This article builds on my previous article on Dirk H. Th. Vollenhoven (Ive 2015) and provides an overview of the development of the systematic philosophy of Herman Dooyeweerd. This article seeks to provide an overview of the key developments in the thinking of Dooyeweerd, both in the convergences arising from the conversation of the two brothers-in-law and long-term colleagues and in their divergences. Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven worked within the tradition of Abraham Kuyper, the father of Reformational philosophy. The development of (...) their respective philosophical systematics has tended to be addressed separately. However, I argue that the close cooperation between the two philosophers was critical in the formulation of the philosophy of the cosmonomic Idea. The philosophical conversation between the two persisted, despite critical divergences, largely aired privately. Their respective insights remained a source of mutual stimulus and complementarity foundational for Reformational philosophy. (shrink)

Philosophy gives an account of our experience 1. Philosophy does not begin with rational propositions or presuppositions, but rather with our experience. Dooyeweerd begins A New Critique of Theoretical Thought by contrasting the continuity of our pre-theoretical experience with the way that theoretical experience splits apart this continuity.1 He says later, “The apriori structure of reality can only be known by experience. But this is not experience as it is conceived by immanence-philosophy.”2 Human experience is not limited to our temporal (...) functions of consciousness.3 Our experience is not an ‘Erlebnis’ of mere psychical feelings and sensations,4 but rather “a conscious enstatic5 ‘Hineinleben.’” — the experience of our supratemporal selfhood enter ing into and living within all aspects of temporal reality. (shrink)