Robert D. Knudsen's Calvinistic Philosophy lectures (Disks 11)

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 5 (disk 11)

The modal distinction of thus and so and the additional distinction of this and that may be distinguished but never separated.  A particular number always has the characteristic of number.  The same is true for all other modalities.

Now Vollenhoven said there are connections within the modes and between the modes.  The simplest case is a relation within the same modality, for example, the relationship between the numbers 3 and 4.  In the analytical, the relationship between premises and a conclusion.  This relationship is called samenhang.  There is a irreversible order, the spatial presuppose the arithmetical and not vice-versa.  The economic presupposes the social and not vice-versa.  More complex presuppose the less complex.  Substrate (all functions that are presupposed) and the higher functions are the Superstrate.  The connection between modalities also consist of the fact that the more complex functions follow the less complex functions but they also refer back to them, this is retrocipation.  All modes look back to the modes that come before it.  A line is always a line, it can be measured and number.  It looks back to the arithmetical, but it is not to be reduced to the arithmetical.  The higher functions take up into themselves the lower functions.  The lower modes look forward to the higher ones, this is called anticipation.  An illustration of this is an irrational number in which a series of numbers anticipate space (MY NOTE: Knudsen admits ignorance here due to his lack of mathematical knowledge, however I think what Vollenhoven was getting at with irrational numbers were numbers that were used to explain a ratio: Pi, Eulers Constant, the golden ratio, etc).  In differential and integral calculus a series anticipates the mechanical.

In all the modalities with the exception of the highest and lowest you have both anticipations and retrocipations.  In faith, there are no anticipations and in the arithmetic there is no retrocipations.  Now because of the fact that the substrate and superstrate differ in man and in the animal, there is no function that man and animal have abstractly in common.  Man and animal do not abstractly share the same functions in the psychical.  In the anthropology you always get a holistic point of view, every function in man has a specific individuality.  In animals each function is unique to the animal and not shared with other functions.

Vollenhoven called a particular thing that embrace two or more subject-functions a subject unity.  Something having various mutually anticipating and retrocipating functions it is a systasis.  The word systasis is to refer to a thing in its concreteness.  A systasis may be designated according to its highest function.  A circle would be a spatial systasis.  A man is a pistical systasis.  What qualifies a man as a totality in its entire individuality is that he then depends upon reaches out toward a firm ground of belief in God and his promises.

Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd thought of man as qualified as a subject in his leading function, the pistic.  Dooyeweerd differed later in his thought and said man is not qualified by any function, man is free.  Nevertheless individual acts of man may be qualified modally.  One of the consequences of this would mean a move in Dooyeweerd’s thinking that mans life is ruled or that we understand man in terms of principles in which one vests his assurance.  Dooyweerd will look deeper and will try to see all principles from a deeper background.  Man is carried along by religious driving motives.

Systasis might be a thing or it might not be a thing.  He said it would be a thing if it had a subject function that was active.  Is a circle a thing?  Not according to this definition.  A rock and water are active.  The subject function of the thing, the highest function is its leading function.  Man functions subjectively in all the modalities, when you describe the man as a thinker, he is qualified analytically.  Since a systasis cannot exist apart from its manifold connections, it is not a thing in itself (Ding an sich).  Now the anticipations, retrocipations, the relations between the modes, the connections and connections within the modes cannot be reduced one to another.