Editing Herman Dooyeweerd (section)

==Dooyeweerd’s critiques of philosophy==
Dooyeweerd made both immanent and transcendental critiques of Western philosophy, following the traditions of [[Continental philosophy]].

In his [[immanent critique]], he sought to understand each philosophic thinker's work or each tradition from the inside, and uncover, in its own terms, its basic presuppositions, to reveal deep problems.  By such immanent critique of philosophic thinkers from the pre-Socratic Greeks onwards through to the middle of the twentieth century (including mediaeval period, into the modern periods), Dooyeweerd claimed to have demonstrated that theoretical thinking has always been based on presuppositions of a religious nature, which he called ''ground motives''.  A ground motive is a spiritual driving force that impels each thinker to interpret reality under its influence.<ref>{{Citation | url = http://www.dooy.info/ground.motives.html | title = Ground motives | publisher = Dooy info}}</ref> Dooyeweerd identified four major ground-motives of Western thought, three of them dualistic in nature:<ref>{{Citation | last = Choi | title = Paper | url = http://www.dooy.info/papers/choi/ | publisher = Dooy info}}</ref>
# the Form-Matter divide of Greek thought
# the Creation-Fall-Redemption motive of Biblical (Hebrew, Semitic) thought
# the Nature-Grace divide of mediaeval, Scholastic thought
# the Nature-Freedom divide of humanistic, Enlightenment thought

This means that theoretical thought ''has never been'' neutral or autonomous of the thinker.

However, Dooyeweerd remained unsatisfied "with an argument that shows that in fact philosophy always has been influenced by religious convictions".  Rather, he "wants to show that it cannot be otherwise, because it is part of the nature of philosophy or theoretical thought."<ref>{{Citation | last = Geertsema | first = H.G. | year = 2000 | contribution = Dooyeweerd's transcendental critique: Transforming it hermeneutically | editor1-first = D.F.M. | editor1-last = Strauss | editor2-first = M. | editor2-last = Botting | title = Contemporary reflections on the philosophy of Herman Dooyeweerd | place = [[Lewiston, New York]] | publisher = [[Edwin Mellen Press]] | page = 99}}</ref>

This led Dooyeweerd to undertake a transcendental critique of theoretical thought, of the kind [[Immanuel Kant]] pioneered.<ref>{{Citation | url = http://www.dooy.info/tc.html | title = Transcendental critique | publisher = Dooy info}}</ref>  Whereas Kant and Husserl sought the conditions that make theoretical ''thinking'' possible, they still presupposed that a theoretical ''attitude'' is possible.  Dooyeweerd sought to understand the conditions that make a ''theoretical attitude'' possible, and argued that all theoretical thought takes place with reference to an "Origin of Meaning", which is a ground-motive to which we adhere extra-rationally.  This means that theoretical thought ''never can be'' neutral or autonomous of the thinker.

From this, Dooyeweerd argued that all "good" philosophy addresses three fundamental parts to an idea: 
# world
# coherence of rationalities
# origin of meaning

This, he proposed, can enable disparate theoretical and philosophical approaches to enter into discourse with each other, as long as each thinker openly admits their own ground-motive. Dooyeweerd, accordingly, made very explicit his own grounding in Creation-Fall-Redemption, with a [[Neo-Calvinist]] flavour and a debt to [[Abraham Kuyper]].