Robert D. Knudsen's Calvinistic Philosophy lectures (Disks 14)

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 8 (disk 14)

The subjectivist has to take position in regards to myth.  Universal subjectivist for example would be mythological or non-mythological.  The mythical thinker thought in terms of becoming of the gods and the world.  They were cosmogonic-cosmological and purely cosmological thinkers.  So there is a method of development.

By way of criticism of Vollenhoven’s method

1.     Knudsen holds that this is a good method.  It has been employed to some degree in the history of ideas.  Very important is how the distinctions are made with which the investigation is carried on.  When you try to compress a thinker, sometimes they don’t fit.

2.     Thinkers are typed according to what appeared to be rigid and minute classifications and we must state this, determining that a thinker stands in a particular line doesn’t explain him.  How does one account for influence of one thinker on another? 

3.     Vollenhoven didn’t want to fall into the trap of categorizing ancient philosophers in terms for modern times, but does he make distinctions of modern philosophers into ancient molds?

It remains that Vollenhoven tried to erect a history of philosophy on a consistently Christian basis.

Heman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977)

Born in Amsterdam, his father was a follower of Abraham Kuyper (Doleantie).  His mother was influenced by the German leader Kohlbrugge,  Dooyeweerd’s father read from De Heraut.  Dooyeweerd entered the Free University of Amsterdam in 1912 unsure of what to study.  A friend recommended the study of Law.  On July 2, 1917 he defended his doctoral dissertation (De Ministerraad in het Nederlandsche Staaatsrecht or Cabinet Ministers under Dutch Constitutional Law). 

He first worked in matters of Jurisprudence.  In 1922 he was invited to be the adjunct director of the Abraham Kuyper foundation in De Haag.  This foundation was developed to study principles of the Anti-Revolutionary party (today absorbed into the Christian Democratic Appeal or Christian-Democratisch Appel).

In 1926 he became professor in the department of Jurisprudence at the Free University of Amsterdam.

Dooyeweerd’s philosophy must be understood as a Christian Transcendental Philosophy and when we speak of its character we do not only have the transcendental critique.  The first real suggestion of this form occurs in 1939, the transcendental critique of theoretical thought.  The earliest appearance in English is in the evangelical quarterly volume 19 pages 32-41 called introduction to a transcendental criticism of philosophical thought.

We affirm that Dooyeweerd’s thinking had a transcendental thrust.  This transcendental thrust was virtually assured by the first steps in developing his philosophy and transcendental critique from the very beginning.

During 1922-1926 Dooyeweerd wrote a series of articles and he wanted to show the relevance of the Calvinistic world and life view to statecraft.  Dooyeweerd believed that this worldview was fundamentally rooted in the Scriptures but did not believe that a theory of statecraft could be read directly out of the Scriptures.

Like Vollenhoven, Dooyeweerd believed that the Scriptures speak to the entire man.  Furthermore as Kuyper presented Calvinism was a world and life view.  As such it requires the undivided allegiance of the entire man.  Now then one then cannot read out a Christian statecraft from the scriptures, one cannot derive from them the fundamental principles on the order of theoretical axioms to which statecraft must conform.  This is where Dooyeweerd stands apart from a major emphasis of the Kuyperian tradition.

While statecraft could not be read out of the scriptures but the principles must conform to it.  Dooyeweerd had to fix on something that would present a meaningful criterion for his scientific studies.  The idea of Law, the law in this sense is not deduceable from the scripture but if you live according to scripture it will manifest itself with respect to the law idea somehow.  So Dooyeweerd came to the conclusion that all of your theoretical concepts are going to involve one or another idea of Law and the idea of Law becomes the instrument that gives you this connection.

There is then a divinely given order of law (Lex Divina) to which every fact is subject in the keeping or in the breech.

Dooyeweerd developed a theory of law spheres.  These are modes, how things appear to the what.  These were related to one another by anticipations (protentional) and retrocipations (retentional).  Dooyeweerd called these together analogies.  In our naïve experiencing these are held together in a systatic unity.  In theory they are distinguished and set it apart one from another.

Robert D. Knudsen's Calvinistic Philosophy lectures (Disks 12 and Disk 13)

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 6 (disk 12)

Interfunctional connection is a connection between two or more systasis.  Intrafunctional connection is a connection within a systasis, example is a lack of desire to work due to sorrow.  More complicated instances occur in objectification.  There is the activity that Vollenhoven called patentizing and latentizing.  The latent functions of iron are bought to light by the activity of man in making it into a machine.  There is a second think called an actualizing.  In patentizing you take something that is a subject and you bring its latent possibilities and you make them patent.  In actualizing you have an objective qualified thing, a machine is objectively qualified, a machine is actualized when it is put to work.

