Dooyeweerd: Prismatic time-order of refracted aspects

The 15 IRREDUCIBLE LAW-SPHERES of COSMIC TIME 

(Also called Aspects/ Modes/ Modalities/ Meaning-sides) 

Dooyeweerd: Prismatic time-order of refracted aspects

Short extract from book 

‘Time, Law, and History: Selected Essays’

As horizon of the modal aspect structures the order of time truly is a law of refraction. The meaning-totality of our temporal cosmos, which constitutes the essential unity and fullness of the meaning of all aspects of creation, cannot be given within time. It has a transcendent, supra-temporal character.

This applies to both the law-side and the subject-side of reality. 

According to its religious fullness and meaning-totality, the law of God is one and indivisible: the demand to serve God whole-heartedly. According to the religious fullness and meaning-totality of the subject-side of reality, the temporal creation, since the fall, is completely concentrated in the religious root-community of the new humanity in Christ. However, within time this religious fullness according to its law-side and subject-side is refracted into the modal aspects in which the wisdom of God’s plan for creation unfolds in a rich diversity of modal ordinances and subject-functions. Just as unbroken sunlight is refracted through a prism into the multicoloured richness of the spectrum, so the religious fullness of meaning of creation is refracted in the wealth of modal aspects which do not find their transcendent root-unity within time itself.

In its general theory of the modal aspects the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea has shown, by means of theoretical analysis, that the modal-aspect structures essentially are time-structures.

As we have seen, cosmic time, which in its continuity embraces and and overarches all modal aspects, refuses to be theoretically analysed, because it is a transcendental pre-supposition of theoretical analysis. Therefore, the only access open to the philosophical investigation of the cosmic time-order is by way of analysing the modal structures of time. Within the transcendental ground-idea of philosophy, cosmic time itself serves as philosophy's basic presupposition.

This ground-idea (or cosmonomic idea) is a foundational limiting concept of philosophy. Through it, philosophical thought, in the process of critical self-reflection, gives an account of its own necessary presuppositions which are themselves non-theoretical in nature and which make possible philosophical investigation to begin with. This basis idea contains, in addition to an idea about the origin and deeper unity of the modal aspects of temporal reality, also an idea about the interrelation or coherence of these aspects.

It is striking that these three transcendental ideas, which in their internal linkage are comprehended in any cosmonomic idea, lie at the foundation of every philosophical system, whether a thinker shows a critical awareness of it or not. Yet the immanence standpoint cannot concede that one's philosophical ground-idea is determined by non-theoretical presuppositions.

(Herman Dooyeweerd, ‘Time, Law, and History: Selected Essays’, Collected Works, Series B - Volume 14, Paideia Press 2017, pp 73-75)

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NOTES ON DOOYEWEERD'S USE OF THE TERM “RELIGION”

It is highly important not to misunderstand Dooyeweerd’s use of this ambiguous word, currently much-maligned in popular parlance. Dooyeweerd is not at all referring to what is commonly disparaged as “organized religion”. Very far from it. Rather, he is alluding to the concentration point or anchorage of every individual’s deepest selfhood, whether that individual be professedly pious, agnostic, humanist, or atheist. Dooyeweerd is denoting that which is an ontically core feature of the human being per se. He is talking about what for humans is a universal structural default, namely the restless search of the selfhood for an ultimate point of integration. In this light it might therefore be productive when reading Dooyeweerd to try mentally replacing the word "religious" with "ultimate". (FMF)

Dooyeweerd writes -

“To the question, what is understood here by religion? I reply: the innate impulse of human selfhood to direct itself toward the true or toward a pretended absolute Origin of all temporal diversity of meaning, which it finds focused concentrically in itself. 

[...] There is one thing, however, on which we cannot lay too much stress. As the absolutely central sphere of human existence, religion transcends all modal aspects of temporal reality, the aspect of faith included.

[...] For we have seen that the faith-function [pistical law-sphere] is bound to cosmic time and to the temporal coherence of meaning with the other modal functions of our existence. It should not be identified with the religious centre of this latter. 

[...] Therefore, with respect to its inner essence, religion can never be described 'phenomenologically'. It is no 'psychological phenomenon', it is no emotional feeling-perception; it is not to be characterised, as is done by Rudolph Otto, as experience of the 'tremendum'. It is the ex-sistent condition in which the ego is bound to its true or pretended firm ground. Hence, the mode of being of the ego itself is of a religious character and is nothing in itself. Veritable religion is absolute self-surrender. The apostate person who supposes that their selfhood is something in itself, loses their self in the surrender to idols, in the absolutising of the relative.

