The Past as Propaganda in The Declaration of Arbroath: Influence of John Duns Scotus (Audio)

         

    John Duns Scotus (1266-1308)                       Declaration of Arbroath (1320) PDF

Ajoutée le 17 juin 2011

Professor Alexander Brodie FRSE 

The Royal Society of Edinburgh

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Canadian Gaeldom: Faded Footprint Redefined

Canadian Gaeldom: 

Faded Footprint Redefined

by Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh  

Review of ‘Seanchaidh na Coille/ Memory-Keeper of the Forest: Anthology of Scottish Gaelic Literature of Canada’, Edited by Michael Newton, Cape Breton University Press, Sydney, Nova Scotia, 2015.

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(This Review was requested by, and first posted on, 

the website BELLA CALEDONIA, 14 Nov 2016)

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“[R]ecent research has revealed that Scottish Gaelic was the third-most spoken European language at the time of (Canadian) Confederation. And yet today, apart from scattered homesteads in Nova Scotia, not only has the language receded from the immigrant communities that once spoke it, but it has practically disappeared from public memory. The descendants of Gaels, who once described themselves as bitter enemies of English speakers, are now categorized as ‘English Canadians’ with only occasional nods to the many distinctions that once divided them.” (from Introduction)

I spent my boyhood in Canada, so was keen to buy this book. My early teens were spent in Dunbartonshire, so I already owned a previous volume by Michael Newton (‘From Clyde to Callander’), being a compilation of the Gaelic heritage of the Lennox (last Lochlomondside native-speakers died c1950). A few years back I was privileged to have a coffee with California-raised Newton in Balloch, where he was presenting a paper at a conference on ‘Scott and the Trossachs’. I am enthusiastic about this man’s work.

Dr. Robert Dunbar, Chair of Celtic Languages, Literature, History and Antiquities, Head of Celtic and Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh (and himself a Canadian) gives the following highly positive endorsement of Michael Newton’s new book:

“This extremely rich collection of Gaelic poetry and prose literature from Canada is the single most comprehensive collection of such material we have ever had, and will be an outstanding and unique resource for a long time to come. Dr. Newton has done a remarkable job in retrieving and expertly contextualizing a large amount of fascinating material, showing the rich variety and national extent of the Gaelic experience in Canada. His sensitive and skillful translations open up this material to an English-speaking readership. This outstanding book will be of inestimable value to students, researchers and anyone interested in an important strand in Canada’s multicultural and multilingual identity and in Gaelic culture more generally.”

Let potential readers thus be well reassured regarding gaelophone Newton’s professional credentials: he is a diligent primary-source researcher, a highly sophisticated cultural thinker, and a cage-rattling radical:

“As I write the conclusions to this collection of literature chronicling the experiences of Scottish Gaels in Canada, events are underway to commemorate the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of John A. Macdonald. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, reflecting on the legacy of the Father of Confederation, waxes proudly about his continuation of the British enterprise in North America, with some anticipation of the 150th anniversary of the creation of the Dominion of Canada. […] A group of international scholars met in Glasgow, Scotland, where Macdonald was born, to investigate the early story of his life more fully during the anniversary. Scotland, looking to assert its own cultural identity and place in world affairs, often looks beyond the British Isles to find exemplars of Scottish ‘success’ and ‘triumph’, with Canada being a favourite hunting ground. Tricia Marwick, Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament, attended celebrations of Macdonald’s birthday in Kingston, Ontario, and remarked: ‘I think what is important is that we recognise famous Scots, people who’ve gone abroad and done wonderful things’. […] It is highly doubtful that Canada’s first prime minister would be characterized as a nice man who did ‘wonderful things’ by the native peoples whom he displaced and starved to death, or by the insurgents of the 1869 Red River Resistance whom Macdonald called ‘impulsive half breeds’. He was, at the least, complicit in colonial policies that were devastating to native peoples and profoundly unfair to non-European immigrants. Despite his Scottish birth, Macdonald always spoke of England as the mother country in the political arena. The fact that his parents were native Gaelic speakers from the Highlands did not predispose him to lift a finger to defend their language or even acknowledge its existence publicly. John A.’s behaviour in these matters was the rule rather than the exception. The notion that Macdonald worked for the equality ‘of language, of religion, of property and of person’ for all people in Canada, as Harper claims, is a convenient myth that turns a blind eye to the suffering, exploitation, dispossession and discrimination suffered by indigenous and racialized peoples in colonial territories. It even ignores the prejudices faced by members of his own ancestral ethnicity—Scottish Gaels—when they attempted to maintain, develop, and assert the legitimacy of their own language and culture. Macdonald’s rhetoric of the racial, moral, social and cultural superiority of Britishness mark him out as an effective champion of extending the long legacy of Anglocentric hegemony into North America, one whose negative consequences have yet to be fully unravelled and acknowledged.”

