Dooyeweerd entered the
scene as a talented academic who soon caught the eye and was offered the
position of Deputy Director of the Kuyper Foundation in 1922.
A mere
four years later he accepted a position at the Faculty of Law at the Free
University as professor in Philosophy of Law, Encyclopedia of the Science
of Law and Ancient Dutch Law. Apart from an extensive series of articles on the
struggle for a Christian politics Dooyeweerd presented his Inaugural
Address in 1926 onThe Significance of the Cosmonomic Idea for the Science
of Law and Legal Philosophy.
This Inaugural Address marks a
significant shift away from the biblicistic appeal to "Scriptural
principles" which obstructed the inner reformation of the special sciences
and opened up an alternative approach to Christian scholarship. Moreover, this
is not done in isolation but explicitly in confrontation with the dominant
trends of thought within the discipline of law. At the same time he succeeded
in advancing a novel and penetrating insight into the deepest dialectical
motivation directing modern philosophy since the Renaissance, designated by him
as the science ideal (nature) and the personality ideal (freedom).
The basic antinomy entailed within this dialectical ground motive of modern
humanistic philosophy manifested itself in multiple theoretical antinomies also
within the science of law. His new intermodal understanding of theoretical
antinomies is equally novel and innovative and it undergirded his analysis of
the various sphere sovereign modal aspects of reality.
The promise entailed in
this Inaugural Address came to fruition in two directions: elaborating
his philosophical foundation of the science of law in his multi-volume Encyclopedia
of the Science of Law and presenting his new insight in the form of a
general philosophical account to the academic world - in the publication of his magnum
opus, De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee (three volumes in 1935-1936),
translated into English in the four volume work, A New Critique of
Theoretical Thought (1953-1958).
This Inaugural Address may be
appreciated as the cradle of his immensely encompassing and penetrating
intellectual legacy.
Strauss, D.F.M. -
University of the Free State
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