93. Conceived classically . . .

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Conceived classically, philosophy is critical reflection, including critical validation as well as critical interpretation, oriented by the existential question about the meaning of human existence in its ultimate setting. As such, it includes logical analysis culminating in metaphysics and ethics, and its proper business is to disclose, at the secondary level of critical reflection, the same truth about existence that is always already disclosed at least implicitly on the primary level of self-understanding and life-praxis as mediated by religion and culture.

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Existentialist philosophy, being philosophy, is critical appropriation of self-understanding and life-praxis generally, as mediated explicitly by religion and implicitly by all the other forms of culture

Existentialist philosophy, being existentialist, is such critical appropriation oriented by the existential question about the meaning of human existence in its ultimate setting.

As such, existentialist philosophy includes both (1) critical interpretation, especially logical analysis, of religion and all the other forms of culture; and (2) critical validation of all answers to the existential question, implicit as well as explicit.

In order to be such critical validation, however, it must also include metaphysics and ethics in the sense of logical analysis of the necessary presuppositions of all thought and action.

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An existentialist theology is (1) oriented by the existential question about the meaning of human existence in its ultimate setting; and (2) dependent upon an existentialist conceptuality as the interpretans for critically interpreting its interpretandum, i. e., the witness of faith of which it is the critical appropriation.

At both points, there is or can be controversy and a dividing of ways between one (sub-)type of existentialist theology and another (or others). E.g., is the existential question the only question orienting theology? If it is, just how is it to be understood? If it isn't, by what other question(s) is it oriented?

Of course, there are other factors as well that distinguish or can distinguish different (sub-)types of existentialist theology. E.g., is existentialist theology limited to the dogmatic task of critically validating the appropriateness of the witness it critically appropriates, or does it also have the apologetic task of critically validating the credibility of the witness? .

3 December 2006