Dooyeweerd: The radical unity of God’s law transcends temporal diversity

Johannes Vermeer, The Milkmaid (1658–1660)

“To illustrate totality and temporality, Dooyeweerd uses the image of the prism. Totality is analogous to white light before it is refracted by a prism into many colours. In this analogy, the prism is cosmic time, which refracts the totality into the differentiated and  individuated temporal reality. The unrefracted light is the time-transcending or supratemporal totality of meaning of our cosmos, both as to its law and subject sides. And just as this unrefracted light has its origin in the Source of light, so this supratemporal totality of meaning has its origin in the Arché or Origin by whom and to whom it has been created. The totality and deeper unity of meaning ‘must transcend its modal diversity’ (NC I, 102; WdW I, 66-67).” J. Glenn Friesen, p7 ‘Dooyeweerd, Spann, and the Philosophy of Totality’ (pdf)

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The 15 EXPERIENTIAL, IRREDUCIBLE, 
LAW-SPHERES of COSMIC TIME 

(Also called Aspects/ Modes of Consciousness/ 
Modalities/ Modes of Meaning)

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IMPORTANT NOTE 

ON DOOYEWEERD'S USE OF THE TERM 

“RELIGION” -

“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." 

(Herman Dooyeweerd, Prolegomena, 

New Critique of Theoretical Thought, p57)

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Dooyeweerd: The radical unity of God’s law transcends temporal diversity

The radical unity of God’s divine law truly transcends the temporal diversity of ordinances. It is revealed to us through Christ as the commandment to love God and our neighbor, a love that must proceed from an undivided heart, embrace our entire understanding, and call upon all our strength. This is the religious fullness, the fulfillment of the law, which reflects the way in which the religious concentration point of our entire temporal existence is located in the heart. 

But according to the divine world-order, this unity of God’s law is attuned to a rich temporal pluriformity of law-spheres, through which the manifold wisdom of God is revealed, just as the heart or soul of a human being is attuned to the body and understood as a created whole whose interwoven individuality structures comprehend all the functions of a person within all the spheres of temporal life. 

As little as the soul can be substituted for the body, so it is impossible to substitute the religious commandment of love for the pluriformity of divine ordinances in the various normative aspects of human society. The temporal moral law, which governs the moral relationships here on earth, is just one of the many aspects which the divine law exhibits in its refraction of meaning. The moral aspect is indissolubly intertwined with all the other law-spheres; when it is absolutized it loses its moral meaning.

In this sense, the moral law in its positive form is also intertwined with history, just as legal norms, social norms, lingual norms, and so on. To deny this indissoluble coherence is to succumb to a rationalistic metaphysics of natural law; to try and reduce the positive moral law, positive legislation, and so on, to “historical phenomena” is to fall headlong into the evil of historicism.

Extracted from:

Herman Dooyeweerd, ‘Time, Law, and History: Selected Essays’ Series B – Volume 14, ‘Law and History’, Paideia Press, 2017, pp 412-413)

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See also:

Herman Dooyeweerd: The central and radical unity of our existence

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J. Glenn Friesen: Dooyeweerd, Spann, and the Philosophy of Totality
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J. Glenn Friesen: Dooyeweerd, Spann, and the Philosophy of Totality

Dooyeweerd, Spann, and the 

Philosophy of Totality

by J. Glenn Friesen

'[Othmar] Spann helps us to situate Dooyeweerd’s philosophy within a tradition that goes back to Romanticism, to the Christian philosophy of Franz von Baader, and to the German mystics, including Meister Eckhart and Jakob Boehme. Spann was associated with what may be called “the philosophy of totality” [Die Philosophie der Ganzheit]. There were many philosophers in the early part of the 20th century who emphasized the idea of totality. Some of those who influenced Dooyeweerd are Spann, Husserl, Cassirer, Nicolai Hartmann, Hans Driesch and Felix Krueger.' 

[...] 'Totality is one of the key ideas of Dooyeweerd’s philosophy. On the second page of his “Prolegomena” to A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Dooyeweerd refers to totality six times (NC I, 4). He says that the temporal coherence of the modal aspects points beyond itself to a central totality. And conversely, this totality expresses itself in the temporal aspects. Our selfhood is a totality that expresses itself in its temporal functions. And our selfhood in turn is the expression of the image of God (the Origin of totality). Later Dooyeweerd says that these three Ideas – temporal coherence, totality, and Origin – are the three transcendental Ideas that are found in the Ground-Motive for any philosophy; different philosophies give different content to these Ideas.' 

[...] 'To illustrate totality and temporality, Dooyeweerd uses the image of the prism. Totality is analogous to white light before it is refracted by a prism into many colours. In this analogy, the prism is cosmic time, which refracts the totality into the differentiated and individuated temporal reality. The unrefracted light is the time-transcending or supratemporal totality of meaning of our cosmos, both as to its law and subject sides. And just as this unrefracted light has its origin in the Source of light, so this supratemporal totality of meaning has its origin in the Arché or Origin by whom and to whom it has been created. The totality and deeper unity of meaning “must transcend its modal diversity” (NC I, 102; WdW I, 66-67).'

[...] 'The difference between Dooyeweerd and many philosophers of totality is that for Dooyeweerd the totality is transcendent and supratemporal. Some other philosophers of totality find totality within temporal reality, whether in a vitalism or a psychologism or a logicism. Dooyeweerd refers to these philosophies as “immanence philosophies,” because their view of totality is wholly within time. If we do not understand the importance of totality for Dooyeweerd, we cannot understand his transcendental critique of these immanence philosophies.'

Download PDF of full essay (32 pages)

HERE

(Corrected link)
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Visit J. Glenn Friesen's 

DOOYEWEERD WEBSITE

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