Nor ought readers to discount this volume as only about “Gaelic in Canada”. That would be to miss, for example, powerful accounts and analysis of the Scottish Clearances:

“Many historians of the Clearances simply treat these events as the inevitable calculus of economics and the irrepressible march of modernity. The resistance of some scholars to take these Gaelic perspectives seriously could be interpreted as an attempt to maintain the authority of an Anglocentric master narrative that asserts that the British Empire was an unstoppable force for civilization, progress, and enlightenment. […] If Gaelic perspectives were taken seriously, they might highlight the injustices perpetrated in the past that have created one of the most concentrated and unjust landholding patterns in the world, one in which native Highlanders are still disenfranchised. They might suggest that reparations are in order. As Dòmhnall Iain Dòmhnallach has recently argued, the Highland Land Agitation of the 1880s deserves to be celebrated and its agenda pressed forward in the present.”

And:

“The British Empire’s ability to expand the territories under its control from 1756 to 1815 owed much to the fact that it spent from 75 per cent to 85 per cent of its budget on military enterprises. Landowners sought to tap these vast financial resources and enhance their own social rank by selling their Highland tenantry as natural-born soldiers who could be recruited in large numbers by leveraging their hereditary clan relationships. Highlanders of many social ranks seemed to believe that they could gain favour with the London government and dispel any lingering suspicions of Jacobite sympathies by a conspicuous demonstration of their loyalty in military service. Thus, the economic-political interests of the land-owning elite and the military ambitions of the empire conspired in the Highlands’ specialization in military recruitment, a specialization justified by recourse to obsolete and ethnocentric myths about supposed Gaelic ‘savagery’. In 1756 the young chieftain Simon Fraser of Lovat—son of an executed Jacobite ‘rebel’—successfully petitioned to raise a regiment to fight against French forces in North America and within two months about 2,000 Highlanders were mobilized for action. Some 12,000 Highland soldiers in total were involved by the end of the Seven Years’ War in other regiments as well. Gaels perceived themselves to have proved their mettle and their loyalties prominently by their efforts, not least on the Plains of Abraham. […] Soldiers and sailors who had fought in the North American theatre of the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) were eligible for land grants in British North America as rewards for their military service.”

Leading on from the foregoing, the central punch of the book for me is the highlighting and analysis of the agonizingly fragmented (lethally “skewered”?) identity of those brutally cleared from Scotland who then found themselves enlisted as British troops:

“Some Gaels consciously or unconsciously blotted these debasing episodes of eviction and the associated shame from communal memory, even if they were left with emotional scars and cultural traumas that were difficult to resolve. Some made an effort, especially through oral tradition, to create a heroic emigration narrative that could turn the experience of defeat and dispossession into a triumph of self-determination and success. Many others, however, were left with an inferiority complex that not only encouraged them to seek the external validation of the anglophone world but to ultimately assimilate to its norms as thoroughly as possible in order to gain its status and privilege.”

