THE 15 IRREDUCIBLE LAW-SPHERES
OF OUR EXPERIENTIAL HORIZON
Also called Aspects/ Modes/ Modalities/ Meaning-sides
(Diagrams by FMF)
NOTES (FMF):
No law-sphere (aspect) can be reduced to another. Infringements of 'irreducibility' are behind all 'isms'. These 'idolatries' show the human heart attempting to integrate entire reality around a single aspect (or 'law-sphere'). There is a plausibility to this because each aspect is present as an analogy in every other aspect (see 'Historical Aspect' diagram below). This gives each aspect an omnipresence, which Dooyeweerd designates 'sphere-universality'. Crucially, since no aspect can be reduced to another, none can be reduced even to the 'Logical / Analytical Aspect' (in other words, the above panoply of aspects is not a theoretical product of "logic" - it is "experiential", it is "intuitive consciousness"). This must be particularly and continually emphasised. Failure to bear that specific fact in mind makes a 'logicism' out of Dooyeweerd's philosophy, when it is primarily against logicism that he is arguing (Dooyeweerd's 'A New Critique of Theoretical Thought' is essentially a critique of Kant). A moment's reflection will observe that the aspects correspond pretty closely to standard academic disciplines.
It is key to Dooyeweerd to appreciate his insistence that there is no thinking without a thinker ("the hidden performer on the instrument of philosophic thought" (Prolegomena, New Critique). The thinker ALWAYS functions in ALL aspects, but transcends them all in the concentration-point of his or her deepest selfhood ('heart'), which is directed towards or away from the Living God Who alone gives meaning to temporal reality. In refusing God as only source of meaning, a substitute ultimate focus is sought by the selfhood within the temporal cosmos by absolutising a law-sphere (or combination of law-spheres). Hence the idol.
Dooyeweerd calls the irreducibility feature of each aspect 'sphere-sovereignty'. With reference to mutual irreducibility, Dooyeweerd draws attention to Genesis 1 where animals are created "according to their kinds". Without getting a handle on the terms 'sphere-sovereignty' and 'sphere-universality' it will be impossible to fathom Dooyeweerd's explanations on just about anything!
Interestingly, the absolutization of any given aspect of reality invariably throws up its 'counter-idol', leading to a dualism. Something like an after-image. The counter-absolute arises as the 'Economic Aspect' of reality resists unbridled profligacy in one direction, the 'Aesthetic Aspect' resists the consequent disharmony, the 'Juridical Aspect' (eventually) avenges the destructive bias via a swing towards the counter-polarity.
Examples:
Rationalism 'deifies' the 'Logical/ Analytical Aspect'. It infringes the irreducibility of the other fourteen aspects by attempting to reduce them all to the 'Logical/ Analytical Aspect'. That is, Rationalism implies that every other aspect is a product of the absolutized 'Logical/ Analytical Aspect' (cf Kant).
Philosophical Materialism 'deifies' the 'Physical/ Energy Aspect'. It infringes the irreducibility of the other fourteen aspects by attempting to reduce them all to 'matter', ie to the 'Physical/ Energy Aspect'. That is, Philosophical Materialism implies that every other aspect is a product of the absolutized 'Physical/ Energy Aspect'.
Combinations of the above have provoked the prevailing (humanist) 'Nature/ Freedom' dichotomy, ie that between 'Absolute Mathematical (or Natural-mechanistic) Law' and 'Absolute Personal Freedom'. The irreconcilable conflicts of this dualism are perenially revisited in movies and TV series such as the Terminator, the Matrix, Battlestar Galactica, etc.
Postmodernism is another irrationalist (subjectivist) reaction to the 'rationalism' of reducing reality to 'One Big Story' dogmatically layed down by autonomous human thought. Many films now interrogate reality from a postmodern viewpoint, eg 'Inception', 'Sourcecode', various Tarantino movies, etc.
Christians often labour under their own 'Nature/Grace' dualisms which lead for example to a gnostic or pietistic flight from the world.
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"It is an undeniable fact that in the first life-phase of a suckling baby feeling precedes the first development of logical distinction; the latter precedes the controlling manner of forming sounds, which in turn precedes the primitive symbolical designation of concepts by words etc. But that does not prove that the higher mental functions originate from feeling as their undifferentiated origin. Rather it testifies to the truth of our view of the order of the modal aspects of experience, as a real temporal order, related to subjective duration in the genetic process." (Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought Vol II pp 112,113)
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The above diagram focuses on the 'Historical/Culturally Formative Aspect'. Besides its own irreducible (supratemporal) nucleus, its structure includes anticipatory (here in green) or retrocipatory (blue) analogical moments dynamically relating to the other fourteen aspects. The weighting of blues to greens in any given aspect depends on where that aspect appears in the fixed temporal order (compare colour sequence in a rainbow).
Thus (now considering all aspects, not just the Historical), in our everyday lives a 'feeling of claustrophobia' might be analysed as a 'Spatial' retrocipation within the 'Sensory (or Psychical) Aspect'. A 'prolix speech' as an 'Economic' anticipation within the 'Lingual Aspect'. An 'elegant stumble' would be an 'Aesthetic' anticipation within the 'Movement/Kinetic Aspect'. A 'vital clue' a 'Biotic' retrocipation within the 'Logical/Analytical Aspect'. And so on.
It should always be borne in mind that, however inadequate the above diagram, what is being referred to is the fabric of actual cosmic reality within which all aspects structurally combine, as spectrum colours combine to form clear daylight.
Dooyeweerd sees the Divine call of civilization as a historical “opening-process”. Each succeeding aspect is "unfolded” in response to the light of God. Reactionary societies attempt to close down such burgeoning differentiation.
EVERY human ACT in thought or deed
ALWAYS involves ALL aspects.
"Keep your heart with all diligence,
for out of it are the issues of life."
(Prov 4:23)
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