1712.If I Have

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If I have correctly understood Iny analysis of "the different senses of 'transcendence,'" the first of the four senses it distinguishes is necessarily presupposed by each of the other three. It

It certainly does if I'm right in arguing, as I've argued more recently, that religion siluply as such necessarily presupposes the applicability somehow of the two transcendental contrasts between the concrete and the abstract and the divine and the nondivine. But

No doubt, the axial religions, in their different ways, do all necessarily presuppose that both of these transcendental contrasts are somehow applicable. But this can hardly be said of archaic re1igions, whose metaphysics, if it can be called that, is, in Prozesky's term, some form of "mythological naturalism."

But, then, is Communism properly said to be a religion or not? It's certainly not analso seems clear that religion simply as such, i.e., prior to the distinction between archaic and axial types of religion, necessarily presupposes "the transcendent" in the first sense. And it is certainly arguable that religion simply as such also needs to presuppose "the transcendent" in the second sense, in which it '!leans the reality or existence of transenlpirical, metaphysical entities of some kind(s). But does religion simply as such necessarily presuppose the transcendent in either of the two remaining senses, i.e., either in the sense of a "naturalistic theism" or in that of a "supernaturalistic theism"? am I right about this? I more and more suspect I'm not. axial religion, because it does not necessarily presuppose the applicability somehow of the transcendental contrast divine/ nondivine. On the contrary, it expressly denies that this contrast can be applied, all differences between concretes! abstracts being merely categorial differences, i.e., individual, specific, and generic differences, as well as categorial differences proper. Otherwise put: Communism is properly said to be "atheistic" because it affirms that all differences between concretes/ abstracts are finite differences only: there neither is nor can be any illfillite difference between them. 2But none of this implies that Communism is not properly a religion, unless one is prepared to question whether archaic religions, also, are religions in the proper sense of the word. vVhereI was nusled, Tfear, in much of nly more recent thinking about all this was in allowing myself to generalize, invalidly, from what is undoubtedly true of axial religion to what is true of religion siInply as such. What any religion necessarily presupposes is only that life is ultilnately meaningful or worth Jiving, in the complex sense in wruch Thave explained this, i.e., as involving a basic suppositioll that life is ultimately meaningful; a basic questioll as to how, exactly, we are to understand the meaning of ultimate reality for us so as to understand it authentically and truly, as it really is; and an open com11litmellt to obey-which is to say, to understand ourselves authentically and truly, because realistically, in accordance with-whatever we are then given to understand explicitly of the lneaning of u1timate reality for us and to lead our lives accordingly. But, as I have usually insisted in Iny analyses of religion, how different religions answer the basic religious question, or with what radicality of insight, is historically variable, depending on which of the conditions of human life are taken to focus the problem and on the depth at which these conditions are grappled with and understoood (d., e.g., Oil Theology: 108). This Ineans that, in the nature of the case, there is never any guarantee that the account that a particular religion will give of the ultimate meaning of life will be at once clear and coherent, meaningful and true. 18January 2010