And:

“In perhaps no other domains of the immigrant experience are the ironies and contradictions of Gaelic history more manifest than those of military triumphalism and tartanism. The Highland soldier became an icon of British imperial supremacy and earned the accolades of the anglophone world so long as his energies and ambitions were directed toward imperial ends. Gaels proved in Canada and elsewhere that they were capable of attaining privilege and power by deferring to anglophone norms, but once they renounced the legitimacy of their own language and culture there was nothing left but a hollow shell of tartanism. Canadian Gaelic literary texts were beginning to embrace tartanistic clichés by the early decades of the 19th century, demonstrating that Highlanders were aware of these stereotypes and willing to conform to them to win approval. They thus could play the role of gallant, manly champions capable of conquering any country and yet were incapable of defending their rights on their own turf.”

Back specifically to language:

“Unlike immigrant groups from beyond the British Isles, Scottish Gaels (like the Irish and Welsh) had a long-standing history of conflict with the anglophone world and had been represented as the “primitive Other” in the venerated canon of anglophone literature and historiography. The dominance of Anglocentric perspectives in Canada as well as in the national institutions of their own homeland presented an extra dimension of difficulty for Gaels to maintain their language and culture. […] The common pattern in North America when immigrants enter into highly interconnected, urban settings is that the ancestral language is lost within three generations. This does not explain why or how the shift from Gaelic to English happened in the more substantial and cohesive rural settlements, such as in the Maritimes, however. Dòmhnall MacGill-Eain Sinclair, writing in 1950, described deliberate attempts to eradicate Gaelic in Nova Scotia through coercion: ‘… in Scotland it has suffered greatly by restrictive laws. In the Highlands, children whose mother tongue it was, were forbidden to speak it in school, and if caught speaking it, were punished. This strange idea came over to Nova Scotia. Dr. Chisholm of Bridgeville, Pictou County, told me that in his early days children who spoke Gaelic were accompanied home from school by others who were to report to the teacher if they heard Gaelic spoken. If caught they were punished, just as in Scotland. Thus in about one generation Gaelic was killed in Pictou County.'”

Also regarding imported prejudices from Scotland:

“These animosities were carried forward into Canada just as much as any common sense of ‘Scottishness’, especially when Highland immigrants did not conform to the ethnolinguistic norms and expectations of anglophones. In a survey of Gaelic traditions in Prince Edward Island conducted in 1987, for example, John Shaw remarked, ‘A small portion of PEI Scots had come from the Scottish Lowlands and according to reports they demonstrated naked hostility to Gaelic—more so than any other ethnic group.”’

In summary (from Michael Newton’s final chapter, ‘Conclusions’):

“Canadian Gaels express the expectation in many texts that they will be remembered for their legacy in North America. They would be disappointed, to say the least, that today they are generally lumped together with their long-time rivals, Lowland Scots, and even more often tossed into the ‘British’ or ‘English-speaking’ divide of Canadian ethnicity, as though they were indistinguishable from the people with whom they fought for centuries for their identity and cultural sovereignty. Many other immigrant groups can look back to homelands where their culture has been valorized and enshrined by national institutions that foster the development of its traditions of learning and literature. Until very recently Scottish Gaels, to the contrary, could only look back at their conquest and domination by rivals whom they had long deprecated and who gained the power to dictate educational and political policies and institutions that inferiorized Gaelic and attempted to replace it with English. This volume contains only a small sampling of the sources available in books, periodicals, manuscripts and archives to tell the story of Canadian Gaelic communities in their own words. Despite a modest show of interest in Scottish Studies in North America, very little effort is being made to address and explore the Gaelic immigrant experience in the universities of either Canada or the United States. In fact, anglophone scholars and mainstream historians have all too often conspired to keep Gaelic voices obscured and peripheral. Take, for example, an essay published in 2014 about Scottish cultural organizations in the global diaspora in which two organizations originally formed by emigrants in Australia are extolled because they: ‘invited membership from across the multi-ethnic communities in which they operated from the outset. Additionally, both were careful to counter that inherently insular Gaelic language objective with a more accessible and inclusive expression of Highland culture, namely the staging of an annual Highland Games for the whole community.'”

