'Integral Nondual Philosophy: Ken Wilber and Herman Dooyeweerd' by J. Glenn Friesen

Ken Wilber and Herman Dooyeweerd: 

Integral Nondual Philosophy

by J. Glenn Friesen (2010)

Introduction

Ken Wilber attempts to integrate philosophy, psychology and other sciences, and spirituality. Judging by the popularity of his books, there is a lot of interest in such an integrative approach. Wilber’s first book, The Spectrum of Consciousness, was published in 1977. Wilber says that his ideas have changed somewhat since then, so most of my citations will be from his later works, such as The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating Science and Religion (Wilber 1998).

Herman Dooyeweerd’s Philosophy of the Law-Idea [De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee, cited here as ‘WdW’], was published more than 40 years earlier. Dooyeweerd also sought an integral approach; he dealt with many similar issues and historical sources. But Dooyeweerd never achieved the same kind of popularity. Why not? His major work, WdW, was not translated until 1953 (A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, cited here as ‘NC’). Some of his works have never been translated. Second, his philosophy was misunderstood as a kind of Christian Aristotelianism (Friesen 2010), or he was misinterpreted in terms of the very different philosophy of his brother-in-law Dirk Vollenhoven (Friesen 2005c). Dooyeweerd’s nondualism was also misunderstood as either monism or dualism (Friesen 2005b). Finally, Dooyeweerd’s philosophy was regarded as of interest only to Dutch Calvinists, whereas Dooyeweerd himself rejected such a narrow approach (Dooyeweerd, 1964).

The philosophies of Wilber and Dooyeweerd are not identical. Wilber writes from the perspectives of Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta. Dooyeweerd writes from a Christian perspective. Both philosophers reject dualism. Both philosophers use the metaphor of a spectrum to describe our different modes of consciousness. They give similar answers to some questions, but very different answers to other questions. A comparison can help to understand each of them better, and will also show Dooyeweerd’s relevance today.

We will begin by looking at the idea of a perennial philosophy, which both Wilber and Dooyeweerd rely on. How does this idea relate to Wilber’s idea of a Chain of Being, and of different levels of reality? What are Dooyeweerd’s views on levels of reality? How does their use of the prism/spectrum metaphor relate to these differing views on levels of reality? What do they mean by ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’? And what do they mean when they say that they reject dualism? Finally, I will use Dooyeweerd’s transcendental critique in order to compare their philosophies in relation to questions of Origin, supratemporal totality (selfhood), and temporal coherence.

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Dooyeweerd: Horizon of Experience

Image Copyright: F. MacFhionnlaigh

The Perspective Structure
of the Horizon of Experience
by Herman Dooyeweerd

The dependence of our knowledge about the cosmos on our self-knowledge and on our knowledge of God.

(Extract from Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol 2, pp 560-563)

The different levels of the a priori we have discovered in the structure of the horizon of human experience as the horizon of ‘earthly’ reality are not placed side by side in an arbitrary way. They are integrated into a perspective coherence in accordance with the Divine order of the creation. In the order among them, and in their coherence, they form the perspective in which we experience the cosmos.

All human experience, both in the pre-theoretical and in the theoretical attitudes, is rooted in the structure of the transcendent unity of self-consciousness. The latter partakes in the religious [ultimate, supratemporal] root of the creation directed to God, or, in the case of apostasy, directed away from God. This religious  [ultimate, supratemporal] horizon is the transcendent horizon of the selfhood, and encompasses the cosmic temporal horizon in which we experience the insoluble coherence and the modal [law-sphere/ aspectual] and typical refraction of meaning. The temporal horizon encompasses and determines the modal horizon both in its theoretical (analytical and synthetical) distinction and in its pre-theoretical systasis [“factual immediacy of our internal experience of reality.”].

The temporal horizon encompasses and determines also the plastic horizon of the structures of individuality, which in its turn implies the modal horizon.

