By Schubert Ogden
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2. But this is in no way to say that there is not a difference within any given field between what is real and what is not. For if what is real, given some mode of reasoning, some way of taking account of things that we are in one way or another obliged to take account of, is, indeed, relative to this mode of reasoning, this way of taking account of things, it is not in the least relative to any particular conclusion arrived at within this mode of reasoning or way of taking account of things. In other words, there remains the distinction between what is believed to be true, given this mode of reasoning, and what is worthy of being believed true, given the standards established by this same mode of reasoning. In this sense, one could say that the distinction between "being-in-itse.lfitself" and "meaning-for-us" is both pertinent and important, insofar as it expresses, or is taken to express, that what is worthy of being believed is one thing, what in fact is believed, something irreducibly different.
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4. But this still leaves open the question of the mode of reasoning, or way of taking account of things that must somehow be taken account of within which religious utterances are either true or false. The answer to this question can be given only by rightly locating the religious mode of reasoning, or way of taking account of reality, relative to the metaphysical mode of reasoning, on the one hand, and the moral mode of reasoning, on the other. (I can't see my way clear to doing this rightly here. The essential point is that, while the religious mode of reasoning overlaps, and hence necessarily presupposes both the metaphysical and the moral modes, religious utterances nevertheless are neither properly metaphysical nor properly moral. This means, among other things, that religious utterances as such -as distinct from the metaphysical and moral assertions they necessarily imply-claim as distinct from the metaphysical and moral assertions they necessarily implyclaim to be expressions of the authentic self-understanding whose possibility is implied both by a true metaphysics and and a just morality. Thus, while they make or imply claims about self, others, and the whole, they do so only as authorizing--giving and demanding demanding--the self-understanding that they also express. So far as the religious mode of reasoning as such is concerned, then, "God" in its proper proper theistic, as distinct from its broader, religious, meaning refers to the universal individual as authorizing a self-understanding of radical trust and radical loyalty. To affirm, accordingly, "I believe in God," is to affirm not only that one in fact does believe in God but also that one in principle ought to believe in God even if one does not in fact do so, because God gives and demands just such faith. By comparison, then, with the way in which metaphysics takes account of God, one could say, quite understandably, religious utterances have to do with the meaning-of-God-for-us, not with the being-of-Godin-itself. But this would neither imply the illegitimacy in principle of metaphysical talk about God (on the ground that it mistakenly tries to overcome the systematic ambiguity of IIreal,.' etc.) nor collapse the crucial distinction between what is believed and what is worthy of belief. It would simply make clear the important difference between religion and metaphysics. And so, too, one could show, with the no less important difference between the religious mode of reasoning and the moral.
5. An analogy may be useful. The criteria appropriate for common sense talk about what is real allows one to say of the sun at sunset that it is "really red." To deny that such talk is about the real, on the ground that yet other criteria-those of the physicist, say-require other criteria require one to say that the sun at sunset is "really yellow" is simply to shift the discussion to another mode of reasoning. What the religious mode of reasoning means by ultimate reality is what confronts us with the possibility of authentic self-understanding. To deny that the talk involved in the religious mode of reasoning is about the real, on the ground that yet other criteria-those of the metaphysician, say, require one to say that ultimate reality is the universal individual that is the ground and end of all other individuals and events, etc., is, again, simply to shift the discussion to another mode of reasoning.
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