Both patentizing and actualizing are possible only then when the necessary presuppositions and substrate are present.  It must be on the foundation of the substrate.  It is this connection, which presupposes the successive realization of the presupposition of   actualizing and patentizing would be called objectification.

In man all functions are present in a subjective way.  Therefore, in man we can speak only of patentizing.  We may speak of man realizing his subjective possibilities.  Vollenhoven did not speak of actualizing in terms of man.  Dooyeweerd developed later that mans potentialities could be objectified.  He can never be objectified in his whole being.  Now that has a relationship to existential thought.  Your existentialist is concerned with the objectification of man.  The idea is that man as a whole you can be understood within a pattern that pertains only to nature.  In this way of thinking you want to redeem him of this and we see him in terms of freedom of himself.  Man according to his structure it is impossible to objectify him, only certain capabilities of man can be objectified but not the whole man.

Now in spite of the fact that you cannot talk of actualizing in regards to man; men may indeed work together with the power available to them in associations and so forth having objectified things.  These things have a founding and leading functions; in business the leading one is the economic, the state the juridical, the family, the ethical, etc.

Now in addition to the this-that and thus-so scheme, Vollenhoven distinguished the dimension of the religious.  For the religious the leading of the creation by the spirit of God in relation to the word of God is fundamental.  Vollenhoven will insist strongly as he has upon this faith relationship that we respond to the word of God by the power of the Spirit of God.  Religion presupposes the created being of men with all their functions in mutual connection according to the image of God so that man reflects the glory of the LORD.  In this position as one looks at the religious there is always a tendancy to look at it in a structured fashion.  Vollenhoven, said on the side of the subject man is a correlate of the triune God.  The structure of man presupposes the three-fold office of Prophet, Priest and King.  But in order to understand Religion one must understand the opposition of good and evil.  Vollenhoven said that with man there is the question of good and evil in the analytical function.  It is only here where we distinguish subjectively between good and bad.  The logical law is the first within the cosmic order that has the characteristic of norm.  Correlate with the norms on the law side is choice on the subject side.  You may choose to think properly or not think properly.  The choice is that of obedience or disobedience.  If we are going to understand this normative properly, one must be careful to think in terms of the fundamental religious commitment of man.

Vollenhoven says this duality existed before the fall of man in the realm of angels.  At first for Adam and Eve it was indicated danger.  The fall into sin Adam and Eve were bought into experience this duality as a reality.  Good stands over against evil, now man is inclined to evil by nature and he is guilty before the requirement of obedience.  Christ was obedient and atoned for sin and Christ has reconciled us to God.  Now the function that has been turned to the left (toward evil) has been turned to the right (toward good).  With sin, there is not a loss of the ontological character of anything ontological in the creation, but rather the creation is still there but nevertheless it is turned away and man worships the creature.  Christ has reconciled us to God and turns it toward God. 

The distinction between good and evil presents us with the difference between right and left and this difference refers to the direction in which a particular function turns.  This difference of functioning cannot be reduced to the thus-so and this-that.  Vollenhoven insisted that the fall did not remove any part of the creation but it brought the religious direction to the left, away from God.  In this way the antithesis came also among the earthly subjects.  The antithesis was in the unseen creation and now through the fall it is manifest in the seen creation. 

Vollenhoven’s view does not allow for an easy solution to the sin problem, for example of the loss of the image of God interpreted as the illumination of certain human functions.  It does not allow us to point to some functions as good and some as evil and to raise the good over the bad. 

Vollenhoven spoke further about knowing.  The pre-theoretical and the theoretical, theoretical is based upon pre-theoretical knowing.   This is important for our understanding of the scriptures, at first our reading of the scriptures is pre-theoretical.  All of our theologizing in the theoretical is based upon our understanding in the pre-theoretical.  As we have seen all know involves a connection between the knower and what is known. 