From this it follows that all temporal knowledge rests on a religious [ultimate, supratemporal] or pseudo-religious foundation, and is restricted and made relative by the temporal dimensions of the horizon of experience and of reality. For this reason we are the victims of an illusion, if we hypostatize [absolutize] the structure of human knowledge, or proclaim the human cognitive apparatus self-sufficient. For the transcendent horizon of the selfhood, radiating through all human experience perspectively, has no rest in itself, but only exists in the creaturely mode of meaning, which is nothing in itself, i.e. nothing apart from its reference to the Origin.

The religious [ultimate, supratemporal] meaning of the created world binds the true knowledge of the cosmos to true self-knowledge, and the latter to the true knowledge of God. [Footnote by Dooyeweerd: This is the radical difference between the Christian view of self-knowledge as the condition of a radical critical knowledge of the world and HUSSERL's transcendental phenomenological egology. The latter makes the knowledge of God dependent on the phenomenological self-interprelation of the transcendental ego.]  

This view has been explained in an unsurpassable and pregnant way in the first chapter of the first book of CALVIN's Institutio. It is the only purely Biblical view and the alpha and omega of any truly Christian epistemology. Theoretical truth, limited and relativized by the temporal horizon, is in every respect dependent on the full super-temporal Truth. If we hypostatize [absolutize] theoretical truth, it is turned into a lie. For there does not exist a self-sufficient partial truth. We cannot truthfully know the cosmos outside of the true knowledge of God. But like all human experience in this earthly dispensation, our knowledge of God, although directed to the absolute Truth, is also restricted and relativized by (but not at all to) our temporal cosmic existence.

The restriction of our human experience of the religious [ultimate, supratemporal] fulness of meaning by time is no restriction to time. 

This means that in the Christian experience the religious [ultimate, supratemporal] fulness of meaning remains bound up with temporal reality. Every spiritualistic view which wants to separate self-knowledge and the knowledge of God from all that is temporal, runs counter to the Divine order of the creation. Such spiritualism inevitably leads to an internally empty idealism, or to a confused kind of mysticism, in spite of its own will or intentions.

In the order of this life - that of the life beyond is still hidden from us as to its positive nature - all human experience remains bound to a perspective horizon in which the transcendent light of eternity must force its way through time. In this horizon we become aware of the transcendent fulness of the meaning of this life only in the light of the Divine revelation refracted through the prism of time. For this reason Christ, as the fulness of God's Revelation, came into the flesh; and for this reason also the Divine Word-revelation came to us in the temporal garb of human language.

But if our experience were limited to our temporal functions of consciousness, or rather to an abstractum taken from our temporal complex of experiential functions, as is taught by the critical and the positivistic epistemologies, it would be impossible to have true knowledge of God, or of ourselves, or of the cosmos. And in the apostasy in which falsehood (and not truth) rules, we have no such knowledge. This also applies to the πρῶτον ψεῦδος [Proton Pseudos -"first lie": first false premise in a deduction] in which the entire epistemology of immanence-philosophy is founded. For it is based on the self-destructive hypostatizing [absolutizing] of the theoretical synthesis of meaning, and on a fundamental misconception of the structure of human experience. In the transcendent religious subjective a priori of the cosmic self-consciousness the whole of human cognition is directed either to the absolute Truth, or to the spirit of falsehood. In this cosmic self-consciousness we are aware of temporal cosmic reality being related to the structure of the human selfhood qua talis.

In its universally valid law-conformity this structure is essentially the structure of a religious [supratemporal] community into which the individual ego has been integrated. Any theoretical displacement of the human selfhood from this central position in experience is due to the lack of a radical philosophical self-reflexion.

But man cannot attain to true self-knowledge without true knowledge of God, which cannot be gained outside of the Divine Revelation in Christ. 

At this point, many a reader who has taken the trouble to follow our argument will perhaps turn away annoyed. He will ask: Must epistemology end in a Christian sermon or in a dogmatic statement? I can only answer by means of the question as to whether the dogmatic statement with which the supposed autonomous epistemology opens, viz. the proclamation of the self-sufficiency of the human cognitive functions, has a better claim to our confidence as far as epistemology is concerned.

