I feel sympathy for the attempt to bring together the notions of truth and truthfulness, as was done in the introductory text to the Truth Matters conference.1 It is indeed appealing to try to connect the epistemic concept of truth with moral and psychological concepts like truthfulness and trustworthiness.
The power of this appeal can be felt in different contexts. Today we are sensitized for the issue of truthfulness, because of the economic crisis and the loss of trustworthiness in the financial system. The public has lost its trust because the stories that legitimized the economic behaviour of bankers and share brokers have proven to be at least partially false. So, trustworthiness is related to truth, but not identical with it. What has shocked people is perhaps not so much the wrongness of certain (epistemic) truths as the extent to which they have relied on these truths. What appears to be disturbing is the looseness of the relationship between truth and trustworthiness, between reality and belief.
In the public sphere there is a similar dissociation, or even gap, between truth and trustworthiness. Reputation has become much more important than epistemic truth. The way authorities relate to truth, especially embarrassing and painful truths, seems much more driven by the desire to preserve the impression of trustworthiness than by the desire to promote truth and veracity. So, there is a new element here, namely, that of intentionally keeping up the appearance of reliability and trustworthiness as a goal.
In other practices such as medicine there is a different form of dissociation: medical professionals, in so far as they know the truth about medically relevant facts, are inclined to proportion truth to what the patient can bear. The truthfulness and trustworthiness of the professional comes to expression in the way this is done. To be truthful is not just to reveal everything that is factually true; it is to stay in touch with what the patient can tolerate and to proportion what is said (the truth) to what the patient can absorb. By doing so the doctor expresses another (second-order) form of truth: truth not just about certain facts, but truth as the expression of the professional’s understanding of how the patient relates to those facts. Professionals are qualified in so far as they have the competence to relate sensitively to what the patient can bear.
In sum, there are at least four concepts related to truth: (epistemic) truth, here understood as truth about certain states of affairs in the world; trust as the attitude that lets us accept certain (epistemic) truths expressed by others; trustworthiness and truthfulness as attitudes that enable others to accept certain truths on psychological or moral grounds expressed by me (or different others); and truth as the expression of a second order way of understanding, namely, the understanding of how others relate to certain first order, epistemic truths.
It is this second order understanding of truth that will mainly concern me in this chapter. As I see it, truth is not only conveyed by reports on certain epistemic truths but often also by the way persons relate to these truths. This second order understanding is relevant not only in understanding others but also in understanding the self. The convictions that emerge in the process of understanding the self and others are mediated and supported by truthfulness and trustworthiness, which provide the psychological and moral grounds for trust.
Philosophers, too, have discussed truth and truthfulness as societal themes. Charles Taylor is one of the most influential among them, and he has gained a wide audience, even outside philosophical circles.2 Taylor discusses the issue of truthfulness under the heading of authenticity. He does not belong to the critics of authenticity who say it is just the expression of individualistic and narcissistic self-concern, such as Bloom, Bell, and Lasch.3 Authenticity once was a fierce ideal, a way to live according to one’s standards; it was the expression of connectedness with one’s spiritual sources. In the nineteenth century these sources were searched for in inner life – in hearing one’s “inner voice” and maintaining the standard of individual originality. The individual person was his or her own “measure.” This Romantic ideal of authenticity, however, has been hollowed out by what Taylor calls “weak relativism.” This relativism has at least two features: loss of a shared horizon of meaning, and insufficient acknowledgment of the need for recognition. Basically, the attempt to self-define and live up to self-chosen standards can only be significant if there are things in the world that others recognize as significant. The attempt at self-definition can only have meaning if there is someone for whom what one is doing and what one considers valuable matters. In our individualistic world, however, authenticity is threatened by lack of mutual recognition and easily turns into an empty and vague notion.
For Lambert Zuidervaart, authenticity is also characteristic for truth – at least artistic truth – along with significance and integrity.4 He seems less ambivalent about the concept of artistic truth than Taylor, but maybe this is because his use of the term has another focus (authenticity as an element of artistic truth), whereas Taylor talks about an ideal of the Romantic period that in our society is threatened. Zuidervaart sees authenticity as a feature of the subject-object relation between the artist and her work, in the sense that the work of art “imaginatively discloses” the artist’s experience or vision.5 Authenticity, therefore, is a mediated expression (mediated by the artwork), and this mediation contributes to the imaginative disclosing effect of the artwork.
Zuidervaart’s work in aesthetics is part of a larger project that will lead to an account of truth in other areas. One of its main thrusts is the search for a concept of truth that is more comprehensive than assertoric correctness and propositional truth, and for a notion of authentication that entails more than just the discursive justification of assertions.6 To be sure, in the end this form of justification should be dealt with. It is this form of justification that Zuidervaart misses in the philosophers who inspired him: Adorno, Heidegger, and Dooyeweerd. Their work lacks a concept of objectivity and of intersubjective validation.
