Herman Dooyeweerd

Herman Dooyeweerd (7 October 1894, Amsterdam – 12 February 1977, Amsterdam) was a Dutch juridical scholar by training, who by vocation was a philosopher and a co-founder of the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea with Dirk Vollenhoven. Dooyeweerd made several contributions to philosophy and other theoretical thought, including concerning: the nature of diversity and coherence in everyday experience, the transcendental conditions for theoretical thought, the relationship between religion and philosophy, and a different view of meaning, being, time and self. Dooyeweerd is most famous for his suite of fifteen aspects (or 'law-spheres'), which are distinct ways in which reality can be meaningful and good, and can exist and occur. This suite of aspects is finding application in practical analysis, research and teaching in such diverse fields as built environment, sustainability, agriculture, business, information systems and development. Danie Strauss, the editor of Dooyeweerd's Collected Works, has provided a systematic look at Dooyeweerd's philosophy here.

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

In his immanent critique, he sought to understand each philosophic thinker's work or each tradition from the inside, and uncover, in its own terms, its basic presuppositions, to reveal deep problems. By such immanent critique of philosophic thinkers from the pre-Socratic Greeks onwards through to the middle of the twentieth century (including mediaeval period, into the modern periods), Dooyeweerd claimed to have demonstrated that theoretical thinking has always been based on presuppositions of a religious nature, which he called ground motives. A ground motive is a spiritual driving force that impels each thinker to interpret reality under its influence. Dooyeweerd identified four major ground-motives of Western thought, three of them dualistic in nature:

This means that theoretical thought never has been neutral or autonomous of the thinker.

However, Dooyeweerd remained unsatisfied "with an argument that shows that in fact philosophy always has been influenced by religious convictions". Rather, "He wants to show that it cannot be otherwise, because it is part of the nature of philosophy or theoretical thought."

This led Dooyeweerd to undertake a transcendental critique of theoretical thought, of the kind Immanuel Kant pioneered. Whereas Kant and Husserl sought the conditions that make theoretical thinking possible, they still presupposed that a theoretical attitude is possible. 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. The means that theoretical thought never can be neutral or autonomous of the thinker.

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