Dooyeweerd's Theory of Aspects
According to Henderson [1994:37-38], Dooyeweerd recounted shortly before his death in 1977 how the shape given to his idea of aspects occurred to him:
"It does sound strange" he says, "but it is really true that the direction in which I worked out my philosophy and my encyclopedia of jurisprudence has no predecessors. I can still reconstruct how I got its basic idea. .. I enjoyed going for walks in the dunes in the evening. During one of these walks in the dunes I received an insight (ingeving) that the diverse modes of experience, which were dependent upon the various aspects of reality, had a modal character and that there had to be a structure of the modal aspects in which their coherence is reflected. The discovery of what I called 'the modal aspects of our experience horizon' was the point of connection."
To Dooyeweerd, the aspects fulfilled several philosophical roles and we could speak about their characteristics. This is what gave the notion its power and uniqueness.
This page contains an overview of Dooyeweerd's theory of aspects, in systematic as bullet point format. A more readable version of some of the theory, but much older, may be found in prose form, but it does not cover everything; we give links to the prose version below where they can be helpful. See aspects.html for a list and discussion of Dooyeweerd's suite of fifteen aspects.
What is an Aspect?
First, what is an aspect? It may surprise us to find that Dooyeweerd used "aspect" in its everyday sense, but gave it philosophical heft. In architecture, the east, south, west and north aspects of a building are ways of viewing the building that cannot be derived from each other. So, Dooyeweerd's aspects are ways of 'viewing' reality that cannot be derived from each other.
Just as the difference between aspects of a building are not mere subjective viewpoint but are of the building itself (and would be its aspects even if nobody ever viewed it), so Dooyeweerd's aspects are of reality itself and no mere human categorisation, and pertain even if nobody every 'viewed' (thought about, experienced) reality.
We meet aspects on the first page of Dooyeweerd's magnum opus,
A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, which begins with some "theses", summary statements that he will fill out throughout the work. We meet aspects that are encountered in everyday experience (he calls it "the pre-theoretical attitude of thought") but which we distinguish when we begin to think about our experience of life. He lists fifteen aspects and emphasises there is a fundamental coherence among them.
In a footnote he explains these are the how of reality rather than the what, reality's modes (of being, functionining, etc.) rather than what exists or functions. However, that how-what differentiation is to be taken as a stop-gap explanation so that the reader does not start off in the wrong direction.
Over on the second page, we meet Dooyeweerd's most fundamental view of reality: meaning. All being, and even selfhood, is meaning. (I prefer to call it "meaningfulness" to ensure it is not confused with the meaning of words, the meaning we ascribe to things, etc.) That makes sense because whatever if Created (as many religions believe all temporal reality to be), then all is meaningful by reference to the Creator and all expresses the Creator. (See page on Meaning.)
(Then Dooyeweerd goes onto his main topic, theoretical thought, but, it all starts from what he has written so far about, everyday experience and meaningfulness.)
This gives philosophical heft to the idea of aspects, without depending on architectural metaphors. An aspect is a "modality of meaning", which is a fundamentally distinct meaning-kernel. It is surrounded by a "constellation" of meanings that incorporate some of the meaningfulness of other aspects, so I call each aspect or sphere of meaning, a way of being meaningful, and a sphere of law, a way in which things can be good. It is also a mode of being and a mode of functioning (which emanate from meaningfulness and law in ways described below).
The aspects are diverse and yet they cohere. After long intuitive reflection, careful study and applying philosophical proofs, Dooyeweerd found fifteen aspects, which he lists on his first page.
"" [p.3]
All the aspects together constitute a framework, which Dooyeweerd called the law side of created reality. Having established that, we can now begin to undertand further all the the various things we have heard about aspects and modes. (But, as I have shown, Dooyeweerd said more about meaning(fulness) than about law: Basden [2019a].)
That the aspects are distinct from each other, and yet intertwined with each other, are what explain the diversity and coherence of everyday experience, and indeed the whole of human life. Dooyeweerd argued that aspects have a number of characteristics and roles that make them philosophically interesting.
