Herman Dooyeweerd writes that “the idea of cosmic time constitutes the basis of the philosophical theory of reality in [A New Critique of Theoretical Thought].” My aim is to present and defend the hypothesis that Dooyeweerd’s idea of time is, in part, mistaken at its foundation. His idea of a cosmic temporal coherence of diverse modal aspects arose from the absolutization of a concept of temporal universality that he adopted uncritically as the transcendental basic Idea of cosmic time. My immanent-critical (...) assessment leads to the hypothesis that temporality should be recognized as the first modal aspect, which, for Dooyeweerd, has been lost to view. Recovering both the sphere sovereignty of the temporal aspect and the equal universality of all aspects opens the way to a resolution of Dooyeweerd’s temporal/supratemporal dialectic and to a new perspective on naive experience and the meaning of humans as God’s image. (shrink)

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)

It is no easy task to respond to the 95 theses on Herman Dooyeweerd by J. Glenn Friesen. The theses are not complete in rendering Dooyeweerd’s thought. For example, his analyses of the history of philosophy and his legal philosophy are hardly touched upon. Yet the theses cover a wide range of topics that are central to Dooyeweerd’s philosophy. Therefore, to give a wellargued assessment of all of them would require more than one issue of this journal. Fortunately the editors (...) have put severe restrictions on the amount of space that is available. So I will limit myself to some comments. My first comment concerns the method of Friesen and the misunderstandings it sometimes leads to. Second I mention some points where I disagree with his interpretation. Third I discuss the idea of supratemporality. I agree with Friesen that it is central to Dooyeweerd’s philosophy but I have problems with the views of Dooyeweerd himself. Then I will deal with another issue where my main problem is with Dooyeweerd, the idea of theoretical thought as opening up naïve thinking. I end with some concluding remarks. They concern my general assessment of the theses and what I see as the importance of Dooyeweerd’s philosophy. (shrink)

Dooyeweerd’s account of abstraction is examined and found to be faulty. He holds that abstract thinking isolates aspects which must then be synthesized, whereas I argue that we cannot isolate any aspect from the others however so hard we try. But our very inability to isolate aspects is then turned into an alternative version of a transcendental critique of theory making. Instead of asking for a basis for synthesizing aspects we have isolated, the new version asks: what is the nature (...) of the aspectual connectedness which is so strong that it cannot be interrupted even by abstraction? I argue that it is impossible for anyone to understand the meaning of a concept fully without taking a position on this issue, whether that is done implicitly or explicitly. Moreover, every answer to this question presupposes a divinity belief. Hence, this recasting of the critique yields a demonstration of the religious regulation of all concepts and every theory. In this way the goal of Dooyeweerd’s critique is achieved, even if not in the way he envisioned. (shrink)

Students and philosophers alike often find Dooyeweerd’s writings unclear and inaccessible, and the ideas expressed in them obscure and difficult to grasp. In this paper I will first explore the issue of unclarity in Dooyeweerd’s work—for example, what makes Dooyeweerdian writings difficult to understand? Why is it that his meaning is often unclear? And does this imply that something is wrong with his writings? Second, and as a case in point regarding unclarity in Dooyeweerd’s work, I will examine an important (...) distinction drawn in Reformational philosophy, namely, between naive experience and theoretical thinking. In his paper “The Amsterdam Philosophy: A Preliminary Critique,” philosopher and theologian John Frame criticizes Dooyeweerd for his unclear writings and for drawing an implausibly sharp distinction between naive experience and theoretical thinking. Assessing Frame’s critique will serve as a framework for the discussion of these two related issues. (shrink)

On the basis of an initial reference to a number of critical appraisals of H. Dooyeweerd’s philosophy, this article proceeds by provisionally focusing on the image of Franz Xavier Von Baader1 — who was intellectually active during the first part of the nineteenth century — in secondary literature . The main concern, however, is to enter into a more detailed evaluation of the claim made by J.G. Friesen,2 namely that all the basic systematic insights and distinctions found in the philosophy (...) of Herman Dooyeweerd are already present in the thought of Von Baader. That Dooyeweerd was indeed influenced by numerous philosophers and philosophical insights spanning the entire history of philosophy is beyond doubt. However, that there is any direct influence on his thought from Von Baader cannot be substantiated on the basis of the available sources even though it is not unlikely that he might have been aware of the existence of Von Baader. Both the quotations used by Friesen in support of his thesis and an extensive reading of the original Collected Works of Von Baader serve as a basis for the assessment of the claims made by Friesen. In fact, there are a number of philosophical distinctions found in the original works of Von Baader that, considered in isolation, are much closer to views of Dooyeweerd. However, once these are placed within the context of Von Baader’s thought, the striking and significant distance between the thought of Von Baader and Dooyeweerd once again become apparent. (shrink)