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© J. Glenn Friesen 2003-2005 |
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.)
| microcosm |
NC II, 593 |
| macrocosm |
NC II, 593 (real experience of the 'macrocosm') |
Dooyeweerd objects to the idea of a microcosm/macrocosm.
And yet he says that the temporal world has no existence apart from its
supratemporal root in humanity (NC I, 100; II,
53). He also says that we find the meaning
of the whole cosmos in our own meaning (I, 14; NC I, 11). why then does
he reject the Idea of a relation between microcosm and macrocosm? The
answer seems to be that he finds "microcosm" too individualistic.
His idea of the root is supra-individual. If the root were separate individual
supratemporal selves, it would result in many separate worlds.
Any individualistic view of the supratemporal is based on an irrationalistic
personalism:
Nor can he be what calls the ‘personal correlate
of an absolutely individual cosmos.’ This idea of a microcosm
is dominated by the radically irrationalistic personalistic view of
the transcendental horizon of human experience. The subjective individuality
determines this horizon, making it both individual and cosmic, and “essentially
and necessarily” different in each person. Even absolute truth
becomes absolutely different for each individual person. Scheler’s
“idea of God” is only “realizable” by an individual
revelation. This Idea remains a merely intentional, theoretical hypostasis
for any one who has not received this individual, most personal revelation.
From this hypostasis the possibility of a real experience of the “macrocosm”
can never be understood.
Our first objection to this Idea of a microcosm is
that subjective individuality can never determine the structural horizon
of human experience and of the cosmos. This horizon is a structural
order, the Divine order of the creation itself. It comprises in its
determining and limiting structure the individuality of human personality,
its religious root as well as its temporal existence. Creaturely subjective
individuality cannot determine and limit itself, but is a priori determined
and limited by the Divine order. (NC II,
593).
On the next page (594) he says,
“The cosmic self-consciousness in which all cosmological
knowledge remains founded, is not an experiential entrance into the
absolutely individual horizon of some “personal world”,
or a “microcosm”. It enters into the full, unique cosmos
created by God within the temporal horizon, in the full meaning-coherence
of all its modal and plastic structures. Naïve experience, the
great primary datum of all epistemology, does not know anything of a
cosmos as a “personal world” supposed to be identical with
countless other “personal worlds” in an abstract, universal,
merely intended essential structure alone.…Man experiences his
individual existence within the temporal horizon exclusively in the
one and only cosmos into which he has been integrated together with
all creatures.”
Individuality is given
within time. Even the indivudation of our own ego
is related to time.
Revised Jul 10/06 |