Abstract

This essay presents an emerging conception of truth and shows how it appropriates Herman Dooyeweerd’s conception. First I compare my “critical hermeneutics” with other reformational models of critique. Then I propose to think of truth as a dynamic correlation between human fidelity to societal principles and a life-giving disclosure of society. This conception recontextualizes the notion of propositional truth, and it links questions of intersubjective validity with Dooyeweerd’s emphasis on “standing in the truth.” While abandoning his idea of transcendent truth, I seek to preserve the holism and normativity of Dooyeweerd’s radical conception. Theoretical thought never finishes its task. Anyone who believes to have created a philosophical system that can be adopted unchanged by every ensuing generation shows no insight into the historical contingency [gebondenheit] of all theoretical thought