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Herman Dooyeweerd | |
|---|---|
 Dooyeweerd,c. 1930 | |
| Born | (1894-11-07)7 November 1894 |
| Died | 12 February 1977(1977-02-12) (aged 82) |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Reformational philosophy,Continental philosophy,Neo-Calvinism |
| Notable ideas | Modal aspects,Meaning-oriented philosophy,Religious ground motive |
Herman Dooyeweerd, also spelledHerman Dooijeweerd (7 October 1894, Amsterdam – 12 February 1977, Amsterdam), was a professor of law andjurisprudence at theVrije Universiteit, Amsterdam from 1926 to 1965. He was also a philosopher and principal founder ofReformational philosophy[a] (with his brother-in-lawDirk Vollenhoven),[b] a significant development within theNeo-Calvinist (or Kuyperian) school of thought. Dooyeweerd made several contributions to philosophy and other academic disciplines concerning: the nature of diversity and coherence in everyday experience; the transcendental conditions for theoretical thought; the relationship between religion, philosophy, and scientific theory; and an understanding of meaning, being, time and self.
Dooyeweerd is most famous for his suite of fifteen aspects (or 'modalities', 'modal aspects', or 'modal law-spheres') of reality. These are distinct ways in which reality exists, has meaning, is experienced, and occurs. This suite of aspects is finding application in practical analysis, research and teaching in such diverse fields as built environment, sustainability, agriculture, business, information systems and development.[6]
Dooyeweerd made both immanent and transcendental critiques of Western philosophy, following the traditions ofContinental philosophy.
In hisimmanent critique, he sought to understand each philosophic thinker's work or each tradition from the inside, and uncover, in its own terms, its basic presuppositions, to reveal deep problems. By such immanent critique of philosophic thinkers from the pre-Socratic Greeks onwards through to the middle of the twentieth century (including mediaeval period, into the modern periods), Dooyeweerd claimed to have demonstrated that theoretical thinking has always been based on presuppositions of a religious nature, which he calledground motives. A ground motive is a spiritual driving force that impels each thinker to interpret reality under its influence.[7] Dooyeweerd identified four major ground-motives of Western thought, three of them dualistic in nature:[8]
This means that theoretical thoughthas never been neutral or autonomous of the thinker.
However, Dooyeweerd remained unsatisfied "with an argument that shows that in fact philosophy always has been influenced by religious convictions". Rather, he "wants to show that it cannot be otherwise, because it is part of the nature of philosophy or theoretical thought."[9]
This led Dooyeweerd to undertake a transcendental critique of theoretical thought, of the kindImmanuel Kant pioneered.[10] Whereas Kant and Husserl sought the conditions that make theoreticalthinking possible, they still presupposed that a theoreticalattitude is possible. Dooyeweerd sought to understand the conditions that make atheoretical attitude possible, and argued that all theoretical thought takes place with reference to an "Origin of Meaning", which is a ground-motive to which we adhere extra-rationally. This means that theoretical thoughtnever can be neutral or autonomous of the thinker.
From this, Dooyeweerd argued that all "good" philosophy addresses three fundamental parts to an idea:
This, he proposed, can enable disparate theoretical and philosophical approaches to enter into discourse with each other, as long as each thinker openly admits their own ground-motive. Dooyeweerd, accordingly, made very explicit his own grounding in Creation-Fall-Redemption, with aNeo-Calvinist flavour and a debt toAbraham Kuyper.
Dooyeweerd's cosmonomic philosophy is different from most extant philosophy in at least three ways, which intertwine:
First, it takes seriously the pre-theoretical attitude of thought, as a starting point from which to begin to understand what makes theoretical thought possible. Most other philosophical thinking begins by presupposing a theoretical attitude and either ignores everyday experience or attempts to explain it theoretically, either way presupposing the possibility of theoretical thought as a way to knowledge. In making the possibility of theoretical thought a philosophical problem to address, Dooyeweerd went deeper and further thanKant,Husserl andHeidegger and others.(too rhetorical of a statement)
Second, it is rooted in different presuppositions ('ground motives') about the nature of reality, which are religious in nature. WhereasGreek philosophy is rooted in the Form/Matter divide,Scholastic thinking of medieval Christianity in the Nature/Grace divide, andHumanistic philosophy in the Nature/Freedom divide, Dooyeweerd began from the biblical idea of Creation, Fall and Redemption. He may be said to have explored the philosophical (rather than theological) implications of this idea. He called his philosophy 'Christian philosophy', though what usually claims that label is of a Scholastic nature and very different.
