In the material that follows, we are given another summary of Dooyeweerd’s thought. This time author Andrew Basden gives us a much fuller account of the philosophical ideas that gave Dooyeweerd his place in the world of philosophy. --RZ

 

 

Dooyeweerdian Ideas as Integration

Realism

Traditional philosophical realism emphasizes the known and acted-upon object and de-emphasizes the knowing, acting subject. In extreme versions (such as positivist science) the relevance of the subject (e.g. the experimenter as person) is denied altogether, leaving only the object. Laws must then be deterministic rather than normative. This has always tended towards a narrowing of focus in scientific investigation and resultant action in the personal, economic or political arena, often resulting in a reductionism. A number of the more obvious reductionisms have been widely recognized - scientific investigation has been reduced to materialism and rationalism while action has often been reduced to technical matters or finance.

Approaches to anything in life (e.g. urban planning) that are based on realist philosophies have the danger of reductionism, resulting in ignoring salient aspects. It may not be absolute but shows itself in an imbalance, in which one aspect is given undue emphasis to the detriment of others. Doing so threatens sustainability of the environment or system we are dealing with.

In nineteenth century industrial Britain, for instance, emphasis was sometimes on provision of physical housing for human resources for factories, in the vicinity of the factory. Biological matters such as health and aesthetic matters such as beauty were seldom considered, resulting in slums that had to be cleared after World War II. In planning their replacement, open spaces, cleanliness and aesthetically clean lines were emphasized, while social issues and those of mobility, for instance, were ignored, resulting in dehumanizing schemes that were also energy- inefficient and expensive to maintain. These schemes are now being replaced, giving them an even shorter life than the slums they replaced, suggesting they were less sustainable. In urban planning, the imbalance in any culture depends on what is considered at that time to be the nature of the object that is the built environment.

Another problem with planning based on realist philosophy is that because the subject is de-emphasized the effects of the action and knowledge of the subjects are often ignored. A prime example of this is, of course, road-building, where the objects are the transport system and traffic volumes while the subjects are those who drive and those who plan journeys, and until recently the traffic generating effect of road-building has been ignored and even denied.

Nominalism

The opposite approach to the subject-object theme is based on nominalist philosophies, of which existentialism is an extreme form and, in information systems, constructivism is a common version. In these approaches the object is denied, leaving only the knowing and acting subject. (In fact, this approach also denies the law side.) This approach pervades post-modernity (Lyon, 1995) and, in scientific circles, constructionist and interpretivist paradigms. It claims to avoid the dangers of reductionism by acknowledging the views and wishes of all and sundry. While it has some success in this, there are three problems. No external reference point is acknowledged or even allowed, so there is no certainty that planning according to these subjective wishes will in fact lead to well-being or sustainability in the longer term. Second, when wishes and views of different people or groups appear inconsistent there is no standard by which to arrive at consensus. Third, there is the danger in practice that those who shout loudest get heard, while less articulate groups and those who cannot represent their right, such as animals or young children, tend to get ignored unless their cause is championed by others.

Therefore while less reductionist than approaches based on realist philosophies, there is still no guarantee of sustainability. There is not even any guarantee that sustainability will be greater than when adopting approaches based on realist philosophies. Approaches based on nominalism find integration and inter-communication, mentioned above, difficult.

Integrating Subject and Object

The philosophical approach of Dooyeweerd (1953) has been developed from a radically different starting point, which questions even assumptions made by the Greeks about existence and meaning. One of its claims is to integrate subject and object. Unlike nominalist approaches Dooyeweerd acknowledged an external reality that is independent of the acting and knowing subject. Because of this, Dooyeweerd originally thought himself a realist, but later distanced himself from realism (Henderson, 1994). This was because he clearly saw that we, acting and knowing subjects, are part of the external reality; it is independent of us but never separated from us. We are affected by it but also affect it and have views and desires concerning it.

We are concerned with sustainability at a time when it is clear that sustainability is threatened. Working more than fifty years ago, Dooyeweerd did not use that term but referred to the 'health' or well- functioning of a system and gave it a long-term meaning. His claim is that such 'health' or sustainability can only be achieved if we understand the nature and, he would say, meaning of the laws that govern both us and all external reality. Realist philosophy drives its adherents to reducing all types of laws to one, such as the laws of physics, of logic, or evolutionary biology, etc. Nominalist philosophy drives its adherents to a denial of all laws. Dooyeweerd wished to escape both dangers.

Presuppositions (more)

The problems with both realism and nominalism are deep-seated, found in their underlying philosophical presuppositions (assumptions). There is little hope therefore that they can be ameliorated just by fine-tuning. Though deep, and not immediately obvious, philosophical presuppositions always reveal themselves in time. Therefore, if we seek a well-founded approach to information systems, or to sustainability of the built environment, it must be one that is based on different philosophical assumptions, especially about the relation between subject and object.

In fact, Dooyeweerd takes the matter one step further, claiming that what seem at first to be philosophical presuppositions often turn out to be religious ones.

Religious Presuppositions

(See section about Religious Presuppositions in Dooyeweerd's theory of ground motives for more.)

