ICS course title: IDS: Meaning/Being/Knowing: The Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Implications of a Christian Ontology
ICS course code: ICS 2400AC W21
Instructors: Bob Sweetman, Nik Ansell, Ron Kuipers
Term and year: Wednesdays, 10am–1pm [EST], Winter 2021 (first session: January 13, 2021)
Last updated: January 6, 2021
1. Course Description:
“Meaning is the being of all that has been created and the nature even of our selfhood.” With these enigmatic words, which form part of the introduction to his magisterial New Critique of Theoretical Thought, the neo-Calvinist philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd signals his intention to de-centre the central concern of Ontology by relativizing (which is to say thoroughly relating) the philosophical notion of Being to Meaning, even to the point of (re-)defining creation’s being as meaning—all in the conviction that this will enable us to engage in (rather than circumvent or supersede) the work of Ontology (and thus Epistemology) in a truly systematic, integrally Christian, way. Although it might seem as though Dooyeweerd is merely substituting one metaphysical idea for another, his reference to the nature of our selfhood here indicates that, for all its theoretical import for Philosophical Anthropology, this highly suggestive proposal also has profound implications for how we might both appreciate and pull upon our deepest (religious) self-knowledge, which takes shape before the face of God as we face the world. To do the work of Ontology well—to gain genuine insight into the “nature of things” and to identify the contours and coherence of the world’s general structures without undermining investigation or denaturing experience—will require that we also draw upon a pre-theoretical form of Knowing, and a spiritual grounding and hope, that will always precede and exceed our understanding.
Implicit in Dooyeweerd’s vision of and for Ontology, we might say, is the provocative claim that creation does not “have” meaning but “is” meaning (a paraphrase that, tellingly, uses the language of Being to relativize Being). But what does Dooyeweerd mean by “meaning”? And what difference might this systematically relational, spiritually open, with-reference-to-self-and-beyond re-centering make (a) to the detailed, nitty-gritty work that needs to be done in any given academic field, and (b) to the theoretical integration that requires both intra- and inter-disciplinary reflection? After an opening discussion about the phenomenon of “post-truth,” to which we shall return at the end of the course, we shall explore the inter-play between Meaning, Being, and Knowing via a close reading of Hendrik Hart’s Understanding Our World: An Integral Ontology, paying careful attention to the ways in which his interpretation of Dooyeweerd’s ideas—not least the discussion of “meaning” that occurs at the midpoint of his Appendix (see 8.1.4) and in a pivotal section within his central chapter (see 4.4 and 405–406n37)—might deepen our insight into how what is known in faith and articulated via our web of beliefs can help us identify and evaluate the core concepts and the conceptual-ontological connections that play such an integral, influential role in the scholarly disciplines with which we are engaged. In paying attention to develop-ments in Hart’s Ontology and Epistemology since the publication of this work, we shall also ask whether the broadly Dooyeweerdian position he initially adopts is as post-metaphysical as it may first appear.
In this iteration of the course, we shall pay special attention to the central concerns of political theory and aesthetics, including their respective interests in the way we posit societal principles and protect, reveal, expand, and find ourselves via the symbols that make up the fabric of our life, history, and society. In further probing the relationship between the aesthetic and political dimensions of created meaning, and between the mystery of our selfhood and the structural contours of reality, we shall also be asking what the development of an Ontology in the Reformational tradition might offer to the scholarly search for disciplinary integrity and interdisciplinary integration—this being a neo-Calvinism in which the unity and diversity we rightly seek are typically seen as covenantally, rather than ontotheologically, grounded.
Given this relational emphasis, we may well wonder what might happen if “Being” were to make way for—or make a way for—“Loving.” Perhaps, following Dooyeweerd’s (post-metaphysical?) turn to “Meaning,” we may find that a Christian scholarly approach to knowing and understanding our world and ourselves “after Being” may have something new to say to the peril and promise of life “post-truth”!
2. Keywords:
aesthetics, analogical concepts, core concepts, covenant, creation order, epistemology, facts, frameworks, individuality, knowing, law, meaning, modal theory, nominalism, normativity, ontology, ontotheology, order, political theory, realism, reduction, reductionism, relativity, revelation, selfhood, singularity, sphere sovereignty, spirituality, subjectivity, supratemporality, theopoetics, time, understanding, unity-diversity, universality/universals
3. Course Learning Goals:
a. To provide a thorough introduction to the field of Ontology via an engagement with the work of Hendrik Hart, in conversation with other neo-Calvinist scholars in the Dooyeweerdian-Vollenhovian tradition.
b. To explore the question of how we might best identify the unique identity of our respective academic disciplines (and/or our fields of investigation) as a way to appreciate the interdisciplinary connections between them—and vice versa.
c. To probe the relationship between the specific disciplines of aesthetics and political theory.
