1517.Material Object

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The lIIaterial ohject of both a religion and a lnetaphysics is the same: the ultimate reality of human existence, i.e., self, others, and the whole. _But whereas the _jorl1uzl object of a religioll is this ultimate reality ill its meallillg for liS, for how we are each to understand ourselves and lead our lives in relation to self, others, and the "vhole, thejonllal object of a metaphysics is this ultimate reality ill its strflcture ill itself 
The conditions necessary respectively to the constitution of a religion and a metaphysics are also different. Whereas the constitution of a metaphysics requires nothing more than human existence simply as such, and so the originalpreselltatioll of ultimate reality through the experience and understanding of each and every human being, the constitution of a religion requires, in addition, some human being(s) qualified in a special way-namely, through the experience and understanding of a special/ decisive re-preselltatioll of ultimate reality in its meaning for us. 

1. This means that the formal object of a religion, as distinct from that of a metaphysics, is duplex, in that it has an existential-historical aspect as well as an existential-trallscelldental aspect. The first aspect is related to the second as the expl icit is related to the ilnplicit, or as ultimate reality as specially / decisively represellted is related to ultimate reality as originally presellted. 5. So it is that the constitution of a religion, as distinct from that of a metaphysics, involves not only one correlation but

25 April 2010two: not only the correlation between its subject side and its (formal) object side, but also the correlation already involved in its (formal) object side itself between its two aspects: its existentialtranscendental aspect and its existential-historical aspect-or, in Christoph BoH's terms, its "order of constitution" and its "order of manifestation."