The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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According to Whitehead, "[R]eligion claims that its concepts, though derived primarily from special experiences, are yet of universal validity, to be applied by faith to the ordering of all experience." Thus "[t]he doctrines of rational religion aim at being that metaphysics which can be derived from the supernormal experience of mankind in its moments of finest insight" (RM: 31 f.).

But, significantly, the "coherent ordering of life" that Whitehead speaks of in the same context as the aim of "rational religion" is expressly said to be "an ordering which shall be coherent both in respect to the elucidation of thought, and in respect to the direction of conduct towards a unified purpose commanding ethical approval." In other words, Whitehead, in his way, recognizes that religion includes not only credenda, but also agenda, and that its "doctrines, " or teachings, accordingly, may just as well be said to aim at being that ethics which can be derived from the supernormal experience of mankind in its moments of finest insight.

9 September 2002

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