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© J. Glenn Friesen 2003. |
Notes regarding WdW I, 10 1. Corresponds to NC I, 7 2. "Not foreign to me." Because our selfhood expresses itself in our temporal functions, these temporal functions must be related back to the selfhood if they are not to be foreign to us. They must be made our own. This is an emphasis that is also found in Baader. I am not aware of any analysis of this idea in Dooyeweerd by reformational philosophers who claim to be his adherents. The Idea is important to Dooyeweerd, but it makes no sense if we do not accept the supratemporality of the selfhood. This supratemporality is the key of knowledge. 3. Our I-ness transcends temporal particularized and diversified meaning. But through our temporal functions, we act within temporal reality. 4. We must participate in totality if we are to have an Idea of it. 5. I myself (in my supratemporal selfhood) am at work in the temporal world in my functions. As Baader says, our temporal functions are the instrument of our selfhood. 6. Dooyeweerd refers to his thought as cosmological thought. Elsewhere, he differentiates this from metaphysical thought. But Dooyeweerd's Ideas of the cosmos, of cosmic time, and of supratemporal Being expressing itself in meaning, are surely also metaphysical. It seems to me that it would be better for Dooyeweerd to acknowledge that we all must engage in metaphysics, and that it is only a question of what kind of metaphysics. Perhaps Dooyeweerd's real distinction is that we do not begin with Ideas, but with our experience of the supratemporal, which can only be approximated in Ideas. 7. We choose our standpoint. This choice of position is a religious act. Like other acts, it is an act of our supratemporal selfhood. Baader says that our choice either for or against God is really our only choice. After we make this choice of position, our other ways of thinking and acting are determined by this Ground-Principle or Ground-Attitude. Dooyeweerd says that in order to see God, Self and cosmos correctly, we need to start from the correct Ground-Motive. To do this, we need a change of heart, or as the Scriptures also say, a metanoia, change of nous. |
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