Now here is where the followers of Vollenhoven differ from those of Dooyeweerd.  Dooyeweerd is going to say that if an act of thought is analytically qualified, that in theoretical thinking the analytical is deepened.  Vollenhoven makes further distinctions of more refined spheres than in pre-theoretical thinking; furthermore it deals with a single law sphere and it is the analysis of a non-logical aspect.  To make this possible the aspect must have been isolated and you distinguished the aspects in this way.  You don’t do it and your principle of the exclusion of antinomies apply.  Now he talks about vertical isolation, isolation of a part of a field (example: animal psychology and human psychology).  In horizontal isolation there is concentration on retrocipations and anticipations, from the psychical you anticipate the social, in the social you retrocipate the psychical.  Furthermore in theoretical thinking there is no single method, because the method is dependent upon the particular function being investigated.  Method in theology is not the same as method in psychology.  The most important thing for Vollenhoven is that the special sciences exist because of modal fields of investigation and not because of manifold points of view.

The result of theoretical activity is a statement that is not altogether analytic and not altogether non-analytic.  It squares with the scheme of modal aspects.  The mathematical axiom is not just mathematical but has also a logical character demanding a bridging of the logical and numerical.  Theoretical synthesis is characteristic of the theoretical concept.

Now that epistemology rests upon ontology then is implied that in knowing the boundary between God and cosmos must be recognized and thus knowledge about God and the cosmos must be distinguished.

Now with respect to pre-theoretical knowledge, one must distinguish between the various sources of knowing, nature and word revelation of God.  For knowledge about God, word revelation is the primary source and correlate with this knowledge is the pistical function of man.  In the knowledge of the cosmos two activities must be distinguished, knowing the cosmos in terms of the cosmos and with word revelation of God.  All knowing from the word of God is pistical activity.  Now there is also the activity of knowing the cosmos in the terms of the cosmos.  In this connection this knowledge is modally conditioned, this knowledge possesses a direction, it establishes a certain path.

Vollenhoven, part 7 (disk 13)

Knowledge is modally conditioned implies that there can be talk of knowledge when there is the presence of the analytical function, an animal cannot know.  The logical norm is also modally conditioned and in the analytical I recognize the principle of contradiction as a normative law.  If we acknowledge that God has set everything under its corresponding laws, then nothing may transgress these creational laws. 

The direction in our knowing; there is obedience to the norm or disobedience to the norm.  Here for the first time we have for the first time the distinction on the analytical level between good and bad.  There are mistakes in remembering and in logical mistakes and it is not meaningless to recognize error, it is the disruption due to sin.

The present is dependent on the past and it is also directed toward the future.

The second source of knowledge is the word of God.  This knowledge is gained by the restored pistical function.  You don’t loose faith, it is just directed in the right or wrong direction and only when it is directed in the right direction that you have the eyes to see what God has in his cosmos.  This can only be said by Christian epistemology but it is truly possible only for a Calvinistic epistemology, which arranges under nature all the cosmos accept the word of God itself.  The Calvinist sees nature as a totality and the entire created state is a natural state restored by the grace of God. 

Now Vollenhoven saw the pistical function resting upon all the others.  It is not set antithetically over against reason.  It is not that the pistical gives us additions and corrections over against reason.  The pistical is a part of nature and it is corrupted by sin and must be restored to its natural state.  Differences in function may not be paralleled with the difference between good and evil.

No concrete knowledge of the cosmos is possible unless both activities of the pistical and everything else operate together.  Only when knowledge is religious in character does it become concrete (Kennis).  Self-knowledge is only possible as your restored pistic function is turned to the word of God and lived out of the word of God.  Man can get knowledge of God from nature as well (MY NOTE: Romans 1 does give indication that the heathen knows God through the cosmos but due to his sin suppresses that knowledge, Knudsen does not bring out if Vollenhoven acknowledges that or not).  The role of this knowledge is the search of faith for the agreement of knowledge gained through the cosmos to what the word of God says about it.

Transition thoughts about Vollenhoven:

Vollenhoven in collaboration with Dooyeweerd developed the WdW.  They have the modal doctrine in common.  The argument comes who developed what first?  There were nuances in each of their thought. 

Vollenhoven’s philosophizing doesn’t have so explicitly the transcendental cache of Dooyeweerds method.

  

Even though Vollenhoven rejects the logos idea and sees logic as an aspect among others and as he sees in theory the combination of the logical and non-logical and sees a synthesis.  Nevertheless he uses analytical distinctions too freely and indiscriminately.

It seem that this type of thing will show up in his way of thinking about the history of philosophy.

