Herman Dooyeweerd: Where meaning ceases, created reality and human experience end.

Judith Leyster: 'Laughing Children with Cat' (Dutch 1629)

Where meaning ceases, created reality and human experience end.

By Herman Dooyeweerd

‘A New Critique of Theoretical Thought’ Vol 2, p 539)

Why is it meaning-less to restrict the datum of experience to the sensory matter of sensory impressions? Because this thesis is self-destructive, insofar as KANT'S conception of matter is the product of theoretical abstraction. What has been abstracted can never be the datum. The sensory function of intuition has a modal meaning by which it is integrated into the full temporal reality and which offers an insurmountable resistance to any attempt to make the sensory aspect of experience theoretically independent. Such an attempt cannot he supposed to leave at least the sensory aspect of experience intact, but it cancels this aspect and lands us in "pure nothingness" (das reine Nichts). If the human selfhood is capable of consciously experiencing the sensory aspect of reality in its subject-object relations, it necessarily experiences this sensory aspect in the cosmic temporal meaning-coherence.

This conscious experience is a quite different thing from the subjective undergoing of sense-impressions found in animals. And if the human selfhood transcends cosmic time, not a single aspect of temporal reality can transcend the self-consciousness operative in all human experience.

Speculative metaphysics has invented the splitting up of temporal reality into a noumenon and a phenomenon. The phenomenalistic conception of human experience remains tainted with the (fundamentally religious) prejudice of this metaphysics which is recognisable even in the disguise of a positivism claiming to be free of all manner of preoccupation.

There is nothing in experience that has been given us without the psychical [ie sensory] function of consciousness. But if nothing outside of this function had been given us, we should not have been given anything at all, not even the sensory itself.

This thesis is merely the counterpart of the thesis we have formulated in the Prolegomena: We cannot know anything without logical thought, but if we were not able to know anything outside of logical thought, we could not know anything at all. For not a single aspect of experience can exist outside of the cosmic coherence of meaning, and where meaning ceases, there is an end of created reality and of all human experience.

Herman Dooyeweerd, ‘A New Critique of Theoretical Thought’ Vol 2, p 539)

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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"
(by FMF)

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. 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. Rather, 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 (or "idol") is sought by the selfhood within the temporal cosmos by absolutising a law-sphere or combination of law-spheres. 

Dooyeweerd writes:

"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 [the sensory aspect] 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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DOOYEWEERD: Democracy and Political Parties: Relativism and Absolute Truth.

"Ja! Nein!" - Photo Credit: Alasdair Nicol (flickr)

Democracy and Political Parties: 

Relativism and Absolute Truth.

by Herman Dooyeweerd

(Extract from A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol III pp 606-609. ‘Structures of Individuality of Temporal Human Society’)

See preceding extract HERE

A primordial question. Can a political party have a normative structural principle? The political contrast between the parties, and political relativism.

PART 1

Meanwhile, there is a primordial question to be answered before we engage in an investigation of the inner nature of the political party: Does not the latter imply a division of the State’s people into opposite factions? If so, how can such a party have a normative structural principle of a supra-arbitrary transcendental character?

This difficulty is indeed insoluble so long as the internal structural principle is not distinguished from the subjective purposes and factual behaviour of the actually existing parties.

In itself the rise of political parties is a manifestation of the interest and the feeling of responsibility of its founders and members with respect to State affairs.

In his famous work Modern Democracies, James Bryce has rightly observed that political parties, notwithstanding the justified complaints lodged against them in their factual appearance, are indispensable in any large and free country. No single representative government can do without them. They awaken and maintain the public spirit in the people and they bring about a necessary order in the chaos of the enormous mass of electors. Party discipline, though it should be bound to certain limits, has proved to be a remedy against political egoism and corruption.

We may add to Bryce’s observations that the divergence of opinion concerning the principles of policy of the State is a necessary result of the individualizing [differentiating, opening-up] process of human society, which proved to be implied in the process of disclosure of the latter. [See previous chapters of ‘A New Critique’]

There can be nothing wrong in such a divergence so long as it does not concern the supra-arbitrary fundamentals of the State and of the societal order in general.

Within this scope no single subjective political opinion of a party can as such lay claim to absolute validity. Therefore, a debate between different parties may contribute to a mutual correction and to finding a common basis of cooperation in practical questions of policy without eliminating the fundamental divergence of political viewpoints. This is the considerable value of the parliamentary debate in the framework of the modern parliamentary system.

