By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
To what extent is there a correspondence between (1) the insight derived from C. I. Lewis and others, that there is no Archimedian point in philosophy, because all philosophical claims, axioms as well as theorems, are controversial; and (2) the insight stressed by Bultmann, Heidegger, and others, that human existence as such is historical, that encounter with the future mediated by the past is always a challenge to one's total self-understanding?
On the face of it, there is evidently a very close correspondence between these two insights, although account must no doubt be taken of the difference between the two levels of living understandingly, existential and reflective. Put differently, there is the risk of faith at the existential level; and there is the risk of belief at the reflective (i.e., philosophical and/or theological) level.
5 October 1972; rev. 5 August 2002
Overview
Content Tools