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Enstasy:
Center and Periphery
(Heart and Cosmos)
An extract from the essay ‘Enstasy, Ecstasy and Religious Self-Reflection: A History of Dooyeweerd’s Ideas of Pre-theoretical Experience’ (125 page pdf)
by J Glenn Friesen
For Dooyeweerd, enstasis is the relation of our central heart to the peripheral cosmos, including our temporal body. We experience temporal reality as “our own.” The movement inwards of religious self-reflection is towards this center. It is only in that center that we have a view of totality (Friesen 2005a). We have seen how for Baader, true stasis is a relation to our true center. Baader also speaks of a view of totality from that center. And we have seen how Scheler, influenced by Baader, says that (in contrast to humans), temporal reality is ‘ecstatic’ because of its inability to report back to a center.
The distinction between our central supratemporal heart and its peripheral functions is emphasized by Dooyeweerd in the opening pages of his major work, De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee (1935).
Translation of excerpts of De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee
(The Philosophy of the Law-Idea)
Study notes for De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee
(The Philosophy of the Law-Idea)
Dooyeweerd begins with a discussion of the importance of this central significance of the heart. Kant’s Copernican revolution was not central or radical (from ‘radix’), but only a revolution in the periphery, because rationality is only a peripheral function that finds its center in the heart. In contrast, a truly radical and revolutionary philosophy begins with the central supratemporal heart, which relativizes everything temporal, including our rationality. That is why Dooyeweerd can criticize the “autonomy of thought.” Thought is not autonomous, but is only one temporal function of our supratemporal center (WdW I, v-vii, poorly translated in New Critique I, v-vii; see Friesen 2011).
In one of his last lectures before his retirement, Dooyeweerd again emphasized the importance of the distinction between central and peripheral:
Center and Periphery: The Philosophy of the Law-Idea in a Changing World (1964)
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The above text is an extract (pp 66-67) from
'Enstasy, Ecstasy and Religious Self-Reflection:
A History of Dooyeweerd’s Ideas of Pre-theoretical Experience'
by Dr J Glenn Friesen.
Download this entire article (PDF 125 pages)
Visit J. Glenn Friesen’s Dooyeweerd Site
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