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r have said elsewhere that philosophy, although oriented by the vital, existential question, is cOllstituted by "appropriate forms of the theoretical questions of meaning and truth." But just what forms of these theoretical questions are appropriate to philosophy? killd(s) of meaning in question and about its(their) necessary presuppositions or conditions of possibility. (Of course, philosophy can ask this form of the question of meaning only by also asking about "surface" meaning-e.g., the surface meaning of the words, sentences, and paragraphs whose killd/sl of meaning it is concerned to analyze.) If this involves, as it does, asking about the kind(s) of meaning u _... G.'SW,++_{c.f\SiI.)~ S}"!> 0;:""'",--,; expressed by any and aU

necessary presuppositions or conditions of possibility of any meaning whatever, which are the proper subject matter of metaphysics and ethics, with their

respective concerns for the structure of ultimate reality in itself and for how we are to act and what we are to do given the meaning of ultimate reality for us as

human beings.IfSpmclzspielell/Lebensforlllell,,,Or what Whitehead calls "the directed activities of mankind," it also involves asking about the strictly

So far as the question of meaning is concerned, the form that is particularly appropriate to philosophy is the form that asks about the "deep," and not merely the "surface," meaning of things, i.e., about the

As for the form of the question of truth appropriate to philosophy, it is solely tlte questioll ofexistelltial truth-of truth about human existence, and thus of both metaphysical truth about the structure of ultimate reality in itself and moral or ethical truth about how we are authorized to act and what we are authorized to do by the meaning of ultimate reality for us. Philosophy, in other words, neither asks nor answers the qllestion ofempirical truth, and thus of scientific truth or empirical-historical truth; nor does it ask or answer any other form of the question of truth about the merely factual or contingent things that are the proper subjects of nonphilosophical fields or diciplines.

This does not mean, natural1y, that philosophy may not quite properly integrate empirical or factual truths into its account of existential truth, providedonly that other appropriate fields or disciplines have first critically validated their truth.

20 July 2001