Our philosophy makes bold to accept the ‘stumbling block [obstacle] of the cross of Christ’ as the corner stone of epistemology. And thus it also accepts the cross of scandal, neglect and dogmatic rejection. In the limitation and weakness of the flesh, we grasp the absolute truth in our knowledge of God derived from His revelation, in prayer and worship. This knowledge in the full sense of the word contains the religious [ultimate, supratemporal] principle and foundation of all true knowledge, and primarily has a religious enstatic ["placed within the concrete, individual reality of things and events"] character. It no more rests primarily on a theoretical meaning-synthesis than does the cosmic self-consciousness. 

The knowledge about God in which religious [ultimate, supratemporal] self-knowledge is implied, is not primarily gained in a so-called theological way. That which is very inadequately called ‘theology’, is a theoretical knowledge obtained in a synthesis of the logical function of thought and the temporal function of faith. It is a knowledge which itself is entirely dependent on the cosmonomic Idea from which the thinker starts.

The true knowledge of God and of ourselves is concerned with the horizon of human experience and therefore also with that of theoretical knowledge. It rests on our trustful acceptance of Divine revelation in the indissoluble unity of both its cosmic-immanent sense and its transcendent-religious meaning; an acceptance with our full personality and with all our heart. It means a turning of the personality, a giving of life in the full sense of the word, a restoring of the subjective perspective of our experience, enabling us to grasp reality again perspectively in the light of Truth. This does not mean a kind of mystical supernatural cognitive function, but it refers to the horizon that God made for human experience in the cosmic order created by Him. The subjective perspective has been obfuscated by sin and distorted and closed to the light of the Divine Revelation. 

True self-knowledge opens our eyes to the radical corruption of fallen man, to the radical lie which has caused his spiritual death. It therefore leads to a complete surrender to Him Who is the new root of mankind, and Who overcame death through his sufferings and death on the cross. In Christ's human nature our heavenly Father has revealed the fulness of meaning of all creation [Ephes. 1:10], and through Him according to His Divine nature, God created all things as through the Word of his power [Hebr. 1:2,3]. 

The primary lie obfuscating the horizon of human experience is the rebellious thought that man could do without this knowledge of God and of himself in any field of knowledge, and could find the ultimate criterion of truth in ‘autonomous’, i.e. absolutized theoretical thought.

(Extract from Herman Dooyeweerd: A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol 2, pp 560-563.) 

NB: FREE PDF DOWNLOADS of this and other books by Herman Dooyeweerd are available HERE

J. Glenn Friesen: Dooyeweerd’s Idea of Modalities: The Pivotal 1922 Article

Dooyeweerd’s Idea of Modalities: 

The Pivotal 1922 Article

by J. Glenn Friesen

Abstract
Dooyeweerd says that “the first rudimental conception” of his philosophy had ripened even before he started work at the Kuyper Foundation in October 1922. He had not even studied Kuyper's works, although he would later find some similarities in Kuyper. A detailed analysis of an article written earlier in 1922 shows us how Dooyeweerd developed his philosophy. This article is “Normatieve rechtsleer. Een kritisch-methodologische onderzoeking naar Kelsen's normatieve rechtsbeschouwing.” It includes these ideas: the rejection of the autonomy of thought, the idea of intuitive beholding [schouwen], and the idea of modalities or modes of consciousness. Previous historians of reformational philosophy have not adequately researched Dooyeweerd's sources for these ideas. None of these sources are Calvinistic. Dooyeweerd used these ideas to critique neo-Kantianism. He dismantles Kant's logical categories and instead puts forward the idea of intuited modalities. And Dooyeweerd uses the scholastic idea of ‘meaning moments’ to individuate these modalities from totality.