Third, it posits thatMeaning is more fundamental than Being or Process. Dooyeweerd expressed it:
Meaning is the being of all that has been created and the nature even of our selfhood. It has a religious root and a divine origin.[11]
Meaningfulness originates from the Creator (God) rather than from sovereign human attribution. All things, not just those linked with humanity, are meaningful. Strictly, Dooyeweerd says, thingsare, rather thanhave, meaning. Thus, meaning is like an ocean in which we swim, an enabler of all our existence and functioning, rather than a property we attribute to things or words.
This has implications for science. Science – whether mathematical, natural, human or social sciences - is seen as the abstracting of certain aspects for study. For example, even though a lawyer and a biologist might study the same things – for example, fingerprints – they are interested in different aspects. They are looking at the meaning of a thing with different focus, though equally concerned with what is real. Perceptions of reality through this kind of scientific attitude, selecting one aspect as distinct from others for study, will necessarily be governed by fundamental assumptions about how these various kinds of meaning are related to one another in a coherent whole, belonging within the total range of all experiences.[12]
Likewise, in everyday life, we can be aware of distinct aspects, though most of the time we function in them tacitly.
The positing of meaning as fundamental, and the priority given to our pre-theoretical experience of diverse meaning, prompts the thinker to ask, "what ways are there of being meaningful, which cannot be reduced to each other?" Or, in other words, what different aspects are there of things? He delineated fifteen, which are not mere categories, but modalities (ways of being, functioning, etc):[13]
Dooyeweerd claimed that since the discovery of these is addressed by our theoretical functioning, which is fallible, no suite of aspects, including his own, can "lay claim to material completion".[14]
Briefly, aspects are ways of being meaningful and are the 'law side' of created reality. All that occurs does so by 'answering to' the laws of each aspect (i.e. being subject to their laws). e.g. physical waves or particles occur by the laws of the physical aspect, poetry occurs by the laws of the aesthetic aspect. Thus, each aspect or 'law sphere' may be seen as defining a distinct kind of possibility.
Earlier aspects are determinative; later ones are normative. Human beings function as subject in or to all aspects, animals as subject up to the sensitive aspect, plants up to the biotic, and non-living things up to the physical. As you are reading this, you are functioning lingually by understanding it, analytically by conceptualizing, sensitively by seeing or hearing, etc. In fact, all our functioning is multi-aspectual, though some aspects might be latent.[15]
Things exist by reference to each aspect. For example, a car exists physically as a load of steel, plastic, etc., kinematically as a mode of transport, socially as a status symbol, economically as a dent in our finances, aesthetically as a thing of beauty, biotically as a polluter, pistically as an idol, and so on. The being of things is multi-aspectual in principle.[16]
Knowledge may be seen as multi-aspectual knowing. For example, analytical knowing gives categories and theories, formative knowing gives skills, lingual knowing gives 'bodies of knowledge' as found in libraries, and so on.[17]
Each aspect defines a different rationality. In this way, Dooyeweerd echoes Winch and Habermas, though with more precision.[18]
Dooyeweerd attempted to provide a philosophy which accounted for not only the differences in non-human reality, but also, between one thinker and another. FollowingAbraham Kuyper, and other, earlierNeo-Calvinists, Dooyeweerd attempted to describe reality as a creation of God, which has its meaning from God. This God-given meaning is displayed in all of the aspects of temporal reality – which has implications for science.
For example, even though a lawyer and a biologist might study the same things – say, fingerprints – they are interested in different aspects. They are looking at the meaning of a thing with different focus, though equally concerned with what is real. Perceptions of reality through this kind of scientific attitude, selecting one aspect as distinct from others for study, will necessarily be governed by fundamental assumptions about how these various kinds of meaning are related to one another in a coherent whole, belonging within the total range of all experiences. Dooyeweerd argued that this showed the need for a consistent and radicallyChristian philosophy which he sought to provide. Furthermore, he attempted to show that even the imaginations of men are part of that same created reality, and even where misguided they cannot escape being subject to the rule of God exposed by the Christian revelation.
Although he self-consciously exposes the religious nature of his philosophy, Dooyeweerd suggests that in fact, all thought is inescapably religious in character. This religious stamp is disguised when the supposed origin of meaning, toward which various thinkers direct their thought, is not called God, but is rather said to be some aspect of creation. This, he suggests, explains why humanistic science will produce bitterly conflicting ideologies. It helps to locate the "antithesis", the source of irreducible differences, between various perspectives. The "antithesis" must be accounted for as a foundational issue, in any complete philosophy, and this antithesis is religious in nature, according to Dooyeweerd.
