Herman Dooyeweerd
Dutch philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd (1894a€"1977) proposed the "cosmonomic idea." This idea roughly means "this comes from the cosmos." Dooyeweerd regarded the cosmos as the sum of God’s creation. The "cosmonomic idea" points to particular objects and beings and recognizes that each particular aspect of the creation has a harmonious design and meaning. At the core of every created object and creature is meaning. Dooyeweerd argued that reality is created by God, and our experience of this reality is meaning. Therefore, the primary property of all we experience is meaning.
Notice that he does not say that truth and the objective existence of the created world gives meaning to experience-as a philosophical realist like myself would say. He says we experience meaning directly, and that experience comprises our whole knowledge of being. This unusual twist of thought makes me a little uncomfortable. Dooyeweerd manages to be neither realist nor idealist, monist nor dualist, nominalist nor platonist, gnostic nor materialist. He rejects existentialism, not because it denies objective reality, but because he insists that we primarily experience meaning and not modes of the will or existence, as existentialists think.
Posted: March 8th, 2007
at 10:29am by Koookiecrumbles
Categories: life,fo' real?,9th dan
Comments: 1 comment
One Response to 'Herman Dooyeweerd'
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what kind of wack shit is a this? no rock n roll?
bunnz
9 Mar 07 at 4:52 am