This chapter arises from a broader project of the author that consists of rethinking Dooyeweerdian systematic philosophy from a Kierkegaardian perspective. Traditionally, Dooyeweerd and Kierkegaard have been seen as near opposites. I hold, however, that there are strong arguments to suspect that this view is based on an erroneous reading of Kierkegaard as a proto-existentialist or early postmodern thinker. By seeing him primarily as a Christian thinker who searches for transparency in the I-self relationship, one can open a fruitful mutual area of encounter.7 The issue of truth is relevant for both thinkers, since both consider truth primarily as a way to relate to and adopt an attitude toward, respectively, the origin of meaning (Dooyeweerd) and the sustaining and inviting power that opens up the I-self relationship (Kierkegaard).8 Zuidervaart criticizes Dooyeweerd’s theory of truth, first in a lengthy online paper and later in two articles in Philosophia Reformata.9 Both he and Dooyeweerd concur that truth is something to be lived and enacted.10 Zuidervaart’s problem with Dooyeweerd is (among others) that the latter on the one hand suggests that religious concentration on the origin never can be grasped conceptually, whereas on the other hand accounts for truth in terms of an ultimate horizon that encompasses and determines other horizons that, in their turn, structure subjects in their orientation toward this origin. This “structuralization” of the way religion works is at odds with the dynamic, open, and undogmatic way in which Dooyeweerd speaks about religion at other places. As a consequence, the overall impression remains static. Whereas Dooyeweerd speaks of “standing in the truth” as the expression of a presupposed superstructure that consists of God’s call to love and human responses, Zuidervaart is inclined to emphasize the processual and dialogical character of all understanding of truth. For this understanding, metaphors like walking and abiding in truth are more apt than Dooyeweerd’s standing in the truth.11 There are more detailed and technical points of disagreement between Zuidervaart and Dooyeweerd, but I will leave them aside for the present.12
In the background of Zuidervaart’s criticism of Dooyeweerd there is a different conception of norms and of the process of the unfolding of reality in the course of history. Norms are not ahistorical, fixed, and pre-given principles, but are thoroughly historical. Truth is a dynamic correlation between human fidelity to societal principles on the one hand and a life-giving disclosure of society on the other hand. The first correlation corresponds (with modifications) with Dooyeweerd’s claim of accordance between law and human response. The idea of life-giving self-disclosure reflects Dooyeweerd’s idea of the opening process and refers to the telos of this process: “the flourishing of all creatures in their interconnections.”13 To be sure, the notion of such a telos is lacking in Dooyeweerd’s analysis of the opening process.
My focus in the present chapter is on a more limited subject, namely, how truth relates to the I-self relationship. My interest in the notion of self-relatedness has partly arisen from the fact that it offers a natural way to understand how religious dynamics are intertwined with the process of the opening-up of structures of reality.14 Self-relatedness is an important category in Kierkegaard’s writings, and is also important in Dooyeweerd’s understanding of theoretical knowing. One of the reasons Dooyeweerd consistently speaks of the (analysis of the) theoretical attitude of thought is that theorizing implies the adoption of an attitude. This attitude of analyzing and constructing abstract representations in its turn has repercussions for the self. It is for the scientist, for instance, not self-evident anymore to feel embedded in the context of which the object of study forms a part. Objectifying implies taking distance, analyzing, and construing relations underneath the surface of ordinary knowledge. In Zuidervaart’s account the idea of self-relatedness is more implicit, albeit not absent. Truth is a comprehensive notion, implying much more than assertoric truth only. Truth should be lived. It has many modes. By living truth, we can bear witness to truth. This bearing witness may occur behind our backs; it may be lived in non-assertoric ways. Other modes of truth may provide the context and support for the pursuit of assertoric correctness, Zuidervaart says.15 Such statements are consistent with the idea that, like truth, self-relatedness has many modes that may operate in different directions. There may be, for instance, tension between what a person says and what she does. Such statements are also consistent with the idea that self-relatedness co-occurs with and is embedded in other relations – relations with others and with the world.
In this chapter, I will employ this many-faceted concept of self-relatedness to acquire a clearer picture of the complexity of the relationship between truth and truthfulness. I begin with Søren Kierkegaard, specifically, with the view of one of his pseudonymous characters (Johannes Climacus) on “indirect communication” as condition for communicating truth. I will frame my discussion of this notion with the broader perspective of a comparison between Kierkegaard and reformational philosophical thinking. This comparison also has something to offer for Zuidervaart’s conception of truth.
My question is: how does the thinker, as thinker, relate to truth or to meaning and a life-giving perspective (to use Zuidervaart’s phrase)? I build my account in five steps. First. I discuss Kierkegaard’s thesis of indirect communication. Then I discuss approaches to truth based on reformational philosophical insights. After this, I return to Kierkegaard and his thesis of the subjectivity of truth. Next, I give another reflection on the relation between the reformational and the Kierkegaardian approach. Finally, I return to Zuidervaart and draw some conclusions as to how the exchange of ideas between Kierkegaard and reformational philosophy may be of help in the further elaboration of Zuidervaart’s conception of truth.
