Dooyeweerd and Baader: A Response to D.F.M. Strauss

by J. Glenn Friesen

© 2005

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I. Introduction

This is a response to Daniël F. M. Strauss’s article, “Intellectual influences upon the reformational philosophy of Dooyeweerd.” [1] Strauss refers to my 2003 article, “The Mystical Dooyeweerd: The relation of his thought to Franz von Baader.” [2]

A certain negative reaction was to be expected following my comparison of the neo-Calvinist philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977) with a Roman Catholic Christian theosophist like Baader (1765-1841) [3]. Baader is also difficult to read, and it will take time for reformational philosophers both to understand what he has written and to relate this to Dooyeweerd. Apart from my own translations [4], almost none of Baader’s work has been translated into English. And it is evident that Strauss has relied a great deal on survey texts like Copleston instead of dealing with the references and scholarly sources to which I referred.

What has surprised me most about the reaction to my article is not Strauss’s misinterpretations and mistranslations of Baader, but rather his misinterpretations of Dooyeweerd. Obviously, we need to understand Dooyeweerd correctly if we want to compare him with any philosopher. In my view, Strauss, like many other reformational philosophers, has interpreted Dooyeweerd through the lens of Vollenhoven’s totally contradictory philosophy [5]. And as discussed below, Strauss’s own philosophy was strongly criticized by Dooyeweerd. But if we read Dooyeweerd’s own writings, and interpret him in accordance with his own expressed intentions, the similarities to Baader become evident. So in this Response, although I need to reply to some of Strauss’s rather sharp criticisms, my primary goal is to encourage the re-reading of Dooyeweerd. A comparison with Baader places Dooyeweerd within an existing philosophical tradition, and it helps us to make sense of many ideas that have been rejected or misunderstood in Dooyeweerd’s philosophy.

II. Comparative philosophy

In order to compare two philosophers, there need be no historical connection between them. We can compare a set of ideas of one philosopher with a similar set from another philosopher from another time-stream. Indeed, this is what the neo-Calvinist philosopher D.H.Th. Vollenhoven does in his problem-historical method. It is certainly of interest that Vollenhoven classifies both Baader and Dooyeweerd under his category of “semi-mysticism.” [6]

But Dooyeweerd also had a historical connection with Baader’s ideas. For some reason, Strauss makes no mention of my subsequent article, also from 2003, “The Mystical Dooyeweerd Once Again: Kuyper’s Use of Franz von Baader.” [7] In that article, I showed that Abraham Kuyper had extensive knowledge of Baader’s works, and that he adopted some of his ideas. Kuyper is therefore one of the ways by which Baader’s philosophy was transmitted to Dooyeweerd. Kuyper showed great admiration for Baader’s philosophy. He says:

Kuyper expressly acknowledges Baader’s opposition to the dogma of the autonomy of thought. Kuyper appreciated Baader’s rejection of pietistic spirituality, and his emphasis on the necessity of “embodiment.” He appreciated Baader’s opposition to dualism, and his desire to reform the special sciences. He used Baader’s idea of the ‘Silberblick’ for aesthetics. Baader even anticipated the idea of a university free from state or church control.

In my recent article “Dooyeweerd, Spann and the Philosophy of Totality” [9], I have shown that Baader’s philosophy was also transmitted to Dooyeweerd through Othmar Spann’s writings and edited works, and through other philosophers of Totality [Ganzheitsphilosophie]. There was a renaissance of interest in Baader in the 1920’s and early 30’s, just at the time when Dooyeweerd was formulating his philosophy. We know that Dooyeweerd carefully read Spann and other philosophers of Totality, and that Dooyeweerd carefully cross-referenced a significant reference to Baader. Dooyeweerd owned some of the volumes in the Herdflamme series edited by Spann, and he had access to other volumes, including one devoted entirely to Baader. That volume summarized Baader’s ideas in a systematic way, and also included one of Baader’s essays on time, “Elementary Concepts Concerning Time,” in which Baader distinguishes between God’s eternity, man’s supratemporality, and temporal reality [10].

Improper comparisons to other philosophers

Strauss’s methodology in comparing Baader and Dooyeweerd is seriously flawed. Why does Strauss devote so much effort to refuting other philosophers like Schelling, Hegel, Bradley and Hartmann? My article specifically notes Baader’s disagreements with Schelling and Hegel, and makes no mention of Bradley or Hartmann. To disagree with philosopher “x” is not relevant to a discussion of philosopher “y”, particularly when that philosopher expressly disagrees with philosopher “x.”

In “Elementarbegriffe,” Baader specifically rejects Hegel’s idea that there was a fall of nature from the Idea that took place in God [11]. But in a clearly erroneous reading of Baader, Strauss incorrectly attributes Hegel’s view to Baader. Strauss interprets Baader in a way directly opposite to what Baader really says. [12]. This serious misinterpretation also indicates that Strauss does not understand Peter Koslowski’s work on Baader, which Strauss also cites. Koslowski shows that Baader’s Christian theosophy differs from the Gnosticism of Schelling and Hegel on this very point [13].

Ideas not referred to in my comparison

Nor does it make sense that Strauss devotes so much of his argument to ideas of Baader that I did not use in my comparison with Dooyeweerd. The fact that Strauss disagrees with idea “x” of Baader is not at all determinative of whether idea “y” influenced Dooyeweerd. To be influenced by another philosopher is not a matter of all or nothing. The influence may be in significant clusters of related ideas. I have not claimed that Dooyeweerd shared all of Baader’s ideas. For example, I agree that Dooyeweerd did not share the idea of a “world soul.” In my translations of some of Baader’s works, I have stated in the footnotes that Dooyeweerd did not share some of Baader’s ideas, like the idea that the earth is supratemporal.

Strauss gives considerable attention to Baader’s idea of the state. Again, this was not one of the ideas that I used in comparing the two philosophers, nor is it one of Dooyeweerd’s own key ideas [14]. Dooyeweerd was professor of jurisprudence, and he developed ideas of the state and of legal concepts from many sources. But the principle of sphere sovereignty is already evident in Baader. Strauss admits this:

Strauss is wrong in identifying aspects and functions (See “Dialectic”). But Strauss is right that Baader’s ideas needed further development. In “Mystical Dooyeweerd,” I said that Dooyeweerd “systematized many of Baader’s ideas,” that “he has related these ideas to subsequent philosophers such as Husserl and Heidegger,” and that “Dooyeweerd has also more fully investigated the analogical relations in the modal aspects, and in the individuality structures.”

I have since shown that this very idea of individuality structures depends on the idea of individuation from out of a supratemporal Totality [15]. Individuality structures must be understood in terms of the philosophy of Totality and the rejection of the idea of substance that developed at the time of the renaissance of interest in Baader in the 1920’s.

Strauss refers to enkapsis as a new idea that Dooyeweerd developed. I did not refer to enkapsis as one of the similarities with Baader. Strauss tries to show that enkapsis could not possibly relate to Baader’s philosophy. But his argument depends on a mistranslation of the word ‘Verselbstständigung’(Strauss, 160). The word ‘Verselbstständigung’means “making oneself independent,” and is used in the sense of autonomy, just like Baader’s terms ‘Selbstsetzung’ and ‘Selbstbegründung.’ The index to Werke specifically notes that Verselbstständigung and Selbstbegründung are synonomous (Werke 14, 448). ). The reference from Baader in Strauss’s Footnote 23 also shows that the terms are synonomous. When we try to be autonomous in such Selbstbegründung, such a striving leads to an Entgründung–it leads to the loss of our true Ground (Werke 7,79). In the passage cited by Strauss, Baader says that when we try to be autonomous, certain elements of our experience become opposed to each other. This is because when we seek an immanent relation, we end up in an antinomy, a relation of opposites. But Baader immediately denies that this is what we should do. Thus Strauss again interprets Baader in a sense that is opposite to Baader’s real meaning! Baader says that we must not close ourselves off from God, who is higher. We must not seek this kind of self-grounding or autonomy, which leads to antinomy. Only by being bound to Him [in subjection] can I retain my independence to what is below me [in the periphery]. In other words, by being subjected to God we give up our own autonomy, but at the same time we avoid being swallowed up in the temporal. Dooyeweerd, too says that our true individuality, or the fullness of individuality, is found in the supratemporal, and temporal individuality is a refraction of that fullness. Therefore, there is only a relative individuality within time (NC III, 65).

Strauss has therefore misinterpreted these passages from Baader. And what Baader says–that we must avoid autonomy or Verselbstständigung–does not in any way prevent the later development of the idea of enkapsis. In fact Dooyeweerd’s idea of enkapsis did develop from the philosophical tradition represented by Baader. Since writing “Mystical Dooyeweerd,” I have discovered Dooyeweerd’s evident indebtedness for the idea of enkapsis to the German philosopher Max Wundt (1879-1963). Wundt refers to the sources that Dooyeweerd was later to use, Rudolf Heidenhain (1834-1897) and Theodor Haering (1884-1964). Wundt’s criticism of Heidenhain and Haering is similar to Dooyeweerd’s later criticism (See “Enkapsis”). Wundt stood in the tradition of the philosophy of Totality, including Eckhart, Boehme and Baader. Dooyeweerd does not acknowledge Wundt’s influence any more than he does Baader’s influence, and in that article I have given some reasons for this lack of acknowledgement.

