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| Hendrick Avercamp 'Winterlandschap met ijsvermaak' (c. 1608) |
By Herman Dooyeweerd
(Extract from A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol III pp 170-171, ‘Structures of Individuality of Temporal Human Society’)
See preceding extract HERE
(Extract from A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol III pp 170-171, ‘Structures of Individuality of Temporal Human Society’)
See preceding extract HERE
At first sight it might appear that this Idea presupposes a differentiated condition of human society which, as explained in Vol. II [Free DIRECT download - large file - 626 page pdf] is dependent upon the opening-process of its historical or cultural aspect ["historical"-- cultural-formative -- law-sphere/ mode of consciousness - see chart on previous extract]. How then can we apply it to primitive or undifferentiated societies? Does not it appear from this difficulty that our whole view concerning the validity of constant structural principles for the factual societal relationships is at best of an ideal-normative character, and should be eliminated from any explanation of society as it factually is?
I think this conclusion would be quite premature. When we establish that a matrimonial community, a State, a Church, etc have a constant inner nature, determined by their internal structural principles, we do not mean that all of these societal structures of individuality have been realized in every phase of development of mankind. We only mean that the inner nature of these types of societal relationships cannot be dependent on variable historical conditions of human society. This is to say, as soon as they are realized in a factual human society, they appear to be bound to their structural principles without which we could not have any social experience of them. We shall see presently that this does not detract anything from the great variability of the social forms in which they are realized.
As to undifferentiated societies, this implies that their types of societal relationship also have structural principles, determining their inner nature, and differing fundamentally from those of differentiated types.
This view is doubtless ruled by the Biblical Idea of divine creation of all things after their proper nature [Gen 1:24,25]. But it is again and again confirmed by the social facts themselves.
The inner nature of a matrimonial bond urges itself upon humanity because it is not our own creation. Doubtless the factual matrimonial relationship between a man and a wife may [on occasion] be bad enough. Man and wife may break the marriage bond. But it is impossible to make such a factual behaviour into a social norm, because it contradicts the very nature of a matrimonial relation and the latter is a fundamental institution of every human society. The bolshevist authorities were obliged to capitulate to the “logic of the social facts” when they saw that the communist doctrine of marriage as a free companionship, dissoluble at any moment by the will of each of the parties, in its practice led to a fundamental disintegration of the Russian society.
In the same way the inner nature of a State, of a university, of a Church, of an industrial enterprise, or, in an undifferentiated society, of a sib, a tribe, or a guild, cannot be identified with the variable and changing factual relationships in which their internal structural types are realized. The latter urge themselves upon mankind and cannot be transformed by us. This is why the real structural principles of human society can never be replaced by constructed “ideal types”, in the sense of Max Weber. (Next extract HERE)
(Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol III pp 170-171, Structures of Individuality of Temporal Human Society)
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