The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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I wonder whether "experience" may not be somewhat like "interpretation," in that it, too, can be understood in at least three different senses:

(1) in the proper sense as only one of the two levels of living understandingly, i.e., the primary level of self-understanding and life-praxis;

(2) in the broad sense as both levels of living understandingly, i.e., the secondary level of critical reflection and proper theory as well as the primary level of self-understanding and life-praxis; and

(3) in the narrow sense as only the first of the two moments of experience in the proper sense, i.e., the moment of givenness, prehension, or intuition, the second moment being thought, belief, interpretation, theorizing, judgment, etc. about what is given, prehended, or intuited.

If this analysis is correct, then whether "experience" is taken to refer to the horizontal dimension of experience or to its vertical dimension; or to the empirical aspect of experience or to its existential aspect, it can be understood in all three of these different senses.

21 March 1999

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