Dr. J. Glenn Friesen

Herman Dooyeweerd: De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee (1935-36) Excerpt on Epistemology, Volume II

Notes regarding WdW II, 401

1. Corresponds to NC II, 468.

2. This section states that, unlike the analytical aspect, the psychical aspect does not offer the possibility of a Gegenstand. It does not set itself over-against other aspects.

3. There is a subject-object relation within the aspect of feeling. It is not to be confused with the Gegenstand-relation.

4. Now it is interesting that there is a subject-object not only with respect to things in other realms, but relation within the aspects themselves. This has not received the attention it deserves in interpretation of Dooyeweerd. I believe that the subject-object relation can be looked at in two ways:

a) Our distinguishing of different realms of reality. Inorganic, organic, animal and the supratemporal human realm.

b) a subject-object relation within the aspects themselves. See NC II, 369. In the succession of the aspects, there is an earlier and a later. The earlier aspects are "objectified" in the later.

5. I do not believe that these two ways of looking at the subject-object relation mean that there are two different kinds of relations. The distinguishing of our self from other realms of reality occurs through the temporal aspects. Our the subject-object relation in our psychical function "objectifies" the previous aspects that have already preceded it. This is the sensory function, as well as the forming of images of the moments that have already occurred (See NC II, 370). The logical subject-object relation then distinguishes those images from each other and compares them.

6. This has implications that have not been explored. The objectification by the sensory aspect is a kind of empiricism. And the comparison of images implies a correspondence theory of truth.

7. But Dooyeweerd's 'empiricism' and 'correspondence theory' is different from normally understood. His empiricism is different from British empiricism because he does not believe in things in themselves that are unrelated to our existence. Things exist only within their human supratemporal root. Similarly, his correspondence theory is not a copy theory in the sense of copying a reality that is independent of us.

8. The subject-object relation cannot be understood apart from Dooyeweerd's view of cosmic time, and the aspects as successive moments in our experience.

9. We act out of our supratemporal center. But within time, our experience is given in successive moments. Our intuition makes that experience our own.

10. In restricting the setting-over-against attitude to one connected with the logical aspect, Dooyeweerd is reacting against the Romanticist emphasis on experience as feeling. This is also evident in that he does not allow feeling to be one of the acts of our supratemporal self.

11. Because feelings do not involve a Gegenstand, they also do not cause any resistance.

12. Even the analytical function has no theoretical resistance as long as it functions within the enstatic continuity of time in naive experience. It is only when we consciously will or intend the Gegenstand relation by an epoché that we have the dis-stasis and the resulting Gegenstand.

13. The post-logical aspects are founded in the logical aspect. This gives the logical aspect a great importance in Dooyeweerd's thought, so much so that some may consider it to be rationalistic. He would deny this.

14. The NC improperly refers to the Gegenstand relation as "antithetical." That is too logical.

15. The NC improperly translates naive experience as the "fullness" of individual temporal reality." But naive experience is not full. It is naive and needs to be deepened. The Dutch word here is "volle niet-uiteengestelde individueele tijdelijke werkelijkheid." The emphasis is on the completely not set-apart. That does not come through in the NC.

16. Our naive thought is an in-denken, an inward thought, in enstasis. The in-denken is not mentioned in the NC. It seems closer to imagining than to thinking. Naive thought is bound to sensory images.

17. The NC Adds: “Even in the theoretical attitude of thought this relation [the analytical subject-object relation] has indeed nothing to do with the antithetical Gegenstand-relation. But here it can be opposed to non-logical subject-object relations. In addition its modal structure can be made in a ‘Gegenstand’ of analysis by abstracting it from the intermodal coherence of cosmic time in its continuity.”

This is the source of the great disagreement between Dooyeweerd and D.F. M. Strauss. Strauss thought that it was inconsistent to subject the analytic aspect as its own Gegenstand. He wanted to change the whole idea of Gegenstand to the logical subject-object distinction. Verburg reports that Dooyeweerd's copy of Strauss's thesis Begrip en Idee is filled with notes by Dooyeweerd commenting that Strauss did not understand him. Dooyeweerd wrote an article saying that Strauss's view, obliterating the differenced between the gegenstand relation and analysis, would destroy the irreducibility of the modal spheres.

18. as in earlier passages in the WdW, Dooyeweerd again refers to the function of thought (denk-functie). This identifies an act of thought with a function.