The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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That Bultmann understands existentialist philosophy -- and Heidegger's existentialist analysis in particular -- to be a world view is clear from at least two considerations:

(1) he says expressly that, in clarifying what existence in general means, philosophy also calls us to exist (cf., e.g., NTM: 107, 23, 117), and even that its teachings, like those of theology, are indirect proclamation (GV 3: 122); and

(2) he says expressly that the statements expressing philosophy's existentialist analysis have the meaning of "timeless truths" (aka "general truths"), and that, if they're to the point, they can be valid as such -- including the statement that existential self-understanding takes place only as my own particular self-understanding in existential decision (NTM: 116).

Of course, qua "ontology," or "existentialist analysis," philosophy is, in effect, metaphysics; and so only one side or aspect of a proper world view. But the concern with structure is not philosophy's only concern; it is also concerned, in its way, with meaning, and so it is also, in effect, ethics.

7 December 2001

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