Robert D. Knudsen's Calvinistic Philosophy lectures (Disks 9)

This is a continuation of the class lectures on Calvinistic Philosophy given by Robert D. Knudsen at Westminster Theological Seminary.  As before, the information in the audio recordings have not been validated for accuracy (use at your own risk).
 

Vollenhoven, part 3 (disk 9)

Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd both break with the traditional view of subject and object in which the object is identified with what is called the Genenstand.  This break is significant for them and necessary to their ideas that the logical is an aspect with its unique subject-object relation.  There are other aspects that have their own subject-object relation.  The eminence position is the starting point within the subject-object relation of the aspects.  Dooyeweerd called the Gegenstand or antithetic relationship.  The attempt then is to get behind this Gegenstand relation.

According the Vollenhoven this logical subject-object relationship is not ultimate.  If indeed it is only an aspect you would not expect it to be ultimate.  More basic is the relationship of the ‘I’ (concrete ego) to what is given.  Then we do not have an agreement between thought and being, our knowing comes roughly by working over what is given by the ‘I’.

Article before Free University appointment, A few fundamental principles of Epistemology:

Knowing or in the Dutch Kennin is a relation and he wanted to come to a clear distinction between Kennin (or Larenkennin) or Theoretical thought and Denken or pre-Theoretical thought.  Kennin refers to a state that of the possession of truth by the subject that knows.  Truth about something in possession of the subject is Kennis.  Now this truth can come either by have it communication or by investigation.  In Kennis there’s always a connection of the truth with the subject.  In order to understand truth one must understand man and his task.  One comes to the possession of Kennis by way of discharging his vocation to be a subject that is by way of obedience.  Knudsen believes this is important because we see in the understanding of knowing we have this religious covenantal direction and that is exactly what the movement of Kuyper wanted.

In the same article, Vollenhoven also treated of the logos idea again.  If the entire creation is called the cosmos then to this is cosmos the unformulated truth.  If we call this logos then we have to say the logical and the a-logical are parts of the cosmos.  So you have the idea from the Scriptures that the Logos that creates the cosmos, you do not have that everything in the cosmos is of a logical nature.

Truth and being cannot be regarded as being on one line.  Thought may not be confused with the divine cosmic order.

According to Vollenhoven, there is a harmony between the logical and a-logical.  A particular truth always points to the a-logical, truth is always truth about something.  Furthermore, if truth is always truth about something it must always be distinguished from the truth.

In a very elaborate discussion of Vollenhoven, a South African van der Merwe sees in the distinction of the logical as an aspect and the remainder of things (a-logical) the first step of the development of the scheme of modalities.

Vollenhoven developed this idea in opposition to a very widespread form-content scheme (subject = form, object = content).  If we have Kennis, it presupposes a 3-fold relation and in developing this idea he gives this subject-object understanding a new interpretation.  Instead of thinking of form and content, this scheme is restricted to the logical aspect so both the form and the content are logical and it is within the logical aspect that there is a connection by which the logos is related to that which is a-logical.  This side he called states of affairs (side that relates to the content).  The form is oriented to the subject, we have to reflect on the subject.  It is thought that brings form and content together.  A particular truth is always a joining of form and content.  In thought the subject brings into being a connection contentful truth and states of affairs.

Vollenhoven, in taking this position, when he says for example if your in this situation where you are thinking there has to be a reflection on the a-logical self, it is the self that thinks.  It is not an abstract consciousness.  Furthermore, it cannot be identified with the center of man.  In our thinking, there is a direction to the self, the reflection on the self is not the self itself.  The logical remains an aspect of human activity, it is not the heart of man. 

Thus we have the position of the WdW in general.  All human activity has its logical side to it.  Our thinking is a logically qualified act.  If so, it is an act among other acts and one must reflect on the total self which is active in this total thought.

Vollenhoven’s Inaugural speech at the Free University (Logos en Ratio, Oct 1926):

Vollenhoven used the results of this previous study in order to give a critical review, to show what effects have issued for western epistemology from the failure to distinguish between God and the cosmos and the law spheres.  Now at this time he had already begun to distinguish the law spheres.