The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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There is no need to state or imply, as I fear I still incline to do, that the properly intellectual questions of science—be they metaphysical, mathematical-logical, or empirical—are eo ipso properly theoretical questions. On the contrary, I ought to go out of my way to make clear that properly intellectual questions can arise and be pursued not only on the secondary level of critical reflection and proper theory, but also on the primary level of self-understanding and life-praxis.This, of course, is the whole point of allowing, as I've allowed all along, in one form or another, that there are "precritical" as well as properly "critical" forms of asking and seeking answers to properly intellectual questions (cf., e.g., 23 August 1999). 

Happily, some of my formulations are much better than others in making, or at least implying, this point. Thus, if I can say, in one of them," Metaphysics in the broad sense, then, I take to be the attempt, at the secondary level of critical reflection and proper theory, to formulate this always already given understanding explicitly, in a clear and coherent conceptuality-terminology" (22 May 1997), I can also say, in another, "Metaphysics in the broad sense is more or less explicit understanding of ultimate reality in its structure in itself as distinct from its meaning for us" (23 February 2000; rev. 23 March 2001). 

5 October 2003

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