But this state of affairs should not be interpreted in the sense of a universal axiological relativism, which Kelsen has ascribed to democracy as its ‘life- and world-view’, in contradistinction to autocracy which is supposed to be founded in the belief in an absolute verity (Vom Wesen und Wert der Demokratie,1920, Allgemeine Staatslehre, pp. 396 ff.).

The truth is that no single political total view is independent of a religious [ie ultimate, deeper-than-theoretical] basic motive, which rules both the practical ‘life- and world-view’ and the theoretical view of temporal reality. If indeed democracy -- or at least modern parliamentary democracy -- should be deemed to be incompatible with the belief in an absolute Truth, this would be tantamount to its inner dissolution as a political governmental system. For a consistent axiological relativism cannot allege a single ground for the maintenance of the State and the entire societal order, which impose themselves upon everybody, and are incompatible with anarchism as an axiological view. Such a relativism cannot provide any argument for the superiority of a democratic to an autocratic system of government. It cannot even account for the democratic majority principle.

If democracy should imply that, for lack of an absolute standard, no single political belief may lay claim to a higher legal appreciation than the others, it contradicts itself by attributing prevalence to the opinion of a parliamentary majority. For the principle of proportionality to which Kelsen appeals (Allgemeine Staatslehre, p. 370) is not warranted from a relativistic point of view.

And if the relativist should try to base the rule of majority upon the necessity of binding legal rules and decisions, we must observe that this very necessity is not to be justified from a relativistic standpoint.

PART 2
If, however, every theoretical and practical political conception concerning the State and the principles of a just government is in the last instance dependent on a 'religious' [ultimate, deeper-than-theoretical] basic motive which transcends any theoretical axiological relativism, no single political party can start from the latter. For this would be tantamount to a flat abandonment of its claim to superiority in comparison with other parties. Of course, this does not mean that a subjective political aim or program can as such lay claim to absolute validity. It only implies that without the belief in an absolute supra-theoretical Truth and in supra-arbitrary political norms any struggle between political parties becomes meaningless.

It is true that modern Historicism has to a high degree undermined the belief in eternal ideas or values and has even led to the fundamental crisis of Humanism amply described in the first volume of this work [A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol I - DIRECT DOWNLOAD (608 page pdf)]. But we have shown that this Historicism itself did not originate in an independent theoretical thought, but much rather in the religious dialectic of the Humanist basic motive [Nature and Freedom].

Theoretically it may result in a complete relativism and nihilism, but practically it cannot maintain this relativism which even destroys its own foundation, viz. the absoluteness of the historical viewpoint as such.

A political party is concerned with practical policy though it cannot do without the aid of political theory. Therefore it cannot hold to an axiological relativism in the sense of Kelsen. It must appeal to a supra-relativistic starting-point in the central religious [ultimate 'ontic'] sphere of human existence, irrespective of the question as to whether or not it pretends to be neutral with regard to religion.

This has nothing to do with the untenable assumption that the factual grouping of a population into different political parties coincides with the differentiation into “religious groups”; this assumption is no better than the opposite supposition that party-grouping coincides with the occupational or class-differentiation.

Opposite political parties may start from the same religious basic motive and it may be that the same party embraces Christians and atheists. But this does not detract from the fact that the radical antithesis between the Biblical basic motive [ie ‘Creation, Fall, Redemption through Jesus Christ in communion with the Holy Spirit’] and the apostate religious [including atheistic] starting-points is of decisive importance to the ultimate division of the political views. For it rules the most fundamental divergence in the total view of human society and in the conception of the place of the State within the temporal societal order. It is only the influence of the dualistic scholastic [Thomistic-Catholic] motive of 'Nature and Grace' which may cause this fundamental line of division to be blurred.

From the above it should not be concluded that it is always and in every condition necessary to form separate Christian parties. It may be that this is factually impossible or undesirable, just as this may be the case with respect to the formation of Christian trade-unions or other Christian associations.

But it is certainly a serious misconception to suppose that the Christian religion has nothing to do with the formation of political parties, or that according to its inner nature a political party is sinful and lacks a structural principle in the temporal world-order. As to its supra-arbitrary inner nature a political party is no more sinful than the State or any other social relationship. It is only the human formative activity and its subjective purpose which can give the structural principle of this type of association a sinful direction.

(Extract from A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol III pp 606-609. ‘Structures of Individuality of Temporal Human Society’)

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Dooyeweerd: Individualism versus Universalism

Goebbels at "Degenerate Art" Exhibition (Munich 1938)

Individualism versus universalism

by Herman Dooyeweerd

(Extract from A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol III pp 601-603. ‘Structures of Individuality of Temporal Human Society’)

See preceding extract HERE

The radical Christian idea of human freedom. The tension between free inter­-individual relations and organized integration in modern society.