The other quotation cited by Strauss (Strauss, 160) refers to the union of two beings in a higher Totality, which can only be done by sub-jection, that is, by giving up autonomy. This again has nothing to do with the issue of enkapsis. It has to do with the action of a central Being dwelling within other beings. In my article “Totality,” I compare a similar quoation to Dooyeweerd’s view that love of neighbour is “nothing but the love of God in His image, expressed in ourselves as well as in our fellow-men (NC II, 155).

Dooyeweerd also does not share Baader’s speculative philosophy, at least insofar as Baader discusses the internal dynamics of the Trinity. Yet even here there are some similarities. Baader says that use of the word ‘speculative’ is related to ‘specula’ or ‘mirror.’ Thus, his speculation is in relation to our having been created in the image of God. And Dooyeweerd certainly has no hesitation in speaking of the relation of God to His image, and in making comparisons to our experience. Man’s heart is the “created image” of the integral Origin of all things” (NC I, 174). Dooyeweerd compares the way that God expresses Himself in man as His image, to the way that man’s selfhood expresses itself within the modal aspects of cosmic time, as a totality in the coherence of all its modal functions [16]. Referring is the reciprocal of expressing, for that which is expressed then has “meaning” referring back to the one who has done the expressing. Dooyeweerd also objects to a static idea of God’s eternity (NC I, 106, fn1). And Dooyeweerd also refers to our sonship with God (NC I, 61). For those who have lamented the lack of a more detailed Trinitarian outlook in Dooyeweerd’s philosophy, these passages, together with Baader’s ideas, can be most illuminating [17]. For Dooyeweerd, to speak of our present experience of the supratemporal self is not at all speculative. It is this experience, of which we become aware in our religious self-reflection, that is the basis for our relation to our functions within cosmic time, including our theoretical thought [18].

Strauss discusses what he claims is Baader’s logos doctrine. The logos doctrine was also not an idea that I used in my comparison. Nor does it seem to me that Baader shares Philo’s idea of the logos; Baader’s idea of the logos is much more dynamic. It involves imagination and realization, and self-realization; it is a self-knowledge where subject and object are identical (See Koslowski, 336). And it is a knowing that is based on God’s love. Baader opposed Descartes’ idea of autonomy Cogito ergo sum. In place of it, Baader says, Cogitor, ergo cogito et sum, (I think and am because I am thought.) (Werke 16, 31; similar statement at 12, 235). A more complete version is

In his beautiful book Does Jesus Know Us? Do we Know Him?, Hans Urs von Balthasar emphasizes that Baader’s idea here is on God’s knowing us in love [20]. He translates a similar statement of Baader as “I am, because God knows me.” Von Balthasar refers to the following Biblical statements in support: “If one loves God, one is known by him (1 Cor. 8:3). “Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood” (1 Cor. 13:12) and “Now you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God” (Gal. 4:9). This knowledge of God shines in our heart as an act of creation of God who let light shine out of darkness (2 Cor. 4:6).

In any event, the mere mention of logos in Baader is not sufficient to show that Baader could not have influenced Dooyeweerd. In fact, Dooyeweerd himself speaks of the logos, at least in his early writings. In his 1923 article “Advies over Roomsch-katholieke en Anti-revolutionaire Staatkunde”[21], Dooyeweerd devotes 10 pages to ‘Kosmos en Logos.’ Cosmos is the whole ordered world of creation; logos is the realm of meaning. The logos is cosmic in character and precedes all knowledge. We can only speak about cosmos when we have looked at the area of logos. He says that logos is fitted into the cosmic order in an essential relation [wezensverband] that we do not and cannot know because our consciousness is itself enclosed [ingemuurd] in the logos and can never look out above the logos to its cosmic coherence. We know only the essential relation within logos. Within the logos are the giving of meaning (noesis), objects having meaning (noema), and the meaning itself (noumenon), as the fixed law-like signification that precedes all individual giving of meaning [als de wettelijk vaststaande beduidenis voorafgaande aan iedere individuele zingeving]. Dooyeweerd goes on to say that the giving of meaning is the condition of all knowledge; it is nothing other than consciousness and intuition of meaning [bewustwording, schouwing van de zin].

‘Logos’ of course means Word, and Dooyeweerd emphasizes the centrality of the Word of God. “In the Word-revelation God addresses the human race in its religious root, and man has only to listen faithfully” (NC II, 307).

Christ is the incarnate Word, and our thought must “find itself in the grip of the Word of God.” The Word must become our thought’s “central basic motive, its central impelling force” (Twilight, 191). And Dooyeweerd says that there is always a strict correlation between the temporal form of the Word of God and its eternal content ["tijdelijke gestalte en eeuwige inhoud van het Woord Gods”] [23].

These quotations seem to indicate a connection between Baader’s understanding of the logos and Dooyeweerd’s references to logos and Word. In any event, the mere mention of logos in Baader is not sufficient to show that Baader could not have influenced Dooyeweerd. The issue at least deserves further study [24].

Comparative philosophy examines early ideas, too

Another curious part of Strauss’s methodology is his apparent lack of interest in investigating the historical sources of Dooyeweerd’s early ideas if he later changed his views. For example, Strauss admits that Dooyeweerd used the idea of an organic coherence until the mid-1930’s (Strauss, 165). He says that by the late 1920’s Dooyeweerd had started to replace his ideas of “organic” with those of meaning, in his so-called “linguistic turn.” The evidence does not seem to support such a linguistic turn. As is shown by the above reference to logos, Dooyeweerd spoke of meaning as early as 1923 [25], and he continued to use the idea of an organic wholeness in the WdW, in the New Critique [26] and even in correspondence as late as 1972 [27]. And Dooyeweerd’s idea of the New Root, the religious seed, and even the idea of temporal unfolding are all ideas relating to organicism [28].

But even if Dooyeweerd did change his views, why would we not be interested in investigating the source of his initial viewpoint? Surely that remains an important task in comparing philosophers and in the history of philosophy generally. The 1930’s were when Dooyeweerd published De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee, and the time prior to the publication of that work is a critically important period of time to investigate. The references are just too important for us not to investigate their source. Here are some of them:

In his 1926 Inaugural Address, Dooyeweerd refers to the "organic coherence among all of God's ordinances" [29]. In 1928, Dooyeweerd refers to "the organic relation of the law-spheres" [30]. In 1930 Dooyeweerd says:

In 1931, he says,

In 1935, in the WdW itself, he refers to “temporal organism of the law-spheres [“tijdelijk organisme der wetskringen”] (WdW I, 70).

We can see that Dooyeweerd sometimes uses the term ‘organic unity’ as synonomous with ‘temporal coherence of meaning.’ He does not replace one term with the other, but sometimes uses them in the same sentence. Should that not prompt us to interpret the temporal coherence of meaning in the same organic way? What is important in both the idea of organicism and in the idea of the temporal coherence of meaning is that we must find the center of temporal reality in the supratemporal.

In his Response to the Curators of the Vrije Universiteit, dated October 12, 1937, Dooyeweerd refers with approval to Kuyper's "powerful conception of the church as an organism."

In his 1938 response to the Curators, Dooyeweerd used the word ‘organ’ in relation to the self as the center of our existence:

In his 1939 article "Kuyper's Wetenschapsleer," (at p. 211), Dooyeweerd cites Kuyper in support of the idea of the supratemporal heart. He refers to Kuyper’s 1898 Stone Lectures, where Kuyper refers to “that point in our consciousness in which our life is still undivided and lies comprehended in its unity, not in the spreading vines but in the root from which the vines spring.” The reference to the supratemporal selfhoood as the root, in distinction from the spreading vines of our (temporal) life is itself an organic idea.

Because he denies the supratemporal selfhood, Strauss seems unable to understand this meaning of organicism, and how it relates to Dooyeweerd’s idea of meaning as referring beyond time. Without the idea of a supratemporal centrality of meaning, the head or root of the organism, all we have is an immanence philosophy, which seeks to find totality within time.

Strauss fails to see the key similarity of supratemporal religious root

Although Strauss mentions many ideas that I did not use as a comparison, he neglects many of the important similarities that I did mention. His most important omission is with respect to this idea of the supratemporal religious root, which Dooyeweerd considered to be the “key of knowledge.”(Twilight, 124-125, 145). Without this idea of the supratemporal religious root, the other comparisons I have made cannot be understood. The religious root is also the basis of the doctrine of sphere sovereignty. As I discuss below, it is even the basis of the idea of modal aspects. And the supratemporal religious root is also the basis of Dooyeweerd’s understanding of theory, and of his transcendental critique.