[..] After having given an account of what we understand by religion, we can establish the fact that the concentric direction in theoretical thought must be of religious origin. It must be of a religious origin, even though it always remains theoretical in character, because of its being bound to the antithetic gegenstand-relation. It springs from the tendency to the origin in the centre of human existence, which tendency we previously discovered in the Introduction. But now we have made clear the inner point of contact between philosophic thought and religion from the intrinsic structure of the theoretical attitude of thought itself. Critical self-reflection in the concentric direction of theoretical thought to the ego necessarily appeals to self-knowledge (which goes beyond the limits of the theoretical gegenstand-relation). Consequently we may establish the fact that even the theoretical synthesis supposes a religious starting-point. Furthermore, we have now explained that it is meaningless to ask for a theoretical proof of its religious character, because such a proof presupposes the central starting-point of theoretical thought."

(Herman Dooyeweerd, ‘New Critique of Theoretical Thought’ Vol 1: ‘The Necessary Presuppositions of Philosophy’, pp 57-59)

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J. Glenn Friesen's 'Christian Nondualism' site: Herman Dooyeweerd articles

Dr J. Glenn Friesen's invaluable Dooyeweerd research has been moved to a new website.

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Intro page for Dooyeweerd material -

HERE

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Freely available articles by J. Glenn Friesen analysing Dooyeweerd's thought -

HERE 

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Freely available writings by Dooyeweerd himself -

HERE

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J. Glenn Friesen's DOOYEWEERD GLOSSARY -

HERE

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Some revision notes on Aspects (Law-spheres) and Analogical Moments.

The 15 EXPERIENTIAL, IRREDUCIBLE, 

LAW-SPHERES of COSMIC TIME 

(Also called Aspects/ Modes of Consciousness/ 

Modalities/ Meaning-sides)

(Diagrams by FMF)

NOTES: Aspects and "isms"

No law-sphere (aspect) can be reduced to another. Infringements of 'irreducibility' are behind all 'isms'. These 'idolatries' show the human heart attempting to integrate entire reality around a single aspect (or 'law-sphere'). There is a plausibility to this because each aspect is present as an analogy in every other aspect (see 'Historical Aspect' diagram below). This gives each aspect an omnipresence, which Dooyeweerd designates 'sphere-universality'. 

Crucially, since no aspect can be reduced to another, none can be reduced even to the 'Logical / Analytical Aspect' (in other words, the above panoply of aspects is not a theoretical product of "logic" - it is "experiential", it is "intuitive consciousness"). This must be particularly and continually emphasised. Failure to bear that specific fact in mind makes a 'logicism' out of Dooyeweerd's philosophy, when it is primarily against logicism that he is arguing (Dooyeweerd's 'A New Critique of Theoretical Thought' is essentially a critique of Kant). A moment's reflection will observe that the aspects correspond pretty closely to standard academic disciplines.

It is key to Dooyeweerd to appreciate his insistence that there is no thinking without a thinker ("the hidden performer on the instrument of philosophic thought" (Prolegomena, New Critique). The thinker ALWAYS functions in ALL aspects, but transcends them all in the concentration-point of his or her deepest selfhood ('heart'), which is directed towards or away from the Living God Who alone gives meaning to temporal reality. In refusing God as only source of meaning, a substitute ultimate focus is sought by the selfhood within the temporal cosmos by absolutising a law-sphere (or combination of law-spheres). Hence the idol.

Dooyeweerd calls the irreducibility feature of each aspect 'sphere-sovereignty'. With reference to mutual irreducibility, Dooyeweerd draws attention to Genesis 1 where animals are created "according to their kinds". Without getting a handle on the terms 'sphere-sovereignty' and 'sphere-universality' it will be impossible to fathom Dooyeweerd's explanations on just about anything!   

Interestingly, the absolutization of any given aspect of reality invariably throws up its 'counter-idol', leading to a dualism. Something like an after-image. The counter-absolute arises as the 'Economic Aspect' of reality resists unbridled profligacy in one direction, the 'Aesthetic Aspect' resists the consequent disharmony, the 'Juridical Aspect' (eventually) avenges the destructive bias via a swing towards the counter-polarity.

Examples:
Rationalism 'deifies' the 'Logical/ Analytical Aspect'. It infringes the irreducibility of the other fourteen aspects by attempting to reduce them all to the 'Logical/ Analytical Aspect'. That is, Rationalism implies that every other aspect is a product of the absolutized 'Logical/ Analytical Aspect' (cf Kant). 

Philosophical Materialism 'deifies' the 'Physical/ Energy Aspect'. It infringes the irreducibility of the other fourteen aspects by attempting to reduce them all to 'matter', ie to the 'Physical/ Energy Aspect'. That is, Philosophical Materialism implies that every other aspect is a product of the absolutized 'Physical/ Energy Aspect'.

Combinations of the above have provoked the prevailing (humanist) 'Nature/ Freedom' dichotomy, ie that between 'Absolute Mathematical (or Natural-mechanistic) Law' and 'Absolute Personal Freedom'. The irreconcilable conflicts of this dualism are perenially revisited in movies and TV series such as the Terminator, the Matrix, Battlestar Galactica, etc. 

