984. If, as Hartshorne holds, logic and ethics...

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If, as Hartshorne holds, logic and ethics, as well as aesthetics are, in Peirce's words; "normative sciences," whose rules apply to rational beings, not to all beings, as do those of metaphysics, why couldn't the same thing be said about theology?

On such a view; theology formulates the rules that are normative for rational beings insofar as they think and speak (Ξ think, say, and do) concerning God; or the strictly ultimate reality that theistic religions call "God," in its meaning for us; as distinct from its structure in itself.

But my difficulty with this whole way of thinking and speaking is that metaphysics is, in its way, a normative science, also, as, indeed, is any special science, in its way.

Spring 1991