I start with a discussion of Kierkegaard’s thesis of indirect communication. For Climacus, the pseudonymous character that voices the position of the sceptical humorist, the issue is fundamental. He is convinced that truth allows only indirect communication.16 The term indirect should be read as contrasting with direct, that is, objective, factual, as a state of affairs one can be informed about. Truth does not tolerate such directness; it is no chunk of information, no non-contextual knowledge to be dredged up at will. In other words, truth is not some objective “over against” to be discussed at a distance. Those who try turn truth into an abstraction. In that case truth evaporates and ultimately turns into illusion, according to Climacus. If there be truth, it must come to expression in the manner one lives, for example in authenticity. Such truth is embodied – it presupposes persons of flesh and blood, who in their attitude embody the truth. Whoever is in search of truth should pay attention to style, attitude, and the relationship implied in the communication of the speaker/writer to himself, his message, and his audience.17
In the background we can suspect an allergy to a Christendom that considers itself capable of codifying its truth and whose deeds deny its spoken confession. This allergy left its wounds in Kierkegaard’s own life history. Still, at stake here is not a psychological motive alone. The systematic point is that in her manner of approaching the truth, the thinker must attune to the truth in such a way that content and form are in harmony.
Humans relate to truth in a twofold way. The matter of truth is, first of all, larger than us. It is not exhausted by what people desire, feel, or think. The pseudonymous author refers to this matter with terms such as infinity, the eternal, beatitude, power, and, indeed, truth. These objects of desire and thought cannot be substantialized in any way at all. They escape from every attempt at objectification. Then, secondly, these “matters” are real only insofar as they concern me; more precisely: they are real to the degree that they are lived and made visible in my doings.18 Every attempt to arrive at an “objective” determination of the truth – in thought or doctrine – turns it into an abstraction and thus into illusion. Such attempts are a sign of empty-headedness; they drive truth to the point where it vanishes. Hegel is Climacus’ favourite example. He built an impressive system but forgot to include himself. He acted like the man who built a large and beautiful home but forgot that he had to live in it and finally found himself sleeping in the doghouse next to his castle.
So, what Climacus means when he says that we have a double relation to truth is twofold: we relate to something that cannot be identified because it is larger than us, and this something simultaneously determines us in our relationship to it (truth). Truth is both ethereal and utterly concrete at once; it is both absent and present.
This doubling in the relation to the truth can be expressed in another way as well. The appropriation by which we interiorize truth is a movement full of tension and does not end in a state of tranquillity. We relate to the truth in “pathos,” i.e., desire as “infinite interest.” This interest is not extinguished (or: negated) once we find faith; rather, faith retains and deepens it. Faith, therefore, is not a condition of rest and relaxation, but of tension and pathos. The more pathos deepens, the more faith increases.
This tension is referred to as a paradox and as a leap. Faith is paradoxical in the sense that the infinite joins the finite in a way that retains the difference between the two. To the degree that faith gains depth, the inexpressibility and absurdity of faith is affirmed rather than reduced.
Something similar holds for the metaphor of faith as a leap. In faith, we do not leave the world of doubt and alienation behind. The leap does not end in a world of peace, harmony, and total insight. That is a misunderstanding. In the leap, it is the leaping that counts, rather than the landing. Faith does not pave the way; it holds on to and interiorizes the obstacles.
How difficult it is to relate seriously to what one wants to investigate or to say becomes clear in Postscript. Initially this text was meant to be a “serious” concluding statement to Philosophical Fragments.19 Nevertheless, this serious work is presented from the point of view of the critical humorist Climacus. This humorist makes things even harder for himself by saying that at some point in his life he decided never to agree with anybody. Armed with this intention, he goes in search of an answer to the question, “What does it mean for me to be a Christian?” As the text proceeds, it seems that the weapons turn against the author. Time and again Climacus relativizes the beginnings of insight and authenticity that seem to emerge. Consciously fooling himself, the author seems to torpedo the entire enterprise. Still, the text can be read quite differently, too.20 It is the ultimately untenable position of the humorist – who becomes a caricature of himself – that makes clear how restricted the humorist perspective is, and that being a Christian implies an essentially different relation to the truth. The humorist can only describe the conditions of faith in a negative way, namely, by underscoring the absurd and the absence of an object. Especially in the edifying works, Kierkegaard corrects this image.
