Dr. J. Glenn Friesen

Herman Dooyeweerd: De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee

© J. Glenn Friesen 2003.

Notes regarding WdW I, 48

1. This is not a separate section in the NC. Some may be included in NC I, 84-85, but much is not included.

2. The special sciences do not have a view of totality. In fact, they lose from their grasp the experience of reality itself. This statement is included at NC I, 84:

By being bound to a special scientific viewpoint, a special science loses the vision of the whole with respect to empirical reality, and consequently the integral empirical reality itself is lost from its grasp.

I think that many scientists would be shocked by this statement, since they believe that they are the ones who in fact do know empirical reality. But "by being bound to a special scientific viewpoint" they interpret all the aspects from that viewpoint and tend to level the diversity of meaning (I, 43). Does this not mean that the special sciences of necessity engage in a kind of absolutization? They require a re-integration into the continuity of cosmic time.

If the view of integral empirical reality is lost in the special sciences, then to remain in that point of view can also impair our normal naive experience. To remain within the scientific view then represents a temptation. This has not been recognized by reformational philosophers like Clouser, who has stated (in an online discussion) that he sees theoretical work as no more dangerous than naive thought.

3. The special sciences remain stuck within the investigation of particularized meaning. They cannot give an account of naive experience. This is also in NC I, 84.

4. Naive concepts are 'ingesteld' within the full temporal reality. This is contrasted with uiteen-stelling, the dis-stasis of theoretical thought. 'Ingesteld' here must mean enstasis, an integral experience.

5. Naive experience does not have the articulated, ex-plicated theoretical knowledge that distinguishes the aspects.

6. The NC has this to say about naive experience:

Furthermore, so far as it is rooted in the ground-motive of the christian religion, naive experience also has the radical and integral view of temporal reality by which the latter is concentrically conceived in its true religious root and in its relation to its true Origin. But its view of the whole is a naive one, which for lack of a theoretical insight into the modal diversity of meaning does not satisfy the requirements of the transcendental ground-Idea as hypothesis of philosophic thought. (I, 84)

That is a difficult statement to understand. How can naive experience "concentrically conceive" of temporal reality? That is a good description of the necessity to see temporal reality as related to its center, concentrically. But is that not what is done by Ideas in transcendental thought? How can naive thought do it if it is restricted to retrocipatory aspects?

The WdW does not have this statement. It says that naive experience has a view of totality, insofar as in its religious attitude it views temporal reality in the light of God's Word from out of its creaturely relation to God. But this naive view of totality misses the theoretical focus that is required in the ground-Idea of philosophy.

7. The distinction between naive and theoretical views of totality is better explained in the next statement of the WdW: "Naïve experience has an intuitive knowledge [weet] of the all-sidedness of things." Naive experience has an intuitive grasp of totality, but not an explicated theoretical Idea of totality. There is a distinction between intuitive and theoretical knowledge.

Van Eeden also distinguishes an intuitive knowledge ('weten') from theoretical 'kennen.' He says that the highest knowledge is a 'weten,' instead of 'kennis'. It is the ‘veritas sicuti se habet’ of thomas a Kempis, the incomprehensible understanding, the ‘Visio sine Comprehension’, the Mysterium Magnum of Boehme, the kennen in opposition to wissen of Von Helmholtz. (van Tricht, 84). This deepest knowledge is an inner knowledge related to the Self. The source of deepest knowledge is ‘Zelfschouw’ –the intuitive knowledge of Self. This kind of knowledge or 'weten' has of its own nature a tendency to be directed towards God. There is a spark within us directed to the light ("zelf-richtend licht, een vonk, oneindig klein (Lied van Schijn en Wezen, I, XII, 48). Our selfhood makes the choice:

Het Ik, dat doet de keuze, ‘t leidend weten,
dat Richting geeft (I, XII, 55).

And yet van Eeden also appreciates theoretical knowledge. This is one reason that Dooyeweerd was attracted to his ideas.(Verburg, 20, referring to the second half of Dooyeweerd's article 'De neo-mystiek en Fr. van Eeden' Nov 27, 1914. The second half of the article is devoted to van Eeden).