4. Course Requirements:
a. Total reading: 1250 pages total, including research for paper, of which approximately 50–70 pages per week is required to prepare for class.
b. In-seminar leadership: Two written response-pieces (2–3pp double-spaced) to the required readings for two sessions, identifying key issues and questions, to aid class discussion; a third written response-piece to material assigned for the final session; ongoing oral contribution to class discussion—plus posted contributions to google classroom (further details to be finalized in the opening session).
c. Description of course paper: One research paper of 3000–5000 words (MA students) or 5000–7000 words (PhD students) on any theme, question, thinker that arises out of your participation in and engagement with the course. Due by the relevant ICS/TST deadline.
d. Description and weighting of elements to be evaluated:
Paper: 60% [50% TST]
Class presentations: 20% [25% TST]
Oral and posted contributions: 20% [25% TST]
5. Required Readings:
Participants taking the course for credit may choose whether to read the “supplementary readings” listed below—and identified as such in the proposed schedule—in the area of aesthetics or political theory. While most of the following will be made available via the Google Classroom site, all participants are asked to try to obtain, or gain access to, those required readings that are either marked with an asterisk*, or (in the case of to-be-chosen supplementary readings) with an [*].
Nicholas Ansell, “From Hierarchy to Covenant: Reflections on Genesis 18:22, Gethsemane, and Beyond.” In Christopher Benge, ed., In a Reformational Key: In Honour of Duncan Roper (New Zealand: The Reformational Christian Studies Trust, 2020), 27–84. [Pp. 27–61 on biblical resources relevant to the law-subject or world-order/ordered world distinction/relationship.]
––––––––––, The Annihilation of Hell: Universal Salvation and the Redemption of Time in the Eschatology of Jürgen Moltmann. Paternoster Theological Monographs (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster Press; Eugene, OR: Cascade 2013), chap. 5. [Pp 210–261 (especially 228–45) contain a discussion of Hart’s view of time in conversation with Moltmann.]
Jonathan Chaplin, “Dooyeweerd’s Notion of Societal Structural Principles,” Philosophia Reformata 60, no. 1 (1995): 16–36.
––––––––––, “Public Justice as a Critical Political Norm,” Philosophia Reformata 72, no. 2
(2007): 130–150. (Supplementary reading)
Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin, with William Kelly, Tom Kelly, and Kevin Hasson, Art, Conflict, and Remembering: The Murals of the Bogside Artists (Coventry, UK: Coventry Cathedral, 2017), 10–19, 68 [title essay] and selections.
*Jeffrey Dudiak, Post-Truth? Facts and Faithfulness (Edmonton, AB: The King’s University Press, 2019).
Alan Goldman, “The Aesthetic.” In The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, ed. Berys Gaut and Dominic McIver Lopes (London: Routledge, 2001), chap 16, 181–92.
Elemér Hankiss, Fears and Symbols: An Introduction to the Study of Western Civilization (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2001). (selections, including chap 2, 47–68 and chap 10, 219–44)
Hendrik Hart, “Notes on Dooyeweerd, Reason, and Order.” In Contemporary Reflections on the Philosophy of Herman Dooyeweerd: A Supplement to the Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd, edited by D.F.M. Strauss and Michelle Botting (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000), 125–146.
––––––––––, “The Spirit of God and the Times of Our Lives.” Exaugural address (Toronto: Institute for Christian Studies, 2001).
*––––––––––, Understanding Our World: An Integral Ontology (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984).
Clarence Joldersma, “Beliefs and the Scientific Enterprise: A Framework Model Based on Kuhn’s Paradigms, Polanyi’s Commitment Framework, and Radnitzky’s Internal Steering Fields” (MPhil thesis; Toronto, ON: Institute for Christian Studies, 1982). [A Hart-directed thesis focused on epistemology, also relevant for the discussion of Dudiak (above).]
Ronald A. Kuipers, “Imagining Responsibility: Hendrik Hart’s Re-Reading of Christianity and Philosophy.” In Philosophy as Responsibility: A Celebration of Hendrik Hart’s Contribution to the Discipline, ed. Ronald A. Kuipers and Janet Catherina Wesselius (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2002), 3–24.