Vollenhoven’s Consistent-Problem Historical Method

Much of Vollenhoven’s career was taken up by the development of this idea.  The application of this method lead to the publication of the first volume of a projected greater work on the history of philosophy, in which the first volume dealt with Greek Philosophy.   This was a blow to Vollenhoven and his publications never again reached book form.

Knudsen noted that Vollenhoven who has attracted a large number of followers and scholars to the Calvinistic Philosophy.  This is due in large part to the influence of H. Evan Runner (Philosophy professor at Calvin College).  One of Runners students Calvin Seerveld (Professor Emeritus, Institute for Christian Studies) prefers Vollenhoven’s method for the history of philosophy to that of Dooyeweerd’s method.

The method proceeds on the notion that similar ideas occur over and over again in the history of philosophy.  As Calvin Seerveld says, as his working hypothesis was molding his judgments Vollenhoven was struck by the similarity of certain conceptions of Edington, Einstein, and Archimeadies.  He hit upon the idea that there were perhaps definite types of  philosophical conception, certain systematic interpretations of reality that keep occurring in the history of thought.  Vollenhoven went to find out if this were true, so as not to read modern conceptions back into earlier ones, Vollenhoven began at the simple beginnings of Greek Philosophy.  He asked what each person had to say about the structure, origin, the troubled state and the meaning of reality.  Out of this study rose one main categories for interpreting Greek and subsequent western philosophy and evidence that there are recurring philosophical positions since the beginning of philosophical reflection.  These were arraigned according to types; the materialistic monism of Thales is held for example by Leucippus, Democratus, Arstippus, Epicurus, Lucretius, Casendy, and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Now there were major distinctions in the history of philosophy.  He sought to bring out the major divisions under a Christian interpretation by distinguishing philosophy from before the synthesis, during the synthesis and after the synthesis.  Again the modes of being are recognized in full by the Christian faith (God, Law, Cosmos).  A full ontology must speak of all these modes.  Ancient ontology could not be complete.  In ancient ontology there was only an eye for the Law and the Cosmos and interpreted in an erroneous fashion.  Where do you find the law?  The realist answer that it was outside the cosmos and the non-realist that it was in the cosmos.  At the first the non-realist held sway in ancient Greek thought.  The objectivist seek to discover the law in the object.  The subjectivist seek to discover the law in the subject, they attempt to reduce the object to the subject. 

In subjectivist orientations Vollenhoven distinguished for one universalism, individualism, and partial universalism.  In a Christian the universal and the individual always appear together.  In non-Christian thought one is attempted to derive the one from the other.

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.

Robert D. Knudsen's Calvinistic Philosophy lectures (Disks 10)

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 4 (disk 10)

Vollenhoven began to distinguish between cosmic unities and modal differentiations that intersect the cosmic unities.  There are cosmic unities such as man, animals, etc which intersect the cosmic unities.  These unities are ordered in a particular order and may not be subordinated to another.

Vollenhoven attempted to develop his own understanding of the world and he came on stream with this in October 1930 in his syllabus in which he developed his Isagoge Philosophiae (Introduction to Philosophy).  He distinguishes between philosophy as an act and philosophy as a result.  Philosophy is a human effort and the result of the human effort and he makes a sharp distinction between ontology and epistemology and ontology has the primacy.  Now he took the position that his method had to be thetic.  It had to present his own thesis and only then critical.  Furthermore, one must take into consideration also the position of those who have gone before and position of contemporary, on must see whether they see the problems correctly.

In this writing Vollenhoven said that philosophy is not the only kind of theoretical knowledge, there is also knowledge of the special sciences, but all theoretical knowledge is distinguished between the pre-theoretical knowledge.  Theoretical knowledge presupposes the pre-theoretical and is dependent upon it.  Vollenhoven opposed the position that everything must be explained in terms of theoretical knowledge.

Philosophy may not be considered apart from the special sciences.  Neither may it come into conflict with pre-theoretical knowledge.  Now to the latter belongs the knowledge of faith.  Faith is a pre-theoretical insight, it may be refined theoretically, but is not dependent upon it.  For a Christian belief in God’s word revelation and rejection of any other revelation, is a pre-theoretical matter.  Now a Christian philosophic system is required to include thoughts about scriptural beliefs, but it must be completely in agreement with that faith and scriptural in character.

Scriptural faith is presented with the following problems

1.     Who is the creator?  The answer is God who is sovereign in his creation, revelation and providence.

2.     What is the creation in relation to God?  The answer is the creation is dependent upon the creator and is subordinate to his sovereign law, revelation and providence.

