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© J. Glenn Friesen 2003. |
Notes regarding this
translation of excerpts from The text below is a provisional translation. Copyright is held by the Dooyeweerd Centre, Ancaster, Ontario, and publishing right is held by Mellen Press, Lewiston, New York. A definitive translation will be published in the series The Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd. 1. This translation of excerpts, notes and commentary are intended for study purposes. I love Dooyeweerd’s philosophy, but I believe that it has been seriously misunderstood. The primary purpose of this translation of excerpts from his work is therefore to correct the widespread ignorance of what Dooyeweerd really said. 2. De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee ['WdW'] has been translated before, as A New Critique of Theoretical Thought (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1969; first published in 1953, and recently republished by the Mellen Press). I have re-translated only excerpts from the WdW. For those who are seriously interested in Dooyeweerd's philosophy, a copy of the 1953 translation remains essential. 3. However, the 1953 translation did not translate all parts of the WdW, and it added many more sections. The page numbering therefore doesnot coincide between the WdW and the English translation, A New Critique. I have therefore compiled a rough concordance (in .pdf format) between the WdW and the New Critique 4. The New Critique's translation of the WdW was inconsistent. Volume I had a different translation team than Volumes II and III, and consequently there was not always a consistency in terminology. At least one of the translators was himself unsympathetic to this philosophy. Volume I was translated by David Hugh Freeman and Willliam Young. Volume II was translated by David H. Freeman and H. De Jongste. Verburg reports that Dooyeweerd had so many problems with the translations of the first two volumes that he translated Volume III himself. Volume III is therefore a very free and quite revised translation. 5. In The Twilight of Western Thought, Dooyeweerd emphasizes that the “key of knowledge” is the knowledge of the supratemporal self, the root of temporal reality that has no existence apart from this root. Even the Christian Ground Motive of creation, fall and redemption must be read using this key, as is Scripture itself. He has also stated that the ideas of the supratemporal self and cosmic time were essential for "any truly Christian philosophy." I have therefore tried to translate the text with this fundamental supratemporal/temporal distinction in mind. In some cases, this has made a big difference in understanding the text. 6. We must be careful not to try to simplify what Dooyeweerd himself acknowledges is complex. (WdW, x; NC I, viii, ix) Dooyeweerd does not set out his philosophical arguments in a series of syllogisms. I believe that the main difficulty with these texts is the fact that Dooyeweerd is using ideas in a new way. We cannot understand Dooyeweerd if we try to interpret him from the standpoint of empiricism, or from a dualistic kind of theism. Furthermore, Dooyeweerd's ideas are inter-related and cannot be understood apart from each other. There is a kind of circularity here that is unavoidable, and if we try to understand his terminology from another viewpoint, we will miss his entire philosophy. Dooyeweerd continually uses terms that he says will be explained later in the text. Dooyeweerd’s translators were well aware that some terminology could only be explained later. The footnotes refer to later discussions. (NC I, 4, ft. 1, 6 ft. 1). 7. The same circularity of Ideas, and indeed many of the same Ideas, also appear in the Christian Philosophy of Franz von Baader. Baader speaks of this circularity in Werke 14,60. The reference also appears in the collection of Baader excerpts Die Weltalter, 4. Kuyper read and appreciated both Baader's Werke and Die Weltalter. Baader says that true knowledge is a circle, which is not understood gradually more and more, but rather all at once. He says that we should therefore not wonder when one concept always refers again to another, and how when we hold to one concept, we must anticipate others. Because each of our concepts refers to our center. True knowledge does not build a row of concepts, but rather a circle. Concepts point to the Center and from there point to others either regressively or in an anticipating way [Werke 8, 11; Weltalter, 105]. Elsewhere, Baader distinguishes between concepts and Ideas, as does Dooyeweerd. 7. I believe that the circularity of Ideas–and their inter-related nature–can now be captured using hypertext links. I have made many thousands of these inter-connected links. This has not been done before for Dooyeweerd's philosophy (or perhaps for any other philosophy). I believe that it will allow a new understanding of Dooyeweerd's original intentions. Because when we do not see his thought as a whole, we tend to view his philosophy from out of a standpoint that is foreign to his philosophy. The hypertext links serve the purpose of reminding the reader to try to view this philosophy in its inter-related wholeness. 8. The hypertext links also makes evident how many of the interpretations of Dooyeweerd over the last fifty years have not done justice to his thought. Because the ideas are inter-related, we cannot reject or accept isolated parts of his philosophy. And yet many who claim to be his adherents have tried to do just that. Very early on, many of the central ideas for Dooyeweerd's philosophy were rejected by most of his colleagues, including his brother-in-law Vollenhoven, whose name has been associated with Dooyeweerd. When Dooyeweerd's philoosphy has been interpreted without these central ideas, it has not been properly understood. They have rejected Dooyeweerd's Ideas of the supratemporal selfhood, the religious root, and cosmic time. Others have tried to replace his Gegenstand-relation with another view of theory such as the abstraction of universals from things. Dooyeweerd himself says that this is to fall back into a logicism. 9. Although it is desirable to avoid sexist language in the translation, this would be an anachronism. It would also greatly complicate the translation of many already difficult passages. Dooyeweerd's sentence structure is complicted and often very long. To interpose dual pronouns is sometimes not really possible. I have therefore not always aimed for political correctness, although in places I have subsituted ‘humanity’ for ‘Man.’ It might also be misleading, since to say “himself or herself” implies an individuality that may not be present in his central idea of humanity. But if we say ‘humanity,’ it is difficult to speak of ‘I-ness,’ since one idea is plural and the other more unitary. Baader’s view was that humanity was originally androgynous. 10. At the beginning of most sections of text, I have placed a link to notes for that section. Many of these notes are mini-essays. And they almost always refer to other inter-related Ideas. 11. Because of the inter-related links, I suggest that the reader should take his or her time in reading through these translated excerpts. Do not assume that you know the meaning of a term. Follow the link, because in many cases, Dooyeweerd uses terms in a very different way than you might expect. Read the translation slowly,carefully, and meditatively, attempting to relate Dooyeweerd's Ideas to your heart, the center of your selfhood. For Dooyeweerd himself emphasizes the importance of religious self-reflection. Revised Dec. 25/04 |
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