But Strauss does not examine similarities between Baader and Dooyeweerd in the way that they relate our theoretical thought to our supratemporal selfhood. Again, this seems to be due to Strauss’s disagreement with what Dooyeweerd says. Strauss says (p. 152) that he has given an “immanent criticism on Dooyeweerd’s epistemology and theory of the Gegenstand-relation […] questioning the entire argument of Dooyeweerd’s transcendental critique.” The article in which Strauss gave this criticism [34] was published nine years after Dooyeweerd’s death, so of course Dooyeweerd could not respond. But in that article, Strauss repeats ideas from his thesis Begrip en Idee, and it is clear that Dooyeweerd certainly did not regard these ideas as merely immanent criticism. Marcel Verburg reports that Dooyeweerd’s copies of Strauss’s thesis contain many marginal notations expressing his vigorous disagreement with Strauss [35]. And it was his disagreement with Strauss that led Dooyeweerd to write his last article, “De Kentheoretische Gegenstandsrelatie en de Logische Subject-Objectrelatie” [36]. In this article, Dooyeweerd strongly criticizes Strauss’s ideas, saying that they represent a “logicism” and that they lead to “insoluble antinomies.” And Dooyeweerd says that Strauss’s ideas of the nature of theory reflect “the most current prejudices of modern epistemology” (Gegenstandsrelatie 97, 100). Insoluble antinomies are a sign of a religious dialectic, and Dooyeweerd normally uses such strong criticism against those who adhere to a different Ground-Motive. Thus, this is very strong criticism of Strauss.

Strauss has therefore not distinguished his own critique of Dooyeweerd from what Dooyeweerd himself says about the relation of our theoretical thought to our supratemporal selfhood. Even if Strauss has criticized Dooyeweerd’s ideas, that is not a sufficient reason to avoid investigating the sources of these ideas! Strauss is confusing systematic philosophy with the task of the history of philosophy in showing sources and relationships. Baader helps us to re-read Dooyeweerd and to understand the ideas that Strauss has rejected, including the relation of theory to our supratemporal selfhood, and his whole argument of the transcendental critique.

III. Some other misinterpretations of Baader

Law and Subject

Our being subjected to God’s law is a key idea for both Baader and Dooyeweerd. Strauss does not adequately deal with the references I provided (Strauss, 166). Like Dooyeweerd, Baader uses the word ‘subject’ and ‘sujet’ to refer to our subjected-ness to law. It is the flip side of Baader’s opposition to the dogma of autonomy of thought. Our being ‘Gesetzt’ means both being placed in the cosmos and being placed under law, since the cosmos is governed by law. Baader clearly makes a connection between law [Gesetz] and being placed [Gesetztsein]:

We are “placed” both in the supratemporal and the temporal. Just as Baader makes a play on the words ‘Gesetz’ and ‘Gesetzt’, so Dooyeweerd distinguishes between the autonomous setting [‘stellen’] of the law, and our receiving of this order as having been set [‘gesteld’] by God:

Dooyeweerd criticizes the view of autonomy that believes that thought can set its own boundaries [door het denken gesteld]. He contrasts this autonomy with the fact that our selfhood transcends temporal coherence, but that it has nevertheless been placed [gevoegd] into temporal reality along with other creatures (WdW I, 36). The New Critique translates this as our being “fitted” into temporal reality (NC I, 24). Man’s selfhood is supratemporal, but man was also placed or fitted within the temporal cosmos as regards his mantle of functions.

Baader says that man did not remain where he was placed, under the law, but sought autonomy. In the resulting fall, man became dislocated, ‘versetzt.’ Or, as Dooyeweerd says, man fell away into the temporal horizon (NC, II, 564). There was a “falling away from our true selfhood,” (“af-val van de ware menschelijke zelfheid,” WdW I, vi).

Strauss objects that being subjected to law does not fit with Baader’s idea of being Gesetzfrei (Strauss, 159). But Strauss mistranslates this word. It does not mean “free from law.” Baader uses the word ‘Gesetzlos’ for that idea. To be Gesetzfrei is to be free within the law, when we are properly subjected to it.

When we are properly subjected to law, we no longer feel law as a burden and limitation, a restraining [Hemmung]. Is that any different from what Paul says? The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster (Gal. 3:23). “Wherefore thou are not more a servant but a son” (Gal. 4:7). James refers to “the perfect law of liberty” (James 1:25). To be free within the law does not mean that we are without law or free from law. To attempt to be free from law is to seek autonomy, Gesetzlosheid or anomie.

Dooyeweerd also speaks of the restraining of the law. In this “earthly” cosmos the unhampered influence of sin does not exist (NC II, 33). The law holds back by God’s common grace what would otherwise be the total demonization of our world. Without the law, man would sink into nothingness, because law determines being-human [38]. But the dynamis of the Holy Spirit brings man into the relationship of sonship to the Divine Father (NC I, 61).

Nature/Grace

Strauss incorrectly classifies Baader as a philosopher within the nature/grace tradition (Strauss, 156). ). He seems to assume that because Baader was a Catholic, he must fall within that tradition. But Baader in fact opposed a nature/grace dualism, and several modern Catholic theologians like Hans Urs von Balthasar and Henri de Lubac refer to Baader with respect to their own opposition to such a dualism. Baader could therefore be a bridge to ecumenical dialogue between reformational and Catholic philosophers and theologians.

Although Baader sometimes speaks of the moral, or the spiritual [Geistlich] in distinction from the natural, this is no more indicative of a nature/grace split than Dooyeweerd’s own of the same terminology in dividing our normative or spiritual [geestelijk] aspects from our natural ones [39].

Strauss tries to portray Baader as holding to a view of faith that is in addition to natural knowledge. But Baader says that our faith is not opposed to scientific knowledge. Even a physicist cannot conduct an experiment without faith that his reasonable questions will receive an answer (Werke I, 240).

Nor does a reference to the fulfillment of nature mean a nature/grace split. It is true that Dooyeweerd rejects the idea of grace perfecting a nature that is somehow independent (Crisis, 92). But neither Baader nor Dooyeweerd accept such an independent, autonomous idea of nature. So when they speak of “fulfillment” they are speaking of the fulfillment of fallen, temporal reality. And Dooyeweerd makes many references to that kind of fulfillment. The temporal modal aspects reach their fulfillment in the center. We, too are to be fulfilled. The fullness of meaning is cannot be given in time. All temporal meaning refers beyond itself to the supratemporal fulfillment (NC I, 106). Mankind is redeemed and reborn in Christ, but mankind “embraced in Christ still shares in fallen human nature until the fulfilment of all things” (Roots, 38). We also need to be perfected. Our faith finds its true fulfillment in the religious “vision face to face” (NC II, 298). Strauss’s references to Aquinas are therefore inappropriate here in judging what Baader intended.

And in “Mystical Dooyeweerd” I have provided references where Baader expressly disapproves of a supernaturalism that is opposed to a naturalism. Baader opposed this way of thinking, since it leads to a disembodied spirituality.

No Unmoved Mover

Strauss criticizes Baader’s idea that movement proceeds from the unmoved, and that movement proceeds from the center. Strauss says that this is evidence of Baader’s belief in Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover. But that is yet one more serious misunderstanding of Baader. As I showed in “Mystical Dooyeweerd,” both Baader and Dooyeweerd see a dynamism in God, and they both reject a static idea of eternity. Baader emphasizes that there must be both rest and motion. “What is in eternity is thus regarded as always resting in its movement, and always moving itself in its rest, or as always new and yet always the same” (Weltalter, 139).

The idea is also found in Dooyeweerd, who speaks of the restlessness of temporal reality, its longing for rest, and the need for an Archimedean point. Dooyeweerd’s idea of rest is not static, but one of enstasis. I interpret this as a state of equilibrium between our supratemporal center and our temporal functions, but a full discussion is beyond the scope of this article.

IV. Some other misinterpretations of Dooyeweerd

Supratemporal heart and religious root

As already mentioned, Dooyeweerd says that the idea of the supratemporal heart as the religious root of temporal reality is “the key of knowledge.” This idea is also the basis for Dooyeweerd’s ideas of Totality, individuality structures, sphere sovereignty and even the nuclear meaning of the modal aspects. In his last article, Dooyeweerd says that not even the irreducibility of the aspects can be understood apart from "the transcendental idea of the root-unity of the modal aspects in the religious center of human existence" (Gegenstandsrelatie, 100). The idea of the religious root is also crucial for understanding Dooyeweerd’s view of the Christian Ground-Motive, since creation, fall and redemption are all to be understood as occurring in the religious root. The idea of Christ as the New Root makes sense only in relation to this idea. Dooyeweerd says that without the idea of a spiritual fall of the heart, the religious root, no single part of his philosophy can be understood [40]. If Dooyeweerd is correct in this emphasis, then it follows that reformational philosophers like Strauss who deny the idea of the supratemporal root have not understood Dooyeweerd’s philosophy. And it is also then not surprising that they do not see the similarities with Baader, who shared this same central and key idea.

Even if Strauss does not agree with this idea of the supratemporal heart as the religious root, he must still be able to account for Dooyeweerd’s use of the idea, and for Dooyeweerd’s emphasis on its central importance. And yet Strauss devotes hardly any discussion to this in his article. And where he does refer to it, he tries to temporalize Dooyeweerd’s idea of supratemporality. An example is his discussion of the aevum.

Aevum

Dooyeweerd distinguishes between (1) God’s eternity (2) the supratemporal (the aevum, the created eternity, which is distinct from God’s eternity) and (3) cosmic time.

