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Niebuhr expressly recognizes that (1) "there are structures on every level [sc. of reality, or of the world]"; and (2) scientists analyze such structures "empirically," even as philosophers analyze them (or the "superstructures" besides them) "metaphysically" (Justice and Mercy: 135 f.). Conspicuously missing from his discussion, however, is anything like the clear Heideggerian-Bultmannian recognition that, even at the level of history (of the self, the personal, freedom, and so on) there are also structures, which philosophers also have the task of analyzing -- if analyzing–if neither exactly "empirically" nor exactly "metaphysically," then by way of "existentialist analysis."

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