Here a question arises about philosophy in general. Can philosophers identify themselves with their own work? Can they talk about “my philosophy?” Traditional philosophy – particularly philosophy of the metaphysical and rationalistic kind – tries to avoid such individualism. After all, philosophy aims to overcome local insight and to address the community of thought across the ages. Reaching beyond themselves and across time, philosophers aim at the universal. In a certain sense, their philosophy is no longer “theirs.” This is what Kierkegaard means when he says that the thinker “loses” himself. He “loses” himself (or his self) in what surpasses him. On the other hand, philosophers do not enter a timeless space; in their claims regarding the universal they remain bound to their own historical and social perspective. The struggle of nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy consists in the search for a relationship between the two perspectives, the personal and the universal. This relationship is seldom without tension.21
It seems worthwhile to interrupt my argument here for a moment to consider how Kierkegaard’s posing of the problem is related to reformational philosophy. I see different levels of discourse here: worldview, epistemology, and naive experience. First, at the level of worldview, there is a strong tendency to see context, diversity, and individuality not as restrictions on a presumed universality but as expressions of our belonging to a world with an intrinsic normativity. Coordinates such as “meaning,” “law,” and “promise-command” indicate this normativity and mark it by a threefold layer. Diversity is inextricably interwoven with coherence; behind these two there is the (transcendental) idea of a deeper unity and wholeness, which in turn points at the idea of origin of meaning. Diversity and socio-cultural determination, therefore, do not detract from the “larger” perspective. All reality, in all its bewildering variety, is, at a deeper, religious level, a whole, a “totality” that we can never completely grasp and understand. The wholeness that humans long for is ultimately a longing for connection, for religious unity, found in the relation to the Christ and not in humans themselves or in human nature or in a given idea of a totality of being(s).22 In contrast to Climacus, main proponents of the reformational tradition do not see a fundamental duality or ambiguity here. If there is a tension at this level, it is due to apostate tendencies in our hearts, which enter into our life and worldviews. Such tendencies lead us to consider a certain aspect or part of reality as absolute.
However, and second, at an epistemological level, Dooyeweerd does give rise to the idea of more intrinsic limitations in our relation to truth. I am referring here to what he says about the perspectival structure of knowing truth. This perspectival structure consists of the relationship between four horizons: a religious horizon, the horizon of cosmic time, the modal horizon, and the plastic horizon (or, the horizon of knowledge of individuality structures).23 Each of these horizons seems bound up with a specific epistemic attitude: a religious attitude, an orientation to unity and totality, a directedness to the modal, and an attitude directed to individuality structures (things in terms of their structural and individual identity, respectively). The perspectives relate to distinct ways of knowing. The most important similarity with Kierkegaard is the rejection of the possibility of a theoretical totality view. The wholeness of reality is a background intuition of our daily lives. In theoretical thought it is only given as transcendental idea.
Third, whereas the distinction between epistemic attitudes is basic for our manner of knowing, it is not decisive for the definition of the truth, which is ultimately religious. The vertical dimension, the religious directedness of what Dooyeweerd calls the “full” selfhood toward the origin of meaning cuts through all (horizontal) perspectives. This selfhood is the heart. For Dooyeweerd, truth refers especially to being properly attuned to this “vertical” orientation, rather than to agreement between reality and thinking in each of the (horizontal) perspectives. Truth does not first of all consist in the agreement between experience and reality or thinking and being. It consists in something deeper, which he refers to as “being or standing in the truth.” This stance is expressed as the firmness and certainty granted to humans in their earthly life when the selfhood – guided by Word revelation – orients itself to the origin of meaning.24 This last formulation suggests both a noteworthy similarity and a difference from the Danish thinker. The similarity is that both for Dooyeweerd and Kierkegaard, truth first of all needs to be lived instead of thought. This living in truth comes from the depth of selfhood when it opens itself to the fullness of meaning. The difference is that for Dooyeweerd, this “opening-oneself” does not lead to doubling or to exclusion of other perspectives as it does in the writings of some of Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous authors. For Dooyeweerd, in spite of the perspectival nature of our knowing, it is possible to talk and reflect on the various perspectives from a kind of meta-perspective. In Kierkegaard all of this is far more complicated. For him there exists a fundamental non-transparency in our knowing of the truth, a non-transparency that can only be wiped out in rare moments of religious surrender.
If Dooyeweerd sees tension between the various perspectives, this is not the consequence of the existence of these perspectives as such, for such tension is rather due to wrong use of the perspectives, most notably the undue absolutization (reification) of an aspect or part of reality. Dooyeweerd and Kierkegaard concur that truth should be lived and that philosophy should not aim at an overarching totality view. However, they differ with respect to the intrinsic paradoxical quality, doubleness, and non-transparency of our relationship to truth.
I turn back to Kierkegaard. What does it mean to say that truth resists objectification? Does it mean that truth completely escapes objectification? Or does it escape complete objectification? What happens to the thinker in the movement of interiorizing and deepening?25
Kierkegaard and reformational philosophers agree with the idea that thinking, by concentrating on truth, deepens and even reverses. Kierkegaard’s passion – belief as passion – shows a more than superficial resemblance with “dunamis,” the term Dooyeweerd uses to indicate the dynamic character of religion, which for him is first of all a driving force. But does such deepening and reversal break through all continuity? Does the thinker leave everything behind? Reflection on Kierkegaard’s thesis that “truth is subjectivity” may shed light on this issue. I will take as guide two notions: objectivity and system.
