Dooyeweerd argued that neither science nor philosophy have been fully appropriate to understanding everyday life and experience. Science is fundamentally inappropriate because it inherently focuses on a single aspect; philosophy could be appropriate but in fact has seldom been so, because of deep presuppositions that have driven it forward throughout its history since the ancient Greeks. He thus sought to discern what philosophy would, could or should be like if it were to be appropriate to helping us analyse everyday experience.
To do this, he first made a longitudinal transcendental critique of the theoretical attitude of thought, which he argued is the antithesis of a pre-theoretical or everyday attitude, demonstrating that the presuppositions that either enable or hinder philosophy in viewing everyday experience are religious in nature. Dooyeweerd himself explicitly chose a religious starting point that is different from those that have informed Western philosophy, namely those of ancient Greece, the mediaeval scholastics, and the humanist modern era; his starting point was the Biblical notion of creation, fall and redemption. As Basden (2008) explains, this starting point freed him to take seriously the diversity and coherence we experience in the everyday attitude, and that meaning is more fundamental than being.
Contents:
We should clarify: he talked about everyday experience and the everyday (naïve, pre-theoretical) attitude of thinking - that is, being and doing on the one hand and thinking on the other. We sometimes conflate them here; what is said about everyday experience will usually apply to everyday attitude of thought, and what is said about everyday attitude of thought will usually apply to everyday experience.
Throughout his work, he kept on returning to everyday experience, with its diversity and its coherence, as an integral part of his argument. For example, in [NC,III:28] Dooyeweerd argued:
"To all of these speculative misunderstandings [made by philosophers,] naïve experience implicitly takes exception by persisting in its pre-theoretical conception of things, events and social relationships [and therefore the speculations must be questioned]."
To him, pre-theoretical experience or attitude was not so much an empirical source of individual 'facts', but rather something he could share with readers of a variety of cultural backgrounds that exhibits distinct, broad areas of meaning.
But Dooyeweerd was no mystic or romantic who treated everyday experience as completely beyond theoretical analysis (except, see below). Instead, having started from the pre-theoretical attitude of thought in order to identify the conditions necessary to the theoretical attitude, he then could use that knowledge to give an account of pre-theoretical experience iself - including its tendency to (as Habermas put it) "dissolve ... as we take it up piece by piece".
"Because it experiences reality in the indivisible meaning-coherence of its modal aspects, common sense intuitively repudiates any attempt to divide its experiential world into theoretically abstracted independent spheres. It takes exception to any idealistic volatilization of essential structural traits of concrete temporal reality, and does not allow the world of things to be reduced to pure sensory phenomena." [[NC,III:29]]Everyday experience could indeed be seen as superior because it is multi-aspectual whereas theoretical thought is narrower, and thus by definition misses reality. See our framework for understanding it. See also elsewhere how Dooyeweerd restored dignity to everyday knowing.
"Does a person of modern culture still have a really naïve experience? ... Can we still legitimately speak of naïve experience in modern culture? Has not education deprived us of a truly naïve attitude? Are we not accustomed to certain scientific concepts?? ... Is not the naïve attitude of experience a 'lost paradise' still inhabited by children and primitive people, but irrevocably abandoned by civilized adult humanity?" [[NC,III:30-31]]
He argued that such questions "betray a lack of insight into the true structural meaning of naïve experience." Modern living is still 'naïve' experience though that experience now includes the products of scientific and theoretical research (such as "telegraph, telephone, trains ..."). "As long as we conceive them in these concrete structures without theoretical reflection on this integral experience, our attitude toward such things is naïve [note: no negative connotation here]. It becomes theoretical only when we seek to give it a theoretical explanation." [[NC,III:31]]
Once Dooyeweerd had established theoretical thought within the context of pre-theoretical thought and explored its nature and limitations, especially with his transcendental critique, he was then in a position to employ the analytical tools offered by theoretical thought to understand pre-theoretical, everyday experience. Here is a summary of what I believe his understanding to have been as follows. A key characteristic of it is that it takes everyday life (pre-theoretical experience) as its starting-point, first establishing the validity of the tool (theoretical thought) with which everyday life may be studied.
This might constitute a Dooyeweerdian theory of everyday life that, if suitably developed, can engage closely yet critically with extant discourses thereon.
In everyday functioning, we function in all the aspects, usually without much awareness of them. See Multi-aspectual Functioning. In everyday knowing and everyday thinking we employ all ways of knowing, without abstraction. See these links for more details. Everyday experience is intimately connected with intuition.
This means that, though we cannot theorize scientifically about everyday life, we can understand if philosophically as an integration of the aspects of our experience. In the everyday, all aspects play their proper place to a greater or lesser extent. This is why, for example, it has an important social aspect and a religious (pistic) aspect, as well as a sensory aspect. But it also means that everyday living is not devoid of analytical activity (which is akin to theoretical thinking), though this takes the form of an analytical subject-object relationship rather than a theoretical Gegenstand-relation.
This provides a useful foundation for analysing the richness of everyday life, everyday engaged attitudes and tacit knowledge; see Multi-aspectual Knowledge Elicitation method.
Phenomenonology sees the lifeworld as the grounds for intersubjectivity. As I understand it, the argument is as follows: if we cannot access the noumenal world, and all we have is individual phenomenal beliefs, then how can we share meaning? Answer: we share a social lifeworld and this, somehow, ensures we share meaning; so intersubjectivity is made possible. If the (notion of) everyday lifeworld is to carry this philosophical burden, then this constrains phenomenonology to see the lifeworld in a certain manner. But, to Dooyeweerd, the lifeworld need not carry this burden, because intersubjectivity has a different ground, in the transending Meaning of the framework that is the modal aspects and law-side. It is only in the positivizing of that Meaning in which individual subjects might differ, and in our theoretical abstraction of it, but our intuitive grasp of the Meaning shared understanding and meaning is likely rather than unlikely. See also below.
