Ken Wilber and Herman Dooyeweerd:
Integral Nondual Philosophy
by J. Glenn Friesen (2010)
Introduction
Ken Wilber attempts to integrate philosophy, psychology and other sciences, and spirituality. Judging by the popularity of his books, there is a lot of interest in such an integrative approach. Wilber’s first book, The Spectrum of Consciousness, was published in 1977. Wilber says that his ideas have changed somewhat since then, so most of my citations will be from his later works, such as The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating Science and Religion (Wilber 1998).
Herman Dooyeweerd’s Philosophy of the Law-Idea [De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee, cited here as ‘WdW’], was published more than 40 years earlier. Dooyeweerd also sought an integral approach; he dealt with many similar issues and historical sources. But Dooyeweerd never achieved the same kind of popularity. Why not? His major work, WdW, was not translated until 1953 (A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, cited here as ‘NC’). Some of his works have never been translated. Second, his philosophy was misunderstood as a kind of Christian Aristotelianism (Friesen 2010), or he was misinterpreted in terms of the very different philosophy of his brother-in-law Dirk Vollenhoven (Friesen 2005c). Dooyeweerd’s nondualism was also misunderstood as either monism or dualism (Friesen 2005b). Finally, Dooyeweerd’s philosophy was regarded as of interest only to Dutch Calvinists, whereas Dooyeweerd himself rejected such a narrow approach (Dooyeweerd, 1964).
The philosophies of Wilber and Dooyeweerd are not identical. Wilber writes from the perspectives of Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta. Dooyeweerd writes from a Christian perspective. Both philosophers reject dualism. Both philosophers use the metaphor of a spectrum to describe our different modes of consciousness. They give similar answers to some questions, but very different answers to other questions. A comparison can help to understand each of them better, and will also show Dooyeweerd’s relevance today.
We will begin by looking at the idea of a perennial philosophy, which both Wilber and Dooyeweerd rely on. How does this idea relate to Wilber’s idea of a Chain of Being, and of different levels of reality? What are Dooyeweerd’s views on levels of reality? How does their use of the prism/spectrum metaphor relate to these differing views on levels of reality? What do they mean by ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’? And what do they mean when they say that they reject dualism? Finally, I will use Dooyeweerd’s transcendental critique in order to compare their philosophies in relation to questions of Origin, supratemporal totality (selfhood), and temporal coherence.
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