Postmodernism is another irrationalist (subjectivist) reaction to the 'rationalism' of reducing reality to 'One Big Story' dogmatically layed down by autonomous human thought. Many films now interrogate reality from a postmodern viewpoint, eg 'Inception', 'Sourcecode', various Tarantino movies, etc.

Christians often labour under their own 'Nature/Grace' dualisms which lead for example to a gnostic or pietistic flight from the world.

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"It is an undeniable fact that in the first life-phase of a suckling baby feeling precedes the first development of logical distinction; the latter precedes the controlling manner of forming sounds, which in turn precedes the primitive symbolical designation of concepts by words etc. But that does not prove that the higher mental functions originate from feeling as their undifferentiated origin. Rather it testifies to the truth of our view of the order of the modal aspects of experience, as a real temporal order, related to subjective duration in the genetic process." (Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought Vol II pp 112,113)

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NOTES: Analogical moments:

Retrocipatory and Anticipatory

The above diagram focuses on the 'Historical/Culturally Formative Aspect'. Besides its own irreducible (supratemporal) nucleus, its structure includes anticipatory (here in green) or retrocipatory (blue) analogical moments dynamically relating to the other fourteen aspects. The weighting of blues to greens in any given aspect depends on where that aspect appears in the fixed temporal order (compare colour sequence in a rainbow).

Thus (now considering all aspects, not just the Historical), in our everyday lives a 'feeling of claustrophobia' might be analysed as a 'Spatial' retrocipation within the 'Sensory (or Psychical) Aspect'. A 'prolix speech' as an 'Economic' anticipation within the 'Lingual Aspect'. An 'elegant stumble' would be an 'Aesthetic' anticipation within the 'Movement/Kinetic Aspect'. A 'vital clue' a 'Biotic' retrocipation within the 'Logical/Analytical Aspect'. And so on.

It should always be borne in mind that, however inadequate the above diagram, what is being referred to is the fabric of actual cosmic reality within which all aspects structurally combine, as spectrum colours combine to form clear daylight. 

Dooyeweerd sees the Divine call of civilization as a historical “opening-process”. Each succeeding aspect is "unfolded” in response to the light of God. Reactionary societies attempt to close down such burgeoning differentiation.

EVERY human ACT in thought or deed 

ALWAYS involves ALL aspects.

"Keep your heart with all diligence, 

for out of it are the issues of life." 

(Prov 4:23)

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Dooyeweerd: State guardian for child only after family breakdown.

Pablo Picasso: 'Child with a Dove' (1901)

Dooyeweerd: State guardian for child only after family breakdown.

[...] So long as organized communities are a necessary factor in the inner vitality of a nation, the state has indeed the... juridical task... 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.

[...] 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, Paideia Press, 2010, pp 178-179)

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Dooyeweerd: we would have no awareness of time if we did not transcend time.

Photo: F. MacFhionnlaigh

Dooyeweerd: we would have no awareness of time if we did not transcend time.

Short extract from book 

‘Time, Law, and History: Selected Essays’ 

It is indeed correct to say that we would not have a genuine awareness of time if we did not transcend time in the deepest core of our being. All merely temporal creatures lack an awareness of time. Every instance of absolutizing time rests on a lack of critical self-reflection.

But the true concentration point, the supra-temporal root of our existence, cannot be known on the basis of an autonomous philosophy; for the latter, in its theoretical character, necessarily remains enclosed within the horizon of time. It is only the divine Word-revelation that discovers us to ourselves. True self-knowledge, as Calvin remarks in his Institutes, is acquired only through true knowledge of God. I call this the religious concentration law of human existence.

The “soul” of the human being, which according to the testimony of Scripture is not affected by the temporal death since it continues to exist even after laying down the “body” - that is, after laying down the entire temporal form of existence enclosed in the individuality structure - is the religious root of the human being, also designated by Scripture as the “inner man” or the “heart” of a person, from which flow the “issues of life” and in which “eternity is laid”. It is, as Kuyper expresses it in his Stone Lectures on Calvinism: 

“that point in our consciousness where our life is still undivided and where it is still bound together in its unity.” 

According to Kuyper this concentration point is not found in: 

“the spreading vines but in the root from which the vines spring. That point cannot be found anywhere but in the antithesis between all that is finite in our human life and the infinite that lies beyond it. Here alone do we find the common source from which the different streams of human life spring and separate themselves.”

Kuyper employs not only the image of a religious root but also that of a focus: 

“Personally it is our repeated experience that in the depths of our hearts, at the point where we disclose ourselves to the Eternal One, all the rays of our life converge as in one focus, and there alone regain that harmony which we so often and so painfully lose in the stress of daily life.”

However, this religious root of the individual human existence ought not to be understood in the sense of an “autonomous individual,” since it is created by God participating in the religious root-community of humankind. In Adam it found its first head falling away from God, but in Christ as its second head this religious community with God is restored. This religious root-community of humankind is the true supra-individual concentration-point of the entire cosmos. It also explains why the fall in Adam not only affected the total human race but drew with it also the entire temporal cosmos, as in Christ the whole cosmos is saved in its root.