Many thinkers speak of aspects to indicate distinct categories that should be considered separately (as for example in "IS evaluation must therefore take into account both the technical and social aspects" [Hirschheim and Smithson, 1999:402]). But Dooyeweerd went much further: aspects are much more than mere categories. They have philosophical roles and characteristics ...
- Philosophical Roles of Aspects:
- Philosophical Characteristics of Aspects:
Click Aspect name for its discussion page.
On the basis of what we have below, a list of tips has been compiled to help identify aspects. See our discussion of why Dooyeweerd's suite of aspects may have advantages over those of others such as Maslow's hierarchy.
- Aspects are spheres of Meaning, within which things are meaningful.
- Therefore each aspect provides us with a distinct way in which things 'make sense'.
- Therefore each aspect has its own distinct rationality.
- The aspects are separated by Time, as a spectrum of light is separated by a prism. (This is part of Dooyeweerd's Theory of Time.)
- Each aspect has a kernel meaning (see above list).
See also readable summary that expands on some of this.
- Aspects are modes in which we can Be. This is the foundation of Dooyeweerd's Theory of Entities - to Be is to Mean.
- It is the aspects that give meaning to things (or events, situations, etc.); meaning is not found in the things themselves. (The things do not even exist without meaning.)
- Most things have several aspectual meanings. e.g. a poem: aesthetic, lingual, formative.
- Some things have no meaning beyond a certain aspect (e.g. rocks on Mars have no meaning later than the physical: no biotic meaning since nothing lives there, no economic meaning since they are not a resource for anyone, no juridical meaning since nobody owns them).
- Each aspect provides a distinct set of concepts etc. by which we can describe and discuss things.
- e.g. physical aspect: atoms, forces, charges, materials, energies, mass. e.g. social aspect: friendship, institutions, membership, politeness. e.g. lingual aspect: words, sentences, gestures, emphasis, spelling.
- A thing, event, situation, etc. can be described in any aspect in which it has meaning.
- The thing can usually be described in several aspects.
See also readable summary that expands on some of this.
Each aspect seems to have a distinct role in the Cosmos, without which something very important would be missing and things would not be able to function so well, if at all. For example:
- Quantitative: amount
- Spatial: continuity and shape
- Kinematic: movement and change
- Physical: persistent, reliable being
- Biotic: integrity of the organism, and reproduction
- Sensitive: sensation and responsiveness not bound by spatial proximity
- Analytical: abstraction and free interpretation
- Formative: creativity and deliberate formation and structuring
- Lingual: to enable meaning to be represented
- Social: to enable people to relate as people, not things, and to live together; roles
- Economic: to enable carefulness, self-control, management
- Aesthetic: non-essentialist coherence, rest and play; antidote to earlier aspects
- Juridical: law; responsibility to the other; essence of the other
- Ethical: love that goes beyond what is due, the deep I-Thou relationship
- Pistic: commitment that is more than response, the religious I-We community
- The aspects are irreducible to each other.
- Their kernel meanings cannot be expressed in terms of another; to attempt so denatures their meaning.
- To attempt to reduce one aspect to another eventually results in antinomy. Dooyeweerd's example is Zeno's paradox, which results from an attempt to reduce the kinematic aspect of the race between hare and tortoise to the spatial.
- Because each has its own role, each aspect is important.
- Since no aspect may be reduced to another, nor derived from another without extra meaning, ...
- ... therefore, in general, none should be ignored and none should be elevated - for example considering only the economics of a government policy and ignoring the justice element.
- (In certain situations, however, the importance varies across the aspects; we might think in terms of an aspectual importance profile if we wish.)
- Unfortunately, humankind has a tendency to elevate aspects, and in the extreme, to absolutize aspects.
- Worldviews may be understood in terms of which aspects are elevated by a community.
- Absolutization is, in the end, religious in nature.
- Absolutization results in reductionism.
See also readable summary that expands on some of this.
