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.
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