Strauss refers to Dooyeweerd’s discussion of the aevum, but Strauss misinterprets the aevum as only supra-functional and thus within time. Strauss should not confuse his critique of Dooyeweerd’s idea of the supratemporal with what Dooyeweerd himself believed, and with the sources of Dooyeweerd’s idea.

Strauss cites Dooyeweerd’s remark that in our actual condition, our experience of the aevum is “nothing but the concentration of the temporal on the eternal” (Strauss, 176). But Dooyeweerd’s emphasis is on our current condition [actueele toestand]. At the present time, our supratemporal heart is bound to our temporal body, or what Dooyeweerd calls our “mantle of functions” [functiemantel]. Contrary to Strauss’s view that we merely have an eternal destination (Strauss 175), Dooyeweerd is speaking of our condition in this life [in dit leven]. Already in this life we transcend time. Dooyeweerd refuses to speculate on what it will be like when our soul [heart] is separated from our body.

As correctly stated in the reference in footnote 57 of Strauss’s article, we transcend time in the center of our existence at the same time [tegelijk] as we are enclosed within time. Dooyeweerd says this in many other places. For example,

and

Strauss seems to argue that the supratemporal is trans-functional and that therefore the supratemporal means nothing but trans-functionality, the “supra-modal and supra-structural (Strauss, 175). It is true that Dooyeweerd views the aevum is trans-functional, as is shown by the above quotation. But it is fallacious reasoning to argue that the converse is necessary. “A implies B” does not necessarily entail “B implies A.” Not all ideas of the trans-functional are supratemporal. It is possible to have a view of the trans-functional within time, particularly if, like Vollenhoven, one denies that cosmic time splits up Totality into the modal aspects. But Dooyeweerd rejects any view of totality within time, whether trans-functional or pre-functional. To seek totality within time would amount to immanence philosophy, seeking to temporalize the supratemporal. Dooyeweerd specifically rejected Vollenhoven’s idea of the pre-functional selfhood (NC I, 31-33 fn 1). The very quotation cited by Strauss on the aevum goes on to say that our aevum-consciousness can reveal itself in an apostate direction when it seeks the eternal within time.

Dooyeweerd’s devaluation of cosmic time

But what about Baader’s devaluation of the temporal (Strauss, 174 fn 50)? Is that found in Dooyeweerd? Indeed it is. The aevum (created eternity) is our original and true state, but we have “fallen away from our true selfhood,” (“af-val van de ware menschelijke zelfheid,” WdW I, vi). The fall was in the religious root, which is supratemporal and supra-individual; individuation is in time. In the fall, “the human selfhood fell away into the temporal horizon” (NC, II, 564; “viel de menschelijke zelfheid af in den tijdshorizon,” WdW II, 496). Although we are not to flee from the world, the present fallen earthly cosmos “is only a sad shadow of God’s original creation,” and the Christian is a “stranger and a pilgrim in this world” (NC II, 34). We live in an “earthly dispensation” where “the transcendent light of eternity must force its way through time” (NC II, 561). The “earthly” world does not exist in itself, but only in relation to the religious root (NC II, 549). But even here, our experience is not limited to our temporal functions; we can recover a cosmic self-consciousness whereby we relate our temporal cosmic reality to our selfhood as such, an awareness that restores the true perspective of our experience (NC II, 561-3). In our present life, our knowledge is “restricted and relativized by (but not at all to) our temporal functions” (NC II, 561, italics Dooyeweerd). This is because in our supratemporal selfhood we really transcend time. After this life, we will not be limited by the temporal, but Dooyeweerd does not speculate on what this state will be like (See “Antinomïen”)

Strauss does not deal with these statements by Dooyeweerd, in which he clearly devalues our temporal experience. Strauss seems committed to Vollenhoven’s view of the fall as having affected only man’s direction towards God, and not temporal creation itself. Dooyeweerd emphasizes the fallenness of the temporal world, and its need for a radical redemption in Christ, the New Root (See “Dialectic”).

Ground Motives

Strauss is wrong that Dooyeweerd does not use the terms ‘Grondidee’ and ‘grondprincipe’ to refer to Ground-Motives. To be sure, as ideas, these are as “hypotheses,” expressions of the underlying motives. Baader’s use of the term ‘Triebkracht’ or ‘driving force’ is echoed in Dooyeweerd’s use of the word ‘drijfkracht’ in referring to the ‘motive’ power of religion.

Strauss has also downplayed my comparison of Baader and Dooyeweerd as to the motive of creation, fall and redemption. Strauss says that of course any Christian thinker believes in this. But Strauss misses the important point. Dooyeweerd expressly says that not every philosophy that uses the words “creation, fall and redemption” comes within the Christian Ground-Motive (Twilight, 145). What is key for Dooyeweerd is that creation, fall and redemption are all in the religious root. Temporal reality has no existence except in this religious root, and that is why the temporal world fell with man. A New Root was required, and that New Root was Christ. Both Baader and Dooyeweerd share this idea of creation, fall and redemption in the religious root, and the need for Christ as New Root. This is a substantial agreement between Baader and Dooyeweerd with respect to the Christian Ground-motive, as Dooyeweerd interprets it. In fact, there is more in common here between Dooyeweerd and Baader than between Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven, since Vollenhoven, like Strauss, rejects the idea of a supratemporal religious root.

When creation, fall and redemption in the religious root are seen as occurring in the religious root, then we can also understand the other Ground-Motives, and the parallels with Baader. When we do not accept this idea of the religious root, then we end up absolutizing, or deifying, aspects of temporal reality. Baader says that there is then set up a polar dialectic.

Antinomy and polar tension

Dooyeweerd shares Baader’s view of antinomy as reflecting a polar tension when we seek our ground within the aspects of temporal reality. In his last article, Dooyeweerd remarks that Strauss "improperly reduces antinomies to logical contradictions" (Gegenstandsrelatie, 95). Strauss is therefore wrong in trying to restrict Dooyeweerd’s idea of antinomy to where one aspect is reduced to another (Strauss, 173). It is true that this “special use” of antinomy helps us to differentiate aspects (NC II, 37). But in its general sense, antinomy occurs when we absolutize any part of temporal reality, overstepping the limit of the order of cosmic time (NC II, 38). There is then a religious dialectic between the first absolutized aspect, and its correlata, driving human action and thought “from one pole to another” (NC I, 64). This religious dialectic has the character of a polar tension (NC I, 123), revealed in antinomies (WdW I, 467: “Polaire spanningen, zich in de stelsels openbarende in bepaalde typen van antinomieën”). Dooyeweerd finds such "insoluble genuine antinomies" in Strauss’s own thought. Strauss's rejection of the Gegenstand-relation, in favour of an intra-modal logical basis for the epistemological antithesis, leads to a logicism that threatens the irreducibility of the other aspects [43].

In Dooyeweerd’s opinion, Strauss’s own thought therefore shows this kind of polar tension between an absolutized aspect (the logical) and the other aspects, the correlata of the absolutized aspect.

Organicism

Baader uses the analogy of an organism to show the relation between the supratemporal unity and the temporal multiplicity of the cosmos. This analogy comes from Ephesians 1:10, where St. Paul speaks of the relation of the head to the limbs of the body. Baader says that the head is the center and the limbs are the periphery; the limbs are subordinate to the head. The individual limbs or members can only relate to each other to the extent that they are unified with the head (Werke 4, 232; 5, 372).

Dooyeweerd uses the same metaphor of St. Paul; like Baader, he uses the idea of organism to show the relation of the supratemporal centre (root and fullness) to temporal individuality, which is the expression of the center:

Strauss says that Dooyeweerd does not operate with an anonymous idea of a cosmic center (Strauss, 167). I am not sure what Strauss means by ‘anonymous.’ Baader does not use the idea of Center anonymously. In the above quotation, Dooyeweerd refers to Christ as the religious centre of the temporal world, the root, the fullness. All temporal individuality is only an expression of this fulness of individuality.

Strauss admits that Christ in his human nature “represented the totality of meaning of creation.” But is Strauss referring only to Christ’s temporal nature? Strauss does not discuss the meaning of Christ as New Root, the Centre, the source of individuality. These ideas are so important to the comparison between Baader and Dooyeweerd, and yet Strauss does not deal with them. The meaning of ‘New Root’ cannot be understood apart from supratemporality. In our full selfhood we transcend the earthly cosmos and partake in the transcendent root (NC II, 593). Christ’s fullness is revealed in time, but the fullness itself is supratemporal [44].

Center and Periphery; Totality and Temporal Expression

Unless we accept Dooyeweerd’s distinction between supratemporal and temporal, we cannot understand what he means by ‘central.’ The second page of the Foreword to the WdW makes reference to a central/peripheral distinction. Dooyeweerd contrasts his philosophy, based on the centrality of the heart (religious root of all of human existence) with Kant’s work. Kant’s Copernican revolution can only be regarded as “merely a periphery” [slechts als een periphere]. Dooyeweerd says that his philosophy concerns the total relativizing of all temporal sides of the cosmos, the so-called ‘natural’ ones as well as the so-called ‘spiritual’ ones. The relativizing of these temporal spheres is in relation to the central Christian viewpoint of the religious root of creation (WdW I, vi). The English translation in the New Critique does not use the word ‘periphery’ but rather refers to Kant’s view as relativizing the ‘natural’ aspects of temporal reality to a merely abstracted transcendental subject. In other words, Kant does not relativize these temporal spheres to the central religious root.

