By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
How is the existential question to be described?
The existential question is to be described as the question about the meaning of ultimate reality for us. As such, it asks at one and the same time about ultimate reality and our own self-understanding. It asks about the ultimate reality that authorizes some understanding of ourselves as authentic and the authentic self-understanding that is authorized by what is ultimately real. It thus presupposes that ultimate reality is such as to authorize some understanding of ourselves as authentic and, conversely, that there is some self-understanding that is authentic because it is the understanding of ourselves authorized by ultimate reality.
Accordingly to think and speak in such a way as to answer the existential question is to think and speak about ultimate reality and ourselves: about ultimate reality as authorizing our authentic self-understanding and about our authentic self-understanding as authorized by ultimate reality.
4 January 2005
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