissenschqjien vom Seienden, onti.')·ci1e_ _Wis,\'ensch(~fien_ _und_ _die_ _Wis...;enschqji vom Sein, die ont%gis'che Wissenscha./i, die Philosophie" \[Phtiflomen%gie und Theologie:_ _14; italics in the text\])._the world—and the 'scientific image—'or the world as science tells us it is" (so Lynch, True to Life: 75). But metaphysics, correctly understood, is concerned with neither—unless, of course, "scientific" is used in a very broad sense that includes metaphysics as well as science proper (as it is used, e.g., in Scholz's title, Metaphysik als strenge Wissenschaft, or in Heidegger's statement that "es gibt notwendig zwei Grundmöglichkeiten von Wissenschaft: Wissenschaften vom Seienden, ontische Wissenschaften und die Wissenschaft vom Sein, die ontologische Wissenschaft, die Philosophie" [Phänomenologie und Theologie: 14; italics in the text]). Wiki Markup
Metaphysics in the proper sense is concerned, instead, with what may be called the "metaphysical image" of the world. This means that, although, like science, it is concerned intellectually with the structure ofthe of the world in itself, as distinct from its meaning for us, what concerns it is not the structure of the immediate reality given empirically, with which science is properly concerned, but the structure ofthe of the ultimate reality given existentially, with which religion and theology, in their ways, are also concerned, albeit existentially rather than intellectually.
18 November 2007