The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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Does the wisdom of which philosophy is the love consist in authentic self-understanding, as I seem to have sometimes slipped into supposing? Or does it consist, rather, in a critically reflective understanding of what is, and is not, authentic self-understanding?

If philosophy is indeed a matter of critical reflection and proper theory, and thus understanding at the secondary rather than the primary level, it would appear that the wisdom that is its objective would have to consist in the second, rather than the first---just as the objective of Christian theology as sapientia eminens practica is not Christian self-understanding, but rather a critically reflective understanding of what is, and is not, Christian self-understanding.

But if this is really so, it might be easier to understand why it is that the wisdom that is philosophy's objective includes, in addition to a critically reflective understanding of what is, and is not, authentic self-understanding, a critical analysis of meaning and of all the logically different kinds thereof. 

28 October 1998

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