A truly Christian philosophy of time is therefore impossible when theoretical thought is not directed towards the genuine supra-temporal concentration-point of the temporal cosmos. Theoretical thought in philosophy is never self-sufficient. Rather, by virtue of the structure of creation itself it is necessarily religiously determined, whether in an apostate direction or in a directedness towards the true Origin of everything, as revealed in Christ Jesus. 

Herman Dooyeweerd, ‘Time, Law, and History: Selected Essays’, Collected Works, Series B - Volume 14, Paideia Press 2017, pp 67-69)

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Robots tueurs, guerre 4.0/ Dooyeweerd: Artificial Intelligence

Géopolitis, 19.11.2017 | Robots tueurs, guerre 4.0
Des drones ou des robots capables de tuer sans intervention humaine remplaceront-ils bientôt les soldats sur les champs de bataille ? L’intelligence artificielle va transformer les guerres du futur et peut-être les équilibres stratégiques existants.

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Andrew Basden offers a Dooyeweerdian perspective on Artificial Intelligence:

Professor Andrew Basden takes a brief look at the debate over artificial intelligence, basing his observations on Herman Dooyeweerd's ground-motives, ie:

Hellenistic: Matter v Form
Medieval: Nature v Grace [Basden: "Nature v Supernature"]
Humanistic: Nature v Freedom
Biblical: Creation, Fall, Redemption [Basden: "Meaning"]

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Dooyeweerd writes regarding ground-motives:

'The religious ground-motives in the development of Western civilization are basically the following:

1. The "form-matter" ground-motive of Greek antiquity in alliance with the Roman power motive (imperium).

2. The Scriptural ground-motive of the Christian religion: creation, fall, and redemption through Jesus Christ in communion with the Holy Spirit.

3. The Roman Catholic [Thomistic] ground-motive of "nature-grace", which seeks to combine the two mentioned above.

4. The modern humanistic ground motive of "nature-freedom", in which an attempt is made to bring the three previous motives to a religious synthesis concentrated upon the value of human personality.' 

(Herman Dooyeweerd, Roots of Western Culture: Pagan, Secular, and Christian Options, Paideia Press, 2012, p15) 

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NOTE ON ASPECTS:

The 15 IRREDUCIBLE LAW-SPHERES of COSMIC TIME 

(Also called Aspects/ Modes/ Modalities/ Meaning-sides) 

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Andrew Basden mentions Dooyeweerd's "aspects", and in particular the "analytical" aspect. In the chart above, this aspect (or "law-sphere") is paled blue for clarity.

Red column A 
shows the aspects to which the human is subject (ie all).

Brown column B 
shows aspects to which the (sensory) animal is subject.

Green column C
shows aspects to which the (organic) plant is subject.

Purple column D
shows aspects to which non-living (mineral) matter is subject.

It will be noted that animals, plants, and minerals function as "subjects" in their designated aspects, but only as "objects" in the remaining aspects above. 

A computer (artificial intelligence) would seem to be qualified in this chart's terminology as "mineral". Even if we consider plausible the development of organic, sentient, "androids" (or Bladerunner-type "replicants"), such consciousness would seem still to function in the "analytical" aspect as machine-like "object" rather than as human-like "subject".

It is crucial to appreciate that in Dooyeweerd's view no cosmic time aspect can be reduced to (or derived from) any other. This resistance reflects the "sphere-sovereignty" of each aspect. To attempt to reduce all aspects to, for instance, the logical (analytical) aspect (ie "logicism"), or to the physical aspect ("materialism"), would reflect a destructively impoverished and imbalanced description of reality. Thus the notion that "consciousness" is just a matter of "physical wiring" is problematically reductionist. 

(FMF)

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See also Andrew Basden's webpage: 

The Artificial Intelligence Question: 

A Dooyeweerdian Resolution

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Dooyeweerd: The uncritical character of the immanence standpoint in prevailing philosophy.

The 15 IRREDUCIBLE LAW-SPHERES of COSMIC TIME 

(Also called Aspects/ Modes/ Modalities/ Meaning-sides) ________________________________________ 

Dooyeweerd: The uncritical character of the immanence standpoint in prevailing philosophy. 

Short extract from book 

‘Time, Law, and History: Selected Essays’

Yet this state of affairs cannot be appreciated and acknowledged unless the immanence standpoint in philosophy is abandoned. This standpoint is characterised by the fact that one attempts to find the starting-point of philosophy [ie the “Archimedean point”*], from which the diversity of aspects is to be apprehended, in a theoretical “totality view,” within theoretical thought itself.