Each Aspect Reaches out to the Others
No aspect exists for itself, but actively reaches out to the others (which fact links with all being important and no aspect being absolute). For example, the lingual aspect enables us to express meaning in symbols (lingual functioning), but that meaning can be of any aspect (reaching out). For example the word 'less' and the symbol '7' both express something quantitative, the word 'friend' expresses something social. Similarly, we can make distinctions and note similarities (analytical functioning reaching out) between amounts (quantitative), between words (lingual), between social roles, between religious beliefs, and so on. There can be amounts (quantitative reaching out) of rock (physical), living things (biotic), words (lingual), social roles (social) and religious beliefs (pistic). We can believe (pistic reaching out) things about numbers (quantitative), rock (physical), words and language (lingual) and so on.
Note, however, that Dooyeweerd himself does not seem to have discussed this, but rather seemed to take it for granted.
Aspects are Ordered
The aspects are ordered (from quantitative to pistic; see above).
- This order is linear, reflecting cosmic time
- The order has two directions: anticipatory (towards later aspects) and foundational or retroccipatory (towards earlier aspects).
- These two directions are fundamentally different, especially when it comes to dependency and analogy.
- See page discussing anticipation.
- The meaning of the aspects is intertwined.
- (This prevents the irreducibility of aspects becoming fragmentation.)
- In each aspect there are echoes of the others
- for example causality (physical meaning) has echoes in logical entailment (analytical meaning).
- An aspect anticipates those after it, and retrocipates those earlier than it.
See also readable summary that expands on some of this. See also how some of Hartmann's dualities might be seen as aspectual analogies.
- In addition, each aspect depends on all other aspects for its full meaning. There are two directions of dependency ...
- In Foundational Dependency the aspect is facilitated by those earlier than itself, for example:
- The biotic aspect of life functions cannot work without the physical aspect, with its solutions, diffusion and chemical reactions.
- Full social interaction cannot be facilitated without symbolic communication, which itself cannot function without the structuring capability afforded by the formative aspect.
- Full aesthetics likewise depends on an idea of economic frugality.
- In Anticipatory Dependency the potential the aspect has for facilitating others depends on the meaning they provide, for example:
- Irrational numbers have no meaning in the quantitative aspect until they facilitate spatial functioning.
- Organic chemicals have little special interest for the chemist, until they are recognised as facilitating biotic life functions.
- Much of linguistic pragmatics is inexplicable until we recognise the social meaning hidden within the lingual aspect.
- Dooyeweerd proposed that the dependency relationship is non-circular, in that if aspect X depends on aspect Y even indirectly, aspect Y will not depend on aspect X.
- This defines an order among the aspects.
See also readable summary that expands on some of this.
If the aspects are ordered according to inter-aspect dependency, several things follow.
- One is that if the functioning in an earlier aspect is faulty then the functioning in later might be jeopardized, even though the aspects are irreducible. For example, if a memory chip in your computer becomes faulty (physical aspect, eg. through over-heating), then your program might start to go wrong. Or it might not, if it does not access that area of memory: the dependency between the two aspects is not determinative. Functioning in an aspect cannot take on its full meaning, as that aspect, without proper functioning in earlier aspects.
- Another is that functioning in an earlier aspect can take on its full meaning as that aspect without any functioning in the later aspects. For example, plants can be fully alive (biotic aspect) without animal feeling (sensitive aspect). For example, creativity and achievement can occur in individuals because the formative aspect is before the social.
- Third, Aspectual 'visibility'. From within an aspect we can 'see' only what is meaningful within that aspect. Because of dependency relationship between aspects, when we look back to earlier aspects we can see something of their meaning, but only as filtered through the lens of the aspect we are in. For example, from the lingual aspect we see paper as medium and not as cellulose. But we have no inkling whatsoever of meaning in later aspects - not until we move to view things from those later aspects and then perhaps move back to the earlier aspect bearing knowledge of that later-aspect meaning. For example, when thinking purely in quantitative terms only rational numbers are meaningful. Irrational numbers only become meaningful (and thus worthy of study) only when we have experienced spatial meaning and then moved back to the quantitative aspect with that awareness. This means that, hidden in each aspect, are things that will serve the interests of later aspects by being the foundation of the implementation of in this aspect of the meaning of the later. But their meaning is not seen until we are aware of the needs of that later aspect. Until this occurs, exploring this earlier aspect without any awareness of the later, we might encounter these things, but they are mere curiousities.