A key element of Dooyeweerd's thought is that no sphere of life is 'neutral'. In particular, science and logical thinking are not neutral, a fact that we readily acknowledge today but when Dooyeweerd was active most assumed they were neutral. This non-neutrality was not just claimed but explained by Dooyeweerd - explained by saying that the human person always has religious pre-suppositions. 'Religious' does not mean to do with rituals and creeds, but rather with our view of what is self-dependent. (This is brought out clearly by Clouser (1992).) According to Dooyeweerd, all is dependent on the Living God, who alone is self-dependent. Even the laws of arithmetic and logic depend on him (which is why, perhaps, the argument between Christians on the one hand that God is three, and Jews and Muslims on the other that God is one, may be somewhat misdirected). He is the designer and creator of all laws and not subject to any of them - yet they truly reflect his character.

Ground Motives (more)

This means that the Ground Motives that were mentioned at the start are essentially religious in nature. They reflect what we most fundamentally believe about the nature of reality, including God. It so happens that while not everybody holds a given ground motive personally, certain ones prevail at certain times in history and guide the direction of theoretical thinking. Dooyeweerd suggests there have been four over the last 2,500 years:

All but the second are dualistic in nature, and thus result in temporal reality being split in two and dis-integrated. Click the above for fuller description of each ground motive; also see page on theory of ground motives.

Nature-Grace came from an attempt to merge the first two, this led to all sorts of oppressions and distortions, which led thinking people eventually to one of two reactions against it. One was the Reformation, which sought to recover some of the pure Creation, Fall, Redemption motive. The other was the Renaissance, which, assuming the problem lay with the God part, sought to remove it from the 'Grace' element, thus producing the Freedom element in the modern ground motive.

(Vollenhoven's analysis of the history of theoretical thought into three phases is similar: Pre-Synthesis, when the first two motives existed in separate communities, Synthesis, when they were merged, and Anti-Synthesis, which sought to break the synthesis.)

To have a dualistic ground motive actually goes against the laws of the pistic aspect. Hence, since we cannot set aside these laws, they will have an effect, a deep effect, a long term effect. And, since the pistic aspect is the last, it is, according to Hart (1984), open to God, the one which allows human contact with God. It is also the one that most deeply affects and influences our functioning in all other aspects. It does not mean that our functioning in other aspects necessarily goes against the laws of those aspects, but rather than it affects the sum total of our functioning and whole persons.

Thus Dooyeweerd maintained that it was important not only from a religious point of view but also from the point of view of healthy living in society and environment, and also from the point of view of healthy science, that we hold the Hebrew Ground Motive, which is seen through the revelation in the Bible. This will, of course, be unacceptable to many, and they will wish to reject at least this claim of Dooyeweerd's, and many, if they cannot have the rest of the system of thought without this claim will reject the whole system. But that just provides substantial evidence for the validity of Dooyeweerd's claim that all is ultimately religious.

This is why Clouser's (1992) book is entitled The Myth of Religious Neutrality.

An Attempt at a Christian Philosophical Framework

The main motivation behind Dooyeweerd's work was to form a philosophical framework that was Christian-Biblical, or at least not anti-Christian. Now, by this he did NOT mean a philosophy made up from biblical phrases or doctrine. Nor did he mean one that excluded all other religious thought such as secular, Islamic, Hindu, atheistic, etc.

What he meant was that the underlying presuppositions should be in line with what God has revealed via the Biblical revelation. Dooyeweerd was troubled by the fact that Biblical ideas do not seem to fit 'comfortably' with most theoretical thinking, yet he was not satisfied with the explanation given by both secularists and fundamentalists that religion has nothing to do with this world of science, technology, business and in particular thinking.

One example: as discussed above the Greeks assumed that the primary thing we can say about a thing is that it exists, and exists in its own right. Yet the Biblical revelation is that all is dependent on the Creator God, and cannot be truly known without reference to him. Therefore all attempt to 'know' a thing without reference to him is doomed to failure, however promising its start might appear. Another example: we experience meaning, and in a way that is integrated with our experience of things around us. Yet nobody has satisfactorily explained meaning in a way that integrated. Dooyeweerd believed that meaning is found in God.

He was convinced that there was a far deeper explanation, and gave his life to finding out what it was. First he went back to the start of theoretical thinking (Greeks) and worked his way forward, and compiled a careful critique; this is Volume 1 of his New Critique. But he did not want to just be negative. So he took the challenge of building an alternative framework, one that does not make God-avoiding assumptions right from the start, and one that is self-consistent. He wanted it to account for the unity and diversity that we experience. He wanted it to account for all sciences and knowledge. He wanted it to account for our everyday experience. And he wanted something that would speak into the intellectual debates in their own terms, and yet make God relevant thereto. He also wanted it to be able to address issues such as: what is the relationship between God and the cosmos that we experience and live in? The results of this work form Volumes 2 and 3 of his work.

Compiled by Andrew Basden.

 

http://www.dooy.salford.ac.uk/summary.html#integ

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