[...] Proceeding from its Christian starting-point, the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea not only radically distanced itself from this immanence standpoint but also demonstrated that its postulate regarding the so-called autonomy of theoretical thought is uncritical and dogmatic. The truth is that the immanence standpoint, too, is not a purely theoretical standpoint: the postulate of the self-sufficency of theoretical thought is a dogmatic assumption, at bottom a preconception of a religious kind which flagrantly contradicts the entire structure of the temporal cosmos. The postulate of the self-sufficency - the “unconditionality” - of theoretical thought, even if qualified by adding “within its own domain,” implies a primary absolutization of the theoretical synthesis, that is to say, of a theoretical abstraction whereby all of reality is “theoreticized” by denaturing the big datum of naive [ie everyday non- or pre-theoretical] experience.

[…] Why is the prejudice of the “self-sufficiency of theoretical thought within its own domain” uncritical and dogmatic? Because theoretical thought in its modal logical aspect [= analytical law-sphere in above chart] (and this is intended here) cannot unilaterally determine its relationship to the other modal aspects of reality. In the “cogito” the thinking selfhood is active, functioning not only in the logical-analytical aspect but equally in all other aspects of reality and so functioning at the same time as the individual concentration point of all these aspects of temporal human existence. Since all aspects are equally embraced by cosmic time and therefore are intrinsically temporal in nature, the concentration point of the human being, where all temporal aspects coincide as in one focal point, cannot itself be of a temporal but only of a supra-temporal, transcendent character. The theoretical synthesis is determined both by cosmic time and by the supra-temporal transcendent selfhood.

[...] The dogmatic character of the "transcendental-logical" conception of the selfhood is apparent as soon as one realizes that it is a theoretical abstraction and as such a thought-product of the thinking selfhood. The thinking selfhood identifies itself uncritically with its own thought product.

Herman Dooyeweerd, ‘Time, Law, and History: Selected Essays’, Collected Works, Series B - Volume 14, Paideia Press 2017, pp 63-66 (£10.00; $12.95) 

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*More on the "Archimedean point" -

Dooyeweerd writes:

"It follows that true self-knowledge is the primary condition for truly critical philosophical reflection. For where the self seeks its reliable ground and origin, that is where the Archimedean point of its philosophy is. Once we have understood this state of affairs, we can only conclude that the idea of the immanent self-sufficiency of theoretical thought betrays a lack of veritable critical self-reflection. The choice of the Archimedean point cannot be purely theoretical, for it is only the thinker himself who is able to make this choice. Rather than theoretical this choice is a religious act. In this act theoretical thought is concentrated upon that which is accepted by the thinking self as the ultimate root and self-sufficient origin of the cosmos. 

"This self, which in Holy Scripture is called the heart*, from which life springs, is subject to the restless search for its own origin and that of the entire cosmos. This is the religious law of concentration, which even on the immanence-standpoint does not lose its sway. This unrest, issuing from man’s heart, affects philosophical thought, which in its tendency towards origin and totality cannot but point beyond its own immanent limits towards its ultimate religious Root and its Origin. 

"The philosophical ground-idea is the foundation of all philosophy. It is the ultimate theoretical limiting idea in which this tendency towards origin and totality comes to expression. When we reflect upon it, we get to the necessary presuppositions of all philosophical thought. 

"By the light of God's revelation in Jesus Christ we do not regard the immanence standpoint as a natural premise for the Christian transcendence standpoint, but rather as a radical defection (apostasy) from the genuine self and from the true origin of all things. Thus we regard it as a falling away from the reliable ground and Origin of truth. The self that seeks a reliable ground in its theoretical thinking has fallen away from its true nature. In the end it identifies itself with its thought-abstraction. By so doing, it stumbles into the temporal diversity of meaning, where it is being dispersed. It can then only find its concentration in an absolutization, that is to say, a deification of something created."

Excerpted from "The Dilemma for Christian Philosophical Thought & the Critical Character of the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea (Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee)" by Herman Dooyeweerd (Translated by Chris van Haeften).

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*More on the "heart" - 

Dooyeweerd writes:

"God created man in His image. In the heart of man, the religious root, the center of his being, God concentrated all of creation toward His service; here He laid the supratemporal root of all temporal creatures. This human heart, from which according to Scripture come the wellsprings of life ["Above everything else guard your heart, because from it flow the springs of life." Prov 4:23 NSV], transcends all things temporal in the service of God. 

The whole religious sense (meaning) of God’s creation lies in our heart, our entire ego, our complete self. This heart, in which according to the Word eternity has been laid ["He has also set eternity in the human heart" Eccles 3:11 NIV], is the true supratemporal center of man’s existence, and at the same time it is the creaturely center of all of God’s creation. 

The apostasy of this heart, of this root of creation, necessarily swept with it all temporal creation. In Adam not only all mankind fell, but also that entire temporal cosmos of which man was the crowned head. 

And in Christ, the Word become flesh, the second Covenant Head, God gave the new root of His redeemed creation, in Whom true humanity has been implanted through self-surrender, through surrender of the center of existence, the heart." 

