Video Transcript: The Natures of Things: Foundational & Leading Functions

We're now going to continue with this theory of reality on sketching its main  points, and not giving the detailed arguments for each point as Dooyeweerd  presents them. That's for you to read another day, but at least I can introduce  this to you. In addition to natural things whose qualifying function is the highest  aspect in which they have their properties actively, and the laws of which govern their internal organization, when you take the thing as a whole, there are also in  addition to natural things, artifacts. A little while ago, I looked around this room  quickly, while I was talking to you, and I tried to find something that I could hold  up was a natural object, I couldn't find anything. I looked around, everything's an artifact. Everything's been made. The stands been made, the tables were made, the books been made, that they're all everything around me, are artificial things  made by human beings, they've taken the natural material, and they made  something new out of it. Now we have to, if we're going to have a decent theory  of reality, we have to be able to account for what's new in the nature of an  artifact. And here's the way that goes, an artifact is going to have two aspects  characterize its nature. The first is going to be called its foundational function.  It's going to exist, function under the laws of a particular aspect, which are  foundational to it in the sense that these are the ones that qualify the aspect that qualifies the process of its formation. The process of its formation, then an  artifact is going to have a leading function, not just foundational, but leading.  And that's going to be the highest aspect, not in which it functions. As a subject,  it's going to be passive, it's not going to be an active function, it's going to be a  passive function. So the first difference between artifacts and natural things is  that the leading function of artifacts, which gives us the key to their nature, is a  passive aspect is one in which they have their properties passively, not actively.  So let's take an example of some artifact and ask about its nature. How about  the book here? The book, okay, the foundational function. What's foundational to this artifact is the process of its formation, which is itself, what I call formative,  right? It's the formative or historical aspect. Humans just take materials and they make the covers and they make the pages and they make the ink and they print  the ink on the pages, and its leading function is going to be linguistic, that's not a shock, I think to anybody it's there to present this linguistic artifact to you, so that you can read what it has to say. Books can be subdivided then according to  what kind of language they use, of course, you could do that. And you could you could list their different natural languages. Or you could also then say what  subjects that language would be talking about. But its leading function clearly, is  to convey something in language to somebody else. It's a record of somebody,  what somebody wants to wanted to tell someone else. So it has an historical or  formative Foundation, human beings make it and then it has a leading linguistic  function. On the other hand, we can take something else we could take, if I had  one $1 bill. And we could say that this foundation was also formative. People  make the paper and they print the money on the face they print the numbers 

and the figures, and so on, but its leading function would be economic. It's there  to actively participate in the process of buying and selling, which is economically qualified. The dollar bill doesn't buy or sell the dollar bill gets exchanged for  something else. In buying and selling, here's one for you. Suppose I asked you  to identify the nature of a hammer. Foundational function is that we take wood  and we take metal, we make the head of the hammer, we take the wood and we make the shafts and we secure one to the other. Now we have a hammer. But  what's its leading function? What characterizes the way it contributes to reality?  And the answer is that it's founded in the formative or historical, and it's leading  function is also, formative or historical. That is, that's true of all tools, a tool is an  artifact we make in order to make other artifacts. So the hammer has a leading  function. So it's the same as its foundational function. Dooyeweerd thought to  this all this stuff only operated in one direction, that if something has a leading  function, it has that function had to be lower on the list, I'm sorry, if it had a  foundational function would have to be lower on the list than the leading  function. And that seems to me a mistake. Let me tell you why. I think Take for  example, a pair of false teeth. It has a formative historical function, human  beings take this material, they make something into a fit, the dentist takes  measurements and they fit in your mouth. And what is its leading function, it's  biotic it's to chew food. And your health can be seriously affected if you can't  chew your food. So I think sometimes it goes the other way too. take an artificial  limb, or an artificial knee. Those are formed by people, they take metal, they put  it into the shape, they make measurements, and so on, a surgeon inserts it. So  into the body. So what so that the body can carry out its normal biotic functions  in movement? I think that's also true about. Hearing aids, are historically formed. But the leading function is sensory it's doing bring back to normalcy, the hearing  of sounds. So in Dooyeweerd's view, the foundational function is always below  the leading function on this list. I'm suggesting that that needs to be expanded,  sometimes it goes the other way round.Now you might wonder, is there anything ever at anytime that that's an artifact? And doesn't have a formative, historical,  historical foundation? Isn't anything humans made made by humans something  that it's got to be formative? And so that Dooyeweerd's answer is that when we  form a marriage, the foundational function isn't us taking a natural material, and  making something new. It's this is driven by our very nature as humans, as male and female, so that the foundational function for a marriage is biological. It has  to do with a difference of the sexes. And that's what's foundational in the leading function of a marriage is ethical love. Ethics here covers all kinds of love. So for,  and it depends upon the social setting of the relationship, just how that love gets nuanced. So we're to have a general love for everyone other than ourselves,  committed to loving our neighbor as ourselves. That doesn't mean we don't love  our spouse in a special way. And we certainly do. It includes an erotic  component that we're not to share with anyone else. And it means I owe my wife

more duty than I owe somebody I don't even know or even the neighbor down  the street or perhaps another relative. Parents owe something to children that  they owe no one else children owe us an ethical love relation to their parents,  

more so than other people that they know. So there's all kinds of love,  depending on its setting, but the central command is to love God that's religious, that transcends the ethical and your neighbor as yourself. And then there are  specific ways that that works out in practice in society, I may love my work. I  may love my house. I may I just hate the weather where I live or something like  that. It has to do with what we love and hate is human love life. So once again,  we're we're zeroing in on ways to understand things given this theory, natural  things. Now artifacts, artifacts are very different. They're different because  they're qualified by aspects in which they possess properties only passively. And they are produced by humans or other animals. I mean, there are animals that  also produce artifacts. Birds make nests, spiders make webs, Beaver, beaver  lodges in dams, that sort of thing. I'm not going into that that's a special category for Dooyeweerd. He has ways of distinguishing human artifacts and animal  artifacts. But this is enough for a start, we can see the differences, differences in nature between the artifacts and the natural things and we've got the difference  between foundational and leading functions. So I'm going to stop there. I'm  going to let you think this over. I'm going to come back and we're going to try  some more examples. See if see how well you do picking out the nature of  something zeroing in on it on its its fundamental characteristics by using this,  this and this, but this for natural things and this for artifacts