Against the individualistic tendencies in free society, God’s conserving grace thus calls into play opposed organizational tendencies of an integrating character.

In this way the divine world-order is also maintained in the individualized inter-individual societal relations. But if this process develops under the predominant leading of an apostate attitude of faith absolutizing temporal interests, there is no harmonious cooperation between the free development of inter­-individual relations and the increasing integrative significance of organizational bonds [ie between individual freedom and communal integration]. Indeed it appears that modern social development displays the picture of a continuous tension between the two tendencies, alternately overstraining the one or the other at the expense of the sound development of both. 

Communism, Humanism, Scholasticism
After a period of extreme in­dividualism modern society is now threatened by a communistic universalism which seeks to realize a totalitarian community of humankind by means of the State’s power, although in its ideology the State is completely depreciated. More than a third part of the human race is delivered to the political power of this totalitarian ideology. Western democracy is in fear of this tremendous adversary and seeks to defend itself by an international integration of its military forces. Nevertheless, by military means alone the free­dom of humanity cannot be protected. 

It should not be forgotten that communism in its Marxian and Bolshevist sense is primarily a spiritual power, a secularized eschatological faith in the final liberation of humanity in a future classless society. It should be borne in mind that, viewed from this spiritual background, it has originated in the dialectical process in which Western thought has been involved since the religious Humanist basic motive of ‘nature and freedom’ began to reveal its driving power in Western history. And the historical rise of Humanism was closely con­nected with the dialectical process in which Christian thought was involved by the introduction of the [inherently flawed and unbiblical] dualist scholastic basic motive of ‘nature and grace’.

Universalism and individualism
In this entire dialectical process of Western thought the view of human society was continually swayed between the poles of universalism and individualism. All attempts to find a way out of this alternative were doomed to fail so long as the immanence [timebound] standpoint was maintained, and the radical and integral freedom of the individual or the radical and integral community of human­kind were sought in the temporal order of our earthly existence.

Historicism [2] [3] [4] [5], Relativism, Fascism, Nazism
It is of no avail to disregard the fact that to a large extent the spiritual basis of the modern Western ideas of freedom and authority has been undermined by historicism and relativism. The simple fact that the fascist and nazi totalitarian ideologies could be presented as the only real alternative over against the communistic system was a symptom of this process. And that this suggestion could acquire such a tremendous influence in many countries of central and Southern Europe should be a warning against an optimistic judgment of the real state of affairs. 

The truth is that since the decline of individualism, even in democratic countries new universalist ideas have penetrated the practical and theoretical view of society. They are presen­ted as a mere historical necessity and adapted to the traditional democratic ideas, which have changed their sense, and in the prevailing theories of the State have been emancipated from their former foundation in an eternal natural law order.

This is why the integrating tendencies in the inter-individual or inter-communal relationships and in the voluntary organi­zations are readily interpreted as a process of socialization in which the idea of community gains the upperhand. Since this view of social development is emancipated from the structural principles of the differentiated societal relationships, it results in an overestimation of the integrating role of the national and international political communities.

Human rights and Sphere-sove­reignty
Even the traditional doctrine of unassailable human rights is not able to check the absolutization of temporal communal rela­tionships, if these rights themselves are interpreted in a universalistic sense. As soon as the inter-individual and inter-communal relationships are viewed as intra-communal, and the structural idea of internal sphere-sovereignty of the different orbits of societal life is replaced by those of [devolved] autonomy or functional de­centralization, there is no fundamental and radical defence against the totalitarian systems.

This radical defence is only found in the Biblical view of human freedom implied in the basic motive of creation, fall in­to sin and redemption by Jesus Christ. For it converts the whole view of temporal society; it excludes in principle both universa­lism and individualism, and it enables us to see the structural patterns in the complicated interlacements between inter-indivi­dual and communal relationships. 

The internal sphere-sove­reignty of the different temporal structures of societal relation­ships is the expression of the transcendent destination of human­kind. This is the only basis of a harmonious relation of authority and freedom in social development. [NEXT]

(Extract from A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol III pp 601-603. ‘Structures of Individuality of Temporal Human Society’)

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Dooyeweerd: Absolutized individualism in modern society. Capitalism, Labour, and Class-struggle.

LS Lowry: 'Going to Work'

Absolutized individualism in modern society. 

Capitalism, Labour, and Class-struggle.

by Herman Dooyeweerd 

(Extract from A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol III pp 595, 596. ‘Structures of Individuality of Temporal Human Society’)

See preceding extract HERE

The growing influence of individualistic tendencies in society during the first half of the 19th century and the irreconcilable struggle of the Chris­tian idea of free inter-individual relationships against them.

