The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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If theology is to wisdom somewhat as metaphysics is to science, then wisdom is not to be identified with authentic self-understanding. It is to be identified, rather, with critical reflection on, or the proper theory of, what authentic self-understanding really is. 

But, then, my earlier criticism of Hartshorne for not identifying wisdom with authentic self-understanding is unjustified—as are my statements that it should be so identified. Moreover, my reasoning in support of my criticism is unconvincing. Whether or not one identifies wisdom with authentic self-understanding, one may still argue that philosophy rightly aspires to "impersonal truth" and that the philosopher, accordingly, ought not to be "the final arbiter, [but] rather the clarifier or intellectual [theoretical?] explorer, of belief possibilities." What "is to some extent irreducibly intuitive and personal" is not so much philosophy as the philosopher. But her or his calling is precisely to surmount this limitation—insofar as it is such, as distinct from rightly orienting her or his entire inquiry!—for the sake of the "impersonal truth" to which she or he qua philosopher rightly aspires.

It also occurs to me that not identifying wisdom with authentic self-understanding agrees more closely with my analysis elsewhere of "the Christian religious attitude" (Notebooks, rev. 3 September 2003). According to that analysis, which is presumably applicable not only to Christianity but also to religions generally, the faith that Protestant Christianity, at any rate, takes to be our only authentic self-understanding is "neither basic faith in the ultimate meaning of life nor even the more determinate belief or conviction that this meaning is what it is decisively re-presented to be [through] normative Christian witness. It is, rather, the obedient trust in and loyalty to strictly ultimate reality as God that is explicitly authorized through the decisive re-presentation of its meaning for us in the event Jesus Christ." If one asks, then, wherein Christian wisdom properly consists, it is neither in basic faith in the ultimate meaning of life nor in obedient trust in and loyalty to God as revealed through Jesus Christ, "whom God made our wisdom" (1 Cor 1:30), but in "the more determinate belief or conviction that [the ultimate] meaning [of life] is what it is decisively re-presented to be [through] normative Christian witness." This belief, or conviction, at any rate, most directly corresponds with the wisdom to which philosophy aspires, which includes, not least, the insistence that we are not, and cannot, be saved by this or any other analogous wisdom, but only by understanding ourselves in the moment in the way in which it calls us to do, by actually accepting our acceptance with all others in trust and then loyally accepting all others as ourselves and leading our lives accordingly.

5 December 2004

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