Dooyeweerd and the history of modern philosophy

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.

Philosophia Reformata

The latest edition of PR has just arrived and it contains an important announcement: all future contributions are to be in English only. While it states that this will commence from the next issue the current issue is already English only.

Here is the list of articles:

Andrew Basden, Engaging with and Enriching Humanist Thought: The Case of Information Systems

M.D. Stafleu, Time and History in the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea

Lambert Zuidervaart, Dooyeweerd's Conception of Truth: Exposition and Critique

Jonathan Chaplin, Beyond Multiculturalism - but to where? Public Justice and Cultural Diversity

There is also a review of B.J. van der Walt's When African and Western Cultures Meet by Steve Bishop. So it is not only the English language that is well represented but also English nationals with three out of the six contributors Englishmen residing in England. I must admit to having a slight reservation about banning future Dutch language articles, despite its obvious positives, especially for people like myself, however I do hope that the prominence of the British is a sign of things to come in this country.

Future Reformational Books

At this time of year it is customary to look back over the year and make lists and observations of various kinds. It occurs to me though that there are many books that I am looking forward to reading once they are published. While it is great to hear about forthcoming books, it can also be a little frustrating when the process of publication takes a long time. So two books that I have read and enjoyed this year I was especially pleased that their publishing date was advertised soon after hearing about them and that they became available as close to on-time as could be wished. Indeed both Bob Goudzwaard's Hope in Troubled Times and Lambert Zuidervaart's Social Philosophy After Adorno arrived as reasonably priced paperbacks.

What follows is a list of reformational books that I have, in a variety of ways, come to learn are to be published at some indeterminate time in the future.

• Dirk H. T. Vollenhoven Reader edited by John Kok
• Philosophy put to work:Contemporary Issues in Art, Society, Politics, Science and Religion Edited by Henk Geersema and Jan van der Stoep
  
• Philosophy the discipline of the disciplines by D.M.F. Strauss
  
• Herman Dooyeweerd: Christian Philosopher of State and Civil Society by Jonathan Chaplin
• Reason Reversed: The Neo-Marxism of the Frankfurt School and the Dialectic of Enlightenment by Jacob Klapwijk
• Creation, Revelation and Philosophy by Johan Mekkes
• Technology and the Future by Egbert Schuurman
• Culture, Society, and Diversity: Essays by Sander Griffioen Edited by Paul Otto and Hubert Krygsman
• Between Historicism and Relativism: The Dynamics of Historicism and the Philosophical Development of Ernst Troeltsch by Jacob Klapwijk

***Update

• Political Community Beyond The State: A Neocalvinist Position On Non-Monopolistic Public Law Order by Gregory Baus
  

If you know of other reformational books worth waiting for do let me know.

Reformational philosophy on the web

These days I rarely do a random internet search on Dooyeweerd or reformational philosophy to see what might turn up. However I recently found some interesting stuff:

The biggest find was a long, "directors cut", article by Lambert Zuidervaart called After Dooyeweerd: Truth in Reformational Philosophy. Since Zuidervaart has been working on theories of truth for a while now, this looks like it is a significant contribution to systematic philosophy within the reformational movement.

I was also encouraged to find a blog post on Dooyeweerd's philosophy of furniture by a "Thomist of sorts" who finds value in Dooyeweerd's non-reductionist ontology. It is also a good illustration of how Dooyeweerd ontology can open up our perspectives on the most mundane of realities.

I also discovered this blog that looks interesting, must get round to reading it properly.

The latest Aspects from the Association for Reformational Philosophy is now on-line and includes interviews with Gerrit Glas and Roger Henderson. Glas has been appointed to the Dooyeweerd Chair at the Free University and hopes to publish more in the area of systematic philosophy. Sound exciting to me.

Reformational presentations at the Metanexus conference

The papers from the Metanexus conference are now on-line. These include the following:

Roy Clouser

A Blueprint for a Non-Reductionist Theory of Reality

Johannes Corrodi Katzenstein

H. Dooyeweerd and E. Voegelin on Transcendence

Adolfo García de la Sienra

The Economic Sphere

Egbert Schuurman

The Ethics of Responsibility as a Comprehensive Approach: An Application to the Ethics of Technology

James Skillen

The Necessity of a Non-Reductionist Science of Politics

Daniel F. M. Strauss

The Significance of a Non-Reductionist Ontology for the Disciplines of Mathematics and Physics–an Historical and Systematic Analysis

Reformational Philosophy

The latest Aspects is now on-line.

Also Schuurman's lecture The Challenge of Islam's critique of Technology is now available in English.