Keywords
autonomy of thought - Herman Dooyeweerd - intuitive beholding (schouwen) - Kant - modalities - meaning-moment - Emil Lask - neo-Kantianism

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Dooyeweerd Glossary

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DOOYEWEERD: The walls of the absolutization of personal individuality have no windows.

John Tenniel illustration for Lewis Carroll's 'Alice in Wonderland'

DOOYEWEERD: The walls of the absolutization of personal individuality have no windows.

"The Christian speaks with awe about the living personal God, Who in His mercy and grace has revealed His identity to fallen humanity.  But also in the communion with this God in Christ, the Christian remains within the human creaturely limits of the possibility of experience.

"Subjective individuality can never determine the structural horizon of human experience and of the cosmos."

"This horizon is a structural order, the Divine order of the creation itself. It comprises in its determining and limiting structure the individuality of human personality, its religious [core selfhood] root as well as its temporal existence. Creaturely subjective individuality cannot determine and limit itself, but is a priori determined and limited by the Divine order.

"But for its super-individual law-conformity, individual subjectivity would be an 'apeiron', a meaningless indeterminateness."

"The possibility of subjective experience would be cancelled, if the horizon of human experience were subjectively individual. The cosmic self-consciousness in which all cosmological knowledge remains founded, is not an experiential entrance into the absolutely individual horizon of some 'personal world', of a 'microcosm' (Scheler). It enters into the full, unique cosmos created by God within the temporal horizon, in the full meaning-coherence of all its modal and plastic structures. 

 "Naive [concrete] experience, the great primary datum of all epistemology, does not know anything of a cosmos as a 'personal world' supposed to be identical with countless other 'personal worlds' in an abstract, universal, merely intended [mental] essential structure alone. This is already precluded by...the plastic horizon of human experience. 

 "Human beings experience their individual existence within the temporal horizon exclusively in the one and only cosmos into which they been integrated together with all creatures. They also experience their individuality in the various structures of the temporal societal relationships.

"The individuality of human experience within the temporal horizon has a societal structure excluding any possibility of a hermetically closed 'microcosm'."

(Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol 2: pp 592-594) [Direct DOWNLOAD of above book PDF]

Dr Quentin Van Meter: The Terrible Fraud of Transgender Medicine

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See also:
Gender Dysphoria in Children and Suppression of Debate
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Herman Dooyeweerd: Free Downloads of Books now available

Free Downloads of many of Herman Dooyeweerd's books are now available.

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HOMEPAGE of DOWNLOADS

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Below are some DIRECT DOWNLOAD links...

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Recommended for those new to Dooyeweerd -

In the Twilight of Western Thought (177 pages)

Roots of Western Culture: Pagan, Secular, and Christian Options (256 pages)

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Magnum opus -

A New Critique of Theoretical Thought 
- 4 Volumes (large files)

Volume 1 (608 pages)

Volume 2 (626 pages)

Volume 3 (820 pages)

Volume 4 (264 pages - extensive helpful index)

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Scottish independence: Norway - the twin nation

Phantom Power | Ajoutée le 5 nov. 2018
"The Norway film tells the story of Scotland’s twin nation. We have the same population, share the oil, gas and fishing resources of the North Sea and have similar geography. But over the last 200 years Norway has withdrawn from a Union with first Denmark and then Sweden and has invested its oil wealth wisely while Margaret Thatcher squandered ours. This much we already know. But did you know Norwegians have chosen to continue paying some of the highest personal taxes in the world to stabilise their oil-based economy – using the oil fund only to top up budgets not underpin them? Did you know hydro was the first big energy revolution, possible because Norway had no feudal landowners blocking the development of free energy for all? And – perhaps most importantly – did you know the widespread ownership of land in the 19th century meant Norway created one of the world’s widest electorates and therefore one of its most egalitarian parliaments? These democratic achievements underpin Norway’s success every bit as much as independence and raise hopes and tough questions about Scotland’s future. Can we hope to use renewables to match the incredible achievements of our twin nation?"

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