Dooyeweerd refers to ‘central’ many times. The central is always supratemporal. The temporal is not central. Whatever is not central must lie on the circumference, or “the periphery.” Center and periphery are not on the same ontic level. It is not a whole/part relation within time. The center is the Totality that is split apart into the modal aspects by the prism of cosmic time. The supratemporal expresses itself within the temporal.

But because Strauss rejects Dooyeweerd’s idea of supratemporality, he can understand Totality only in the temporal sense of an inter-modal meaning-coherence. That was also the view of Vollenhoven, who substituted a completely temporal pre-functionality for Dooyeweerd’s supratemporal selfhood (See “Dialectic”). Dooyeweerd emphatically rejected Vollenhoven’s interpretation (NC I, 31-33, fn 1). From Dooyeweerd’s point of view, Strauss and Vollenhoven are engaged in immanence philosophy, because they seek Totality within time. That is what “immanence philosophy” means.

Strauss says,

There are many errors in this analysis by Strauss. The center-periphery is not merely a metaphor, but an ontological statement of the relation of our temporal world to the supratemporal. The center is the supratemporal Totality that is refracted by cosmic time into the aspects of our temporal experience. Nor is the center to be in any way equated with merely an “inter-modal meaning-coherence.” Dooyeweerd is clear about this: in our selfhood we transcend any temporal coherence (NC I, 24). Temporal coherence is “the expression of a deeper identity” (NC I, 79). In the fullness of meaning of the religious root, the modal spheres coincide in a radical unity (NC I, 106). In the religious root of our existence we experience this transcendent identity of the modal functions.

Strauss’s explanation of Totality as an extended use of the spatial modal aspect (Strauss 171) does not do justice to the ontical importance of this idea for Dooyeweerd. In my article “Totality,” I have explored Dooyeweerd’s use of the term and its importance for him. The idea of Totality is also the basis for Dooyeweerd’s transcendental critique (which Strauss also rejects).

Strauss says that Dooyeweerd would never use Totality in the sense of a whole and its parts. But neither Dooyeweerd nor Baader uses the idea of ‘Totality’ in the sense of a temporal whole/part relationship. If Baader uses the term ‘whole’ to refer to ‘Totality,’ he is clear that this reference is to a whole that has not been divided. Dooyeweerd also speaks of Totality as a “still undivided whole” [“als nog ongescheiden geheel”; Roots, 39, Vernieuwing 38).

Supratemporal Selfhood and Temporal Embodiment

Strauss denies the idea of “embodiment” in the periphery (Strauss 170). Here it must be recalled that Kuyper specifically praised Baader for his idea of embodiment (See “Kuyper”). Dooyeweerd has a similar view of our temporal body as being the temporal mantle of functions [functiemantel]. Dooyeweerd believes that our embodiment in this mantle of functions occurred after the creation of our supratemporal selfhood. Man's temporal embodiment was a second stage after his supratemporal creation. Dooyeweerd says that Gen. 2 speaks of becoming "living souls"–that refers to the bodily forming process. That is not creation, but rather giving form to "an already existing material present in the temporal order." He says that this distinction between creation and becoming is wiped out by a historicistic interpretation that sees creation as a temporal event:

There is therefore a "double creation." However, Dooyeweerd speaks of the second stage not as a creation, but as the forming of a previously existing and created material.

Steen correctly says that Dooyeweerd’s reference to man’s becoming a living being presupposes that man already was created and gives a clear indication that becoming follows creation. The body is the expression of an undifferentiated unity and fullness, the refraction of a root. The body, the functiemantel, finds its concentration point in the heart (Steen 62-63).

Dooyeweerd had already made the same point in his 1959 article “Schepping en Evolutie.” The creation of the supratemporal heart is distinguished from the forming process in Genesis 2:7. In that article, Dooyeweerd emphasizes that man’s becoming a living being presupposes that man was already created.

Dooyeweerd says on the same page that forming is not creation, but rather the giving form to a material that was present even earlier in the temporal order (“een reeds eerder in de tijdelijke orde aanwezig materiaal”) [47].

Dooyeweerd says that the creation of man’s body and soul has been completely perfected [voltooid], but that it becomes creaturely effective through a double generation. The bodily side of generation occurs in time. The spiritual [geestelijk] side does not occur in time, but is generated by rebirth in the Spirit [48].

The distinction between creation and forming, the accounts in Genesis 1 and 2, is usually related to the idea that the world was already fallen when man was created. The fall of the angels preceded both the creation of man, and man’s own fall. The temporal world was a result of Lucifer’s revolt. Kuyper says that there is a question as to what existed in Paradise before the fall–whether the ‘Tohu Wa Bohu’ refers to a still unformed chaos or whether it refers to the result of a destruction that had already occurred. He says that Baader’s theosophical position on this is “well known,” as is Milton’s position. But Kuyper himself takes no position on the issue (See “Kuyper”). In his 1926 Inaugural Address Dooyeweerd refers to the law-idea,

The reference to creation of light from out of darkness may refer to this idea of creation as a re-forming of a previous destruction. And the reference to a “confused diversity of law-spheres” also suggests the present fallenness of temporal reality.

Baader says that the reason that man was both created and made, as both a supratemporal and a temporal being, was so that he might assist in the regeneration of the already fallen temporal world. Man is responsible to assist in the perfecting of the temporal world. Dooyeweerd also held this same view:

The fulfillment of temporal reality must be found in man. Dooyeweerd cites Kuyper's Lectures on Calvinism, and Kuyper's reference to the semen religionis [religious seed] implanted in man (“Kuyper’s Wetenschapsleer, 211). In another article, Dooyeweerd says that there are “slumbering powers” that need to be developed in all of the law-spheres. He speaks of this work in terms of sacrifice [49]. The need to develop these powers was already given at creation:

Man failed at this task. Man fell away into the temporal horizon (NC, II, 564), and fell away from his true selfhood (WdW I, vi). And with man’s fall, the entire temporal world fell with man:

This falling into the temporal is what Baader refers to as “materialization.” It does not mean that Baader has a dualistic view of substance. The falling is a turning away from our true and ultimate state of the supratemporal and to the temporal. Dooyeweerd says that antinomies will arise in every philosophy that is rooted in this fallen selfhood [in de af-vallige zelfheid wortelt] (WdW I, 472). And because the fall was in the root, Christ was needed as the New Root.

There is therefore a remarkable similarity between Baader and Dooyeweerd in these ideas of creation, fall and redemption in the root. I have given many of references in “Mystical Dooyeweerd,” but Strauss has not dealt with them.

Aspects

Strauss rightly emphasizes that Dooyeweerd developed the idea of the aspects. But in his last article, where Dooyeweerd criticized Strauss so strongly, Dooyeweerd says that the mutual irreducibility of the aspects as well as their unbreakable coherence “cannot be separated from the transcendental idea of the root-unity of the modal aspects in the religious center of human existence” (Gegenstandsrelatie, 100). This must be because the modal aspects share the structure of central and functional. The nucleus or kernel of the modal aspect is the center, and the other aspects surround it [51]. Since both Baader and Dooyeweerd agree on the key issue of the supratemporal heart as the religious root, there is more agreement between them regarding the modal aspects of our experience than between Dooyeweerd and Strauss, who rejects the supratemporality of the heart. This is so even if Baader did not enumerate as many modal aspects, or if he calls them ‘elements’ or ‘factors.’ And Baader’s use of anticipation and retrocipation is more accurate in referring to the relations between aspects, since Baader, like Dooyeweerd, regards temporal reality as constituted by cosmic time and anticipation and retrocipation as referring to cosmic time. But Strauss seems to follow Vollenhoven in regarding anticipation and retrocipation as a purely logical relation of the more complicated modal aspects including the simpler aspects, and not as a temporal order of earlier and later (See “Dialectic”).

Strauss, like Vollenhoven, regards modal aspects as properties of things; we come to know them by abstraction from things. In his last article, Dooyeweerd also strongly opposed this view. He says that aspects are not deduced or abstracted from things. Dooyeweerd says that that is a “serious misunderstanding” shared by certain adherents of the Philosophy of the Law-Idea, who wrongly suppose that the modal structures can be discovered by a continued process of abstraction from out of our concrete experience of reality (Gegenstandsrelatie, 90). The truth is in fact exactly the reverse: “The modal structures lie at the basis of the individuality structures, and not the other way around” [Dooyeweerd’s italics]. The individuality structures function in the aspects, which have an ontological priority to those individuality structures. Dooyeweerd also criticizes Strauss’s view that we have implied knowledge of the aspects in our naïve experience. He says that Strauss blurs the crucial distinction between pre-theoretical and theoretical experience, and that he negates the distinction between theoretical and pre-theoretical intuition. For a detailed discussion, see “Enkapsis.” And see “Dialectic” where I have shown that Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd did not share the same idea of aspects.

