Leabhar Cheanannais: Crìosd an Rìgh
SÙIL NAS DLÙITHE AIR AN DÀIMH EADAR FEALLSANACHD AGUS SEALLADH-BEATHA IS -SAOGHAIL.
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CLOSER DETERMINATION OF THE RELATION BETWEEN PHILOSOPHY AND A LIFE- AND WORLD-VIEW.
In what sense does philosophy have to give an account of the life- and world-view?
It has to bring the latter to theoretical clarity by rendering a theoretic account of its pre-theoretic picture of the world. So far as it includes in its horizon life- and world-views which possess another religious foundation than that which finds expression in its own transcendental ground-Idea, it must try to approximate this foundation in a transcendental ground-Idea, which is equal to the task of the theoretical illumination of these life- and world-views. This is the only way in which it is really possible to do justice to the various types of life- and world-views.
The life- and world-view is no system and cannot be made a system without affecting its essence.
At this juncture, the problem also necessarily emerges, why philosophy will never be in a position to replace the life- and world-view. It cannot do so for the same reason that prevents it from replacing naive experience by theoretical knowledge. There is left a residue of living immediacy in every life- and world-view, which must necessarily escape theoretical concepts.
An authentic life- and world-view is never a system; not that it should be lost in faith or feeling, but because in it thought must remain focused in the full concrete reality. This is exactly what theoretical, systematic thought as such cannot do.
As soon as a life- and world-view is made into a system, it loses its proper universality, it no longer speaks to us out of the fullness of reality. It now speaks out of the distance which scientific abstraction must preserve in opposition to life, if it is to furnish us with theoretical knowledge.
A life- and world-view has no universality in the sense of a (philosophic) system. It does not bear a "closed" character, as LITT supposes. It must rather remain continuously open to each concrete situation of life, in which it finds itself placed. Its deeper unity lies only in its religious root.
To the Calvinistic life- and world-view, as developed by Dr ABRAHAM KUYPER in the Netherlands since the last decades of the nineteenth century, belongs undoubtedly also the radical Christian view of science. But how is this view of science born? Not from a philosophical or systematic tendency, but rather in the midst of a concrete situation of life. The pressure of the scholastic notion of science on the one hand, the necessity for defence against the ruling Humanistic view of science on the other, stimulated young neo-Calvinism to a consideration of its religious calling in the realm of science.
While Christianity in the Roman Empire was still being persecuted with fire and sword, its attitude with respect to politics and wordly culture in general was, in the main, a negative one. There could be a positive commitment with respect to the task of the Christian in this territory, only when the possibility of exercising influence in these realms had been created.
Apart from the concrete influence of the rationalistic thought of the "Enlightenment" upon all realms of life, the reaction of
the ideal of personality would never have disclosed itself in Humanistic circles. This reaction has been an important turning-point in the development of the Humanistic life- and worldview. That is to say, the requirement of the neutrality of science with respect to personal commitment in a life- and world-view would never have been born apart from this concrete situation.
Many more instances may be adduced in favour of our thesis. We constantly find the development of a life- and world-view in immediate contact with concrete situations in the fulness of life. These things will remain so, because this immediate relation to the latter is essential to the life- and world-view.
On this account we must repeat, that it is entirely erroneous to conceive of Christian philosophy as nothing but a theoretical elaboration of a Christian life- and world-view.
A life- and world-view may not be "elaborated" philosophically. It must elaborate itself in the sequence of immediate life- and world-situations.
Is it then peculiar to the concrete individuality and so prevented from laying claim to "universal validity"?
What is the meaning of the concept "universal-validity"? The Kantian conception is determined by the critical Humanist immanence-standpoint.
For this question to be answered satisfactorily, it is first necessary to render an account of the correct meaning of the concept "universal validity". Up to the present, we came to know this concept only in the dogmatic cadre of a pretended "unconditioned pure thought" in which it really took the place of a standard of truth.
KANT, as is well known, was the first to give to it an apriori epistemological meaning. "Universally valid" means to him: independent of all "empirical subjectivity", valid for the "transcendental consciousness", the "transcendental cogito", which is itself in its apriori syntheses the origin of all universal validity in the field of experience. In this sense, the synthetic apriori, which makes objective experience possible, is universally valid.
On the other hand, perception has merely "subjective validity", since it is dependent upon sensory impressions, on which no objective, necessary validity can be grounded.
KANT has applied this contrast to judgments, by distinguishing the latter into mere judgments of perception and judgments of experience. "So far as empirical judgments have objective validity, they are JUDGMENTS OF EXPERIENCE. Those, however, which are only subjectively valid, I call mere JUDGMENTS OF PERCEPTION. The latter require no pure concept of the understanding, but only the logical connection of perceptions in a thinking subject. The former, however, at all times require, in addition to the representations of the sensory intuition, special concepts originally produced in the understanding, which bring it about, that the judgment of experience is objectively valid" [Prolegomena zur einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik (Prolegomena to any future metaphysics) W. W. GROSSHERZOG WILHELM ERNST Ausg. IV, S. 422 (Works, GROSSHERZOG WILHELM ERNST ed. IV, p. 422): „Empirische Urteile, so fern sie objektive Gültigkeit haben, sind Erfahrungsurteile; die aber, so nur subjektiv gültig sind, nenne ich blosze Wahrnehmungsurteile: Die letztern bedürfen keines reinen Verstandesbegriffs, sondern nur der logischen Verknüpfung der Wahrnehmungen in einem denkenden Subjekt. Die ersteren aber erfordern jederzeit über die Vorstellungen der sinnlichen Anschauung noch besondere, im Verstande ursprünglich erzeugte Begriffe, welche es eben machen, dasz das Erfahrungsurteil objektiv gültig ist. "]
KANT illustrates this distinction with the following examples: The judgments "The room is warm, the sugar is sweet, wormwood is revolting" and "The sun heats the stone" are merely subjectively valid judgments of perception.
The last-named judgment, however, becomes a judgment of experience, with a genuine claim to universal validity, if I say, "The sun causes the heat of the stone", for here "to perception is added the concept of the understanding, i.e. causality, which necessarily connects the concept of the sunshine with that of heat, and the synthetic judgment becomes necessarily universally valid, consequently objective, and is transformed from a perception into experience" [note p. 426: „kommt über die Wahrnehmung noch der Verstandesbegriff der Ursache hinzu, der mit dem Begriffe des Sonnenscheins den der Wärme notwendig verknüpft, und das synthetische Urteil wird notwendig allgemeingültig, folglich objektiv, and aus einer Wahrnemung in Erfahrung verwandelt."]
This whole view of universal validity stands or falls with the critical Humanist immanence standpoint and with the vision which it determines as to the structure of experience and of temporal reality.
The break with this immanence standpoint makes necessary also a break with this view of the universally valid. In the light of our transcendental basic Idea the universal validity to which a judgment lays claim, can merely be conceived in the sense of the agreement of the judgment with the divine law for the cosmos in its modal diversity, inter-modal coherence and fulness of meaning, apart from the validity of which no judgment would have meaning.
(Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought. Vol II, pp 156-160)