Borrowing language and concepts from a wide variety ofphilosophical schools, especiallyEdmund Husserl, theMarburg school of neo-Kantianism,Ernst Cassirer'sPhilosophy of Symbolic Forms[19]—and, as some contend,Franz Xaver von Baader,[c] Dooyeweerd builds on this foundation of a supposed "antithesis" to make distinctions between one kind of thinking and another, theorizing that diverse kinds of thinking disclose diverse kinds of meaning, and that this meaning corresponds in some way to the actualstate of affairs.
Dooyeweerd developed an anti-reductionistontology of "modal aspects", concerning diverse kinds of meaning which are disclosed in the analysis of every existent thing. He considered such modes to be irreducible to each other and yet indissolubly linked. Dooyeweerd at first suggested that there were 14 modes but later postulated 15.[22] The indissoluble coherence of these modal aspects is evinced through their analogical relationship to one another, and finally in their concentration in the central religious selfhood which has a direct relationship to its origin: God.
The majority of Dooyeweerd's published articles and multi-volume works originally appeared only in Dutch. During his lifetime efforts were already underway to make his work available to English-speakers. Translation of Dooyeweerd's writing has continued since 1994 under the oversight of the Dooyeweerd Centre (see link below). To date, thirteen books have been published in English, including hismagnum opus,De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee (1935–1936), which was revised and expanded in English asA New Critique of Theoretical Thought (1953–1958).
Dooyeweerd's influence has continued through the Association forReformational Philosophy and its journalPhilosophia Reformata which he and Vollenhoven founded in 1932. The title of the journal is something of an arcane philosophical joke, which repristinates and shifts the meaning of the title from a 1622 book, authored by Johann Daniel Mylius,Philosophia Reformata, a compendium of alchemy, then regarded by some as a science. There are also a number of institutions around the world that draw their inspiration from Dooyeweerd's philosophy.(such as? - name at least some)
Dooyeweerd became member of theRoyal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1948.[23]
In a commemoration editorial appearing in the newspaperTrouw on 6 October 1964 upon the occasion of Dooyeweerd's 70th birthday, G.E. Langemeijer, chairman of theRoyal Dutch Academy of Sciences, professor at theUniversity of Leiden, and appellate attorney general, lauded Dooyeweerd as "... the most original philosopher Holland has ever produced, evenSpinoza not excepted."
A religious ground motive is a spiritual driving force that impels each thinker to interpret reality under its influence.[24] Dooyeweerd wrote that, in the case of thinkers who presume that human thought is autonomous, who operate by the dictum that it does not matter whether God exists or not, such a thinker's basic commitment to autonomous thought forces him to pick out some aspect of the creation as the origin of all meaning. In doing so, the supposedly autonomous thinker is made captive to a kind of idol of his own making, which bends his understanding to conform to its dictates, according to Dooyeweerd.
Dooyeweerd self-consciously allowed hisChristian perspective to guide his understanding, but in a philosophical rather than a theological mode of thought. He believed that this permitted the philosopher to gain insight into the principle by which diversity of meaning is held together as a unity, as he directs his thought toward the origin of things, which is God, and God's purpose for making things, which is found in Christ. This basic religious orientation should affect the way that the Christian understands things. In contrast to adualistic type of religious ground motive, Dooyeweerd suggested that the Christian's basic orientation to the world ought to be derived not from human speculation, but from God's revealed purposes: Creation, the Fall into sin, and Redemption in Christ. This Christianreligious ground motive is a fundamentally different posture toward things, compared to say, the"Form/Matter" scheme of the Greeks, the"Nature/Grace" synthesis of Medieval Christianity, or the"Nature/Freedom" approach of the Enlightenment, all of which are orientations divided against themselves by their reliance upon two contradictory principles. While the Christian religious view of things as Created, Fallen and being Redeemed has often been blended with speculative and dualistic schemes, it has never really become fully identified with them, so that there is historical continuity in Christian thought despite the fact that it has undergone numerous significant shifts, in Dooyeweerd's view. But the fact that they are capable of being blended convincingly exposes the transcendental rules to which both false and true theories are subject.