First, however, I will give a brief explanation about the concepts of self, subjectivity, and self-relatedness, especially the thesis of the subjectivity of truth. In a cautious interpretation this thesis means that truth is always truth in relation to a human being rather than to a truth by itself. The thesis implies more specifically that truth expresses itself in the deepening of the relationship of a human being to him or herself. Subjectivity refers to this interior aspect of the I-self relationship. This interiority does not aim at the inner life of a solipsistic cogito. It is a form of relatedness that is embedded in other relationships. Finally, the thesis of the subjectivity of truth points to the restlessness and passion that is characteristic for subjectivity.
The self is a relational category. It is, according to Anti-Climacus (Kierkegaard’s most Christian pseudonym) in The Sickness unto Death, a relation that is related to itself, and that in relating to itself is related to a power outside itself. This power is a dunamis that both hurts and opens. It keeps the I-self relationship open – and so rescues it – for without this power the self-relationship would be passive and would end in an empty mimetic circle in which I and self mirror one another. In the end I and self would coalesce and become a purely “negative unit,” as Anti-Climacus calls it.26 Put differently: if becoming a self consists of the interiorizing of truth, the I-self relation with all its doubt, fear, desperateness, and pride must deepen and transform into an existence that is attuned to that power outside itself. This deepening and this inner transformation do not take shape gradually; they require a leap. I will now flesh out the significance of the thesis that truth is subjectivity in terms of the notions of objectivity and system.
Why such a strong contrast between objectivity and subjectivity? One answer is that the objectifying approach never will lead to absolute knowledge. However, if there be truth, it must be absolute, according to Climacus. Objectifying approaches to the cosmos and to history are, by definition, approximations. They never picture the totality. Climacus compares the attempt of objectifying the totality (of meaning) with pantheism. The pantheistic position assumes a cosmos in which the eternal God is everything in everything, at every moment. Such pantheism cannot be the starting point for thought, for the human condition is utterly historical. The absoluteness of truth can only become real from the standpoint of subjectivity. In objectifying thought absolute truth is at best a conceivable possibility (or, hypothesis). In actual thinking such truth never will become reality (or, actuality).
Here I interrupt the argument. Is Climacus not exaggerating here? Is it true that truth is absolute? Is it true that the objectifying approach “forgets” the subject? Is this not a highly idealized version of theoretical thought as aiming at pure and detached objectivity? Is theoretical thought not by definition bound to a certain subjectivity – in the sense that theoretical thinking is practiced in a context and by taking positions in a scientific debate? Is Climacus not neglecting the more daily practices of objectification that do not exclude subject participation, but presuppose it? Recent approaches in philosophy of neuroscience suggest that our cognitive acts are embodied, embedded, and enacted.27 These approaches strongly resist the idea that objectifying consists of special acts of detached inner representation, even in philosophy.
Nevertheless, Climacus repeatedly turns to such absolute views. For instance, he says that abstract thought assumes a completed truth and thus an ideal identity of thought and being. From this ideal identity there is no subsequent return route to the subject, for that road back would imply concretization, application in the here and now. Such concretization would mean that the ideal identity is exposed to the becoming character of temporal being, and in becoming there can be no identity of thought and being.28 God alone, in his actuality, has such identity of thought and being. Hence, in abstract thought, that which is par excellence never entirely abstract must necessarily remain abstract: the subjective thinker her or himself.
Climacus emphasizes, as I have shown, that the subjective and objective approach can never occur simultaneously and can therefore never simultaneously be true. This brings us to the notion of the system. When Kierkegaard speaks about a system, he often means Hegel, who, according to Kierkegaard, tried to think together the subjective and the objective as simultaneous. The concept of mediation is central for this thinking together. Mediation refers to the attempt to join the subjective and the objective in the present. Mediation is annulment and conservation at once. Kierkegaard comments on this extensively, but his main point is that mediation remains abstract by definition, precisely because it takes place in thought. Thinking together the objective and the subjective, thinking together the existing individual as subject and object, and even thinking together the desire for God and the idea of God all ultimately continues to be a matter of arguing and constructing. In such thinking, the subject by definition turns into something accidental, into a function within the system, something that essentially makes no difference and is doomed to disappear. The system is in essence indifferent; it wipes out all differences. Kierkegaard, in other words, thinks of being human in terms of difference and even, in an intensified form, as paradox.
Human beings come closest to this simultaneity of subjectivity and objectivity in passion. Passion is paradoxical in that it keeps a secret, which at the same time escapes because it is transcendent (nonabsorbable). The secret is an “over-against” that never can be objectified or absorbed. Precisely because of this resistance against conceptual appropriation does this “over against” keep exerting its influence on the I-self relationship. Thus, the truth can be radically subjective and yet the subject need not be swamped by subjectivism. The dynamic from the “over against” prevents solipsism. Resistance to this power, however, can surely end in isolation and solipsism.
I will compare these insights with views within the reformational philosophical tradition. To begin, I again indicate some points of agreement.