The following opening verse of a poem (“Albannaich Chanada” by Revd. Dr. Alasdair MacGill-Eain Sinclair of Nova Scotia) perhaps encapsulates the tension in the book:

“Bho Alba thàinig mo shluagh-sa
Thar cuain do’n àirde an iar
A chogadh air son Bhreatainn,
Gu calma, seasmhach, dian.”
(“My people came from Scotland
across the ocean to the west
to fight for Britain
bravely, resolutely, keenly.”)

I am always impressed by the ability of academics to present incandescent material calmly. I am not an academic. Here in closing is my own bitterly ironic response:

Ah! The smirking genius of Empire! The unstaunchable seeping alchemy whereby the Hideous Project is internalised and ferociously furthered by doubly enthralled victims! How supremely delicious the grotesque spectacle of schizoid zealots thrusting the Imperial Banner aloft with one hand while throttling themselves with the other! The mirth of it! The deep, gut-warming, ecstatically tectonic, MIRTH of it all…!

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Herman Dooyeweerd: TAMING LEVIATHAN: State Intrusion in Church, Economy, Family etc

 Image by Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh
(adapted from original engraving "Destruction of Leviathan" by Gustave Doré 1865

TAMING LEVIATHAN: 

State Intrusion in Church, Economy, Family etc

Extracts from "The Crisis in Humanist Political Theory" 

by Herman Dooyeweerd (1931) 

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Dooyeweerd's 15 "Law-spheres" 
(also called "Aspects", "Functions", "Modalities", "Modes of Consciousness" etc) -

NORMATIVE (post-analytical) 
15. Pistical/ Faith-related  
14. Ethical
13. Juridical / Justice-related
12. Aesthetical 
11. Economical
10. Social
9. Lingual/ Symbolical
8. Cultural/Formational/Historical
7. Analytical/ Logical

NATURAL (pre-analytical) 
6. Sensory
5. Biotical
4. Physical
3. Kinematic
2. Spatial
1. Numerical
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STATE (Juridical Law-sphere)
Finally then, I would like to give in conclusion a few practical examples to illustrate our new-found criterion for applying the cosmological principle of sphere-sovereignty to the area of law. Based on my previous comments on the integrating role that the modern state plays in relation to non-state law, I shall also use the opportunity to clear up some misunderstandings that have already arisen in certain quarters about my view of sphere-sovereignty in the juridical field. I shall choose my examples mainly from internal church law and internal corporate law. I must emphasize that I shall not be speaking of what is desirable from a political point of view, but only of the strictly material legal limits to internal state-sovereignty.

[...] Judging the material legal question among the internal differences of organized communities would force the civil judge to take sides in an area of internal law that falls under the meaning-individual guidance of the destination function of such an organized community. [ie, sports team, orchestra, church congregation, book club, vintage car society, etc. (FMF)]

CHURCH (Pistical Law-sphere)
Suppose, for instance that someone would file an action in a civil court based on Article 1401 of the Civil Code, in order to establish the unlawfulness of an ecclesiastical decision to suspend or defrock a minister. Imagine further that the judge would want to go behind the formal juridical question (whether a rule of internal church law had formally been violated) and initiate an investigation into the material question of law (whether the minister had, in fact, deviated from official doctrine). One senses immediately that this would land the judge within the area of internal ecclesiastical law. But that would be impossible without taking sides in a question of faith and doctrine, in which a civil judge is not competent. And a state legislator is even less qualified to get involved in such internal questions of church law. If he does so anyway, the resulting legislation will merely have the subjective form of law but cannot be recognized as binding positive law.

On the other hand, by virtue of its juridical sphere-sovereignty the state is fully competent to guard against the church if she were to assume rights in the public domain the exercise of which would endanger the internal order of the state. This would hold even if such ecclesiastical activities possessed a pistically qualified structure [ie determined by the Faith-related Law-Sphere (FMF)]. The church cannot claim sphere-sovereignty in the internal order of the state [Juridical Law-Sphere].

