By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
That there are good reasons for distinguishing the two aspects of the existential question as "metaphysical" and "moral" is clear enough from my many clarifications of the distinction. But I have more and more come to wonder whether there may not be reasons as good or even better for speaking of the first aspect as "intellectual" instead of "metaphysical."
One reason, of course, is the precedent set by the traditional distinction between "intellectual" and "moral" going back at least to Aristotle. But another more important reason is that, although the intellectual beliefs necessarily implied by any properly religious answer to the existential question certainly include properly metaphysical beliefs, these are not the only beliefs they include, because they also include properly historical beliefs. True, one might argue, as I actually have, that the actions necessarily implied by any properly religious answer to the existential question also include specifically political as well as properly moral actions. But the apparent parallel here is only that, since political actions are in a broad sense moral, whereas historical beliefs are in no sense metaphysical. Because the beliefs implied by any properly religious answer to the existential question include historical as well as metaphysical beliefs, suggesting in any way that they are metaphysical only is misleading and should be avoided.
Of course, all the changes I'd have to make in my usual ways of thinking and speaking were I to substitute "intellectual" for "metaphysical" are painful to contemplate. But this is hardly a reason for not making them if the reasons for doing are as good as they seem to be.
21 November 2004
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