- Because of their irreducibility, the aspects account for diversity of meaning and entities that we encounter.
- Because of the inter-aspect relationships, the aspects account for our experience of coherence in the Cosmos.
- Each aspect has its set of laws. e.g. physical law of gravity, lingual law of syntax.
- Aspectual Law is a framework which makes meaningful Being and Doing in that aspect possible. e.g. without Law of syntax no communication would be possible.
- Aspectual Law is NOT to be confused with social norms, human rules, regulations, etc. This is because we can never fully know aspectual law (see below. e.g. Aspectual Law of syntax is NOT the same as the laws of syntax in any given language. We may differentiate the various types of law as follows:
- Aspectual laws and aspectual kernels can never be fully known since they constitute themselves the very framework by which we can know. (However, they may be grasped with intuition.)
- However, we can come to know them to some extent (both explicitly and tacitly); this constitutes our knowledge of aspectual law. This knowledge is always partial.
- A community might emphasize certain of those it has knowledge of as important (either validly because of cultural conditions, and/or invalidly because of human arrogance or unconcern). These become the social norms of that community. They are created by human selection: functioning in the analytic aspect.
- Codified laws and written rules are an attempt to cast the social norms written in precise form by functioning in the lingual aspect.
- Aspectual Law should not be seen as constraint, but as enabling.
- Maybe a better word for Aspectual Law is Promise? It holds the Promise of repercussions.
Note 1: this emphasis on the Law Side of the cosmos explains the rather clumsy name 'Cosmonomic' that was given to the philosophy. In fact, law is seen as boundary between God and the cosmos.
See also readable summary that expands on some of this.
- An entity (e.g. a person, an animal) responds to laws of an aspect, ..
- .. and thereby the entity functions in that aspect.
- Therefore aspects define ways in we can function, meaningfully.
- Responding to the laws of an aspect is tantamount to saying that the entity is subject to laws of aspect. The entity is functioning as subject. e.g. someone who owns something is functioning as subject in the juridical aspect.
- An entity functions as object in an aspect when it has meaning in that aspect to another entity who is functioning as subject. e.g. a rock is an juridical object to the human who, in owning it, is juridical subject.
- This is the basis of Dooyeweerd's non-Cartesian notion of subject-object relationship.
- Aspects provide different ways by which things can relate to each other.
See also readable summary that expands on some of this.
- When a thing functions a certain way in an aspect, we can say it has a certain property.
- e.g. I exert a certain force on the chair I sit on (physical functioning) and so have the physical property of being a certain weight.
- Each aspect provides a collection of different properties.
- Most human living, being and acting is multi-aspectual. Human beings function in all aspects, in general.
- Consider what you are doing now: lingual functioning, as you read the symbols on the page and their meaning, sensitive functioning, as you see the shapes of the letters and hear the fan of your computer, biotic functioning, in your breathing, economic functioning, in that you must read this quickly in order to catch that train.
- There is very little human functioning in which only one aspect is meaningful.
- Sometimes, however, certain aspects are more important than others. Several types of importance occur:
- the qualifying aspect that expresses the main meaning of the thing itself,
- the leading aspect, often the same as the qualifying, but sometimes expressing the meaning of the thing to people involved with it,
- the founding aspect, on the basis of which the thing has been formed or implemented.
See Qualifying Aspect.
- The laws of earlier aspects (up to approx. physical) are determinative, allowing no freedom of responds.
- The laws of later aspects (at least from analytical) are normative, allowing freedom of response, both within the laws of the aspect and even to go against the laws.
- (There is debate over where the crossover between determinative and normative occurs, and whether it is sharp or gradual.)