3.     Where does the boundary between the two lie?  The law is the boundary between God and the cosmos.

Only God is the sovereign lawgiver and the creation is subject to his law.

Now the task of philosophy is to think about the creation.  Philosophy may not deny the states of affair of creation.  The field of the investigation of philosophy is the entire extent of the cosmos and may not transgress the boundary or the law.  Philosophy must retain its own character and it may not pass over into theology or empty speculation.

What is the relationship of Theology and Philosophy?  Theology is among the special sciences, it is among the other special sciences and must explore its philosophical foundations.

Vollenhoven distinguishes between the heavenly creation and the earthly creation and he investigated the distinction and connection between these spheres.

H.G. Stoker believed that one may philosophize about parts of the creation that is unseen.  Stoker and Vollenhoven differ between Dooyeweerd on this point.  Dooyeweerd thinks of the limits of science within our experience.  The method that has come out of Dooyeweerd’s thought is an empirical transcendental method.

Vollenhoven maintained that there are unseen things that we may philosophize about (heaven, angels, etc.). 

In reference to the earthly creation, Vollenhoven attempted to make the least complicated distinctions to build up to more complicated distinctions by making further distinctions.  The primary distinction is the “thus-so” distinction.  You talk about an earthly being in a particular way, and we refer to it arithmetically, spatially, physically, organically…thus and so.  Now Vollenhoven originally distinguished 15 modal aspects of the created cosmos.  Each of the aspects were irreducible to the other.  If one does not keep this in mind he falls into anatomies, that is into logical contradictions that cannot be resolved by being more clear, the boundaries are being transgressed and can only be resolved by making proper distinctions within the sphere.

Vollenhoven’s original 15 aspects

1.     Arithmetic

2.     Spatial

3.     Mechanical

4.     Physical

5.     Organical

6.     Psychical

7.     Analytical

8.     Historical

9.     Linguistic

10.  Social

11.  Economic

12.  Aesthetical

13.  Juridical

14.  Ethical

15.  Pistical

Over the course of time, by various individuals in this school these have be changed, rearranged, deleted etc.

There is the idea that when we examine the created cosmos we have to give attention to the states of affairs and we may not impose distinctions or take the place of the difficult effort of ferreting out truths that exist within the cosmos as God has created.  This is different from the task of the Theologian who’s job it is to engage in the special science of Theology.

Now if a particular subject exists in a particular mode we must also hold that there is a corresponding particularity of law.  You have the law side and a subject side.  A psychical subject must have a psychical law that applies to it.  It implies that there are particular laws that hold for the particular law spheres. 

Now here we find the outworking the principle that the logical is not considered an all embracing a common denominator.  It too is embedded in the cosmic diversity.

The second simplest distinction in the cosmos is the ‘this-that’ distinction.  This occurs in all the modal aspects of reality.  All the ‘this-that’ for which the same law pertains constitutes a sphere of the particular law.  Since there are many laws there are many law spheres. 

The ‘thus-so’ and the ‘this-that’ may be distinguished from one another and yet intersected with modal distinctions.  A particular number has the characteristics of number.  You have the number and it is this-that number.  There are connections within and between the modes.  You can have relationships within the arithmetical between the numbers 3 and 4.  Another case in the Analytical is a conclusion following from two premises.  Vollenhoven calls such a relationship samenhang   (My note: I don’t know if this is the correct Dutch word, the online translator I used translated this as connection).  There are relationships between the modes because there are a natural order of subject functions.  Spatial characteristic presupposes the Arithmetical.  Analytical thought presupposes emotional relationship.  The more complex relationship presuppose the less complex relationships.  The functions that are presupposed are the substrate (all functions have substrate, except the arithmetical).

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.

Robert D. Knudsen's Calvinistic Philosophy lectures (Disks 8)

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 2 (disk 8)

Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd began the development of WdW with the analysis of the particular modes of reality.  Dooyeweerd set his attention to the legal and the moral.  This had been the major focus in Jurisprudence as well as Philosophy and Theology.  Dooyeweerd had called this the Cape Horn of Jurisprudence.  Vollenhoven approached matters from the point of view of the problems dealt with in his dissertation.  He dealt with two problems 1) The relationship between mathematics and logic and 2) The relationship of mathematics to natural science especially to physics.

