Life such as it is
now, for us twentieth-century people, has not fallen out of the sky. Neither
has science: it has its history. Everyone knows and understands this, except
Western science itself, especially since the previous century. It believes in
the always 'present thinking', which, like a camera on a tripod, takes
snapshots of the 'factuality' in front of the lens - snapshots that, as in a
film, give the illusion of movement, of events, of history. However, the camera
itself stands fixed, positioned outside that movement. From that point the
story begins and ends, and the person behind the camera remains completely out
of the picture. This “present thinking” can itself at most focus somewhat more
sharply, reflecting and correcting itself, but it remains holding the
first and last word for itself.
How has science become so uncritical and
pretentious in our Western mind, especially in this West that was once
Christianized, and thus could have known that history is the history of life,
and not a result of thought?
...
Various thinkers had
already warned against this in the nineteenth century: people such as
Kierkegaard (who emphasised the subjective existence of the thinker) and
Marx (philosophers have interpreted the world, but the point is to change the
world); in the Netherlands, and especially for our Christian circles, Abraham
Kuyper. But that this raised questions concerning the privileged position of thought,
and pointed to another core, remained misunderstood or was ignored: people
fitted Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Kuyper into their own frame of thought.
But it was precisely
reformational philosophy that made it clear that Kuyper had indicated a
different central point of reflection than thinking.
With this, reformational philosophy had
provisionally found a basis from which to proceed to the attack. If there is a
central point that transcends thinking – central because it is the centre of
everything in life – then a break with 'thinking' as a fixed point must be
made.
...
It is not enough to
make critical comments on the content of humanistic assertions, now included in
a broader framework as 'general-natural'. The content could not be the primary
target; it is a question of the point out of which people
operate, namely the exclusive universal validity of thinking, regardless of how
critically praised. The 'Self-criticism' of thinking, as provided by Immanuel
Kant, is also not enough, according to reformational philosophy: self-criticism
must be pushed so far that I, thinking, see that thinking is not an independent
activity, and therefore know that I have to account for what precedes science.
In other words; self-criticism must penetrate to the question: where do the outflows
of life come from, including thinking, which is after all an activity of life?
Johan Mekkes “God’s Normaal en de wijsbegeerte.” (1974) pp.35-37