(Herman Dooyeweerd: The Christian Idea of the State, Craig Press 1968, p5)

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"Fata Morgana"

'The inner restlessness of meaning, as the mode of being of created reality, reveals itself in the whole temporal world. To seek a fixed point in the latter is to seek it in a "fata morgana", a mirage, a supposed thing-reality, lacking meaning as the mode of being which ever points beyond and above itself. There is indeed nothing in temporal reality in which our heart can rest, because this reality does not rest in itself... 

The question: "Who is man?" is unanswerable from the immanence-standpoint. But at the same time it is a problem which will again and again urge itself on apostate thought with relentless insistence, as a symptom of the internal unrest of an uprooted existence which no longer understands itself.' (Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol III: 109, 784)

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“ Dès lors, beaucoup de ses disciples se retirèrent et cessèrent d’aller avec lui. Jésus demanda alors aux douze disciples: « Voulez-vous partir, vous aussi? » Simon Pierre lui répondit: « Seigneur, à qui irions-nous? Tu as les paroles qui donnent la vie éternelle.” 
(Évangile selon Jean 6:66-68, La bible en français courant)
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'At this, many of his disciples turned away and no longer accompanied him. Jesus asked the Twelve, "Do you also want to leave?" Simon Peter answered, "Lord, where would we go? You have the words of eternal life.”' (John 6:66-68 CEB)
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'On àm sin thionndaidh mòran dhe a dheisciobail air ais agus cha do choisich iad tuilleadh còmhla ris. Mar sin thuirt Ìosa ris an dà fhear dheug, “Am bu toigh leibhse falbh cuideachd?” Fhreagair Sìmon Peadar e, “A Thighearna, cò thuige a thèid sinn? Is ann agadsa a tha faclan na beatha maireannaich.”' (Eòin 6:66-68)
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'Ansin tharraing a lán dá dheisceabail siar agus ní théidís timpeall lena chois a thuilleadh. Dúirt Íosa dá bhrí sin leis an dáréag: “Cad mar gheall oraibhse, an mian libhse freisin imeacht?” D'fhreagair Síomón Peadar é: “A Thiarna, cé chuige a rachamaid? Is agatsa atá briathra na beatha síoraí.”' (Eoin 6:66-68)
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Dooyeweerd: Historical Aspect discloses formative anti-reactionary task. But tradition retains a role.

Dooyeweerd: Historical Aspect discloses formative anti-reactionary task. But tradition retains a role.

Short extract from book 

‘Time, Law, and History: Selected Essays’

In the historical aspect time reveals itself in the modal sense of historical development. (Footnote: According to its subject-side “culture” is “formative control”). Historical “periods” are periods in the execution of the human task of formation and control. They are not mathematically demarcated from each other; the vital cultural factors of an earlier period are absorbed into those of the later cultural period. It is in tradition that historical developmental time fuses past, present and future. This time-order bears, similar to those present in all the subsequent aspects to be discussed, a modal normative character. It imposes on humankind a normative task to be culturally formative: it confronts the inertia of resting in the present or vegetating on the past with the demands of the future. A reaction in history is an anti-normative reaching back to a dead past; in a reactionary way it positions itself against the norm of historical development.

Extract from: Herman Dooyeweerd, ‘Time, Law, and History: Selected Essays’, Collected Works, Series B - Volume 14, Paideia Press 2017, pp 58 (£10.00, $12.95)

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Dooyeweerd: The modal aspects of time and their cosmic continuity.

Dooyeweerd: The modal aspects of time and their cosmic continuity.

Short extract from book 

‘Time, Law, and History: Selected Essays’

Temporal reality functions in a diversity of modal aspects which themselves are not subject to change in time but instead form a constant and basic modal framework within which the individual changeable entities, events, acts, deeds and societal relationships display their variable functions. The modal aspects make possible this variable functioning.

The modal structure does not exhibit the concrete what that is typical of individuality structures, since it reveals the how of reality. Each modal aspect is a functional way of being, a modality or a modal aspect of reality.

In the general theory of modal aspects the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea provisionally brought to light fourteen [subsequently fifteen (FMF)] such modal aspects of temporal reality. According to their law-like structure they are designated as law-spheres. They are that of:

1) quantity [numerical], 
2) spatiality, 
3) the aspect of movement [kinematic], 
4) [the physical energy aspect,] 
5) the biotic aspect,
6) the feeling (psychical) [sensory] aspect, 
7) the analytical (or logical) aspect, 
8) the historical [cultural, formative power] aspect, 
9) the aspect of symbolical signification [lingual], 
10) that of social interaction, 
11) the economic, 
12) the aesthetic, 
13) the jural, 
14) the moral [ethical]  
15) and the faith [pistical/ certitudinal] aspect.

In theoretical-philosophical analysis these modalities are essentially set apart in a theoretical discontinuity. However, within temporal reality they are fitted into a continuous cosmic coherence and, as we shall see, this cosmic coherence is a temporal coherence. 