Vollenhoven sought in his dissertation that certain lines of thought in the theory of mathematics are a direct result of positions are taken in respect to metaphysics.  He talked about Empiricism, Formalism, and Intuitionism.  He viewed the Empirical and Formalistic as monistic and Intuitionism as dualistic.  Monism starts with the 1 to explain the many.  Dualism starts with the many to explain the 1.  Vollenhoven takes the position that the theistic standpoint that is able to develop a consistent dualistic viewpoint.  The reason is that it does not have to deny the peculiarly of mathematical knowledge.  Here you get the sphere sovereignty idea creeping in.  How are we going to understand the diversity of the cosmos in relation to its unity?  Our Christian viewpoint does not have to deny the peculiarly of mathematical knowledge by making it subject to logic or natural science.  Thus, we attempt to show that theism accounts for multiplicity in the cosmos.  We note the refusal to base mathematics in logic is in both Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd and this denial was crucial for the development of the law spheres.  It is opposed to the attempt of Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead in Principia Mathematica, to understand the foundation of mathematics in logical terms.

According to Dooyeweerd, all of these aspects are going to be empirical in a broad sense of the term, because they are going to fall in our experience and modes of our experiencing.

With respect to Vollenhoven’s idea that Christianity offers a most consistent dualism, did he distinguish sufficiently between the creator creature distinction and a philosophical dualism within the confines to the cosmos?

Vollenhoven concluded that monism in the guise of materialism or psycho-monism was not able to provide mathematics a solid basis in a system.  Dualism saw distinctiveness of the psyche, it had to be distinguished from the physical and both make contribution to the knowledge situation.  In contrast monism discovers an all-inclusive principle in the empirical.

Vollenhoven included that intuitionism had brought to light a truth that even though those not of the household of faith they can come up with truth.  Vollenhoven said that thought play a part with respect to that which is not thought.  In mathematics that which is non-mental is never absent from thinking.  WdW later in the development of the idea of the concept; a theoretical concepts involves the logical and non-logical (synthesis).

Vollenhoven maintain that if intuitionism had come up with insight and if he agreed monism either sacrifices the mental to the non-mental or the non-mental to the mental (reductionism).

In Vollenhoven’s stance there is a departure from the idea of the objective logos.  Vigorous departure from the idea that what is amendable to thought, logical forms embedded in reality by the divine Logos.

Furthermore, intuitionism has room for the normative.  It can recognize the peculiarity of mathematical principles.  It does not fall into the problems connected with actual infinity as logicism does.  If you absolutism the logical and if you do not see in its distinction from the mathematical you can fall into problems with actual infinity.

Vollenhoven insisted that there is no reduction of space to number and he resists subordinating mathematics to logic.  Logic may not be reduced to number.  Axioms are not purely mathematical.  Axioms presuppose the norm of the logical.

Norms are not simply methodological, but are divinely ordained.  Vollenhoven in his dissertation opposes Neo-Kantianism, which gave undo place to methodological procedure.  Neo-Kantianism the object of your thought is developed in the process of thought itself.  Vollenhoven distinguishes the logical object from other objects, there is a logical subject-object relationship which has its own identity.  Generally speaking in the subject-object relationship you have the subject (observer) over against the object (observed), the thinker over against the object of thought in which there are these objective logical forms.

The subject-object relation exists in each aspect of reality (subject to the law that holds for that aspect).  Vollenhoven begins here; the logical object is distinguished from all other objects.  When you have a logical object, you don’t have reality as a whole but just a part that must be seen within the whole.  All norms are divine in origin and that divine authority is the ground of the norms of thought.  Norms are not purely methodological.  The norms are divine in origin because of the subject-object relationship.

You have a logical subject-object relationship, you have other subject-object relationship and they then are on the subject side and subject to divine law.  The object then can occur in relations other than that of the Gegenstand relation.  Vollenhoven (and Dooyeweerd) hold that there is a subject-object relation outside the Gegenstand relation.  They make a distinction between the subject-object relation in all of our activity and the Gegenstand relation where we abstract a side of it.

Examples given:

A chalkboard eraser – it is for something and used by me (Knudsen).

A table – it is constructed for something

A bird’s nest – has meaning in the life of the bird.

Robert D. Knudsen's Calvinistic Philosophy lectures (Disks 7)

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).
 