The correlated differentiating and integrating tendencies in modern inter-individual societal relationships cannot fail to result in an individualistic process of disintegration in modern society if they are not counter-balanced by a due unfolding of the organized institutional communities and voluntary associations. 

This disintegration is what actually happened under the leading of the Humanistic science-ideal in the first phase of the Industrial Revolution. The rationalized and absolutized idea of free inter­-individual relations dominated the entire industrial sector of Western society and gave it an extremely individualistic and merciless capitalistic form. It is true that the process of differen­tiation and integration tends to increase the interweaving of individual interests. But in the free inter-individual societal re­lations the unrestrained striving after separate interests gave rise to fierce antagonism, which even lacked the remedy indi­cated by Hegel, viz. the formation of organized occupational classes.

The process of unlimited one-sided technical rationalization in economically qualified industrial life sharpened the con­trast between the interests of labour and capital to a real class-struggle. Labour was viewed apart from the human personality as market ware, and in the factories the labour-community was to a high degree affected by the individualist, exclusively con­tractual viewpoint. The unlimited competition on the market made the Hobbesian picture of the state of nature, as a condition of "homo homini lupus [est]” ["man is wolf to man."] into a terrible reality.

As the inter-individual societal structures are indissolubly interwoven with those of the institutional relationships, so family and kinship as well as the State were also affected by this morbid process of disease in “free society”. Societal groups for the promotion of private interests tried to seize the political power to make the institution of the State subservient to their social ends. The factor of private economical interest and the poisonous ideo­logy of the dogma of class struggle penetrated the political party system. Family- and kinship-life of the labourers were de­natured by the encroachment of the impersonally rationalized industrial labour-relations. In international political relations the “sacred egoism” of the separate States was elevated to the highest law.

Such individualistic tendencies in social development form an irreconcilable antithesis with the Christian idea of free inter-individual relations. The civitas terrena ["Earthly City" (Augustine)] revealed itself in this individualistic process of distintegration, and Christianity was doomed to decay whenever it thought of making a truce, or concluding a peace-treaty with this kingdom of darkness. (NEXT)

(Extract from A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol III pp 595, 596. ‘Structures of Individuality of Temporal Human Society’)

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Dooyeweerd: ‘Institutional communities’ (eg state, family, marriage) and ‘voluntary associations’ (eg sports, arts, work, politics)

Nicolas de Staël, Les Musiciens (1952)

‘Institutional communities’ (eg state, family, marriage) and ‘voluntary associations’ (eg sports, arts, work, politics)

by Herman Dooyeweerd

(Extracts from A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol III pp 574, 577, 596, 597, 603, 605. ‘Structures of Individuality of Temporal Human Society’)

See preceding extract HERE

[…] Secondly we have to introduce the systematic distinction be­tween institutional and non-institutional communities. As the terms “institute” or “institution” lack a univocal meaning in sociology (especially since Durkheim’s extremely broad inter­pretation of the words), it is again necessary to give a sharp definition of the sense in which I shall use them.

‘INSTITUTIONAL COMMUNITIES’
By “institutional communities” I understand both natural and organized communities which by their inner nature are destined to encompass their members to an intensive degree, continuously or at least for a consider­able part of their life, and such in a way independent of their will. According to the Christian view their differentiated basic types are founded in a special divine institution.

Family, State, Church
The natural family community (both in its broader and in its narrower sense) is one into which one is born. The same holds good with respect to the State; although one can get citizenship also in other ways, no citizen is able to change his nationality at will. The institutional community of the Church receives the children of Christian parents as its members by baptism and as such they continue to belong to this com­munity through a bond independent of their will, until they reach their years of discretion. This institutional trait is lacking in the sects which reject infant-baptism and are sometimes even without any institutional organization.

