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| ABC Dooyeweerd 4: Arché |
CONTEXT of QUOTE:
How does philosophical thought attain to the Idea of the totality of meaning?
The proper character of philosophical thought, as we have said, may never be disregarded with impunity. Philosophical thought is theoretic thought directed towards the totality of meaning.
Therefore, I must first give my thought a fixed direction in the idea of the totality of meaning.
If this idea (1) is not to remain completely without content, if it is to succeed in showing a direction to my philosophical thought, then it must be possible that I, who am to practise philosophy, should choose my standpoint in this totality of meaning of our temporal cosmos. For, unless such a standpoint can be found, the latter will remain strange to me. In my central selfhood I must participate in the totality of meaning, if I am to have the idea of it in my philosophical thought.
To speak in a figure: In the process of directing my philosophical thought in the idea towards the totality of meaning, I must be able to ascend a lookout-tower above all the modal speciality of meaning that functions within the coherence of the modal aspects. From this tower I must be able to survey this coherence with all the modal diversity of meaning included in it. Here I must find the point of reference to which this modal diversity can be related, and to which I am to return in the process of reflecting thought. In other words, if I am not to lose myself in the modal speciality of meaning during the course of philosophic thought, I must be able to find a standpoint which transcends the special modal aspects. Only by transcending the speciality of meaning, can I attain to the actual view of totality by which the former is to be distinguished as such.
The Archimedean point of philosophy and the tendency of philosophical thought towards the Origin.
This fixed point from which alone, in the course of philosophical thought, we are able to form the idea of the totality of meaning, we call the Archimedean point of philosophy.
However, if we have found this Archimedean point, our selfhood makes the discovery that the view of totality is not possible apart from a view of the origin or the ἀρχή (archē) of both totality and speciality of meaning.
The totality in which our selfhood is supposed to participate may indeed transcend all speciality of meaning in the coherence of its diversity. Yet it, too, in the last analysis remains meaning which cannot exist by itself but supposes an ἀρχή (archē), an origin which creates meaning.
All meaning is from, through, and to an origin, which cannot itself be related to a higher ἀρχή (archē).
All meaning is from, through, and to an origin, which cannot itself be related to a higher ἀρχή (archē).
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(1) Translator's note: "Idea" is used here in the technical sense of a"limiting concept" which refers to a totality not to be comprehended inthe concept itself. W.Y.
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(Herman Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Prolegomena, pp 7-9)
