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| Johannes Vermeer, The Milkmaid (1658–1660) |
“To illustrate totality and temporality, Dooyeweerd uses the image of the prism. Totality is analogous to white light before it is refracted by a prism into many colours. In this analogy, the prism is cosmic time, which refracts the totality into the differentiated and individuated temporal reality. The unrefracted light is the time-transcending or supratemporal totality of meaning of our cosmos, both as to its law and subject sides. And just as this unrefracted light has its origin in the Source of light, so this supratemporal totality of meaning has its origin in the Arché or Origin by whom and to whom it has been created. The totality and deeper unity of meaning ‘must transcend its modal diversity’ (NC I, 102; WdW I, 66-67).” J. Glenn Friesen, p7 ‘Dooyeweerd, Spann, and the Philosophy of Totality’ (pdf)
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The 15 EXPERIENTIAL, IRREDUCIBLE,
LAW-SPHERES of COSMIC TIME
LAW-SPHERES of COSMIC TIME
(Also called Aspects/ Modes of Consciousness/
Modalities/ Modes of Meaning)
Modalities/ Modes of Meaning)
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IMPORTANT NOTE
ON DOOYEWEERD'S USE OF THE TERM
“RELIGION” -
“To the question, what is understood here by religion? I reply: the innate impulse of human selfhood to direct itself toward the true or toward a pretended absolute Origin of all temporal diversity of meaning, which it finds focused concentrically in itself."
(Herman Dooyeweerd, Prolegomena,
New Critique of Theoretical Thought, p57)
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Dooyeweerd: The radical unity of God’s law transcends temporal diversity
But according to the divine world-order, this unity of God’s law is attuned to a rich temporal pluriformity of law-spheres, through which the manifold wisdom of God is revealed, just as the heart or soul of a human being is attuned to the body and understood as a created whole whose interwoven individuality structures comprehend all the functions of a person within all the spheres of temporal life.
As little as the soul can be substituted for the body, so it is impossible to substitute the religious commandment of love for the pluriformity of divine ordinances in the various normative aspects of human society. The temporal moral law, which governs the moral relationships here on earth, is just one of the many aspects which the divine law exhibits in its refraction of meaning. The moral aspect is indissolubly intertwined with all the other law-spheres; when it is absolutized it loses its moral meaning.
In this sense, the moral law in its positive form is also intertwined with history, just as legal norms, social norms, lingual norms, and so on. To deny this indissoluble coherence is to succumb to a rationalistic metaphysics of natural law; to try and reduce the positive moral law, positive legislation, and so on, to “historical phenomena” is to fall headlong into the evil of historicism.
Extracted from:
Herman Dooyeweerd, ‘Time, Law, and History: Selected Essays’ Series B – Volume 14, ‘Law and History’, Paideia Press, 2017, pp 412-413)
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