Dr. J. Glenn Friesen

Herman Dooyeweerd:
De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee

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De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee Volume I
Foreword
Introduction
Ground-Idea
Foundation
Law-Idea
Prism of Cosmic Time
Law and Subject
Philosophy/Worldview

De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee Volume II
The Gegenstand
Dis-stasis/ Synthesis
Intuition and Time
Conceptual Limits
Horizon and Levels
God, Self and Cosmos

© J. Glenn Friesen 2003-2005

Notes regarding WdW I, 49

1. Corresponds to NC I, 84. the NC does not have a separate heading for the section headed "methodological precedence."

2. The unity of concrete things in the diversity of meaning is a problem for philosophy. That statement must come as a surprise to those reformational philosophers who want to begin with things as unproblematic. But Dooyeweerd does not begin with things. He says that methodologically the philosophic research of the abstract aspects must precede the philosophic analysis of the structure of concrete things. This seems to be a difference from Vollenhoven, who starts with things, facts and events.

3. Dooyeweerd here contrasts the special sciences with "mere enstasis." ("de zich bloot in de werkelijkheid instellende denkhouding der naieve ervaring." This statement does not appear in the NC. Elsewhere, Dooyeweerd speaks about not "falling back" into the naive attitude. These statements indicate that theoretical thought, while a distancing from our experience, is nevertheless a deepening of it.

We may perhaps compare it with Baader's view of pre-theoretical experience as a "blind, unfree empiricism" (Werke 6,89 ft 1, 1,130). and in Über den Zwiespalt des religiösen Glaubens und Wissens he refers to the "merely outer seeing" (58, ft. 14).

I believe that for both Dooyeweerd and Baader, our naive experience is deepened when, after the dis-stasis of theoretical thought, we return to a deepened experience by theoretical synthesis, which relies on our intuition.

4. Dooyeweerd contrasts ‘in-stelling’ [enstasis] to ‘uiteen-stelling’ [dis-stasis]. Here he also contrasts ‘in-stelling’ to ‘tegenoverstelling’ [opposition, standing over-against, Gegenstand]. These various uses of 'stelling' are not brought out at all in the NC translation in NC I, 85.

5. I have tranlsated 'aftrekt' here as 'abstract.' But this abstraction should be understood in the sense of the refraining from the full experience of cosmic time, willed withdrawal from that full experience.

Revised Sept 4/05