1573. Note how, in the whole discussion of what philosophy is . . .

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Note how, in the whole discussion of what philosophy is in the attached pages, I quite ignore that, by my—own understanding of the question by which it is oriented, philosophy has to include, in its purely formal aspect as analysis, not only transcendental metaphysics, but also ethics.

For that matter, I quite ignore that, even on its metaphysical side, it has to include existentialist analysis as well as transcendental metaphysics sensu stricto.

6 October 2000 

Perhaps I have been misled in concluding that developing a transcendental metaphysics belongs to the first, purely formal, analytic aspect of philosophy, as distinct from its 'second, existential aspect. Perhaps all that belongs to philosophy in its first aspect, so far as metaphysics is concerned, is simply analysis of the kind of meaning and truth involved in metaphysical assertions, as both related to and distinct from assertions of other logical types.

At any rate, I now realize that such reasoning as I've offered for my conclusion quite fails to support it. Even granting that among the kinds of meaning is "the kind where the question of whether or not an utterance expressing it is really meaningful is identical with the question of whether or not the utterance is really true," one is not warranted in concluding that, simply because philosophy is analysis of this kind of meaning, along with all other kinds, it thereby provides "not only a purely formal language in terms of which merely verbal issues about existence can be overcome and real issues somehow adjudicated, but also a purely formal, transcendental metaphysics." Perhaps all that philosophy provides in analyzing this kind of meaning is not a transcendental metaphysics, but only an account of what such a metaphysics would be, as distinct from such other things as categorial metaphysics, science, morality, religion, and so on.

31 October 1998; rev. 6 October 2000

Philosophy is correctly understood as the comprehensive critical reflection constituted by asking about human existence simply as such.

So understood, philosophy has two main aspects. In one aspect, it consists in a purely formal analysis of meaning, and thus of all the different kinds of meaning involved in understanding ourselves and leading our lives through all the forms of culture, religious as well as secular. Among such kinds of meaning is the kind where the question of whether or not an utterance expressing it is really meaningful is identical with the question of whether or not the utterance is really true. Thus, in its first analytic aspect, philosophy provides not only a purely formal language in terms of which merely verbal issues about existence can be overcome and real issues, somehow adjudicated, but also a purely formal, transcendental metaphysics.

But philosophy is more than the purely formal analysis of meaning, even if such analysis includes providing a transcendental metaphysics. In its other main aspect, its existential aspect, philosophy has the task of critically interpreting and critically validating all the different answers to the existential question, implicit as well as explicit, so as to formulate its own critico-constructive answer to this question—which it answers, however, only indirectly, at the secondary level of critical reflection and proper theory, and solely on the basis of common human experience and reflection.

Thus philosophy is indeed analysis, but analysis that as such includes metaphysics in the strict and proper sense of transcendental metaphysics. And beyond that, philosophy is existential reflection—critico-constructive reflection on the truth about existence originally and universally presented in common human experience and reason and therefore also more or less adequately represented, implicitly if not explicitly, in all the forms of culture, both secular and religious.

6 August 1997; rev. 6 October 2000