mercredi, mars 13, 2013

ABC Dooyeweerd 2: Hidden Performer

ABC Dooyeweerd 2 (Gratis for non-profit use)
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CONTEXT of QUOTE:
The necessary religious transcending in the choice of the immanence-standpoint.
     By this original choice of a position, the attempt is made to detach the logical function of theoretical thought (whether only in the ἀρχή [archē] or in the archē and Archimedean point alike) from the inter-modal coherence of meaning and to treat it as independent. In the nature of the case, this choice is no act of a "transcendental subject of thought", which is merely an abstract concept. It is rather an act of the full self which transcends the diversity of modal aspects.
     And it is a religious act, just because it contains a choice of position in the concentration-point of our existence in the face of the Origin of meaning.
     In the choice of the immanence-standpoint in the manner described above, I myself elevate philosophic thought, whether in the transcendental-logical or in the metaphysical-logical sense, to the status of ἀρχή (archē) of the cosmos. This archē stands as origin, beyond which nothing meaningful may be further asked, and in my view no longer occupies the heteronomous mode of being which is meaning. It exists in and through itself.
     This choice of a position in the face of the arché transcends philosophic thought, though in the nature of the case it does not occur apart from it. It possesses the fulness of the central self-hood, the fulness of the heart. It is the first concentration of philosophic thought in a unity of direction. It is a religious choice of position in an idolatrous sense.
     The proclamation of the self-sufficiency of philosophic thought, even with the addition of "in its own field", is an absolutizing of meaning. Nothing of its idolatrous character is lost by reason of the thinker's readiness to recognize, that the absolutizing κάτ' ἐξοχήν [par excellence] which he performs in the theoretical field is by no means the only rightful claimant, but that philosophy should allow the religious, aesthetic or moral man the full freedom to serve other gods, outside the theoretical realm.
     The philosopher who allows this freedom to the non-theoretician is, so to speak, theoretically a  polytheist. He fights shy of proclaiming the theoretical God to be the only true one. But, within the temple of this God, no others shall be worshipped!
     Thus the first way of our critique of philosophical thought has for a provisional conclusion: Even on the immanence-standpoint the choice of the Archimedean point proves to be impossible as a purely theoretical act which prejudices nothing in a religious sense.
     In truth the selfhood as the religious root of existence is the hidden performer on the instrument of philosophic thought. Only, it is invisible on the basis of the immanence-standpoint.
     Actually, philosophic thought in itself offers us no Archimedean point, for it can function only in the cosmic coherence of the different modal aspects of meaning, which it nowhere transcends.
     The immanent Ideas of the inter-modal coherence of meaning and of the totality of meaning are transcendental limiting concepts. They disclose the fact that theoretical thought is not self-sufficient in the proper field of philosophy, a point to which we shall have to return in detail.
     No other possibility for transcending the inter-modal coherence and the modal diversity of meaning is to be found, except in the religious root of existence, from which philosophic thought also has to receive its central direction.
(Herman Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Prolegomena, pp 20-21)