Dooyeweerd: A Bird's Nest...

Photo by Andreas Trepte 

http://www.photo-natur.de

    A bird's nest is not a "thing in itself", which has a specific meaning in the bird's life. It has as such no existence apart from this meaning. Anyone who theoretically eliminates the latter does not retain the objective reality of a bird's nest, but an aggregate of materials of different structure, which lacks the very nature of this animal form-product as an individual whole. Such things are united with the animal creatures which formed them in an individual bio-psychical relationship. Even when detached from the latter they remain qualified as objective animal formations...

     For the reality of a thing is indeed dynamic; it is a continuous realization in the transcendental temporal direction. The inner restlessness of meaning, as the mode of being of created reality, reveals itself in the whole temporal world. To seek a fixed point in the latter is to seek it in a "fata morgana", a mirage, a supposed thing-reality, lacking meaning as the mode of being which ever points beyond and above itself. There is indeed nothing in temporal reality in which our heart can rest, because this reality does not rest in itself.

     Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing Company, 1969, Vol 3, pp 108, 109)

_________________________________