Kierkegaard and the reformational tradition concur that philosophy should aim at contact with ultimate truth. Dooyeweerd and Kierkegaard both acknowledge the fundamental significance of religious dynamism in establishing such contact, and they impress us with their persistent search for such contact.
Both thinkers are also inclined to an approach from within. Kierkegaard’s dialectical approach displays some affinity with Dooyeweerd’s critique of inner tensions within scientific theories or worldviews (the so-called critique of antinomies). Both thinkers agree that, from the contrast between incompatible points of view, suspicion arises as to the viability of the overall conception. Kierkegaard’s notion of “transparency” or “transparency in being grounded in a power” seems an existential version of the sort of consistency Dooyeweerd looks for in his analysis of paradigms and worldviews. By investigating the tensions within these paradigms and worldviews, the thinker is brought to the point where she or he recognizes the religious roots of these tensions. This recognition is accompanied by an intensification of the I-self relationship. Kierkegaard’s calls this intensification pathos. Dooyeweerd uses the term concentration.
A difficult and interesting issue is – next – the theme of doubling. Dooyeweerd has been reproached for the fact that certain modal concepts, such as love and religious desire, are repeated in the transcendent, central-religious sphere. For those who are not familiar with Dooyeweerd’s systematic philosophy, I will briefly explain the terms “modal,” “modal sphere,” and “central-religious sphere.” The term modal (in: modal concepts) refers to modal spheres or aspects, namely, ways in which things in the world exist or function, human beings included. Dooyeweerd discerns fifteen of these aspects (spheres), from the numerical via the spatial, physical, biotic, psychic, and logical/analytical aspect onto the highest moral and pistic aspect (pistis means faith). These ways of functioning (aspects; spheres) might be depicted as horizontal layers crossed by a vertical line representing the religious dynamic that permeates all layers. This religious dynamic is directed at the origin of existence, which transcends created reality. The concept of religion, therefore, does not refer to phenomena that are empirically analyzable, but to a dynamic with a transcendent origin and focus that can only be indicated with boundary concepts (or, religious-transcendental ideas). Religion belongs to what Dooyeweerd calls the central sphere. All human functioning is concentrated in the heart, which directs the totality of existing and functioning to the real or presumed origin of meaning in this central sphere. However, the philosopher can say nothing about how this referring to and expressing of the origin takes place. When she or he nevertheless tries to do so, i.e., when empirical (modal) terms are used to indicate this central dynamic, this leads to a repetition of terms, with the risk of a too anthropomorphic and isolated view on the transcendent sphere. Dooyeweerd always insists that the central religious sphere escapes theoretical conceptualization. This does not mean that nothing can be said about it, but it does mean that whatever is said can never have the status of theory or of philosophical system. This is one reason why the use of a transcendental framework was so attractive to Dooyeweerd. It also explains why a certain vagueness characterizes terms like love and religious desire when they apply to what is centrally religious. The meaning of these terms transcends their modal sense. In spite of these limitations Dooyeweerd is inclined to speak of central love, religion as concentrated in the heart, and a supra-temporal community of believers in Christ.
In Kierkegaard’s thought “doubleness” plays an important role, for instance as a dialectical instant just prior to the leap. I limit myself to the example just discussed, where the absolute paradox doubled such that it no longer indicated only the actuality of my life but simultaneously the actuality of an existence outside of me in the other who takes my place.
The point gains even more relevance when considering notions like time and history in relation to the transcendent sphere. I am thinking about notions such as the supra-temporal sphere, the fullness of time. The topic itself is too big for treatment here. Still, it makes sense to point out that the temptation of a “double” use of language arises especially where an attempt is made to conceptualize the nitty-gritty of the religious dynamic in existence and in history, the “togetherness” of the transcendent and the immanent. Doubling, then, emerges in the attitude of concentration/intensification, that is, in the attempt to inquire into the divine mystery of things and events. The perspective can turn about in this concentrated searching and probing in a reality marked by conflict and incompatible facts. Suddenly a new layer of meaning becomes visible and we see matters in a different light.
Once again one can wonder whether – notwithstanding all the differences in style and rhetoric – there are also essential areas of agreement between Dooyeweerd’s religious-transcendental approach and the religious-existential one of Kierkegaard. From a Kierkegaardian point of view, we can interpret the doubled terminology in reformational philosophers such as Dooyeweerd and Meijer C. Smit positively, namely, as announcement of the leap, of the possible disclosure of new dimensions of meaning, or of new positions from where philosophizing is possible.29 Except, Kierkegaard moves on from here; his thinking itself witnesses to the ambiguity and conflict that is characteristic of human life. Seen in this light, reformational philosophy, with its emphasis on creation and law and its relative neglect of themes like ambiguity, evil, and brokenness, still gives the impression of a certain naiveté. This philosophy needs to open itself for these darker themes.