As modal aspects of temporal reality they are implicitly modal time-aspects. In other words, within each modality of reality time comes to expression in a distinctive way without being exhausted by any one of them. The modal structure of reality itself is enclosed within cosmic time.

[...] The truth is that all so-called definitions of time are merely definitions of modal aspects of time, where time itself constantly remains the indefinable presupposition.

Extract from: Herman Dooyeweerd, ‘Time, Law, and History: Selected Essays’, Collected Works, Series B - Volume 14, Paideia Press 2017, pp 50-51 & 53. (£10, $12.95)

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Fascism: Brief Dooyeweerdian Critique

FASCISM: 

Brief Dooyeweerdian Critique

"When the Historical School attempted to understand the whole of culture, language, art, jurisprudence, and the economic and social orders in terms of the historical development of an individual national spirit, it elevated the national character to the status of the origin of all order. It therefore denied the truth that the individual creature always remains subject to law. It argued that if the individual potential of a man or nation is the only law for development and action, then this potential cannot be evaluated in terms of a universally valid law. Accordingly, any nation was considered to act rightly and legitimately if it simply followed the historical fate or goal implicit in its individual potential or disposition." (Herman Dooyeweerd, 'Roots of Western Culture' p 52)

READ FULL ARTICLE

HERE

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Dooyeweerd: Numerical, Spatial, and Kinetic Aspects of Time discussed in regard to Parmenides, Zeno and Heraclitus.

"Landscape with Fall of Icarus" by Pieter Breugel (1558)

DOOYEWEERD's 15 IRREDUCIBLE LAW-SPHERES 

(Also called Aspects/ Modes/ Modalities/ Meaning-sides)

NUCLEUS AND ANALOGICAL MOMENTS 

OF THE SPATIAL LAW-SPHERE 

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NOTE on term: "IMMANENCE PHILOSOPHY" -

"A name for all non-Christian philosophy, which tries to find the ground and integration of reality within the created order. Unlike Christianity, which acknowledges a transcendent Creator above all things, immanence philosophy of necessity absolutizes some feature or aspect of creation itself." (Definition by Albert M. Wolters)

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NOTE on term: "RELIGIOUS"  

It is highly important not to misunderstand Dooyeweerd’s use of this ambiguous word, currently much-maligned in popular parlance. Dooyeweerd is not at all referring to what is commonly disparaged as “organized religion”. Very far from it. Rather, he is alluding to the concentration point or anchorage of every individual’s deepest selfhood. Dooyeweerd is denoting that which is an ontically core feature of the human being per se. He is talking about what for humans is a universal structural default, namely the restless search of the selfhood for an ultimate point of integration. In this light it might therefore be productive when reading Dooyeweerd to try mentally replacing the word "religious" with "ultimate". (FMF)

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The following is an extract from Herman Dooyeweerd's essay 'My Philosophy of Time: The Problem of Time and Its Antinomies on the Immanence Standpoint', from Chapter 1 of ‘Time, Law, and History: Selected Essays’, Series B, Volume 14, Paideia Press, 2017.

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8. The urge towards the Origin of all temporality

Thus the cosmic order of time, according to its two basic directions - the foundational or retrocipatory direction and the forward-pointing or anticipatory direction - comes to expression in the very structure of the modalities, while their nuclei express the boundary point or criterion of these two directions of time (the present as boundary between the earlier and later). An understanding of this state of affairs turns out to be of tremendous importance for Christian thought.

For it is in this context that we understand also philosophically what those believers who are secured in Christ can know with certainty in the light of God’s Word: namely that there is nothing within time in which the heart can come to rest, because whatever is embraced by time does not rest in itself but points above and beyond itself, in a dynamic restlessness, to the creaturely - in truth transcendent - Root and the eternal, self-sufficient Origin of all things.

For the entire view of cosmic time in which every modality, in complete non-self-sufficiency, points backwards and forwards to all the other modalities, and in the final limiting aspect of temporal meaning, that of faith, points beyond time itself, is only possible on a scripturally Christian standpoint which reveals to us every absolutization of temporal, creaturely meaning as sinful apostasy from the true God - as idolatry.

Not until we adopt this standpoint do we experience, also in philosophy, that powerful urge in all temporality towards the Origin, an urge that is concentrated religiously in our heart, whence are the issues of life according to the testimony of Scripture [Cf. “Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life.” Prov. 4:23]. And only in Christ Jesus, the new Root of Creation, does this restless striving after the Origin acquire its direction towards the only true God who has revealed himself in his Word.

Theoretical thought which has fallen away from its true Origin in idolatry - the “fleshly mind” in Paul’s sense - searches within time for a self-sufficient point of rest. It performs this search on the basis of an absolutization which sets apart theoretical thought in its transcendental structure by lifting it out of its cosmic coherence without realizing that this transcendental structure lies at the basis of all real thinking in the sense of making it possible.

