Dr. J. Glenn Friesen

Studies relating to Herman Dooyeweerd Linked Glossary of Terms

© J. Glenn Friesen 2003-2004

Linked Glossary of Terms
(references to De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee, unless indicated.See concordance for correlation with pages in the New Critique. The concordance is in pdf format.)

Enstasis is a resting in the coherence of cosmic time. Sometimes Dooyeweerd refers to this coherence as a systasis, which he also describes as 'resting.' One of Dooyeweerd's first references to 'systasis' is in his 1928 article "Het juridisch causaliteitsprobleem in 't licht der wetsidee" He says that our knowledge depends on analysis and synthesis and is no resting systasis. (Cited by Verburg 115).

Our theory leaves this enstasis, or systasis. It is therefore no longer resting. It breaks apart the coherence of time by dis-stasis and the epoché. Our intuition of time allows us to "enter into the temporal cosmos" and to set apart and combine the modal aspects in theoretical thought. (NC II, 480). following theory, we "fall back" into the attitude of naive experience.

I would like to point out that these contrasts of movement and rest should not be thought of in the specific sense of the kinematic aspect.

Baader also refers to the resting in our selfhood; he contrasts it with the movement into the temporal world of extasis. Our resting selfhood is an ‘Ineinandergestürtz-Sein of the Center, as opposed to the becoming [werden] of the periphery (Begründung, 58). Our theory requires a movement outwards, and this requires an act of imagination, which is a movement from enstasis to ek-stasis (Susini I, 378, 379). Baader distinguishes between a passive, contemplative knowledge, and a more active knowledge (Susini II, 30). Our passive knowledge is the Subject-Object relation, where we contemplate, or are spectators of objects above and below us. Baader uses the words anerkennen, kennen and Wahrnehmen for this passive knowledge. Our active knowledge is erkennen. It is an active work, an effort of grounding (ergründung) and a battle [Kampf].The reason for moving into temporal reality is in order to act as a center for temporal beings which were previously unmediated. We make this movement out of love, in order to save those beings, just as Christ was incarnated in order to save us.

We have free movement of life in the periphery when we are related to the Center:

…die Begriffe des Zentrums und der Peripherie hier in ihrem gegenseitigen Bezug in einem und demselven organischen Systeme zu nehmen sind. Denn in einem solchen bewirkt nur die Ruhe, das Gesetztsein (‘le posement’) des Zentrums die freie Bewegung in seiner Peripherie (in seinem Äußeren), weil jede Bewegung nur aus dem Unbeweglichen hervorgeht…( Zeit 24 ft.4).

[…the concepts of the Center and of the periphery, in their reciprocal relation, are to be understood as an organic system. For only in such an organic system can the Stillness effect or cause the ‘being fitted’ (le ‘posement’) by the Center of the free movement in its periphery (in its exterior), because each motion only goes from out of the Unmoved…].

There is a dynamism even within God, in the generation of the persons of the Trinity. Eternity should instead be seen as always resting in its movement and always moving in its Rest, as always new and always the same. God is eternal Life, eternal Being and eternal Becoming at the same time, an eternally proceeding Process (Philosphosche Schriften I, 149; Weltalter 139).

Revised Dec 27/04