24 Facts About Herman Dooyeweerd

Herman Dooyeweerd, spelled Herman Dooijeweerd, was a professor of law and jurisprudence at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam from 1926 to 1965.

Herman Dooyeweerd was a philosopher and principal founder of Reformational philosophy with Dirk Vollenhoven, a significant development within the Neo-Calvinist school of thought.

Herman Dooyeweerd is most famous for his suite of fifteen aspects, which are distinct ways in which reality exists, has meaning, is experienced, and occurs.

Danie Strauss, the editor of Herman Dooyeweerd's Collected Works, has provided a systematic look at Herman Dooyeweerd's philosophy here.

Herman Dooyeweerd made both immanent and transcendental critiques of Western philosophy, following the traditions of Continental philosophy.

Herman Dooyeweerd identified four major ground-motives of Western thought, three of them dualistic in nature:.

However, Herman Dooyeweerd remained unsatisfied "with an argument that shows that in fact philosophy always has been influenced by religious convictions".

Herman Dooyeweerd sought to understand the conditions that make a theoretical attitude possible, and argued that all theoretical thought takes place with reference to an "Origin of Meaning", which is a ground-motive to which we adhere extra-rationally.

From this, Herman Dooyeweerd argued that all "good" philosophy addresses three fundamental parts to an idea:.

Herman Dooyeweerd, accordingly, made very explicit his own grounding in Creation-Fall-Redemption, with a Neo-Calvinist flavour and a debt to Abraham Kuyper.

In making the possibility of theoretical thought a philosophical problem to address, Herman Dooyeweerd went deeper and further than Kant, Husserl and Heidegger and others.

Herman Dooyeweerd claimed that since the discovery of these is addressed by our theoretical functioning, which is fallible, no suite of aspects, including his own, can "lay claim to material completion".

Herman Dooyeweerd attempted to provide a philosophy which accounted for not only the differences in non-human reality, but, between one thinker and another.

Herman Dooyeweerd argued that this showed the need for a consistent and radically Christian philosophy which he sought to provide.

Herman Dooyeweerd self-consciously allowed his Christian perspective to guide his understanding, but in a philosophical rather than a theological mode of thought.

Herman Dooyeweerd believed that this permitted the philosopher to gain insight into the principle by which diversity of meaning is held together as a unity, as he directs his thought toward the origin of things, which is God, and God's purpose for making things, which is found in Christ.

In contrast to a dualistic type of religious ground motive, Herman Dooyeweerd suggested that the Christian's basic orientation to the world ought to be derived not from human speculation, but from God's revealed purposes: Creation, the Fall into sin, and Redemption in Christ.

Herman Dooyeweerd wrote that, in the case of thinkers who presume that human thought is autonomous, who operate by the dictum that it does not matter whether God exists or not, such a thinker's basic commitment to autonomous thought forces him to pick out some aspect of the creation as the origin of all meaning.

Herman Dooyeweerd developed an anti-reductionist ontology of "modal aspects", concerning diverse kinds of meaning which are disclosed in the analysis of every existent thing.

Herman Dooyeweerd considered such modes to be irreducible to each other and yet indissolubly linked.

The majority of Herman Dooyeweerd's published articles and multi-volume works originally appeared only in Dutch.

Translation of Herman Dooyeweerd's writing has continued since 1994 under the oversight of the Herman Dooyeweerd Centre.

Herman Dooyeweerd's influence has continued through the Association for Reformational Philosophy and its journal Philosophia Reformata which he and Vollenhoven founded in 1932.

Herman Dooyeweerd became member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1948.