Habermas. Habermas' notion of lifeworld as distinct from yet colonized by system bears some resemblance to Dooyeweerd's notion of everyday life. Though Habermas refers to lifeworld at length, he does not examine its characteristics so clearly and precisely as did Dooyeweerd. Habermas was more concerned with system than lifeworld, and to reinterpret Weber's view of it. He offered the insight that the modern lifeworld differs from the pre-modern (myth-oriented) not in being replaced by system but by encompassing a communicative rationality which enables people to challenge validity claims. This insight may be something that Dooyeweerd missed. Certainly, Dooyeweerd does not seem to have discussed Habermas at all. See our comparison between Dooyeweerd's and Habermas' notions of everyday lifeworld, and our more general discussions of the relation between their thought. See also below.
| Extant Lifeworld | Dooyeweerd |
|---|---|
| Lifeworld ('natural') attitude (S+L) | Pre-theoretical attitude, engaging with world of which we are part and accepting all aspects |
| 'Living through' lifeworld (Merleau-Ponty) | Our normal functioning in all aspects |
| Lifeworld experience | Functioning in all aspects constitutes concrete experience |
| Lifeworld as stock of experiences | Multi-aspectual ways of knowing all aspects of life |
| Lifeworld as collective mental life (Husserl), mediated via others (Straus) | To human beings, 'Multi-aspectual' inescapably involves social and analytical aspects |
|
Lifeworld as foundation of science (Husserl), which cannot function without the words and concepts scientists use having their meaning based in everyday life. | The doing of science is multi-aspectual functioning, in which the analytic aspect is elevated. |
| More generally (Schutz, Berger & Luckmann) as the 'paramount reality' in relation to which all other 'realities' ("finite provinces of meaning") stand such as theorizing, playing, religious ecstasy, watching theatre, which are "a turning away of attention from the reality of everyday life" [B&L p.39]. | All human functioning is multi-aspectual, but sometimes we elevate one aspect of this functioning to such a degree that we focus our attention and awareness within that aspect. |
| Lifeworld as totality | All the aspects cohere and resist being pulled apart. |
| Lifeworld as necessary foundation for intersubjectivity (phenomenology) | No: Intersubjectivity enabled by us all being and occurring within the same law-meaning framework, whose meaning we grasp with intuition |
| Lifeworld constituted by social consensus, via critique of validity claims (Habermas) | No: Both lifeworld, social consensus and critique are founded in aspects and affect each other |
| Lifeworld as necessary foundation for critique (Habermas) | No: Critique presupposes meaning; each aspect a distinct type of rationality |
| 'Thinking about' lifeworld | Thinking is functioning in analytic aspect to make differentiations about lifeworld, but in relationship with all other aspects |
| Lifeworld 'dissolving as we take it up piece by piece' (Habermas) | Beginning to sever inter-aspect relationships as we focus and isolate the 'pieces' so they lose their meaning and multi-aspectual nature. |
| Lifeworld as horizon | Two sides give two horizons: Law-side gives meaning-horizon, entity-side gives plastic horizon. |
| Lifeworld as given |
Law side: Aspects pertain Entity side: The actual world of which we are part |
| Lifeworld as limits |
Law side: Aspectual normativity that pertains, Entity side: Concrete limitations imposed by entity side |
| Lifeworld meaning |
Law side: Aspects are spheres of meaning Entity side: concrete meanings attributed by us, enabled by that framework of law-side meaning. |
| Lifeworld normativity |
Law side: Aspects are spheres of law that pertain universally and enable Entity side: Concrete norms selected by us, formed, written, agreed, codified |
| Diversity of lifeworld (Berger & Luckmann; see below * ) | Diversity of law-side lifeworld that is the irreducibly distinct aspects, especially of cosmic time. |
| Pre-modern life | Elevating the Grace pole of the Nature-Grace ground-motive, with absolutization of pistic aspect |
| Modern life without meaning | Elevating either pole of the Nature-Freedom ground-motive, with absolutization of analytical and formative aspects |
| Meaningful modernity | Opening up of aspects by humanity employing e.g. science, technology. |
| Loss of meaning in modernity | Closing down of aspects around the formative aspect |
| System (Habermas) | Closing down an aspect around the formative aspect: tending to absolutize one aspect of life (esp. economic, political) along with the formative aspect, and thereby sever inter-aspect relations |
| Agency of lifeworld (Rogers) | The rest of world functions in same aspects as we do. |
* The diversity of the lifeworld seems to have been very seldom discussed, and hardly even acknowledged, so that until recently I thought that it was unique to Dooyeweerd. But Berger and Luckmann [p.40ff] do acknowledge and discuss it, though indirectly via their discussion of what they call 'cosmic time'. They emphasise that "the temporal structure of everyday life is exceedingly complex", speak of "levels of temporality", and give examples of what seem very like Dooyeweerdian aspects of time.
This page, "http://www.dooy.info/everyday.html", 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: 22 April 2005. Last updated: 25 April 2005 phenomenonology. 10 May 2005 link to abstraction. 2 March 2006 comparison with extant lifeworld. 21 February 2008 link to knowing#intuition r.t. thinking. 30 July 2008 B+L diversity, Hsl science, B&L provinces of meaning. 2 February 2010 new title and intro. 12 October 2010 contents. 15 February 2018 corrected misunderstanding of lifeworld; link to Reid; new .end, .nav; Reid, Bourdieu, deCerteau. 2 March 2018 bullets of framework for understanding everyday. 25 September 2021 see.also, canonical.