Religion, Faith and Philosophy

I cannot understand why Strauss tries so hard to deny Dooyeweerd’s idea that all philosophy is religious. Dooyeweerd says,

The whole thrust of Dooyeweerd’s philosophy is to show the religious basis of all theoretical thought, including philosophy. On the very first page of the New Critique he says, “The great turning point in my thought was marked by the discovery of the religious root of thought itself…” (NC I, v). Our thought (including theoretical thought such as philosophy) therefore has a religious root. Dooyeweerd says that we direct our consciousness towards or away from God, and that this occurs in the transcendent religious self-consciousness: “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 (NC II, 562). He says that all immanence philosophy is based on the self-destructive hypostatizing of the theoretical synthesis of meaning; this is the proton pseudos (NC II, 562).

For both Baader and Dooyeweerd, such religious philosophy has precedence over theology [53]. Theology is one science among many. How could Baader have come to such a view if, as Strauss argues, he identified religion and faith? Baader’s article Zwiespalt gives a good discussion of his views of belief and knowledge. Baader says there that both belief and knowledge come from a common center:

Life

In “Mystical Dooyeweerd,” I compare Baader and Dooyeweerd’s statement of the importance of a Christian philosophy, in that it is a matter of life or death. This is not just a rhetorical statement that they have in common. Both Baader and Dooyeweerd are referring to Life in its central sense. As Dooyeweerd says,

Dooyeweerd says that what gives life is the Christian Ground-Motive in our hearts –the Motive of creation, fall and redemption, in the root. Without that “key of knowledge,” we do not have a living philosophy. But he emphasizes that this is not theological knowledge. We ought not to confuse theoretical Christian theology with the true knowledge of God and true self-knowledge, which surpasses all theoretical knowledge (Twilight, 115, 120, 135-36). Many Christians have only a theological knowledge of creation, fall and redemption, and this central theme of Word-Revelation has not yet become the central motive-power of their lives (Twilight, 188).

Mysticism

Not all kinds of mysticism are the same. Neither Baader nor Dooyeweerd accept a mysticism of identity with God. Both avoid such a pantheistic identification. Baader speaks of the concept of the inexistence [Inexistenz] of all things in God, but specifically distinguishes this from pantheistic identity (See Elementarbegriffe). Baader’s point is that to have our existence in God is not the same as to be identical with God. Dooyeweerd says that we are “from, through and to” the Origin (NC I, 9), and we are his expression (NC I, 4). This is not a pantheistic identification with God. I believe that it is more accurately described as nondualism (See “Dialectic”).

Dooyeweerd also rejects that kind of mysticism that posits a separate cognitive faculty that is added on top of so-called natural knowledge:

Instead of a separate cognitive faculty, Dooyeweerd puts forward the idea that we have different dimensions of experience within "the horizon that God made for human experience." The religious dimension is the supratemporal level of our selfhood. From there we “descend” to the temporal level (NC II, 552). This includes the modal level. And the temporal and modal levels together encompass the fourth level, that of individuality structures. This multi-dimensional horizon is what Dooyeweerd calls the “perspectival nature” of our experience.

Dooyeweerd also rejected a kind of mysticism that would attempt to flee from the world (NC II, 34). Baader also opposed a merely pietistic spirituality. Kuyper expressed his appreciation for this emphasis of Baader on the importance of embodiment (See “Kuyper”).

As Dooyeweerd says in the passage cited above, we must restore “the subjective perspective of our experience, enabling us to grasp reality again perspectively…” There has not been enough attention paid to Dooyeweerd’s emphasis on the importance of experience. The very first paragraph of the New Critique opens with a discussion of our experience. It is an experience that relates the supratemporal to the temporal. It is not a subjectivistic ‘Erlebnis’ or feeling. It is, as Dooyeweerd says, a ‘Hineinleben,’ an “integral experience of reality.” This is a function of the religious root of our personality that “transcends its temporal acts and modal functions” (NC II, 473-4).

And this experience is a mysticism. Dooyeweerd certainly uses mystical language and ideas. He says that all human experience “participates” [wordt deel te hebben] and “partakes” [in haar deel hebben aan] in the Totality of meaning, the religious root (NC I, 8; II, 560; WdW I, 11; II, 491). We “have part” [waaraan wij deel hebben] in Christ, the New Religious Root of mankind (NC I, 99; WdW I, 64). And Dooyeweerd emphasizes the importance of “religious self-reflection” (NC I, 15, 165), the perception of temporal things and events “as they really are” (NC III, 30), and the fulfillment of Christian faith in the beatific vision when we will behold God “face to face” (NC II, 298).

Is such a mysticism a secret knowledge? It is not secret in the sense of learning about things that are unrelated to our present experience. But both Baader and Dooyeweerd see our present our experience in very wide terms. Our experience is not restricted to the temporal world, since our selfhood is supratemporal even in this present life. And to speak about the supratemporal selfhood is not speculative, since we have present experience of it. Dooyeweerd continually speaks of the supratemporal selfhood. All of our acts come forth from it [54]. Our intuition helps us to relate the temporal to our experience of the supratemporal.

Baader says that mysticism is related to our being image of God (Koslowski, 545-46). This is the deepest mystery within us [tiefste Geheminis in uns] (Tageb., Werke 11, 61). And this is also Dooyeweerd’s view. In religious self-reflection, we come to know our true supratemporal selfhood. Dooyeweerd emphasizes the importance to “know thyself.” “Only in the way of knowledge of itself can human consciousness concentrate on a central point where all the aspects of our consciousness converge in a radical unity” (Ev.Qu. 48). True knowledge of self, God and cosmos are interrelated. And this knowledge is not theoretical. “Self-knowledge in the last analysis appears to be dependent upon knowledge of God, which, however, is quite different from a theoretical theology” (NC I, 55).

It was Baader’s recovery of the truly spiritual [geestelijk] as opposed to the merely pietistic spiritualistic that so impressed Kuyper (see “Kuyper”). Kuyper himself emphasizes such a mystical spirituality in his To be Near Unto God:

Kuyper here refers to “this secret” as something that must be entered into. And it is in this sense of the importance of “entering” that true mysticism is secret. For those who have not entered, the experience remains secret. It is not that someone else is keeping the information from them, but that they have not chosen to “taste and see.” It is for this reason that Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables (Matt. 13: 10-17). Those who have not experienced the supratemporal, or who do not want to acknowledge it, cannot understand it. Dooyeweerd goes even further. Those who have not experienced the supratemporal do not even understand the temporal world! As the sense of transcendence is lost, our ability to experience the perspectival nature of our experience is weakened [56]. We then cannot see reality as it really is (NC III, 30). We cannot have true knowledge of God, self or cosmos.

The mysticism of both Baader and Dooyeweerd is an experience that transcends time, and yet one that illuminates the temporal world. When the religious dimension of the horizon of our experience is opened, “The light of eternity radiates perspectively through all the temporal dimensions of this horizon and even illuminates seemingly trivial things and events in our sinful world” (NC III, 29).

I don’t recognize any of this passionate spirituality and mysticism in Strauss’s account of Dooyeweerd’s philosophy. He seems to follow Vollenhoven, who explicitly rejected the idea of a supratemporal conversion in the heart, and who also rejected any immediate experience of God (See “Dialectic”). Strauss emphasizes Dooyeweerd’s distinction between concepts and ideas, and says that our ideas may approach religious fullness (Strauss 177). But for both Baader and Dooyeweerd, our religious experience is prior to and informs all theoretical thought–both concepts and ideas are still only temporal). And since Strauss rejects the supratemporal, his idea of religious fullness can only be a temporal fullness. Strauss does mention that we may wonder at God’s creation. But this does not come close to Dooyeweerd’s emphasis on the importance of a living philosophy, relating the supratemporal to the temporal.

V. Conclusion

In trying to distance Dooyeweerd from Baader, Strauss has seriously misinterpreted both philosophers. His interpretations of Baader are superficial. Even worse, Strauss’s translations of Baader sometimes give exactly the opposite meaning from what Baader really says. And Strauss makes comparisons to other philosophers like Schelling and Hegel, even though Baader expressly disagrees with those philosophers.

With respect to Dooyeweerd, Strauss seeks to interpret Dooyeweerd in terms of his own systematics, a systematics that Dooyeweerd sharply criticized in his last article Gegenstandsrelatie. I have suggested that Strauss misinterprets Dooyeweerd in this way because he interprets Dooyeweerd through the lens of Vollenhoven’s totally contradictory philosophy. When Dooyeweerd is read on his own terms, the comparison with Baader becomes much more clear, at least for those points of comparison that I used in my article.