John Marenbon, Medieval Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), chap. 6. [Pp 67–78 contain a discussion of “Universals (Avicenna and Abelard)” that is oriented to modern philosophical concerns, thereby providing us with a most useful introduction to the opening of UOW]
[*]David Miller, Political Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). (Supplementary reading)
[*]Kenneth Minogue, Politics: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). (Supplementary reading)
[*]Bence Nanay, Aesthetics: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). (Supplementary reading)
James H. Olthuis, “Be(com)ing: Humankind as Gift and Call” [revised version]. In Dancing in the Wild Spaces of Love (unpublished manuscript), chap. 5.
––––––––––, “Theopoetics: Love on a Cosmic Scale.” In Dancing in the Wild Spaces of Love (unpublished manuscript), chap. 2.
*Jacques Rancière and Peter Engelmann, Politics and Aesthetics, trans. Wieland Hoban (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2019).
Calvin Seerveld, “Dooyeweerd’s Legacy for Aesthetics: Modal Law Theory.” In Normative Aesthetics: Sundry Writings and Occasional Lectures, ed. John H. Kok (Sioux Centre, IA: Dordt College Press, 2014), 45–80.
––––––––––, Rainbows for the Fallen World: Aesthetic Life and Artistic Task, 2nd edition (Toronto: Tuppence Press, 2005), chap. 4
Danielle Yett, “Making Sense: An Expansive Study of Imagination, Structural Metaphor, and Aesthetic Normativity with Calvin Seerveld” (MA thesis; Toronto, ON: Institute for Christian Studies, 2019). (Supplementary reading)
Lambert Zuidervaart, “Macrostructures and Societal Principles: An Architectonic Critique.” In Religion, Truth, and Social Transformation: Essays in Reformational Philosophy (Montreal and Kingston: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 2016), 252–76, 376–79.
6. Recommended Readings:
(a) Selected Additional Resources on Aesthetics and/or Political Theory
Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, Georg Lukács, Aesthetics and Politics, with an Afterword by Frederic Jameson (London: Verso, 2007 [1977]).
Jonathan Chaplin, “Defining Public Justice in a Pluralistic Society: Probing a Key Neo-Calvinist Insight,” Pro Rege (March, 2004): 1–10.
Berys Gaut and Dominic McIver Lopes, eds., The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics (London: Routledge, 2001).
Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture (London: Maurice Temple Smith, 1970).
Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Foundations of Culture.” In Anthropology in Theological Perspective, translated by Matthew J. O’Connell (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1985), chap. 7, 315–96.
Calvin Seerveld, A Christian Critique of Art and Literature. Revised edition (Sioux Center, IA: Dordt College Press, 1995).
––––––––––, Normative Aesthetics: Sundry Writings and Occasional Lectures, ed. John H. Kok (Sioux Centre, IA: Dordt College Press, 2014).
James W. Skillen, “Towards a Comprehensive Science of Politics,” Philosophia Reformata 53, no. 1 (1988): 33–58. [Also available in Jonathan Chaplin and Paul Marshall, eds., Political Theory and Christian Vision: Essays in Memory of Bernard Zylstra (Lanham, MD: University Press of America 1994), 57–80.]
“Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea: Herman Dooyeweerd’s Political and Legal Thought,” The Political Science Reviewer 32 (2003): 318–80.
––––––––––, “The Pluralist Philosophy of Herman Dooyeweerd.” In Jeanne Heffernan Schindler, ed., Christianity and Civil Society: Catholic and Neo-Calvinist Perspectives (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008), 97–114. [A revised version of the above essay.]
Lambert Zuidervaart, Artistic Truth: Aesthetics, Discourse, and Imaginative Disclosure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
–––––––––– and Henry Luttikhuizen, eds., Pledges of Jubilee: Essays on the Arts and Culture, in Honor of Calvin G. Seerveld (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995).
(b) Selected Additional Works Relevant to the Study of Understanding Our World
Nicholas Ansell, “For the Love of Wisdom: Scripture, Philosophy, and the Relativisation of Order.” In The Future of Creation Order, Volume 1: Philosophical, Scientific, and Religious Perspectives on Order and Emergence. New Approaches to the Scientific Study of Religion, vol. 3, ed. Gerrit Glas and Jeroen de Ridder (Dordrecht: Springer, 2018), chap. 12, 257–87. [ICS students will have read this for Biblical Foundations. For other participants who are unfamiliar with it, this is strongly recommended as a preparatory reading for session 5 and/or session 8.]
David M. Armstrong, What Is a Law of Nature? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
A.F. Chalmers, What Is This Thing Called Science? 4th ed. (Indianapolis, MN: Hackett, 2013).
Arnold H. De Graaff and James H. Olthuis, eds., “Toward a Biblical View of Man” (mimeographed; Toronto, ON: Institute for Christian Studies, 1978).
Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, translated by David H. Freeman, William S. Young, and H. De Jongste, 4 vols. (Jordan Station, ON: Paideia Press, 1984).
Hendrik Hart, “Conceptual Understanding and Knowing Other-Wise: Reflections on Rationality and Spirituality in Philosophy.” In Knowing Other-Wise: Philosophy at the Threshold of Spirituality, ed. James H. Olthuis (New York: Fordham University Press, 1997), 19–53.
––––––––––, “Creation Order in Our Philosophical Tradition: Critique and Refinement.” In An Ethos of Compassion and the Integrity of Creation, ed. Brian J. Walsh, Hendrik Hart, and Robert E. Vander Vennen (Lanham: University Press of America, 1995), 67–96.
––––––––––, “Dooyeweerd’s Gegenstand Theory of Theory.” In The Legacy of Herman Dooyeweerd: Reflections on Critical Philosophy in the Christian Tradition, ed. C. Thomas McIntire (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985), 143–66.
––––––––––, “Draft for Proposed ICS Systematic Philosophy Syllabus.” Unpublished ms., 2 vols (Toronto: Institute for Christian Studies, 1976). [This precursor to UOW also contains material on the history of philosophy and epistemology.]
–––––––––– et al., “Theorizing Between Boethius and Ockham” (mimeographed; Toronto, ON: Institute for Christian Studies, 1974).
––––––––––, Ronald A. Kuipers, and Kai Nielsen, eds. Walking the Tightrope of Faith: Philosophical Conversations about Reason and Religion (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999).
Ronald A. Kuipers and Janet Catherina Wesselius, eds., Philosophy as Responsibility: A Celebration of Hendrik Hart’s Contribution to the Discipline (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2002).
C. Thomas McIntire, ed., The Legacy of Herman Dooyeweerd: Reflections on Critical Philosophy in the Christian Tradition (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985).
Kai Nielsen and Hendrik Hart, Search for Community in a Withering Tradition: Conversations between a Marxian Atheist and a Calvinian Christian (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1990).
Michael Polanyi, Knowing and Being, ed. Marjorie Grene (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969).
––––––––––, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. Corrected ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974 [1958]).
–––––––––– and Harry Prosch, Meaning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975).
Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. 30th anniversary ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).
D.F.M. Strauss, Philosophy: Discipline of the Disciplines (Grand Rapids, MI: Paideia Press, 2009)
William Sweet and Hendrik Hart, Responses to the Enlightenment: An Exchange on Foundations, Faith, and Community (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2012).
Caroline Whitbeck, “A Different Reality: Feminist Ontology,” in Women, Knowledge, and Reality: Explorations in Feminist Philosophy, ed. Ann Gary and Marilyn Pearsall (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 51–76. [This essay was first published in 1984 and so is contemporary with UOW.]
Zuidema, S.U., “Philosophy as Point of Departure,” in Communication and Confrontation: A Philosophical Appraisal and Critique of Modern Society and Contemporary Thought (Toronto, ON: Wedge, 1972), 124–28.
Lambert Zuidervaart, Religion, Truth, and Social Transformation: Essays in Reformational Philosophy (Montreal and Kingston: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 2016).
7. A Provisional Schedule:
1. Dudiak, Post-Truth? (a short yet lively work to be read ahead of the first class); Introductions
2. Hart, UOW, Introduction; chap 1 (xvii–xxiii, 371–74; 1–35, 375–79); Kuipers; Marenbon
3. Hart, UOW, chap 2 (37–83; 380–90)
4. Hart UOW, chap 3 (85–147; 391–400)
5. Hart UOW, Appendix (325–70; 425–35); Ansell, “From Hierarchy to Covenant”
6. Hart UOW, chap 4 (149–201; 401–407); Seerveld, “Dooyeweerd’s Legacy”
7. Goldman; Seerveld, Rainbows; Rancière, first interview; Hankiss (selections);
Supplementary: Yett (selections); Nanay
8. Hart UOW, chap 5 (203–42; 408–12); Hart, “Notes”
9. Hart UOW, chap 6 (243–66; 413–16); Ansell, Annihilation, chap 5 [on time]
10. Hart UOW, chap 7 (267–324; 417–24); Olthuis “Be(com)ing”
11. Rancière, second interview; Chaplin, “Dooyeweerd’s Notion”; Zuidervaart;
Supplementary: Miller or Minogue; Chaplin, “Public Justice”
12. Hart, “Spirit;” Olthuis, “Theopoetics;” Dengerink Chaplin
13. Dudiak, Post-Truth?, in the light of class discussions and Joldersma; Final reflections