BUSINESS ENTERPRISES, WORK-FORCES (Economical Law-sphere)
Far more controversial than the juridical sphere-sovereignty of the ecclesiastical community is that of the enterprise as an economically qualified organized community. How can the criterion as we have defined it apply in this case? The problem is indeed extremely complicated here because the "leading function" [ie the compelling Economical Law-sphere dynamic (FMF)] of the enterprise itself can never guide the process of making positive law. Another reason is that a large modern enterprise with its immense, and often international, concentration of economic power has a massive impact on the internal life of the state, indeed on the whole of human society. 

On the other hand, since the previous [19th] century the modern state has begun to intervene in the world of economic enterprise with mounting intensity by means of social legislation. Moreover, the state, either by itself or via its subdivisions (provinces and municipalities), exploits various enterprises in monopolistic fashion; the state has become a shareholder in large private firms; and so on and so forth.

[...] In short, the life of the state and the life of the economic enterprise have in modern times been intertwined by a thousand fibers. 

Taking all this into account, how are we to give practical application to the meaning-criterion for juridical sphere-sovereignty in the area of economic enterprise? Once more we begin by emphasizing that internal corporate law differs fundamentally from internal church law, internal family law, and the like, in that it is firmly linked to the "leading function" of the enterprise but that this "leading function" can be applied here only as a meaning-individual substrate of organized communal law. Internal corporate law itself can only receive genuine guidance, a deepening of its meaning, from later meaning-functions (the moral and the pistical) while always fully maintaining its meaning-individual foundation.

Thus the state through its social legislation at one time put an end to the legal defenselessness of the economically weaker party which, under the pernicious slogans of the Manchester school, had de facto been reduced to wage-slavery. Similarly, once the ban on "combinations" was lifted, the trade unions, using their increased historical and economic power, de facto terminated the fiction of  individualistic freedom of contract and launched the battle for just working conditions.

On the other hand, it belongs equally to the competence of the state legislator, with his right to govern, to guard against potential excesses of modern trusts and cartels by which consumers unjustly become victims of restricted production, inflated prices, and so on, aimed at making exorbitant profits. Yet we must also realize that we should not exaggerate the danger of such excesses because, thanks to the cosmic coherence of the law-spheres, they could backfire on the entrepreneurs.

However, it can never be part of the competence of the state to interfere in the internal structure of corporate law. The internal authority of an enterprise does not derive from the authority of the state.  Suppose government legislation would make it mandatory for all economic enterprises of a certain size to install employee councils which would share authority in the internal guidance of the enterprise with the employer [...] In such cases the state would overstep the juridical boundaries of its position as government and indeed usurp an economic guiding function, which it cannot possess by virtue of its cosmic structure.

Wherever the state functions as a governing community, it must never allow its actions to be guided by the meaning-individual leading function of the economic enterprise as a free organized community. Ultimately, maintaining the sphere sovereignty of the internal law of organized communities can only lie with the highest authoritative organs of those organized communities themselves. And as we have seen, the criterion for this is not open to their subjective choice but resides in the divine laws for the structures of these communities themselves.

Seen in this light, no subterfuge is acceptable that would once again submit the assessment of the material boundaries for the state's competence versus other communities exclusively to an administrative court of the state itself, in whose decisions the non-state communities would then have to acquiesce. The Leviathan state may for a time factually violate the juridical sphere-sovereignty of non-state communities by brute force. But juridically the state lacks any overriding competence whatsoever vis-à-vis the sphere-sovereignty of non-state communities.

Never can the state coerce non-political communities into compliance in their internal meaning-structures as though they were its subjects, which it can do in their external position as subjects of the government (for instance, in the execution of taxation debts and so on and so forth). The directors of a firm, for example, can never be prevented by the state from closing their enterprise as a consequence of their unwillingness to comply with rules given by the state which interfere unlawfully with the internal structure of the enterprise and which they cannot square with their own independent sphere of responsibility. When this occurs in mutual solidarity, a power struggle is unleashed.

Nor should we overlook the fact that every positive legal order, if it has kept to its divine foundation, by itself offers remedies, one way or another, against such transgressions from the side of the state. This it does by suggesting ways and means to render the enforcement of the substance of such arbitrary decrees impossible.