Kierkegaard’s thought alerts the philosopher to the delicate character of the relation between the thinker and the truth. There is often a disparity between truth and the way the thinker relates to it. Such disparity comes to expression in a lack of transparency, which should act as warning signal, like inconsistency does in the logical sphere.
This message may also have an impact on Zuidervaart’s account of truth. As I said above, Zuidervaart is aware of the multidimensionality and complexity of our relatedness to truth. There is also an implicit awareness that this relatedness involves self-relatedness and that there may be incongruities in this self-relatedness. However, the overall emphasis is on increasing richness and interconnectedness in the course of history and on the telos of disclosure: the eschatological flourishing of all creatures. I am aware that what I am suggesting is more a matter of emphasis than a point of disagreement. What I am suggesting is that by taking into account more explicitly the idea of self-relatedness, as a condition that structures our attempt to embody truth, it is possible to amplify the conceptual space for an account that does justice to the intrinsic ambivalence and ambiguity of this attempt.
There is nothing new in saying this. Anglo-American speech act theory and Continental existential phenomenology, each in its own way, have highlighted that the speaker by asserting is not only relating to the theme (the asserted) but also to her or himself. Assertions are acts in which the speaker not only states “something” (the asserted) but also connects her or his own trustworthiness to the occurrence of this “something” (the asserted). When I say that I did something and it turns out after a while that I did not do it, my trustworthiness is compromised. In speaking, there is not only the act of speaking but also the speaker to whom the asserted reflects back. More precisely, in the act of speaking the speaker relates to the speaker’s self, by adopting a certain stance, i.e. an assertoric stance, toward him or herself as presenter of the asserted. The adoption of this stance is an implicit confirmation of the normative relationship the speakers have with themselves as speakers. Zuidervaart’s account of truth could easily be adapted and expanded in this direction.
This is important for two reasons. First, it is important because the notion of I-self relationship (or, self-relatedness) helps to elucidate the complexity of the relationship between truth, truthfulness, and authenticity. These qualities and virtues not only refer to features of certain actions and assertions but also implicitly refer to the manifold ways in which the agent relates to the purpose or theme of these actions and assertions. The notion of I-self relatedness helps to gain a full picture of what kind of rules and norms are implied in these qualities and virtues. In my introduction, I suggested that truthfulness and trustworthiness offer the psychological and moral grounds for the acceptance of certain truths. We can now add that these two qualities are exemplifications of a double sensitivity: sensitivity for how one relates to the theme and sensitivity for how one relates to the context. In another context, I describe this double sensitivity as a requirement for any true philosophy.30
The other reason for taking the idea of self-relatedness more explicitly into account is that it provides the conceptual space for doing justice to the intrinsic ambivalence, inner tension, and brokenness of human life. This is important because pain, doubt, suffering, and inconsistency are undeniably part of our existence. Kierkegaard’s writings are an important testimony to the fact that a certain measure of non-transparency usually marks this self-relatedness, and that it is only at our best (religious) moments that this opaqueness may disappear. I miss this element of almost insurmountable non-transparency in both Dooyeweerd and Zuidervaart. Dooyeweerd recognizes sin, but the concept does not play a central role in his epistemology or in his cosmology and anthropology. Zuidervaart focuses on productive circularity, wholeness, and an eschatology of fulfilled understanding and interconnectedness, not on brokenness and ambivalence. As I said, this is maybe more a matter of emphasis than a point of real divergence. At least, it does not seem very difficult to incorporate the ambiguities of self-relatedness into Zuidervaart’s account of truth.
1 Part of this chapter was originally published as an article in Philosophia Reformata 77 (2, 2012).
2 Charles Taylor, The Malaise of Modernity (Don Mills: Stoddart, 1991). See also Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).
3 Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (London: Heinemann, 1976), Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York: Norton, 1978).
4 Lambert Zuidervaart, Artistic Truth: Aesthetics, Discourse, and Imaginative Disclosure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 127–34.
5 Zuidervaart, Artistic Truth, 200–1.
6 Lambert Zuidervaart, “After Dooyeweerd: Truth in Reformational Philosophy” (Toronto: Institute for Christian Studies, 2008), section 3.5, http://records.icscanada.edu/ir/articles/20081007-1.shtml.
7 See C. Stephen Evans, Faith beyond Reason: A Kierkegaardian Account (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) and Kierkegaard on Faith and the Self (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006); also David J. Gouwens, Kierkegaard as a Religious Thinker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). S.U. Zuidema belongs to the reformational thinkers who saw Kierkegaard as proto-existentialist. See his “Kierkegaard,” in Denkers Van Deze Tijd (Franeker: Wever, 1957), vol. 1, 11–61.
8 Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).
9 Zuidervaart, “After Dooyeweerd,” Lambert Zuidervaart, “Dooyeweerd’s Conception of Truth: Exposition and Critique,” Philosophia Reformata 73 (2008): 170–89, Lambert Zuidervaart, “Unfinished Business: Toward a Reformational Conception of Truth,” Philosophia Reformata 74 (2009): 1–20.
