1337. In thinking about how I might write . . .

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In thinking about how I might write up what I have to say about "transcendental metaphysics," etc., I have come to certain tentative conclusions: 

1. What is wanted is a little book of about the same size as Faith and Freedom (1st ed.), or Is There Only One True Religion or Are There Many?

2. Assuming that it, too, would have four main parts or chapters, each of approximately 20-25 pages in length, 1 judge that the first would be methodological and would consist (a) in mapping transcendental metaphysics' place in relation to all the other human interests, inquiries, etc.; and (b) in clarifying both how it is based in experience and how it supports its conclusions, i.e., its distinctive mode of "objective argumentation" alongside other prominent modes. 

3. In the second part or chapter, then, I would consider transcendental metaphysics formally, in relation to the question it asks and seeks to answer.

4. In the third part or chapter, I would consider transcendental metaphysics materially, by outlining my own particular answer to the question. 

5. In the concluding chapter, then, I would deal with the specific issue of "theology and metaphysics," arguing (a) that theology necessarily presupposes some transcendental metaphysics; and (b) that the transcendental metaphysics that most nearly meets theology's need today is the transcendental metaphysics outlined in the preceding part or chapter. 

6. The argument of the book as a whole would serve (a) to clarify the differences between transcendental and categorial metaphysics as well as neoclassical (transcendental) and classical metaphysics; and (b) to argue that the only or the best way to do "natural theology" today is to do neoclassical transcendental metaphysics. (I have put this last point to myself by saying that this is the book that I wish I had been able to envisage and see my way clear to write before I declined the invitation to do the Gifford Lectures.)

7. The conclusions about which I feel the least certain and am therefore the most tentative are the two pertaining to the second and third parts or chapters of the book (3 and 4). It is entirely possible that the question-answer scheme will prove not to be the best way to organize what needs to be done in them. Other better possibilities for organizing it may be suggested, for example, by the distinctions between general and special metaphysics and the disciplines of the latter; or by the distinction between fundamental ontology and ontology.

2 February 1998