807. I now realize that...

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I now realize that I would almost certainly have understood Bultmann better – and more quickly! – had I been as clear as I have become about the important distinction between metaphysics, on the one hand, and philosophy, on the other – or, if you will, the purely formal, analytic task of philosophy and its partly material, critico-constructive task. Why? Well, because the distinction Bultmann makes between philosophy as "a philosophical analysis of existence" and philosophy as "[a] definitive philosophical system – such as idealism, say, and specifically G. W. F. Hegel's" (NTM: 107), converges very closely with the distinction that I have only gradually learned to draw.

8 October 2001