A New Critique of Theoretical Thought by Herman Dooyeweerd (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 599 A New Critique of Theoretical Thought. By HERMAN DooYEWEERD. Translated by D. H. Freeman, W. Young, and H. de Jongste. 4 vols. Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1958-1958. Pp. 566, 598, 784, 257. $86 per set. Because the approach and milieu of this work will seem very strange at first to the American reader, it may be best to begin by referring to some background material which may help to bring it within a more familiar context. One of the earliest and most perceptive responses to Etienne Gilson's renowned Gifford lectures on medieval philosophy came in the form of a series of articles contributed by Michael Foster to Mind, n. s., vols. 48-45 {1984-86). These articles were entitled: "The Christian Doctrine of Creation and the Rise of Modern Natural Science " and " Christian Theology and Modern Science of Nature," and they constituted an acute Protestant appraisal of the theme of Christian philosophy as related to the question of the origins of modern science. Foster's thesis was that the influence of revelation upon philosophy is deeper than we suspect and that it extends even to the modern scientific outlook. He viewed the relation of medieval Christian theology to Aristotelian philosophy as a substitutional critique rather than a transforming assimilation. The sharpest point of criticism of Aristotle and the Arabians was their philosophy of nature, precisely because the Christian theologians were trying to replace the conception of an eternal natural whole with the view of nature as created in freedom, as new with the newness of time, and as thoroughly contingent even in its most intelligible and conditionally necessary aspects. Once this revolutionary reappraisal of nature was started, it could not be brought to a neat halt. Foster maintained that there is a closer continuity between the medieval Catholic and the Reformed theologian than is usually admitted from a standpoint centered around institutional conflicts, and that both groups were closely related to classical modern science. The theologians stressed the production of nature through God's knowledgable will, and the scientists were thereby assured not only of the intelligibility of nature but also of the need to consult sensory experience as the contingent counterpart of the free act with which God produced the natural world. Thus Foster expanded Whitehead's suggestion that modem science could only have grown out of the theological schooling of men to regard nature as an intelligible order whose laws can be known only through a conjunction of analysis, observation, and experiment. Richard Kroner is presently developing this same thesis about the role of faith in the constitution of ·modem philosophy and science. Herman Dooyeweerd has been working for forty years in Holland to stimulate a specifically Protestant interest in the problem of the Christian contribution to the modem scientific attitude and the philosophies based 600 BOOK REVIEWS on that attitude. He is professor of philosophy of law at the Free University of Amsterdam and editor of Philosophia Reformata, a multilingual journal which approaches theoretical and historical issues in philosophy in terms of a highly sophisticated Calvinist philosophy of science and culture. Traditionally, the Calvinist mind has been less hampered than the Lutheran in making room within the life of faith for a reflective study of philosophical reasoning and scientific methods. For many decades after Hegel's death, the idealistic notion of science and cultural life was dominant in those Calvinist circles where philosophy counted. During the past generation, however, it has become increasingly clear to such groups that absolute idealism is not only capacious but also rapacious as far as the distinctive claims of revealed faith are concerned. Hence particularly among continental Calvinists, there has been a gradual shift of philosophical allegiance from Hegel to Kant and a corresponding growth of interest in the philosophy of modern science, especially the question of its ultimate foundations. Dooyeweerd is a leader in this movement, his journal gives voice to the particular discussions, and his present book is the major expression of the entire tendency. From every angle, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought is a remarkable achievement, one of the significant multi-volumed philosophical works of our century. It reminds one of...