Marriage
Similarly the institutional conjugal community embraces hus­band and wife by a bond independent of their will. According to its inner structural principle it is a bond which is destined to unite them for life. When there are particular circumstances which make it necessary to dissolve it, it is the institutional character of the conjugal community which requires supra-in­dividual rules for divorce. In any case the inner nature of this institution is independent of the subjective conceptions of the matrimonial bond, which in course of time may strongly vary. A scientific examination of the development of such conceptions and their influence upon the formation of the positive norms regulating this institution presupposes the supra-arbitrary struc­tural principle of the latter. By eliminating this principle, scien­tific research lacks any point of reference which alone makes it possible to relate the different conceptions to the same institu­tion. It is in vain to seek for some common characteristics in the different subjective conceptions which science might combine to a so-called “em­pirical” concept of the marriage bond. The so-called “common traits” are as such quite arbitrary and can never determine the inner nature of the institution. The institutional character of the conjugal bond precludes any possibility of transforming the latter into a ‘voluntary asso­ciation’. […] It is true that in a modern individualized and differentiated society the agreement of the future marriage partners is an essential condition for constituting the institutional conjugal bond. But this agreement is in the nature of the case not a contract of free association in which the establishment of a specific purpose is constitutive. (p 574)

‘VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS’
The establishment of the purpose of a ‘voluntary association’ is a subjective act of the founders, in contradistinction to the structural principle of the organized community, which is a supra-arbitrary structural law. This explains how the subjective purpose may give the internal leading function of the organization a fundamentally illegal and criminal form, and that nevertheless the internal community remains bound to some typical moral, juridical, economical, and social normative principles which are indispensable to maintain the organizational bond between the members. (p 577)

Free societal life (sports, arts, commerce, job, politics etc)
For reasons of self-preservation it is necessary for modern society to develop counter-tendencies against the unbridled operation of individualism. This is what modern society is actually doing in the formation of voluntary associations or unions which direct the typical integrative tendencies in horizontal forms of organization. These organizational forms are to be observed in the most different sectors of free societal life, in science and fine arts, in sports and the different branches of instruction, in journalism, philantropy, etc. But the most impressive image of this organizational integrating process is to be found in the economically qualified societal relationships. Both employers and labourers in trade, traffic and industry have organized themselves according to the various branches of the latter, though in all these branches organization has not arrived at an equal level of development. In addition, trusts, large business concerns, etc. have been formed, which often display an international character. (pp 596, 597)

The ‘voluntary associations’ display an infinite structural variety. Some of them only touch people's temporal existence very superficially, such as "clubs"; others, eg, the horizontal occupational organizations such as trade unions etc, occupy a very important and extensive place in modern society and are at least partly animated by a strong spirit of community and solidarity. […] We shall have to devote a more elaborate investigation to the structural principle of a political party, which we have chosen as a second example of the application of our method of analysis to structural types of voluntary associations. (pp 603, 605) (NEXT)

(Extracts from A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol III pp 574, 577, 596, 597, 603, 605. ‘Structures of Individuality of Temporal Human Society’)

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Dooyeweerd: Difference between transcendental structural principles and subjective socio­political principles of society

Pieter de Hooch: Courtyard of a House in Delft (1658)

Difference between transcendental structural principles and subjective socio­political principles of society

by Herman Dooyeweerd

(Extract from A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol III p 173, ‘Structures of Individuality of Temporal Human Society’)

See preceding extract HERE

The typical structural principles to which the social forms give a positive shape should be sharply distinguished from the sub­jective socio-political principles. The latter are results of human reflection on the fundamentals of human society and the maxims of their concrete formation in accordance with a particular cultural-historical situation. In this sense one speaks of liberal, socia­listic, fascistic, communistic, Roman Catholic, Calvinistic, etc. principles for societal life. These subjective social principles are always to be tested against the normative structural principles founded in the temporal divine world-order, which determine the inner nature of the different societal relationships and the mutual re­lations between the latter.

It is undeniable that the process of formation of human society is influenced to a high degree by the subjective social principles which have acquired a socio-cultural control over the majority of the members of a cultural community. But it would be in­correct to overestimate their role. Subjective social principles may contradict the essential structural principles of human society founded in the divine world-order. The latter is the order of reality, which can never be set aside without destructive consequences for human societal life. 

This is also the reason why veritable positive structural norms are constitutive for the factual [de facto] societal relationships. They are not merely “ideal” stand­ards for valuating the latter, but really give a positive form to their inner nature. 

It is true that this formation can occur in a better or worse way in proportion to its being guided by better or worse subjective social principles. But apart from the typical structural principles which determine the inner nature of the different societal relationships, there can be no question of real positive societal norms. (NEXT EXTRACT)

(Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol III p 173, Structures of Individuality of Temporal Human Society)

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Dooyeweerd: The principle of structural sovereignty of every type of societal relationship

Hendrick Avercamp 'Winterlandschap met ijsvermaak' (c. 1608)

The principle of structural sovereignty of every type of societal relationship

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

But when we try to apply this Idea ["societal structures of individu­ality find their radical unity and meaning-totality beyond cosmic time"] to the factual [de facto, in practice] societal relationships realized in the different phases of the evolution of human social life, there seems to arise a serious difficulty.

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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