This concludes our elucidation of the basic antinomy of this immanent standpoint. We shall now turn our attention to the contradictions entailed in the conception of time that flows from this basic antinomy. In the present context a single example will have to do.

NUCLEUS AND ANALOGICAL MOMENTS 

OF THE LOGICAL (ANALYTICAL) LAW-SPHERE 

9. The inner antinomies of the Eleatic concept of being in connection with a denial of the temporal structure of space. Spatial simultaneity

Parmenides already realized that when the essence of reality, the being of what is, has to be viewed as completely timeless, then one must also exclude the whole temporal diversity and coherence from this metaphysical concept of being. Since this a-temporal being can only be grasped by theoretical thought in its logical structure, it cannot have a character distinct from this thought. Thus he teaches that “thought and being are identical” (Dieks-Kranz, 1960, B. Fr. 3). This concept of being is absolute, supra-temporal, without becoming, imperishable, without multiplicity or movement - it is one continuum. 

[…] Parmenides, as we know, did not stop at his logically negative predication of his concept of being. The “timeless being” is indentified by him with spherical filled space, an everywhere dense and limited continuum.

However, we have noted that cosmic time has a universal structure that embraces all law-spheres and functions in each law-sphere in a particular modality. Within the law-sphere of number it expresses itself in a quantitative earlier and later which determines the position of each number in the succession of numbers. And in the original modality of space, cosmic time comes to expression as spatial simultaneity. [Footnote: This naturally cancels the traditional coordination of space and time. Time belongs to a deeper layer of reality than space, because it expresses itself in the latter as one of its modalities.] Thus, the conception of an a-temporal space lacking all multiplicity is internally antinomic. Space does not exist without an analogy of number and without the simultaneity of a spatial multiplicity. Every subjective spatial figure displays an inner multiplicity in the sense of continuous extension and can exist only in a simultaneous extension of this multiplicity. A straight line already supposes a spatial multiplicity as it is bounded by two points. Even a point, although it lacks actual extension, is not defined except through the intersection of two simultaneously extended straight lines or curves.

[…] Zeno, the pupil of Parmenides, follows his teacher in this attempt to demonstrate the impossibility of continuous temporal succession. He does that with the aid of his famous paradoxes, which identify continuous temporal succession with motion. His argumentation dissolves temporal succession into moments of time which he deems timeless but in reality identifies with static spatial points that are given at once without any true succession. This stance actually disproves the claim that this concept of being is timeless, since spatial simultaneity is not timeless, but rather presupposes cosmic time.

Furthermore, the modal meaning of space contains anticipations of the nucleus of motion. 

[…] Heraclitus had indeed absolutized the aspect of motion of temporal reality to be the metaphysical essence of reality. Parmenides, by contrast, in his metaphysical concept of being absolutizes static space.

When Parmenides’ pupil Zeno attempts to demonstrate the logical nothingness of multiplicity and movement, he actually does no more than provide a strict proof for the irreducibility of the original meaning of space to that of number and movement. Thus the attempt to demonstrate the logical nothingness of time, with the diversity and coherence entailed in it, definitively failed.

Subsequent philosophical developments had to abandon this negative assessment of time. Whoever traces the history up to the most recent times (to Einstein, Bergson and Heidegger) will have to acknowledge the correctness of our contention that it is impossible for the immanence standpoint to grasp the cosmic universality of the horizon of time and the many-sidedness of its aspects. The latter constantly drives theoretical thinking into a position where it encloses the horizon of time within one or another aspect. This occurs invariably, whether a Newton defends a purely objectivistic notion of time or a Berkeley and Bergson hold to a purely subjectivistic conception, that is to say, whether time is conceived as order or merely as subjective duration, as an actual state or merely as an ordering form for sensory impressions of consciousness.

But this also ensures that the problem of time at once turns into a veritable wellspring of all the antinomies which continue to characterize the course of development of immanence philosophy.

The Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea holds that the origin of these antinomies is grounded in the basic antinomy of the immanence standpoint itself. And this deepest origin is not philosophical but religious in nature.

[…] The problem of time lies on a much deeper and more fundamental level than that of space - with which it was associated for a long time without sufficient justification. Time indeed concerns the entire structure of the cosmos and of the horizon of human experience. It entails the basic question at what point human consciousness transcends the horizon of time. For without this transcendence time cannot be made a philosophical problem.

If we did not transcend time at the deepest concentration point of our existence, our consciousness would of necessity be exhausted by time, which would cancel the possibility of religious self-concentration. The problem of time would have been unknown to us, because time essentially only becomes a problem to us if we are able to take distance from it in what is supra-temporal, which we experience in the deepest core of our being.

Herman Dooyeweerd, ‘Time, Law, and History: Selected Essays’, Series B, Volume 14, Paideia Press, 2017, pp 14-19. (£10, $12.95)

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