FAMILY (Ethical Law-sphere, ie "Love/ Troth")
[...] So long as organized communities are a necessary factor in the inner vitality of a nation, the state has indeed the meaning-individual juridical task, by virtue of the leading function of its structure as an organized community, to take measures that support, restore and stimulate the life of non-political communities. Primarily this applies to the natural organized communal life of the nuclear family, insofar as this is threatened in its normal structure by the devastating effect of sin. But in the widest sense of the word, too, this competence of the state is valid for the world of enterprise and for cultural communities.

One must not think, however, that when the state takes measures such as depriving parental rights, appointing a guardian for the children, and so on, it materially interferes with the internal structure of the family bond. For such measures are adopted only when the internal structure of the family community has itself already been disrupted. Nor does the state interfere because it possesses absolute sovereignty over non-state communities in their internal structure, but rather because as state it has to ensure the preservation of the nation, in the life of which the family plays such a basic role. In this emergency situation the state uses its governing authority to provide artificial supports to these communities that threaten to disintegrate, as an emergency substitute for a natural structure that factually no longer exists.

SUMMARY
[...] It is a profound fallacy to insist that in this temporal world order there has to be an authority that is capable of overruling absolutely every other authority in a juridical sense, under the pretense that otherwise anarchy would reign. God did not ordain any "absolute power" in time. The truth is that it is precisely the theory of the state's totality of juridical power that rests on an anarchistic, revolutionary basis, because it ignores the divine structural laws of human society.

Everyone acquainted with life knows that there are material limits to the competence of the state. It is unworthy of legal science to ignore the connection between law and life through a sterile formalism. Rather it should base itself on a cosmology that is capable of meaningfully clarifying these limits and indicating an unambiguous criterion for them.

[...] Neither the arbitrariness of a government nor an arbitrary contract is in itself a source of law. In all its individual forms, positive law is always the positivizing of divine jural principles, whose structure is determined by the divine world order.

Extracts from "The Crisis in Humanist Political Theory"

by Herman Dooyeweerd (1931)

(Paedia Press, 2010, pp 152-161, 178-179)

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See also:

Dooyeweerd: The Criteria of Progressive and Reactionary Tendencies in History

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Dooyeweerd: Reactionary & Progessive National Norms (Scottish State? Gaelic Resurgence? British Values?)
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Dooyeweerd: Disclosure of an Apostate Culture: The Enlightenment
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Dooyeweerd: Gender Normativity
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Dooyeweerd: The Wielding of Power

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'Sphere-sovereignty', 'sphere-universality', Christian responsibility to join the struggle of historical 'opening-process' -

Dooyeweerd: Hume, Kant, The Unfathomable Silence of the Sphinx, Soap-bubble Reality...

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Website of pages on Dooyeweerd's identification of the normative parameters of the State,

 ie 'territorial power' and 'pursuit of justice' - 

Dooyeweerd: The Structural Principle of the State

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Experimental Relating of Dooyeweerd Text to Mark Rothko Painting

Mark Rothko: No. 61 (Rust and Blue) (1953)

Dear D & A,

A fraught experiment! 

I am currently reading through Dooyeweerd's very early book (1931) "The Crisis in Humanist Political Theory". I certainly don't recommend it as a starter. Part I is particularly difficult. Also, key terminology in this book was eventually modified.

Anyhow, a passage I read this morning is reasonably accessible (at least from where I'm now at). And I thought I could maybe squeeze some juice out of it to do with our potential discussion of Mark Rothko.

Firstly, I present the piece of text as Dooyeweerd wrote it (or at least the book's English translation of his Dutch). It is to do with "Statehood" and the "Aspect" or "Mode of Consciousness" of Jurisprudence. 

Secondly I have tried to transpose it all [with my own words in square brackets] to address painting and the "Aspect" or "Mode of Consciousness" of Aesthetics.

