Now Johan Mekkes has also left us. At the age of 89, the good fight came to an end for him. Earlier, in his gaze, the recognition of friends and students increasingly made way for a prospect of meeting our Forerunner. In this way, we too were gradually and at a distance prepared for his passing. Yet the farewell is still too close, the incision of it still too sharp, to make more than a few words of remembrance possible. Appropriate reflection on the depth and scope of Mekkes' thinking requires a longer period of time than the editors were granted for this issue - although the reader will already encounter references to Mekkes with remarkable frequency in this issue. How shall we characterize his thinking and writing? If it must be in one word, I choose: penetration. First of all, this says something about his personal way of philosophizing. Any lack of commitment was alien to it. Deeply aware of the provisionality and fallibility of human thought, including his own, he nevertheless practiced philosophy with genuine commitment. Readers of Philosophia Reformata know that this commitment was marked by mission. Precisely for that reason, with the passion of the personal, it was at the same time aimed at real encounter with others: students, but also non-kindred spirits and opponents. That trait of penetratingness has not failed to be both infectious and stimulating. Could it be otherwise? With Karl Jaspers he criticized 'passive tolerance', and even more than this he shunned publishing for a vague audience. He was drawn into thinking by the human, the striving and choosing, the struggling and suffering, the rebellious and sought-after.
But he
respected the demands and possibilities of thought. The step-by-step, the
complicated and the multifaceted were taken into account. The structure and
articulation of an argument, of a conversation with a predecessor or
contemporary, were his great concern. Living in wonder and reverence, he was
also sensitive to nuance. However, the frame of an argument often tensed and
bent under the persistent concentration on the heart of the matter and the
heart of the human being. Accessibility and lucidity are therefore not the most
striking features of his way of thinking and writing. But those who took the
trouble were lastingly struck by a penetration which, in addition to those
already mentioned, was given by the nature of the matter which occupied him.
That matter was the all-pervading meaning-dynamics of reality as creation,
propelled towards its destination. And although in sharpness of drawing
distinctions he was no one's inferior, yet the striking feature of his
philosophical work consists above all in the combination of that acumen with an intense awareness of the dynamics of meaning. That is why he was also
wary of schematic analyses - tempting especially when a philosophy of
impressive architecture is 'available'. All too easily an ingenuity arises that
seems pale and bloodless. Mekkes himself was interested in systematic
distinctions insofar as it resembled the search for the power grid of an
electric power station. (I borrow this image from one of his older articles).
In addition,
there were the special accents and the unique style of presentation, also when compared
with the circle of reformational philosophers. Meaning dynamics, creation,
concentration, - these are big, imposing words; but they only gain real
expressiveness in the personal connection with the Master and His way. 'Law-idea'
is also a word worth keeping, but only if it remains related to the law of the grain
of wheat. When the 'Biblical ground-motive' speaks of 'redemption' this word
will not be able to do without the continuous tones of humility, trial,
exercise for its pure sound to resonate; these are also indispensable for a Biblical
philosophy of history.
Mekkes' own
style of presentation: we knew him as combative, uncompromising. But deeply
moved by the word of the dying grain of wheat, he managed to keep these
features free from triumphalism and warlike fervour. He was also blessed with a
nobility that is rare, 'left' as well as 'right'. He felt formed - as he once
told me - above all by three teachers of great stature: General Jhr. W. Roell
('a deeply religious nobleman of the old stamp', - G. Puchinger), H. Dooyeweerd
and the Walloon minister - at some distance from Dutch Reformed Protestantism -
G. Forget.
Mekkes has
made a particularly valuable contribution to this journal. He held the always
demanding position of editorial secretary from 1945 to early 1959. Especially
in that period he wrote many concise and finely crafted reviews. But then and
later he wrote several great articles of a high standard which greatly promoted
study and reflection - I will only mention “Wilhelm Dilthey's 'Kritik der
historischen Vernunft' in de wending der eeuw,”, 20 (1955), p. 7-45, and “Wet
en subject in de Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee (Onze wijsbegeerte op een
driesprong)”[Law and Subject in the Philosophy of the Law Idea (Our Philosophy
at a Crossroads)], 27 (1962), p. 126-190.
Pending a
more detailed and thorough consideration of his work - as anticipated above - I
think it appropriate to close now by leaving the last word to Mekkes himself. I
quote a few passages from a little-known publication that appeared in 1959 in
the Leiden University Press under the title “The scientific-critical attitude
and the acceptance of revelation” [De wetenschappelijk-critische houding en het
aanvaarden van de openbaring], which contained both a lecture by Mekkes and one
by his then Leiden colleague J. H. M. M. Loenen, both delivered at a meeting of
the Christian Student Council.
'Divine
Revelation only exercises its critique in this regard in order to keep science
a science. It wants to prevent science from degenerating into the cult of the
idol of thought, scientific, historical, theological thinking. It does not lay
claim to any scientific results, not even partially. It does not provide
scientific data. It points the way, or perhaps better yet: it warns
against false directions. It warns against taking paths that inevitably lead to
a dead end - that is, in truth, a religious - contradiction (...). It does not
accept for science any residual theoretical truths and stresses the permanently
hypothetical and subjective character of all scientific practice and of all
methods, including Christian ones (...) It
does not fail to point out the solidarity involved in the task of the entire
human community to bring science into culture in open communication, but within
this communication the thesis of 'open reasonableness' as a separate thesis
will have to demonstrate its merits, instead of directing the tournament from
the outset (...) The critique of Revelation thus points to the horizon, which -
far beyond the scientific horizon - is the true human horizon ( ... )'
'Where is
the decision finally made about the entire practice of my life, about my
scientific insight integrally and totally? Where lies the crisis of my daily,
my scientific, my philosophical, my ... theological actions?
That crisis,
the court of criticism, lies in the most displaced place in the entire history
of humankind, and it is from that place alone that I can see the furthest
horizon, which also encloses my widest horizon of thought.
I can only
come to that place as a child. For it is the cross from which the Most Despised
of the despised has been cast out. And where the Risen One says to me:
everything is yours and you ... are Mine!' (p. 10, 11, 12, 13).
J. van der Hoeven
Dooyeweerd is often
misunderstood to reject all prior philosophy. His claim that philosophy has
deep religious roots is taken to imply that a Christian is thereby duty bound
to reject all philosophy that is not explicitly founded on the Christian religion.
However, he rejects this view thoroughly and repeatedly. Here is one such
example.
“Philosophic thought as such
stands in an inner relationship with historical development, postulated by our
very philosophical basic Idea, and no thinker whatever can withdraw himself
from this historical evolution. Our transcendental ground-idea itself requires
the recognition of the “philosophia perennis" in this sense and rejects
the proud illusion that any thinker whatever, could begin as it were with a
clean slate and disassociate himself from the development of an age-old process
of philosophical reflection.
…
Whoever takes the pains to
penetrate into the philosophic system developed in this work, will soon
discover, how it is wedded to the historical development of philosophic and
scientific thought with a thousand ties, so far as its immanent philosophic content
is concerned, even though we can nowhere follow the
immanence-philosophy.” (NC I, 118)
I’ve made a provisional translation of Johan van der Hoeven’s assessment of Dooyeweerd’s engagement with modern philosophy. See here.
My article "Herman Dooyeweerd and Marburg Neo-Kantianism" will be in the next issue of Philosophia Reformata. It is available in the "advanced articles" now.
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
