1347.Wilfrid Sellars

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Wilfrid Sellars distinguishes helpfully between "the 'manifest image' -or our pretheoretical, ordinary conception of the world[Jand the 'scientific image'[-]or the world as science tells us it is" (so Lynch, True to L(/i:: 75). But metaphysics, correctly understood, is concerned with neither-unless, of course, "scientific" is used in a very broad sense that includes metaphysics as well as science proper (as it is used, e.g., in Scholz's title, A1elaphysik al....' strenge WissenschaJi, or in Heidegger's statement that . 'e....' gihl notwendig zwei Urundmiiglichkeiten von Wi,...·senschl!ji: Wissenschqjien vom Seienden, onti.')·ci1e Wis,\'ensch(~fien und die Wis...;enschqji vom Sein, die ont%gis'che Wissenscha./i, die Philosophie" [Phtiflomen%gie und Theologie: 14; italics in the text]).

Metaphysics in the proper sense is concerned, instead, with what may be called the"metaphysical image" of the world. This means that, although, like science, it is concerned intellectually with the structure ofthe world in itself, as distinct from its meaning for us, what concerns it is not the structure of the immediate reality given empirically, with which science is properly concerned, but the structure ofthe ultimate reality given existentially, with which religion and theology, in their ways, are also concerned, albeit existentially rather than intellectually.

18 November 2007