Dooyeweerd, Herman

(1894-1977)

   A Dutch Reformed philosopher of law, Dooyeweerd is now noted not so much for his particular interest in jurisprudence as for his more general and systematic view of reality that expanded from his legal theory. He studied at the Calvinistic Free University of Amsterdam, and then worked for the Dr Abraham Kuyper Foundation, before returning to the Free University as Professor of Legal Philosophy. Dooyeweerd saw himself as implementing Kuyper's dream of a fully Christian and Reformed philosophy on a scale to match Kant's. To this end Dooyeweerd wrote over 200 separate titles thinking through the principles underlying a wide range of academic subjects; these titles varied in length from a few pages in the case of some shorter articles to several thousand pages for the major works, such as the three-volume work The Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea, published in 1936, also known under the title A New Critique of Theoretical Thought. Dooyeweerd is perhaps best known today for his theory of aspects, in which he isolates fifteen categories into which everything can be fitted. Dooyeweerd's philosophy has had influence not only in his native Netherlands, but also in Canada, the United States and South Africa. The Dooyeweerdian school of thought is often known as 'reformational philosophy'.

   See Calvinism; Kuyper, Abraham

   Further reading: Clouser 2005; Dooyeweerd 1975; Hart 1984; Kalsbeek 2002