Dr. J. Glenn Friesen

Studies relating to Herman Dooyeweerd Linked Glossary of Terms

© J. Glenn Friesen 2003-2005

Linked Glossary of Terms
(references to De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee, unless indicated. See concordance for correlation with pages in the New Critique. The concordance is in pdf format.)

In Dooyeweerd's anthropology, there are four enkaptically interwoven individuality structures. The act-structure is the fourth and most encompassing. The act structure is founded in a lower structure qualified by feeling-drives in which the psychical aspect has not yet opened its anticipatory spheres (NC II, 114, ft.)

Thus the natural body form (lichaams-gestalte) is the (nodal) point of intertwinement between the various structures. ("32 Propositions on Anthropology," (1942))

Dooyeweerd says that this anthropology is only for the temporal body, and not the supratemporal selfhood, which is the religious root of man's temproal existence. In this religious root human life is still "undivided."

Our acts come out of our supratemporal soul or spirit, but they function within the enkaptic structural whole of the body, by which man, under the guidance of normative viewpoints, intentionally [bedoelend] directs himself to states of affairs in reality or in our imagination, and then makes these states of affairs innerly his own [innerlijk eigen maakt] by relating them to his selfhood [ikheid]. The human act life reveals itself in the three basic directions of knowing, imagining and willing. (Reformatie en Scholastiek in de Wijsbegeerete, Vol. I, 137; cited by Verburg 266).

Verburg says that Dooyeweerd first outlined the act structure in an address on January 4, 1943, when he presented his "32 Propositions on Anthropology" to the Association for Calvinistic Philosophy. (Verburg 266). See De leer van den mensch in de W.D.W., Corr. Bladen 5 (1942).

Revised Sept 8/07