tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846671056195917287.post439571281549775382..comments2024-03-12T00:51:27.766-04:00Comments on Ground Motive: Spectres of Nature-Grace: On Dooyeweerd’s “Religious Truth”admin1http://www.blogger.com/profile/16479743334126277132noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846671056195917287.post-57758007888878238322016-02-20T14:49:27.140-05:002016-02-20T14:49:27.140-05:00Thanks for the comments, Rudi. I'll do my best...Thanks for the comments, Rudi. I'll do my best to respond concisely (your comments in >><<). <br /><br />>>Dooyeweerd is talking about truth, not experience per se, and he is focusing on the religious fullness of truth.<<<br /><br />I agree that D is not talking about experience <i>per se</i>, but he does say that "[T]rue knowledge of God and of ourselves” concerns “the horizon of human experience" (NC 2: 562-63). To the extent that we're talking about "religious truth," then, we are also talking about experience, since the former serves as horizon for the latter. <br /><br />>>Dooyeweerd, however, defends the “scientific character of philosophy” while seeking to combat every closed system<<<br /><br />This seems right (thanks for the quotations), but I think Zuidervaart's point is not that D is <i>unaware</i> of the problem of doing away with epistemology, but rather that D's conception of religious truth makes it difficult to see how he can <i>succeed</i> in preserving the scientific character of philosophy. He (and I following him) has provided interpretations and arguments as to why this might be the case. <br /><br />>>I also wonder how fair it is to say that "Dooyeweerd limits the light of “absolute truth” to particular confessional communities".<<<br /><br />I think you're right to call me out on this. I could have been more careful in my rendering of what D actually means. Yet it seems to me that the more fundamental point has not been touched on: namely, that D construes religious responses as antithetical, and thus risks what Peter Geach once cleverly called "logical Manicheanism"--that is, "setting up of the<br />True and the False as two objects of reference implicitly recognized in all thinking." This is the risk of dualism I worry about. <br /><br />Thanks again for the interaction. <br /><br /><br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06143032361402350432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846671056195917287.post-84489177904830454522016-02-20T07:10:32.848-05:002016-02-20T07:10:32.848-05:00I also wonder how fair it is to say that "Doo...I also wonder how fair it is to say that "Dooyeweerd limits the light of “absolute truth” to particular confessional communities". Doesn't Dooyeweerd object strongly to this in his introduction to Roots of Western Culture? "The antithesis is ... not a dividing line between Christian and nonchristian groups." It "cuts right through the Christian life itself", "the Christian principle is not the permanent possession of a select few who can manipulate it as if it were a collection of magical formulas! On the contrary. It is a dynamic, spiritual force that cannot be halted. Those who enclose it within the fixed boundaries of tradition are irrevocably left behind" etc.<br />RudiAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846671056195917287.post-43174259410380831112016-02-20T07:01:19.436-05:002016-02-20T07:01:19.436-05:00I must admit that I’m rather confused about Zuider...I must admit that I’m rather confused about Zuidervaart’s claim that Dooyeweerd’s view leads to “the absurd consequence … that only Christians, or perhaps even only authentic Christians, would be subjectively capable of experience. In other words, religion would trump experience rather than direct and sustain it.” Dooyeweerd is talking about truth, not experience per se, and he is focusing on the religious fullness of truth. He was very willing to acknowledge that philosophers from diverse religious traditions have recognised and uncovered important states of affairs and offered profound and worthwhile philosophical reflections on them. He also understood well, and rejected the charge that a religious philosophy would give itself a privileged position:<br />The second thought that easily comes to mind is that the Calvinists, who accept divine revelation as the absolute Truth will claim that same monopoly on truth for their philosophical views. A new debasement of philosophy would seem to be the inevitable result. For philosophy is the love of wisdom, a tireless searching and struggling for truth. But if one imagines that he already possesses the Truth, he or she no longer needs to search for it. And nothing would be easier than for such a person to claim a privileged position in philosophical discussions with other schools of thought and to brand one’s adversaries with the stigma of being “un-christian.”” (Reformation and scholasticism in philosophy II.19) <br />Dooyeweerd, however, defends the “scientific character of philosophy” while seeking to combat every closed system (RS II.26). Dogmatism occurs when philosophy “puts all its confidence in philosophical thought and pretends that its religious presuppositions are theoretical axioms” (RS II.26). While explaining that his philosophy of the Law-Idea seeks to unmask the dogmatism of humanistic philosophy and opposes in principle scholasticism, Dooyeweerd states that “Nevertheless, it recognizes the scientific value of classic scholasticism, found in its often profound philosophical insights. In the same manner it also wishes to do full justice to ancient Greek and modern humanistic philosophy. It steadfastly opposes, however, every attempt at synthesis between the Christian ground-motive and the ground-motive of unscriptural philosophy.