I hope that my comparison with Baader will persuade reformational philosophers to read Dooyeweerd for themselves. Baader’s influence on Dooyeweerd is not just a matter of historical interest. Baader helps us to interpret Dooyeweerd’s philosophy as an integral whole, including the Gegenstand-relation, the supratemporal heart, the religious root, the theoretical dis-stasis and the synthesis achieved by our intuition, by which we relate what has been split apart in theoretical dis-stasis to the enstatic unity of our supratemporal selfhood. Dooyeweerd’s ideas are interrelated; we cannot reject part of his philosophy without changing the meaning of other ideas. To read Dooyeweerd this way will challenge prevailing interpretations in reformational philosophy. I hope that by investigating these sources of Dooyeweerd’s philosophy, we may understand him again and experience the living and vital nature of this philosophy, and yes, its truly mystical nature.

Endnotes

[1] Daniël F. M. Strauss: “Intellectual influences upon the reformational philosophy of Dooyeweerd,” Philosophia Reformata 69 (2004), 151-181 [‘Strauss’].

[2] J. Glenn Friesen: “The Mystical Dooyeweerd: The relation of his thought to Franz von Baader,”Ars Disputandi 3 (2003) [http://www.arsdisputandi.org/publish/articles/000088/index.html] [‘Mystical Dooyeweerd’].

[3] The scholarly literature refers to Franz von Baader as ‘Baader’ and not ‘Von Baader’ as Strauss does.

[4] See my website at [http://www.members.shaw.ca/baader/]. Some Baader excerpts were also translated by Ramon Betanzos in his Franz von Baader’s Philosophy of Love (Vienna: Passagen Verlag, 1998).

[5] See my article, “Dooyeweerd versus Vollenhoven: The religious dialectic within reformational philosophy,” Philosophia Reformata 70 (2005) 102-132 [‘Dialectic’].

[6] See Vollenhoven, D.H.Th.: Schematische Kaarten, eds. K.A. Bril and P.J. Boonstra (Amstelveen: De Zaak Haes, 2000), 92 fn 11; Chart 49; 385-388 [Kaarten]. I do not object to the idea of a problem-historical method, but I disagree with some of Vollenhoven’s assumptions behind his own method that are reflected in his classification of Baader and Dooyeweerd. See my article, “Monism, Dualism, Nondualism: A problem with Vollenhoven’s problem-historical method,” [http://www.members.shaw.ca/hermandooyeweerd/Method.html]. But it is significant that Vollenhoven classified both Baader and Dooyeweerd under the same category.

[7] J. Glenn Friesen: “The Mystical Dooyeweerd Once Again: Kuyper’s Use of Franz von Baader,” Ars Disputandi 3 (2003) [http://www.arsdisputandi.org/publish/articles/000130/index.html] [‘Kuyper’].

[8] Abraham Kuyper, “Het Modernisme: een Fata morgana op Christelijk gebied,” (Amsterdam, H. de Hoogh, 1871). [http://www.neocalvinisme.nl/ak/broch/akfatam.html]. The full quotation reads,

[9] J. Glenn Friesen: “Dooyeweerd, Spann and the Philosophy of Totality,” Philosophia Reformata 70 (2005), 1-22 [‘Totality’]. Online at [http://www.members.shaw.ca/hermandooyeweerd/Totality.html].

[10] Franz von Baader: “Elementary Concepts Concerning Time: As Introduction to the Philosophy of Society and History” (1831) (Werke 14, 29-54) [‘Elementarbegriffe’]. See my translation at [http://www.members.shaw.ca/baader/Elementar.html]. In my view, this work influenced Dooyeweerd in formulating his threefold division between God’s Eternity, man’s supratemporality, and cosmic time. Baader also has a fourth level, the infernal, below cosmic time. Kuyper mentions this infernal level (See “Kuyper”).

[11] Many other references could be given. See Franz von Baader: Die Weltalter: Lichtstrahlen aus Franz von Baader’s Werken, ed. Franz Hoffmann (Erlangen, 1868) [‘Weltalter’], 150, where Baader says it is a Gnostic error to assert that creation is a falling away of the Idea from itself.

[12] Strauss (p. 162) gives two citations, one from Max Pulver’s 1921 collected excerpts from Baader, and another incomplete citation from Werke. The citation should be Werke 2, 248. Strauss seems unaware that these are both the same reference, to Volume III, 6 of Fermenta Cognitionis. This passage describes the views of some philosophers. But Strauss ignores the italicized words directly following this passage, where Baader rejects this idea. Baader says that only the possibility of a fall is given with creation, and not an actual fall in God. In a footnote, Baader shows that Boehme had the correct view: sin consists in following one's own will, in disobedience wanting to be one's own master, and leaving the order in which God has created us. Later in the same work (Fermenta IV, 6; Werke 2, 286), Baader denies that the becoming of nature is to be identified with a fall of the Idea; this would make God responsible for sin. Strauss’s interpretation is therefore the exact opposite of what Baader says!

[13] Peter Koslowski: Philosophien der Offenbarung. Antiker Gnostizismus, Franz von Baader, Schelling, (Vienna: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2001), 340. Koslowski emphasizes Baader’s opposition to Hegel’s error that creation itself involves sin, in a fall of God from Himself. Koslowski notes at p. 547 that it is evident that Hegel felt he had been hit in the core of his theory by Baader’s criticism of his theory that nature was a fall of the Idea from itself. Hegel tried to defend himself from Baader’s criticism in the Foreword to his Enzyklopädie. (“Hegel mußte sich schone in der Vorrede zur gegen Baaders Kritik verteidigen, und es ist erkennbar, daß er sich von der Kritik an seiner Theorie, daß die Natur der Abfall der Idee von sich sei, im Kern seines Systems getroffen fühlte”).

[14] As discussed below, Dooyeweerd believed that “the key of knowledge” was the idea of the supratemporal heart as the religious root. Strauss devotes hardly any attention to this idea.

[15] See my article “Individuality Structures and Enkapsis: Individuation from Totality in Dooyeweerd and German Idealism,” (2005) [http://www.members.shaw.ca/hermandooyeweerd/Enkapsis.html] [‘Enkapsis’].

[16] Herman Dooyeweerd: A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1997; Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1969; first published 1953), I, 4 [‘NC’]. This work is an English translation and revision of Dooyeweerd’s De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee, (Amsterdam: H.J. Paris, 1935) [‘WdW’].

[17] But Baader’s views of the relation of the Trinity to temporal reality must be clearly distinguished from those of Hegel. Baader vigorously opposed Hegel’s pantheistic identification of God’s Trinitarian relationship with the trinitarian relationships in temporal reality itself.

[18] What Dooyeweerd refuses to speculate about is not our current experience of the supratemporal, but our future state, when our heart-soul is separated from the temporal body. For at that time, our existence will be wholly supratemporal, and not bound to the temporal mantle of functions. See Herman Dooyeweerd: “Het Tijdsprobleem en zijn Antinomieën op het Immanentiestandpunt,”Philosophia Reformata 1 (1936), 69; 4 (1939) 1-28, at 4-5 [‘Antinomieën’].

[19] Franz von Baader: Über die Begründung der Ethik durch die Physik und andere Schriften (Stuttgart: Verlag Freies Geistesleben, 1969), 61 [Begründung].

[20] Hans Urs von Balthasar: Does Jesus Know Us? Do We Know Him? (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1983), 54-56.

[21] Herman Dooyeweerd: “Advies over Roomsch-katholieke en Anti-revolutionaire Staatkunde,” (February, 1923) [‘Advies’]. Cited by Marcel Verburg: Herman Dooyeweerd: Leven en werk van een Nerlands christen-wijsgeer (Baarn: Ten Have, 1989), 48-61 ['Verburg'].

[22] Herman Dooyeweerd: In the Twilight of Western Thought: Studies in the Pretended Autonomy of Philosophical Thought, (Nutley, N.J.: The Craig Press, 1968, first published 1961), 120 [‘Twilight’].

[23] Herman Dooyeweerd: “De wetbeschouwing in Brunner’s boek ‘Das Gebot und die Ordnungen’,” Anti-revouitionaire Staatkunde, 9 (1935), 334-374, at 336-339; 364; referred to in Peter J. Steen: The Structure of Herman Dooyeweerd’s Thought (Toronto: Wedge, 1983), 225 [‘Steen’].

[24] Even in “Kuyper’s wetenschapsleer,” Dooyeweerd’s objection to Kuyper’s use of the doctrine is that it led to a depreciation of science. Dooyeweerd himself accepts Kuyper’s idea of the semen religionis or divine seed planted in the heart. And Dooyeweerd’s objection to Woltjer’s use of the logos doctrine was that Woltjers had no place for the heart. Herman Dooyeweerd: "Kuyper's Wetenschapsleer,"Philosophia Reformata 4 (1939), 193-232, at 208-211.

[25] With respect to meaning, Baader says that God gives meaning and we participate in this meaning. If the concept cannot be shown to relate to the center, it is meaningless (Begründung 109). Thus, concepts have to relate to the center to have meaning. This denial of the center, is an absolutization of the temporal. I have also suggested the possible influence of Frederik van Eeden, who like Baader was also strongly influenced by Boehme. Dooyeweerd wrote an important student article about van Eeden. In his book De Redekunstige Grondslag van Verstandhouding (Utrecht: Spectrum, 1975, originally published 1897), Van Eeden writes of the linguistic or rhetorical foundation of knowledge, and the referring beyond of language. The book also identifies various modes [wijzen, modi] of reality, such as the mathematical, spatial, movement, the physical, and the sensory, and relates them to a supratemporal selfhood.

