(Witte Jr., John, introduction to A Christian Theory of Social Institutions, by Herman Dooyeweerd, trans. Magnus Verbrugge. Ó 1986 by The Herman Dooyeweerd Foundation.)
Herman Dooyeweerd was born in Amsterdam in 1894, the child of Calvinist parents. In 1912 he matriculated as a law student in the Free University of Amsterdam, a Christian institution established in 1880. Five years later he took the doctorate in law. [Dooyeweerd's dissertation, De Ministerraad in Nederlandsche Staatsrecht (The Cabinet in Dutch Constitutional Law) was written under the supervision of D.P.D. Fabius, a constitutional theorist.] From 1918 to 1921 he worked in the Dutch Department of Labor as a legislative draftsman. From late 1921 to mid-1926 he served as assistant director of the newly organized Dr. Abraham Kuyper Foundation, a research and policy organ of the Anti-Revolutionary Party of The Netherlands (see "The Legacy of Kuyper," below).
There he was responsible not only to address the immediate issues of policy that faced the Anti-Revolutionary Party, but also to elaborate the Calvinist principles of law, politics, and society upon which the Party had been established some 80 years before. It was in discharging this latter responsibility a responsibility upon which he had himself insisted-that Dooyeweerd began (1) to study systematically traditional Calvinist legal, political, and social theories; (2) to explore the structures and organization of a number of historical societies; and (3) to engage critically a wide range of present and past theories of law, politics, and society. His work in these four years culminated in five major articles, including a fifteen-part tract "In the Struggle for a Christian Politics" [Herman Dooyeweerd, "In den strijd om een Christelijke Staatkunde. Proeve van een fundeering der Calvinistische levens- en wereldbeschouwing in hare Wetsidee," I Antirevolutionaire Staatkunde (henceforth A.R.S.) 7-25 62- 79, 104-118, 161-173, 189-200, 228-244, 309-324, 433-460, 489-504, 528- 542 581-598, 617-634, (1924-5); 2 A.R.S. 244-65, 425-445 (1926). A.R.S. was the monthly journal of the Dr. Abraham Kuyper Foundation, which Dooyeweerd edited for several years. This work will appear as volume B5 of the Collected Works of Dooyeweerd.] and an important monograph Calvinism and Natural Law (contained in volume B1 of he Collected Works of Dooyeweerd).
In 1926 Dooyeweerd returned to his alma mater as a professor of legal philosophy, Dutch legal history, and encyclopedia of law. He retained this position until his retirement in 1965. For the first five or six years of his professorship, he shifted the focus of his research and publications from the broader issues of Calvinist political and social theory to intricate questions of legal doctrine and legal philosophy. In a series of brilliant articles, he analyzed, historically and philosophically, the intricate questions of juridical causality, fault, responsibility, rights, and sources of law. All along, however, he insisted upon viewing these legal questions, as well as questions of politics and society, in the context of a broader theory of the nature and destiny of man (anthropology), of being and order (ontology), and of knowledge and its sources (epistemology). In the 1930s Dooyeweerd began to elaborate systematically and in detail these latter three philosophical theories and to show their importance for defining and resolving issues of law, political science, sociology, and many other sciences. He first articulated his views in The Crisis of Humanistic Political Theory in the Light of Calvinist Cosmology and Epistemology (1931) (De Crisis der Humanistischen Staatsleer in het Licht eener Calvinistische Kosmologie en Kennistheorie [Amsterdam: 1931)]. This work was quickly eclipsed by his path-breaking three volume work The Philosophy of the Cosmonomic ldea (1935-1936) [De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee (Amsterdam: 1935-36)]. While his articles of a decade before had made only rudimentary advances in traditional Calvinist teachings, the ideas and analysis set forth in these latter volumes were profound and original contributions, rooted in Calvinist thought. They remained at the center of Dooyeweerd's philosophical system for the rest of his life. His work over the next forty years was, in many respects, an amplification and application of the seminal ideas developed in this formative period. He amplified his anthropology and his critique of traditional theories in a series of articles and reviews and then in a three volume work Reformation and Scholasticism in Philosophy [volumes A5, A6 A7 of the Collected Works of Dooyeweerd]. He amplified his ontology and epistemology in several subsequent articles and in later editions and translations of his The Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea. At the same time, he resumed his detailed treatment of questions of law, politics, and society with which he had started his career. He systematized many of his concepts of law and politics and sharpened his earlier analysis of the history of legal and political theory, in his two volume work Encyclopedia of Legal Science [Encyclopacdie der Rechtswetenschap - to appear as volumes A8 - A12 of the Collected Works of Dooyeweerd]. He also elaborated his social theory in a number of articles and reviews in the 1940s and 1950s. One of the most important of these works is his Ten Lectures of Sociology, which is translated in the volume mentioned above in the Sources - it will be republished in the B-Series of the Collected Works of Dooyeweerd.