Stoker, part 2, Vollehoven, part 1 (disk 7)

Stoker indeed criticized Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd for advocating the idea of Law as the boundary between God and the cosmos and he substituted his own idea of creation as the boundary between God and the cosmos.  Knudsen did mention a type of criticism of the law idea as being formal and empty from a Christian point of view.  Stoker did not critique from this point.  It was not because he thought the V & D advocated that the law as abstract from creation.  That possibility is already excluded in that Stoker allows for the law to be a legitimate boundary idea (God is one side and the cosmos on the other).

J.M. Spier (Introduction to Christian Philosophy) comments on Stoker’s substitution of law idea with creation.  One should not think that there is an opposition here because the idea of law includes the idea of creation.

Stoker’s reason for questioning V & D use of law as boundary lies elsewhere, their view (particularly D) it involved the idea that there is nothing in the cosmos that is not subject to law.  Freedom is freedom in subjection to law. 

Now Stoker took another path, he wanted to assert that the being of the cosmos is not exhausted in being subject to law, there is something more.  The service of God is not simply obedience but free activity with one’s own sphere of competency.

When Stoker uses creation in this way he attempts to make it philosophical relevant that is questionable.  How do you make the creation idea philosophically relevant?  Stoker associates the creation idea with an area of freedom, it acts as his guarantor; we are not only subject to law but to freedom in the sphere of competency as well.  The problem enters in where you address this “more than” mean.  To what is law conformity to be contrasted?  And this thing we’re contrasting can it have any meaning apart from law conformity?  The creation involves everything including law conformity.  Freedom is just as created as law.  Creation applies to the entire cosmos.

How is this universal creation idea philosophically relevant?  How does it present us with criteria for the formation of religious concepts?  Stoker has contrasted his view with law as if it were a question of one boundary idea over against another.  Dooyeweerd from the first held to the notion that creation idea is encompassed by the law idea. 

Dooyeweerd began he philosophical reflections in a conscious effort in the spirit of Abraham Kuyper to make relevant the reformed world and life view in particular to the formation of Christian statecraft.  To this end he chose the idea of law as the instrument.  He sought a philosophical relevant criterion, which could be used as a universal principle for the interpretation and criticism of philosophical positions.  The criterion had its point of origin and point of reference in a radically Christian worldview.  This was the idea of law.  For V & D the law was the boundary between God and man.  Dooyeweerd held that every philosophical position is ruled by a law idea.  This law idea was first of all an idea of origin and the coherent of the cosmos.  Later on he developed that radical unity was a part of this law idea ruling every philosophical system.

For Dooyeweerd the Archimedean point was not the law.  It was the point from where the entire cosmos could be viewed as it came to its point of concentration in the heart of man standing before his origin.  A key to Archimedean point is understood in terms of the redeemed humanity in Jesus Christ.

Knudsen believes that Vollenhoven does not have a clear distinction of what the boundary is.  God à Law à Cosmos for Vollenhoven were just 3 analytical distinctions.  Does the boundary belong to God or the Cosmos.

Interestingly enough (as far as Knudsen understands it) Van Till holds that God is the Archimedean  point.

Dirk Hendrik Theodore Vollenhoven (1892 – 1978)

Vollenhoven was born in Amsterdam November 1, 1892.  In 1918 he became a pastor in the GNK in Oostkapelle.  In 1920 he took Psychology lectures in Leipzig and in December of 1920 he came back to the Netherlands and became a pastor in Den Haag in May of 1921.  In 1926 he was called to be a professor of philosophy and theoretical psychology at the Free University.

Important in the development of Vollenhoven was contact with Antheunis Janse , between 1918 and 1921.  Janse was head of the school in Biggekerke.  Janse read Vollenhoven’s doctoral dissertation and wrote Vollenhoven a letter.  Vollenhoven and Janse wrote a paper on the activity of the soul in the teaching of arithmetic.

The two became in more intimate contact when Vollenhoven moved to Den Haag.  Discussions continued to a discussion of  anthropology.  In the interm Janse came to a different insights concerning the soul.  Vollenhoven said, Janse freed him from many fruitless speculations.  Janse began to gain new insights into God’s revelation.  Janse held that the scriptures speak in concrete language and not in a theoretical fashion.  This insight increased his regard for the Bible.  Janse believed this gave him insight into every situation without having to theorize.  This view was not regarded to replace child-like faith with inner experience. 

Vollenhoven’s dissertation had been on the theme of the philosophy of mathematics from a theistic point of view.  He began with a study of the foundation of mathematics; the principles that would rule in the sphere of mathematics.