The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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1. The material object of both a religion and a metaphysics is the same: the ultimate reality of human existence, i.e., self, others, and the whole.

2. But whereas the formal object of a religion is this ultimate reality in its meaning for us, for how we are each to understand ourselves and lead our lives in relation to self, others, and the whole, the formal object of a metaphysics is this ultimate reality in its structure in itself.

3. The conditions necessary respectively to the constitution of a religion and a metaphysics are also different. Whereas the constitution of a metaphysics requires nothing more than human existence simply as such, and so the original presentation of ultimate reality through the experience and understanding of each and every human being, the constitution of a religion requires, in addition, some human being(s) qualified in a special way---namely, through the experience and understanding of a special / decisive re-presentation of ultimate reality in its meaning for us.

4. This means that the formal object of a religion, as distinct from that of a metaphysics, is duplex, in that it has an existential-historical aspect as well as an existential-transcendental aspect. The first aspect is related to the second as the explicit is related to the implicit, or as ultimate reality as specially / decisively re-presented is related to ultimate reality as originally presented.

5. So it is that the constitution of a religion, as distinct from that of a metaphysics, involves not only one correlation but two: not only the correlation between its subject side and its (formal) object side, but also the correlation already involved in its (formal) object side itself between its two aspects: its existential-transcendental aspect and its existential-historical aspect -- or, in Christoph Boff's terms, its "order of constitution" and its "order of manifestation."

25 April 2010

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