<br />The philosophy of the Law-Idea also maintains the historical continuity of philosophical thought, but with the proviso that there is radical discontinuity in the religious ground-motives and in the basic philosophical ideas dominated by them. It nourishes itself upon the whole tradition of philosophical thought and thus fully recognizes its own historical conditioning; but in its basic conception it nevertheless sets itself against that philosophical tradition.” (RS II 26-27)<br />RudiAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846671056195917287.post-65244521903378984882016-02-17T19:19:41.083-05:002016-02-17T19:19:41.083-05:00Well, blog pieces are supposed to be provocative, ...Well, blog pieces are supposed to be provocative, and your suggestion is just the right sort of provocation, the kind of legitimate questioning of the tradition that Lambert identities with retrieval. My guess is that Dooyeweerd has resources that could be tapped in response to your provocation, and if not Dooyeweerd then Vollenhoven or one of the many other in the Reformational cloudlet of witnesses. I will do my best to channel Dooyeweerd but it would be better to get someone like Jonathan Chaplin whose deep familiarity with the spirit and letter is such that his response would be most telling. So Jonathan if you are lurking out there, I have hopefully given you a hole you could drive a lorry through (does that work in UK English? or is it a dialect-ically mixed metaphor?).bob sweetmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02020964276816359915noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846671056195917287.post-86594153282631596472016-02-17T14:35:07.645-05:002016-02-17T14:35:07.645-05:00Thanks for the comment, Bob. I think your Vollenho...Thanks for the comment, Bob. I think your Vollenhovian point re: "duality" and "dualism" is a clearer and better version of what I was trying to say. Indeed, it is the latter that seems to me to be operative as the conceptual grammar of this apostasy/belief relation. <br /><br />Yet I hope it comes across that this dualism matter is for me little more than an educated <i>impression</i> as I read Dooyeweerd. I could easily be shown to be wrong about such a characterization. But I should say that Zuidervaart's essay reinforced precisely that nagging impression; hence, this (perhaps overly provocative) call for clarification. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06143032361402350432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846671056195917287.post-51524967847608605072016-02-16T17:44:03.642-05:002016-02-16T17:44:03.642-05:00Wonderfully clear exposition, Joshua. Many thanks...Wonderfully clear exposition, Joshua. Many thanks. When I got to your last paragraph, however, I wondered if I had understood your point. Is your point that the good/evil distinction is at bottom the basis for spiritual dualism in Christian thought? In making this point I take you to hold to an implicit distinction between what Vollenhoven often speaks of as a dualism on the one hand and a duality on the other. He thinks there are dualities to be encountered in the world and thought about as such. He cites biological sex as an example. A dualism on the other hand is a marking of a distinction between "this" and "that" that hypostasizes the relation between some circumscribable identity, some "A" on the one hand and its negation--all that is "not-A"--on the other. A negation isn't anything, properly speaking. To treat it as if it were something, that is, to hypostasize a negation, is to introduce a dualism into one's thought. To make that dualism the root of one's thinking about the world is to think about the world dualistically, which is to think in conformity with a spirit that is not the Spirit of Truth we could say. If all of this is correct, then to think in terms of the good/evil distinction, all thought is either good (rightly directed) or evil (apostately directed) is to think dualistically for evil is not something in contrast to good, but rather its negation or perversion, a not-A to the good's A. Is it something like this that you are claiming to be operative in Dooyeweerd's thought, Joshua, or have I gone into the gigglyweeds, importing Vollenhovian notions where they just do not belong?bob sweetmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02020964276816359915noreply@blogger.com