Enkele kanttekeninge by N DeRoo se opmerkings oor Edmund Husserl, die fenomenologiese metode en Herman Dooyeweerd se transendentale denkkritiek

Abstract

Marginal notes to N. DeRoo’s remarks on Edmund Husserl, the phenomenological method and Herman Dooyeweerd’s transcendental critique of theoretical thought

In a recent publication, N. DeRoo expressed the view that Dooyeweerd is best understood as a phenemenologist, not a neo-Kantian. He avers that if we view the “Amsterdam School” as being closer to Freiburg than to Marburg, we can reexamine two central tenets of Dooyeweerd’s work ? meaning and temporality ? in light of their phenomenological heritage and implications. DeRoo concludes that Dooyeweerd offers us a new stream in the history of phenomenology, and more importantly offers a new wave for the future of phenomenology. In this article the author considers the transcendental approach of Husserl and in particular Dooyeweerd’s criticism of the phenomenological method. Dooyeweerd says that in theoretical thought, the aspects of reality are unarticulated in everyday experience. In theoretical thought these aspects are abstracted from the unity of cosmic time and are set over against each other as the fields of investigation for the special sciences, such as biology, physics, and psychology. In the theoretical thought, therefore, there is an abstraction from full, concrete reality. In the antithetic relation the non-logical aspect stands over against thought and offers resistance to it as its Gegenstand. To Dooyeweerd, there is room for a true transcendental critique only when in a radical-critical attitude we can fix our theoretical thought itself on its necessary presupposita, which are postulated by this structure. Dooyeweerd holds that the theoretical attitude of thought is an intentional relatedness, a mental directedness to a Gegenstand. Like phenomenology, Dooyeweerd is opposed to phenomenalism, which distinguishes between appearance and a thing-in-itself behind appearance. Although there are many points of similarity between Dooyeweerd’s philosophical methods and those of the phenomenological school, Dooyeweerd avers that the phenomenological movement is a most dangerous adversary of a truly Christian philosophy. According to Dooyeweerd, the phenomenologists miss the truly transcendental direction of thought. A proper view of the human subject is also gained only by way of a truly transcendental reflection, which, while remaining within the confines of theoretical thought, points beyond it to the deeper unity of all experiencing. In this article Dooyeweerd’s objections to the phenomenological movement are considered, his rejection of a broadly phenomenological method investigated, and the implications of Dooyeweerd’s dialectical method approach for his philosophical position critically considered.