In his bookRoots of Western Culture[25][26] Dooyeweerd identified four great frameworks or value-systems that have determined human interpretations of reality with formative power[27][28][29] over Western culture. Three of these are dualistic and may be described in the terms ofHegelian dialectic as antitheses of opposite poles of reference that are eventually resolved by synthesis, only for the synthesis to draw out, inexorably, a new opposing pole and so a new antithesis. Other RGMs may readily be added to Dooyeweerd's list, and this endeavour may be sanctioned by Dooyeweerd's own passing reference to aZoroastrian RGM.[30]
TheForm/Matter framework forontology was articulated by Greek philosophers, particularlyAristotle. However, Dooyeweerd identifies its roots in the ancient religious beliefs about a river of life[31] and the rule of μοιραfate, which came to be set against the later culture religion of the rule of theOlympian gods,[32] in a logical[33]antithesis.[34]Nietzsche argues, similarly, that Greek philosophy from the time of Homer through to Plato and Aristotle demonstrates a tension between valorization of aDionysian natural orgiastic devotion to the life force, celebrated in the annual Baccanal atDelphi, and the model of the city and its justice as achieved by calm thought in accord with an Apollonian devotion represented by the Temple ofAthena. Perhaps the best articulation of this tension of values can be seen in the tragic drama where the Furies are constrained and given a place below the Temple's altar where they can no longer unleash themselves in the historic form of a blood revenge.
Dooyeweerd's next RGM is not dualistic but ternary,[35] described asCreation -Fall -Redemption: three moments of radical cosmic change. This RGM is argued to be authenticallyJudeo-Christian because it does not identify any parts or aspects of experienced reality that might be absolutised[36] in place of God; rather, it shows the significance of thebiblical metanarrative for a correct understanding of reality.[37] Significantly, it is an understanding that can only be derived fromspecial revelation.[38] For much of thehistory of Christianity this RGM has not taken its legitimate prominence because of the way thatChristianity was accommodated to Greek pagan philosophy[39] in the writings of some of the Church Fathers such as[40]Justin andAthenagoras. This facilitated a transition from the Form/Matter RGM to the Nature/Grace RGM. Dooyeweerd believed that theProtestant Reformation represented a re-discovery of the Creation - Fall - Redemption RGM and that he, with others such asAbraham Kuyper,[41] was helping to restore it to its rightful place in Christian thinking,[42] as the foundation for a ProtestantChristian worldview andChristian philosophy.
According to Dooyeweerd, the authentic Creation - Fall - Redemption RGM of theNew Testament writers largely failed to win its place in the development of Christian philosophy. Instead, a synthesis of the Form/Matter RGM took place, giving rise to a concept of natural earthly reality, and the Christian theological understanding ofredemption was taken as the antithesis to this in the form of the concept ofGrace. Thus arose the Nature/Grace antithesis, which was initially oriented with Grace as superior to Nature. The Nature/Grace RGM was powerfully developed in the philosophy ofThomas Aquinas and so persisted through theRenaissance of the 12th century, theRenaissance, and indeed through theProtestant Reformation and CatholicCounter-Reformation.
Eventually, with the decline in the Church's political dominance and the implicit dismissal of the earthly realm by the polarisation of the Nature/Grace RGM, this antithesis was secularised, leading to its replacement by ahumanistic Nature/Freedom RGM. This may be understood by considering howEnlightenment thought may be aligned with each of two poles. One was the elevation of Nature, the deterministic universe of thenatural philosophers; the other was the quest for absolute freedom, the ideal ofRomanticism. Dooyeweerd saw how manymodernist philosophers struggled to account for both sides of this dualistic RGM, retaining human freedom while construing the Universe as a kind of machine, but without finding a lasting solution.
The Nature/Grace RGM is the last in Dooyeweerd's survey, but he then moves on, in the final section ofRoots of Western Culture, to a critique ofHistoricism. This worldview, abandoning absolutes and proposing a relativistic interpretation of culture, appears as an elevation of the Freedom motif above the Nature motif, and is in turn contested by the rise of modern sociology with its implicit bid for dominance on behalf of Nature. This brings the survey up to Dooyeweerd's time of writing, where he is ready to propose his new framework for Reformational philosophy founded on the Creation - Fall - Redemption RGM.
Posthumanism#Philosophical posthumanism
At first I was strongly under the influence of neo-Kantian philosophy, and later of Husserl's phenomenology.
A special issue of the journalAxiomathes was devoted to the subject of "Philosophy and Science in the Thought of Herman Dooyeweerd".