10 Zuidervaart, “Dooyeweerd’s Conception of Truth,” 187.
11 Ibid., 181.
12 Other points of criticism are that by speaking of a religious a priori that makes experience possible Dooyeweerd runs into difficulty both ontologically and epistemologically: ontologically because, if such an a priori horizontal structure exists, it could only explain how existence is possible but not how experience and knowledge are possible; and epistemologically because this thesis seems to imply that only those who have understood and accepted divine revelation are capable of true experience and knowledge. Then there is the problem that theoretical intuition, which Dooyeweerd assigns a central role in his account of theoretical knowledge, cannot solve the problem of “intermodal synthesis.” Intuition does not achieve synthesis nor does it confirm or disconfirm certain ideas; it at best helps to discover such synthesis and offers suggestions and heuristic ideas. Finally, by construing truth as an accord between law side (horizons) and subject side, Dooyeweerd ignores the issue of objectivity and overlooks the importance of inter-subjective validity.
13 Zuidervaart, “Unfinished Business,” 5, 8.
14 See for instance Gerrit Glas, “Christian Philosophical Anthropology: A Reformation Perspective,” Philosophia Reformata 75 (2010): 151–89. See also Gerrit Glas, “Person, Personality, Self, and Identity,” Journal of Personality Disorders 20 (2006): 26–138.
15 Zuidervaart, “Unfinished Business,” 18.
16 Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 72–80.
17 See for instance the first pages of Kierkegaard’s Either/Or: A Fragment of Life, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).
18 It is therefore preferable to call Kierkegaard the first philosopher of life rather than to speak of him as founding father of existentialism.
19 Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript; Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments and Johannes Climacus, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985).
20 For this interpretation see Alastair Hannay, Kierkegaard: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
21 One elaboration of this thought could be that postmodern philosophers are far less ironic – at a distance – regarding themselves than they purport to be (think of Rorty). Postmodern philosophers do not forget themselves; rather, they insert themselves prior to all discourse on the universal and on the community of thought. In Kierkegaard’s terms, they take themselves far too seriously by continually letting their own historical formation and the perspectival character of their perspectives dominate the picture.
22 See Hendrik G. Geertsema, Het menselijk karakter van ons kennen (Amsterdam: Buijten and Schipperheijn, 1992), 130.
23 Herman Dooyeweerd, De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee, 3 vols. (Amsterdam: H.J. Paris, 1935–36), 2:491–2; A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, 4 vols. (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1953–58), 2:560.
24 Dooyeweerd puts it this way (transl. J.N. Kraay):
The transcendent, religious Fullness of Truth which is the condition for all truth within the horizon of time does not touch an abstract function of theoretical thought; it addresses our full selfhoods, the heart of the whole of human life, the heart therefore also of our theoretical thinking . . . For the a priori genuine attitude of thought, too, the first condition is that the thinking selfhood stand in the truth, through acceptance (with the heart) of the Revelation of God, which enters our horizon of time only via our faith function, in complete reliance on the firmness of God’s Word. God is the Origin, the source of all truth. Christ, as perfect Divine Revelation, is the fullness of meaning of Truth. Apart from this transcendent fullness of Truth the a priori temporal dimensions of truth have no meaning, no force, no being. It is the transcendent, religious dimension of truth, touching the heart, that confers on all temporal truth the necessary firmness and certainty.
Dooyeweerd, De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee, 2:504; A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, 2:571–2.
25 See for what follows also Christopher Hamilton, “Kierkegaard on Truth as Subjectivity: Christianity, Ethics, and Asceticism,” Religious Studies 34 (1998): 61–79; Evans, Kierkegaard on Faith and the Self, chapters 2, 7, 10.
26 Here we meet a basic difference with Hegel’s thought, especially his analysis of the dialectic of Anerkennung (recognition). In the recognition of the other (as that which consciousness has outside itself) this is about the Aufhebung (negation) of the otherness of the other. This Aufhebung is made possible through the recognition that the other is another consciousness that consciousness encounters within itself (hence the reference to a doubling of consciousness). Next, this other consciousness is interpreted as my consciousness of the other consciousness; consciousness recognizes itself in the other consciousness (identification). In Kierkegaard’s thought no such identification can obtain. Such Hegelian doubling turns into ambiguity and ultimately a paradox in Kierkegaard – see Mark C. Taylor, Journeys to Selfhood: Hegel and Kierkegaard (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000).
27 Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993), Evan Thompson, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of the Mind (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007).
28 Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, 190–2.
29 See Meijer C. Smit, “Beschouwingen over de geschiedenis en de tijd der geschiedenis,” in De eerste en de tweede geschiedenis. Nagelaten geschriften van Meijer C. Smit, ed. Jacob Klapwijk (Amsterdam: Buijten and Schipperheijn, 1987), 96–117.
30 Gerrit Glas, “Persons and Their Lives: Reformational Philosophy on Man, Ethics, and Beyond,” Philosophia Reformata 71 (2006): 31–57.