698. Factum et Faciendum.

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                                                                                                   Factum et Faciendum

1. Direct witness calls for a faciendum -- for something to be done, i.e., for the actualization of one of one's existential possibilities.

2. The ground of its call, however, is always some factum -- something already done, some reality, that, in the meaning for us that belongs to it, authorizes the actualization of this rather than any of one's other existential possibilities.

3. But, then, communication of this factum is indirect address insofar as, in communicating it, one indirectly calls for the faciendum that it warrants.

4. This, however, is not the only mode of indirect address; because any explication of the meaning of the faciendum authorized by a factum at least indirectly witnesses to both -- the factum and the faciendum -- it, too, is a mode of indirect address.

5. But doesn't it belong to the concept of a religion as such -- as arising from what is special even as it extends to what is general -- that there should always be at least two facta involved: (1) the factum of ultimate reality in its meaning for us; and (2) the factum of the decisive re-presentation of ultimate reality as having this meaning? In other words, there are always (1) the factum implicitly authorizing a certain self-understanding as authentic; and (2) the factum explicitly authorizing the same self-understanding.

n.d.; rev. 12 December 2000