Dooyeweerd remained a profound and prolific scholar until his death in 1977. Over the course of his life, he published more than 200 books and articles, presided over numerous legal and philosophical societies and symposia, edited a variety of academic and popular publications, and lectured widely in Europe and North America. Though the novelty of his ideas, and the acuity of his critiques of others, often made Dooyeweerd's work an object of controversy, he garnered respect and praise from adherents and antagonists alike." He was a premier Christian polymath who commands the attention of scholars in every discipline who seek to integrate faith and learning.
Having summarized, in the briefest of terms, the history of Dooyeweerd's activities and achievements, I shall outline the developments of his social theory as it emerged out of his Calvinist beliefs and his broader philosophical system. His ultimate goal was to provide a philosophical account of the various institutions which comprise society. The analysis will pay particular attention to the analytical stages through which Dooyeweerd passed to develop this account.
The (Abraham Kuyper) Foundation was established on the death of Abraham Kuyper (1837- 1920), a brilliant Calvinist theologian, pastor, journalist, and politician. As theologian and pastor, Kuyper had articulated a rich systematic Calvinist theology, revitalized a grass-roots Calvinism in The Netherlands, and led the 1886 Separation (Scheiding) of the new reformed churches (Gereformeerde Kerken) from the old reformed church (Hervormde Kerk). As a politician and journalist, he had reorganized the Anti-Revolutionary political party and brought it to power, serving as Prime Minister of The Netherlands from 1901- 1905. Throughout his career, Kuyper remained committed to applying reformed beliefs to all walks of life. In that spirit, he had founded the Free University of Amsterdam in 1880, requiring in the University Constitution that all spheres of scholarship be imbued with Calvinist principles. In that spirit, he had also delivered his Lectures on Calvinism at Princeton University in 1898, articulating basic Calvinist principles of religion, politics, law, science, and art. In the spirit also, Kuyper's followers (Colijn and Idenburg) had, on his death, developed the Dr. Abraham Kuyper Foundation: to provide a forum for articulating Calvinist principles of law, politics, society, and economics and applying them to resolve specific issues of policy. A biography of Kuyper's writings and of studies on Kuyper is available in Kalsbeek, pp.340-342. See also McKendree Langley, The Practice of Political Spirituality: Episodes from the Public Career of Abraham Kuyper 1879-1918 (Jordan Station, ON: 1984); James W. Skillen and Stanely W. Carlson-Thies, "Religion and Political Development in Nineteenth-Century Holland," 12 (3) Publius: the Journal of Federalism (1982), pp. 43ff; Steven E. Meyer, Calvinism and the Rise of the Protestant Political Movement in the Netherlands (Ph.D. Diss., Georgetown, 1976); Justus M. VanderKroef, "Abraham Kuyper and the Rise of Neo-Calvinism in the Netherlands," 17 Church History (1948), pp. 316ff; P.A. Kasteel, Abraham Kuyper (Amsterdam: 1938); P.A. Diepenhorst, Dr. A. Kuyper (Haarlem: 1931).
*The biographical information summarized in this section is drawn from Hendrik van Eikema Hommes, Inleiding tot de Wijsbegeerte van Herman Dooyeweerd (The Hague: 1982), pp.1-4, 123; Bernard Zylstra, Introduction to L. Kalsbeek, Contours of a Christian Philosophy: An Introduction to Herman Dooyeweerd's Thought (Toronto: 1975), pp.14-33, 296-302; G. Puchinger, "Dr. Herman Dooyeweerd," Perspectief: Feestbundel van de Jongeren (Kampen: 1961), pp.43-70. See also Dooyeweerd's brief autobiographical comments in "Introduction by the Editor in Chief," 38 Philosophia Reformata [Festschrift for Vollenhoven] (1973), pp.5-16; Forewords to Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee (Amsterdam; 1935-1936), Vols.I and III. The Foreword to Vol.I is partly translated in Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, D.H. Freeman and W.S. Young, trans. (Meel Edition of the Collected Works Series A1), pp.v-ix.
In conclusion three evaluations are mentioned:
- Dr. P.B. Cliteur, president of the `Humanist League' in The Netherlands and professor of philosophy at the Technical University of Delft wrote on October 8, 1994: "Herman Dooyeweerd is undoubtedly the most formidable Dutch philosopher of the 20th century. ... As a humanist I have always looked at `my own tradition' in search for similar examples. They simply don't exist. Of course, humanists too wrote important books, but in the case of Herman Dooyeweerd we are justified in speaking about a philosopher of international repute."
- At the occasion of the commemoration of the 70th birthday of Dooyeweerd an article appeared in the Dutch Newspaper `Trouw' (October 6, 1964). It was written by prof. G.E. Langemeijer, a jurist from the University of Leiden, attorney general of the Dutch Appeal Court and chairman of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences. He explicitly mentioned that he comes from "a totally different world view" and continued by remarking that Dooyeweerd can be called "the most original philosopher Holland has ever produced, even Spinoza not excepted."
- Giorgio Delvecchio, the great Italian neo-Kantian philosopher, regarded Dooyeweerd as "the most profound, innovative, and penetrating philosopher since Kant."