- In this way, Dooyeweerd brings Determinism and Freedom together into one integrated approach, showing that their presumed mutual incompatibility may be questioned.
- The laws (normative) aspects provide norms for living and acting.
- Note 1: Aspectual laws are NOT the same as human laws, rules, regulations, etc. The latter may or may not be derived from the former, which can never be fully known nor expressed in symbolic form.
- Note 2: In the normative aspects, we experience responding to aspectual law as response. In determinative aspects, we experience responding to aspectual law as properties; e.g. I respond to the spatial aspect by being 6 feet tall, which seems like a property of me. This is an unusual meaning of the word 'respond'.
See also page on normativity, and a readable summary that expands on some of this.
- All aspectual functioning has repercussions. This is the Dooyeweerdian basis for, for example, both physical causality (determinative)
- Though we have freedom to go against the aspects, the aspects still pertain, whether we do or not.
- The laws of a modality are not emergent properties, and in particular are not 'socially constructed' (though knowledge about their laws might be).
- This is not unlike Heidegger's notion of 'worlding'.
- (In this sense (and perhaps in this sense only) the aspects transcend humanity, and may be thought of as 'given'.)
- This means there are always repercussions of aspectual functioning.
See also readable summary that expands on some of this.
- Beneficial repercussions come from going with the laws of aspects.
- Detrimental repercussions come from going against the laws of aspects.
- This provides a basis for distinguishing Good from Evil that does not depend on ontological dualism.
- It also provides a good basis for a multi-aspectual ethics and the notion of shalom.
- If the normative aspects allow us freedom of response, then we have responsibility for how we function in those aspects.
- If functioning in each aspect has repercussions of our functioning, then we also have responsibility for the repercussions of our functioning.
- This is, of course, the basis of the legal notion of responsibility for individual action. (It is no coincidence that aspects present us with Law.)
- Dooyeweerd contended that there is no incompatibility between the aspects. None inherently work against others, but all work in harmony with the others, as instruments of an orchestra do when playing a symphony.
- For example, if we act generously in business (follow the norm of the ethical aspect, then, in general, our business will prosper (economic aspect) rather than suffer. (In general, of course; these are normative aspects so outcome is not guaranteed in every specific case.)
- (This contention arises from from Dooyeweerd's belief that the aspectual framework is a love-gift of Creator to the Cosmos, which is a presupposition he made under the Creation-Fall-Redemption ground motive. He explains apparent lack of harmony in our experience by reference to evil in the human heart/ego/self.)
- This leads to the Shalom Principle: that if we function well in every aspect then things will go well, but if we function poorly in any aspect, then our success will be jeopardized.
- This could form the basis for a Dooyeweerdian account of what we might call 'successful living', for example, environmental sustainability, the success or of information systems, and the longevity of businesses or other institutions. This is being explored in papers like, for example, A philosophical underpinning for information systems development and Beyond Emancipation.
See also readable summary that expands on some of this.
- There is no single aspect of knowing. Knowing is multi-aspectual in nature. e.g. theoretical, social and cognitive knowing are all of different aspects.
- Each aspect provides a different way of knowing, a distinct epistemology.
- Each aspect delineates a distinct scientific arena.
- The aspects always refer beyond themselves, first to each other (via inter-aspect relationships).
- This means that multi-aspectual is richer and more 'true' than uni-aspectual.
- But this does not mean the whole integration of aspects is absolute, because ...
- .. the aspects always refer beyond themselves to their Divine Source, who alone is Absolute (aspects may be seen as an expression of the Divine Character without being Divine themselves).
- Therefore, no aspect is absolute, that is able to act as a firm foundation on which everything else is based.
- This means that no functioning is absolute. e.g. words can never fully express meaning.
- It also means that no knowing or truth is absolute in itself.
