1379. Any self-understanding necessarily implies...

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Any self-understanding necessarily implies an understanding of existence (=understanding of ultimate reality) that, like a self-understanding, is a matter of decision and risk. I do not have to understand myself or existence as I do when I understand either in a certain way. 

The understanding of existence that any self-understanding necessarily implies may also be called a "world view." But while a self-understanding may therefore be said necessarily to imply a world view, it itself is not a world view.

Self-understanding and understanding of existence (or world view) are both modes of existential understanding of the meaning of existence for us, as distinct from existentialist understanding of the structure of existence in itself. But any existential understanding—be it a self-understanding or an understanding of existence—necessarily implies an existentialist understanding.

When this implied existentialist understanding is made explicit, the result is existentialist analysis, or transcendental metaphysics in the broad sense of "metaphysics;' which includes transcendental anthropology as well as transcendental ontology and therefore transcendental theology and transcendental cosmology, i.e., transcendental metaphysics in the strict sense of the word.

Note that on this use of terms, "existentialist analysis" is not just another way of saying "(transcendental) anthropology," but is a synonym for "transcendental metaphysics in the broad sense of 'metaphysics."' Just as "existence" may be taken to include others and the whole as well as the self, and thus as synonymous with "ultimate reality," so "existentialist analysis" may be understood to mean "'(transcendental) metaphysics' in the broad sense," as including not only "(transcendental) anthropology," but also "'(transcendental) metaphysics' in the strict sense," i.e., "(transcendental) ontology," "(transcendental) theology," and "(transcendental) cosmology." 

As for the question whether there is any place in my understanding of metaphysics for a "fundamental ontology," the answer is still affirmative. But what is properly said to occupy this place, given the use of terms thus clarified, is not what is here called "existentialist analysis," or "transcendental metaphysics in the broad sense of 'metaphysics,'" but rather what is distinguished as "transcendental anthropology." As analysis of the necessary conditions of the possibility of the self's existence, transcendental anthropology provides the basis for the deeper and more comprehensive analysis of the necessary conditions of the possibility of any even conceivable existence, and thus of God's existence as well as of the existence of others.

27 November 1997; rev. 2 February 1998