I preface all the above with a resumé list of Dooyeweerd's "Law-spheres" (also called "Aspects", "Functions", "Modalities", "Modes of Consciousness" etc):
_________________________
NORMATIVE (post-analytical) 
15. Certitudinal, Pistic, Fiduciary 
14. Ethical
13. Juridical 
12. Aesthetical [nucleus = "harmony"]
11. Economical
10. Social
9. Lingual/ Symbolical
8. Cultural/Formational/Historical
7. Logical

NATURAL (pre-analytical) 
6. Sensory
5. Biotical
4. Physical
3. Kinematic
2. Spatial
1. Numerical
_________________________

Okay. The following is the original text. We must be very wary of Dooyeweerd's (subsequently discontinued) use of the term "spiritual" here. He is not at all meaning, for example, "supernatural". He is simply referring to the "normative" or "post-analytical" law-spheres / modes of consciousness. Words hyperlinked in green take the reader to J. Glenn Friesen's "Dooyeweerd Glossary":

ORIGINAL ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF TEXT:
In order to reduce this seemingly obvious argument to its proper dimension, we need only recall that not a single "thing-structure" may be absolutized (as done in metaphysics) into a thing in itself which as such would be detached from the religious root of our entire temporal cosmos. As a community the state can only become real through human activity, as we saw earlier, the human being as such has no "leading function" in time.

In this manner all temporal things, natural as well as spiritual ones, depend on human activity for a deepening of their meaning. As such they do not lose their thing-structure, unless they are being transformed into another entity with a new thing-structure that has a different leading function. 

That also holds for the state as an organised community. But this particular organized community has, as such, its "leading-function" in the jural aspect. And all deepening of its meaning, which the state's structure exhibits in law, remains essentially determined by its meaning-individual structural principle. 

Both the private-legal and the public-legal idea of the just state contain a juridical deepening of meaning in the authority structure of the state as against the autocratic types of organized governmental authority. 

Yet throughout this deepening of meaning the state remains qualified by its jural function. As soon as one were to put this structural principle aside, the state would cease to exist. One cannot seek the "leading-function" of the state in any other law-sphere without disrupting the very concept of state. 

Nevertheless, the idea of right, which points beyond the meaning of the jural towards the meaning of the cosmically later spheres, and which as the consummation of right points beyond time towards the religious fullness of meaning of divine justice, retains its sway over the meaning-individual jural domain of the state.

(Herman Dooyeweerd, "The Crisis in Humanist Political Theory", 1931, pp151, 152)

MY [FREELY ADAPTED TEXT] TRANPOSED TO AESTHETIC CONTEXT:
In order to reduce this seemingly obvious argument to its proper dimension, we need only recall that not a single "thing-structure" may be absolutized (as done in metaphysics) into a thing in itself which as such would be detached from the religious root of our entire temporal cosmos. As [an artwork] the [painting] can only become real through human activity, and as we saw earlier, the human being as such has no ["demarcating mode of consciousness"] in time. 

In this manner all temporal things, natural as well as [normative] ones, depend on human activity for a deepening of their meaning. As such they do not lose their thing-structure, unless they are being transformed into another entity with a new thing-structure that has a different [demarcating mode of consciousness. For example, the "thing-structure" of raw pigment is demarcated within the "physical" mode of consciousness, but if used in a painting it becomes part of a new "thing-structure" demarcated within the "aesthetic" mode of consciousness.]

That also holds for the [painting] as [organised materials]. But this particular [organisation of materials] has, as such, its ["demarcating mode of consciousness"] in the [aesthetic] aspect. And all deepening of its meaning, which the [painting's] structure exhibits [aesthetically], remains essentially determined by its meaning-individual structural principle. 

Both the [referentially abstract] and the [non-referentially abstract] idea of the [successful painting] contain an [aesthetic] deepening of meaning in the [formal] structure of [painting] as against the [conventional] types of [artistic subject-matter]. 

Yet throughout this deepening of meaning the [painting] remains qualified by its [aesthetic] function. As soon as one were to put this structural principle aside, the [painting] would cease to exist. One cannot seek the [demarcating mode of consciousness] of the [painting] in any other law-sphere without disrupting the very concept of [painting]. 

