The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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Now that it has occurred to me, it seems obvious that there are uses for as well as a possibility of a further distinction analogous to that between "existential-historical" and "empirical-historical."

This is the distinction with respect to the concept-term "transcendental," which I have sometimes used in distinction from "historical" – as, for example, in the thesis: "A religion's explicit primal source of authority is thus the historical, as distinct from the transcendental, source [implicitly] authorizing its claim to decisive existential authority" (5 December 1994). (Elsewhere, however, I have used "transhistorical" in place of "transcendental" – as, for example, when I say, "the point is that the object side of the religious correlation is itself duplex, having a historical as well as a transhistorical aspect, each dialectically related to the other. Otherwise put: the object side of the religious correlation itself involves a correlation—in Boff's terms—between an 'order of manifestation' and an 'order of constitution' relative to the subject side of the correlation" [10 June 1989; rev. 5 January 2001].) In the case of this further distinction, however, the distinguishing adjectives are not "existential" and "empirical," but "existential" and "metaphysical," which yield the distinction between "existential-transcendental" and "metaphysical-transcendental." Whereas the first means the transcendental in its meaning for us, the second means the transcendental in its structure in itself— just as "existential-historical" means the historical in its meaning for us, while "empirical-historical" means the historical in its structure in itself. Of course, the difference, requiring one to characterize this distinction as only analogous to the other is the logical-ontological type difference between "the transcendental" and "the categorial"—"the historical" being simply a special case of "the categorial."

7 October 2003

N.B.: Another use of the distinction is prominent in my answer to the question as to "the foundation of faith (fundamentum fidei)" (December 1992; rev. 26 November 1993; 15 June 2002). Presupposed by my answer, I point out, is "a distinction between transcendental, ultimate reality, including strictly ultimate reality, in its meaning for us, on the one hand, and the historical reality through which the meaning of transcendental, ultimate reality for us is decisively re-presented, on the other hand." Thus I say, in response to the first question about "the essential or substantial foundation of faith," that it is "the twofold reality of Jesus and God: Jesus as the historical reality through which transcendental, ultimate reality in its meaning for us is decisively re-presented; and God as the transcendental, strictly ultimate reality whose meaning for us Jesus decisively re-presents."

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