Philosophy gives an account of our experience 1. Philosophy does not begin with rational propositions or presuppositions, but rather with our experience. Dooyeweerd begins A New Critique of Theoretical Thought by contrasting the continuity of our pre-theoretical experience with the way that theoretical experience splits apart this continuity.1 He says later, “The apriori structure of reality can only be known by experience. But this is not experience as it is conceived by immanence-philosophy.”2 Human experience is not limited to our temporal (...) functions of consciousness.3 Our experience is not an ‘Erlebnis’ of mere psychical feelings and sensations,4 but rather “a conscious enstatic5 ‘Hineinleben.’” — the experience of our supratemporal selfhood enter ing into and living within all aspects of temporal reality. (shrink)

Dooyeweerd’s account of abstraction is examined and found to be faulty. He holds that abstract thinking isolates aspects which must then be synthesized, whereas I argue that we cannot isolate any aspect from the others however so hard we try. But our very inability to isolate aspects is then turned into an alternative version of a transcendental critique of theory making. Instead of asking for a basis for synthesizing aspects we have isolated, the new version asks: what is the nature (...) of the aspectual connectedness which is so strong that it cannot be interrupted even by abstraction? I argue that it is impossible for anyone to understand the meaning of a concept fully without taking a position on this issue, whether that is done implicitly or explicitly. Moreover, every answer to this question presupposes a divinity belief. Hence, this recasting of the critique yields a demonstration of the religious regulation of all concepts and every theory. In this way the goal of Dooyeweerd’s critique is achieved, even if not in the way he envisioned. (shrink)