[26] WdW I, 70 [“tijdelijk organisme der wetskringen”]; II, 347; NC II, 418 [“religious organism”]. This important second quotation is discussed in detail below.

[27] See my article “Totality.” A letter from Roy Clouser to Dooyeweerd dated June 21, 1972 refers to Dooyeweerd’s view that theoretical analysis disrupts the causal relation in a way analogous to the way that dissection kills a living organism.

[28] Steen refers to Dooyeweerd’s use of organic analogies in the terms ‘root’, ‘unfolding’, and ‘differentiation.’ He says that the figure of the organism shows the correlation of time and eternity (Steen, 185)..

[29] Herman Dooyeweerd: De Betekenis der Wetsidee voor Rechtswetenschap en Rechtsphilosophie (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1926; cited by Verburg, 97) ['Inaugural Address'].

[30] Herman Dooyeweerd: “Het juridisch causaliteitsprobleem in ‘t licht der wetsidee,” Anti-revolutionaire Staatkunde (1928) 21-124 at 121, note 86, cited by Verburg, 114).

[31] Herman Dooyeweerd: “De Structuur der rechtsbeginselen,” Wetenschappelijke Bijdragen, Aangeboden door Hoogleraren der Vrije Universiteit ter Gelegenheid van haar Viftigjarig Bestaan (1930), 223-266 at 232. Cited by Verburg, 12..

[32] Herman Dooyeweerd: De Crisis in de Humanistische Staatsleer (Amsterdam: Ten Have, 1931), 90 [‘Crisis’].

[33] Herman Dooyeweerd: Response to Curators of the Vrije Universiteit, March 19/1938 cited by Verburg, 226-227). A similar idea is found in the New Critique: "…the human body is the free plastic instrument of the I-ness, as the spiritual centre of human existence." (NC III, 88). Or in the idea that “the selfhood as the religious root of existence is the hidden performer on the instrument of philosophic thought” (NC I, 21).

[34] D.F.M. Strauss: “An Analysis of the Structure of Analysis: The Gegenstand-relation in discussion,” Philosophia Reformata 49 (1984) 35-56.

[35] Verburg, 401. Dooyeweerd’s marginal notes contain exclamations like “serious misunderstanding,” “sophistic reasoning,’ “this cannot be maintained,” and “this is also never asserted by me!”

[36] Herman Dooyeweerd: “De Kentheoretische Gegenstandsrelatie en de Logische Subject-Objectrelatie,” Philosophia Reformata 40 (1975) 83-101 [‘Gegenstandsrelatie’]. This article was previously not fully translated into English, so the full extent of Dooyeweerd’s criticism of Strauss was not widely known. See also my article summarizing the differences between Dooyeweerd and D.F.M. Strauss: “Dooyeweerd versus Strauss: Objections to immanence philosophy within reformational thought,” (2006) [http://www.members.shaw.ca/hermandooyeweerd/Objections.html].

[37] Franz von Baader: “Concerning the conflict of religious faith and knowledge as the spiritual root of the decline of religious and political society in our time as in every time,” [Über den Zwiespalt des Religiösen Glaubens und Wissens als die geistige Wurzel des Verfalls der religiösen und politischen Societät in unserer wie in jeder Zeit], Werke 1,357-382. Online at [http://www.members.shaw.ca/baader/Zwiespalt.html] [‘Zwiespalt’].

[38] Herman Dooyeweerd: Vernieuwing en Bezinning, (Zutphen: Van den Brink, 1959), 36-37 [‘Vernieuwing’], partially translated as Roots of Western Culture, (Toronto: Wedge, 1979) [‘Roots’].

[39] Dooyeweerd says that his own goal was to relate the whole temporal cosmos, in both its so-called ‘natural’ and ‘spiritual’ [geestelijk] aspects (WdW I, vi; NC I, v). Dooyeweerd frequently refers to the non-normative modal aspects as ‘natural sides’ of meaning. See WdW I, 63, 65, 79. He distinguishes these natural meaning-sides [natuur-zijden] from the logical and the post-logical sides of reality. This of course in no way means that Dooyeweerd has a nature/grace split. Neither does Baader.

[40] Herman Dooyeweerd: First response to the Curators of the Vrije Universiteit, April 27, 1937 (cited in Verburg, 212).

[41] This idea of knowing one’s temporal functions “as one’s own” has not been commented on in reformational philosophy. An example is relating one’s sensation of sweetness:

[42] See WdW I, vii [grondprinciep, in reference to sphere sovereignty], 34, 39, 45, 50, 52, 57-58, 61, 44-46, 48-54, 57-58, 61, 86 [grondidee], 70 [grondbeginsel].

[43] Dooyeweerd says that logicism identifies cosmic diversity with logical diversity (NC I, 19). In his last article, Dooyeweerd says that Strauss’s use of an intra-modal logical relation to differentiate the aspects must lead to the elimination of irreducibility of modal aspects (Gegenstandsrelatie, 100). Such irreducibility of the modal aspects is the basis of cosmic diversity.

[44] Dooyeweerd distinguishes between the two natures of Christ. It was only in his human nature that Christ was subjected to the law (NC I, 99 fn1). Dooyeweerd says that within time, Jesus had a temporal nature, and according to this human nature, He had to fulfill the law. ("De staatkundige tegenstelling tusschen Christelijk-Historische en Antirevolutionaire partij." Dec 1923, cited by Verburg 64). On the other hand, Christ, “as the fullness of God’s revelation, came into the flesh” (NC II, 561). This may relate to the anhypostasis issue. Hepp criticized Vollenhoven for rejecting this idea; it is not clear whether Dooyeweerd holds to it. Anhypostasis is evident in Kuyper’s view that when Christ was born, the number of men was not increased by one (Kaarten, 269). I leave this theological point for a later discussion.

[45] Herman Dooyeweerd: "Na vijf en dertig jaren," Philosophia Reformata 36 (1971), 1-10) [‘Vijf en dertig’]. In a footnote on the same page, Dooyeweerd rejects the view that Genesis 1 and 2 are merely two different stories about the same creation.

[46] Herman Dooyeweerd: “Schepping en Evolutie,” Philosophia Reformata 24 (1959) 113-159, at 115, fn., cited by Steen 62.

[47] To be sure, this material is not something that exists from eternity. Dooyeweerd says that it is also created by God. The interesting issue is whether the material is the aftermath of the angelic fall from heaven.

[48] Herman Dooyeweerd: “De leer van den mensch in de W.d.W.,” Corr. bladen 5 (1942), 143, cited by Steen 44. Translated as “The Theory of Man: Thirty-two Propositions on Anthropology,” (mimeo, Institute for Christian Studies) [‘32 Propositions’].

[49] Herman Dooyeweerd: “Leugen en Waarheid over het Calvinisme,” Nederland en Oranje 6 (1925) 81-90.

[50] Herman Dooyeweerd: Encyclopedia of the Science of Law (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2002), 152 [‘Encyclopedia’].

[51] Herman Dooyeweerd: “Introduction to a Transcendental Criticism of Philosophic Thought,” Evangelical Quarterly 19 (1947), 42-51. [‘Ev.Qu.’].

[52] Verburg 380, transcript of tape recording of address by Dooyeweerd on January 2, 1964 to the Vereniging voor Calvinistische Wijsbegeerte, my translation.

[53] Dooyeweerd clearly says that philosophy is not to be directed by theology. He criticizes, as based on the influence of Greek theoria, the view that philosophy is the servant of Christian theology. Herman Dooyeweerd: Transcendental Problems of Philosophic Thought (Eerdmans, 1948), 69. He says that theology is “a theoretical knowledge obtained in a synthesis of the logical function of thought and the temporal function of faith” (NC II, 562). Baader also places theology under the higher category of philosophy (Werke 5, 224).

[54] “All our acts [verrichtingen] come forth out of the soul (or spirit) but they function within the enkaptically structured whole of the human body” (“32 Propositions”; also NC III, 88).

[55] Abraham Kuyper: To Be Near Unto God (New York: Macmillan, 1925, now available online), Part 1. Originally published as Nabij God te Zijn (Kampen: Kok, 1908). This was written by Kuyper late in his life, after he had developed his ideas of sphere sovereignty. This work seems to be among the few works by Kuyper that were really appreciated by Dooyeweerd. He mentions Kuyper's Stone Lectures, his address at the opening of the Vrije Universiteit regarding sphere sovereignty, and works relating to "contemplation of life and of a meditative nature" [van levenbeschouwelijke en meditatieve aard] (Vijf en dertig, 6). Although Dooyeweerd criticized some of Kuyper’s ideas in his article “Kuyper’s Wetenschapsleer,” he did not criticize these mystical ideas. On the contrary, Dooyeweerd continued to emphasize the importance of Kuyper’s rediscovery of the importance of the supratemporal heart. And here we must remember that Kuyper read Baader (See "Kuyper").

[56] Herman Dooyeweerd: "Het Tijdsprobleem in de Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee," Philosophia Reformata 5 (1940), 160-182; 193-234, at 209:

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