- Dooyeweerd always maintained that his proposed suite of aspects is merely a proposal, and should be criticised. In a section in NC II:556 entitled 'The system of the law-spheres is an open one', Dooyeweerd said:
"In fact the system of the law-spheres designed by us can never lay claim to material completion. A more penetrating examination may at any time bring new modal aspects of reality to the light not yet perceived before. And the discovery of new law-spheres will always require a revision and further development of our modal analyses. Theoretical thought has never finished its task. Any one who thinks he has devised a philosphical system that can be adopted unchanged by all later generations, shows his absolute lack of insight into the dependence of all theoretical thought on historical development."
- This is because, to identify them, he was functioning in the analytical aspect of making distinctions, which functioning is non-absolute, as we have just seen.
- Therefore, they should not be seen as 'given' in any 'essentialist' way.
- But they are 'taken'. That is, whenever we employ a suite of aspects (whether Dooyeweerd's or another) we adopt it with a degree of trust and faith for the duration of our taking.
- However, he did claim that aspects as such do transcend humanity, since they are the framework within which we and all else have our being etc.
- For example, in order to criticise, he claims, there must be a framework by which criticising is possible and meaningful.
- Note: since Being (types of Existence) comes out of aspectual functioning, and in many aspects the functioning is not determined, then what types of Being come into existence is fundamentally undetermined. Human construction of Being-reality is a reality.
- But the aspects (as such, not our knowledge of them) is not humanly constructed.
- (Remember, Dooyeweerd's philosophy is based on primacy of Meaning. It may be that the non-constructed nature of aspects is a necessary outcome of a Meaning-oriented philosophy.)
- Since each aspect provides a distinct way of knowing, distinct areas of science (physical, biological, social sciences, etc.) are oriented towards aspects, and each has methods of research and quality criteria distinct from others; see {D.4.5 science}.
- If the existence of entities is founded in aspects, this gives a philosophical basis for typology of entities. Dooyeweerd used this in accounting for kingdoms, phyla, genotypes, etc. of natural entities
- This in turn was used by Dooyeweerd in his theory of social institutions, in that he assumed that distinct valid types of institution could be correlated with aspects (e.g. a social club has purpose centred in the social aspect, a government, in the juridical aspect, a church, in the pistic aspect, and so on).
- That the aspects are distinct and offer distinct sets of concepts facilitates analysis of situations, because it aids clarity of reflection and can also act as a checklist to stimulate the analyst to consider what aspects of the situation might have been overlooked.
- That each aspect has different concepts and laws may be used to identify for example software facilities.
- The shalom hypothesis can be employed as a means of understanding diversity of beneficial and detrimental impacts of technology, or other human activity, including sustainability.
- Some perspectives that people hold may be seen as elevating particular aspects.
This is part of The Dooyeweerd Pages, which explain, explore and discuss Dooyeweerd's interesting philosophy. Questions or comments are very welcome.
Compiled by Andrew Basden. You may use this material subject to conditions.
Written on the Amiga with Protext.
Created: 3 March 2003, part 2 was cut-n-paste from summary.html.
Last updated: 4 March 2003 aspectual visibility. 10 March 2003 split up reld section into analogy, dependency and order, with extra material, links to bem and ecis papers. 25 April 2003 quote about openness of asp.suite. 10 June 2003 some new sections added, to link with new material in aspects.html; added two directions of dependency. 10 July 2003 added link to Heidegger's 'worlding'. 25 July 2003 roles of aspects; minor changes, link to Hartmann. 28 July 2003 minor change to roles. 26 September 2003 link idasp. 14 August 2004 admin. 26 January 2005 link to intuition; rationality; suite tidied; added list of philosophical roles, characteristics. 1 April 2005 link to suite.html. 20 March 2006 inner link to knowing; way of relating; rid counter. 20 September 2008 link qualasp, and correct a link to qual.asp. 9 January 2009 fwm and lvl sorted. 17 March 2009 order. 4 August 2009 restored html version; added reachout. 28 September 2009 'harmony' label, some rewriting. 4 May 2010 corrected 3 links. 15 September 2010 small changes. 17 September 2010 more intro about what aspects are. 22 September 2010 Henderson quote and better Intro. 3 September 2015 corrected '../'; rid counter; new .nav.
21 June 2022 new intro.