Nevertheless, the idea of [harmony], which points beyond the meaning of the [aesthetic] towards the meaning of the cosmically later spheres, and which as the consummation of [harmony] points beyond time towards the religious fullness of meaning of divine [harmony], retains its sway over the meaning-individual [aesthetic] domain of [painting].

Regards,
Fearghas.

Mark Rothko: No. 6 (Violet, Green and Red) (1951)

___________________________________

Dear D,

I have written too much too closely posted already. But, whatever, here is a short initial contribution to further possible discussion of the difficult ''Ding an sich" issue. 

Nothing immediately jumps out at me from your Torrance quotes to take issue with on this specific matter, though I would be extremely surprised if he in fact agrees with Dooyeweerd's view. People can talk similar language but mean such different things. 

As for "given-ness", Dooyeweerd was fully engaged with the matter of identifying real "states of affairs". That is pretty much the nub of his philosophy. He is not an abstractionist. He is not a rationalist. He is a valiant champion of everyday "wrap-around" actuality. 

Dooyeweerd rejects the notion of "substance" because he thinks that it is a reification of thought (via Hellenism). In other words the notion of "substance" is a fundamental misreading of existence. This includes the idea of the "soul" as "substance" (being a reification of our rationality, following the Platonic view of "reason" being pure immutable timeless form). And likewise the Ding an sich misunderstanding of "things" having a primary core behind so-called secondary qualities. 

Dooyeweerd considers social organisations such as football clubs, art associations, pre-school nurseries, geopolitical States, businesses, etc to be "things", as well as rocks, trees, fish, and cars etc. What is the "substance" of "Inverness Harriers Jogging Club", or whatever?

So for Dooyeweerd there is no raw, neutral "substance" out there, alien to us. The Cosmos is somehow enmeshed with humankind. That is why the Cosmos "fell" with/in Adam, and is redeemed with/ in the Last Adam, the True Man, Christ.

Andy Bannister of the Ravi Zacharias ministry recently took over from David Robertson as director of the Dundee-based  "Solas" apologetics online project. I listened to an audio by him from a few years ago: "Responding to the New Atheists". 

Just after 16.00 mins in, he makes the statement: "Science is metaphysically neutral". I rewound and listened again. Could he be correct? He has just sold the shop, I thought. How does the "metaphysical neutrality of science" comport with Romans 1? Or with the Scriptural assertion that "All things are through Him, for Him, and to Him" etc? ("Science", of course, views the entire cosmos as its remit. And cf Carl Sagan's famous quote: “The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be".)

Is the aesthetic research conducted by art not also scientific? Is Art "metaphysically neutral" too? (I do realise the contention implicit in these questions).

Dooyeweerd insists reality is characterised not as (Hellenistic) "being", but as "meaning". The structures (ordinances) of reality are NOT neutral. They are meaning (as distinct from having meaning). They are sustained by Christ, therefore testify to Christ. Exhaustively. Humans have nowhere else to go. Nowhere to hide. There is only encounter with Christ whichever direction we turn. Therefore whether we eat or drink or whatever, we (whether we like it or not) refer to Him. Believers are called to acknowledge that with thanksgiving. He is the Way. He is the Door. He is Water. He is Light. (As you know, I am not, of course, talking "pantheism" here).

This post has got too long again. If I understood matters better I could be more concise...

J Glenn Friesen has a couple of related glossary entries:

This one on "Ding an sich" is fairly short.

This one on "Thing" is longer...

😊

Fearghas.

PS I might also mention here J Glenn Friesen's most recent essay which superbly relates Dooyeweerd back to a critique of Kant. 

Friesen writes:

"How do Dooyeweerd’s modes of consciousness relate to our experience of reality? Does he have the same problem as Lask did in relating Kant’s logical categories to the things of our experience? Dooyeweerd would later clarify that the modalities relate to reality because the individuality structures [things] of our experience function within the same modes. We can therefore make analogies from our experience of things to our modes of consciousness."  

(Dooyeweerd’s Idea of Modalities: The Pivotal 1922 Article).