Dr. J. Glenn Friesen

Studies relating to Herman Dooyeweerd Linked Glossary of Terms

©J. Glenn Friesen 2003-2006

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.)

Explication is the making conscious of what we know only implicitly in naive experience. Theory explicates or articulates the different aspects.

The modal aspects are implicitly included in naive experience. Their "ex-plication", the theoretical unfolding of the functional modalities of meaning from what has been given in the naive attitude, is a task of philosophy, which has to make use of theoretical analysis and synthesis. (NC II, 36).

But this does not mean that we are implicitly aware of the aspects in our pre-theoretical experience. In his last article, “De Kentheoretische Gegenstandsrelatie en de Logische Subject-Objectrelatie,” Philosophia Reformata 40 (1975), 83-101, Dooyeweerd says that D.F.M. Strauss’s rejection of the Gegenstand-relation involves “real antinomies.” Strauss blurs the crucial distinction between pre-theoretical and theoretical experience, and negates the distinction between theoretical and pre-theoretical intuition. Contrary to Strauss’s assertions, we do not have implied knowledge of aspects in pre-theoretical experience. Nor are aspects deduced or abstracted from things. That is a “serious misunderstanding.” Aspects are therefore not kinds of properties, as is often asserted in reformational philosophy. It is the other way around: the modal aspects lie at the basis of individuality structures; things are individuations of the empirical functions of the aspects. Dooyeweerd says that Strauss’s rejection of the Gegenstand-relation reflects the most common prejudices of modern epistemology. And Dooyeweerd emphasizes that the ideas of the irreducibility of the modal spheres and their coherence are not to be separated from the transcendental idea of their root-unity in the religious center of human existence. We are not conscious of their differentiaiton in our native experience.

Articulation depends on logical distinction. But this is only clealry done in theory, after the dis-stasis. (II, 406).

Revised Aug 21/06