Dirk Hendrik Theodoor Vollenhoven (November 1, 1892, Amsterdam

Amsterdam

Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

–1978) was with Herman Dooyeweerd

Herman Dooyeweerd

Herman Dooyeweerd was a Dutch juridical scholar by training, who by vocation was a philosopher and the founder of the philosophy of the cosmonomic idea. He received early support for his work from his brother-in-law D. H. Th. Vollenhoven...

 the first generation of reformational philosophers

Reformational philosophy

Reformational philosophy is a Neo-Calvinistic movement pioneered by Herman Dooyeweerd and D. H. Th. Vollenhoven that seeks to develop philosophical thought in a radically Protestant Christian direction.- Historical overview :...

, an intellectual movement with which Vollenhoven worked communally from his election in 1936 as President of the newly-organized group formed to advance the movement; the organization is now known as the Association for Reformational Philosophy.

(Outside formal settings Vollenhoven always preferred to be addressed simply as "Theo," pronounced in his native Dutch with only a "t" sound, but spelled "Th" in deference to the Theta-sound in the Greek origins of the name.)

Pastor

After Vollenhoven's marriage, he became a pastor in the Gereformeerde Kerk in Oostkapelle

Oostkapelle

Oostkapelle is a village in the Dutch province of Zeeland. It is a part of the municipality of Veere, and lies about 9 km north of Middelburg.Oostkapelle was a separate municipality until 1966, when it was merged with Domburg....

 from 1918. In 1921 he moved pastorates to Den Haag (The Hague

The Hague

The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...

) which afforded Vollenhoven and his friend Herman Dooyeweerd opportunities for discussions. These discussions formed the foundation of what became known as Reformational philosophy.

Doctorate and the VU University

While pastoring his congregation in Den Haag, Vollenhoven was appointed the first full-time Professor of Philosophy at the VU University

Vrije Universiteit

The Vrije Universiteit is a university in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The Dutch name is often abbreviated as VU and in English the university uses the name "VU University". The university is located on a compact urban campus in the southern part of Amsterdam in the Buitenveldert district...

 in Amsterdam – partly because his academic background was strong in classics

Classics

Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...

, philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

, and theology

Theology

Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...

 and partly in consideration of his interdisciplinary doctoral

Doctorate

A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder to teach in a specific field, A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder...

 dissertation in theology and the philosophical foundations of mathematics

Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

: 'The Philosophy of Mathematics from a Theistic Standpoint' (not yet translated from the Dutch

Dutch language

Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...

). He successfully defended it in 1918. To prepare for it, Vollenhoven — whose undergraduate and Master's level studies were pursued at the VU University — turned to VU's larger rival, the University of Amsterdam (UA) in order to study under its Professor of Mathematics, Dr Lutgen Brouwer

Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer

Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer FRS , usually cited as L. E. J. Brouwer but known to his friends as Bertus, was a Dutch mathematician and philosopher, a graduate of the University of Amsterdam, who worked in topology, set theory, measure theory and complex analysis.-Biography:Early in his career,...

, an Intuitionist

Intuitionism

In the philosophy of mathematics, intuitionism, or neointuitionism , is an approach to mathematics as the constructive mental activity of humans. That is, mathematics does not consist of analytic activities wherein deep properties of existence are revealed and applied...

 in mathematics and a Marxist

Marxism

Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...

 in other respects. Vollenhoven in his dissertation criticized Brouwer's version of Intuitionism, but retained and revised the definition of the term "Intuitionist" for his own emerging position,¹ which would become a component of Vollenhoven's epistemology. Once inaugurated into the chair of Philosophy at the VU University, Vollenhoven shouldered the responsibilities of his task from the time of his appointment, being a relatively young scholar, to the time of his retirement in ripe old age.

Christian philosophy

Vollenhoven was one of the leading intellectuals at the Free University and in the broader Reformed community of his country, who were dedicated to work formatively at the task of founding a distinctively Christian Philosophy. At the time, philosophical thought was dominated by German neo-Kantianism, and that movement's main challenger, the Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl

Edmund Husserl

Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl was a philosopher and mathematician and the founder of the 20th century philosophical school of phenomenology. He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his day, yet he elaborated critiques of historicism and of psychologism in logic...

. An affinity for mathematics linked some of Husserl's and Vollenhoven's ideas. Vollenhoven also absorbed significant influence from the maverick neo-Kantian Ernst Cassirer

Ernst Cassirer

Ernst Cassirer was a German philosopher. He was one of the major figures in the development of philosophical idealism in the first half of the 20th century...

.²

Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd

The main influences on Vollenhoven's thought were the VU's founder Abraham Kuyper

Abraham Kuyper

Abraham Kuijper generally known as Abraham Kuyper, was a Dutch politician, journalist, statesman and theologian...

 and leading theologian Herman Bavinck

Herman Bavinck

Herman Bavinck was a Dutch Reformed theologian and churchman.-Background:Bavinck was born in the town of Hoogeveen in the Netherlands to a German father. He first went to theological school at Kampen, but then moved on to Leiden for further training...

 who both taught a theistic realism, along with a number of other VU professors and outside sources — Anema taught a transcendental realism, Wilhelm Geesink introduced Vollenhoven to the critical philosophy of Kant, Jan Woltjer

Jan Woltjer

Jan Woltjer was a professor of Classical languages and literature at the VU University in Amsterdam....

 taught him Classical languages and the literature and philosophy those languages carried, Woltjer also brought Vollenhoven into awareness of the modern natural-scientific theories of Lorentz

Hendrik Lorentz

Hendrik Antoon Lorentz was a Dutch physicist who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman for the discovery and theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect...

, van der Waals

Johannes Diderik van der Waals

Johannes Diderik van der Waals was a Dutch theoretical physicist and thermodynamicist famous for his work on an equation of state for gases and liquids....

, and Einstein

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...

. The professor of medical thought L. Bouman raised the questions of body and soul, and the lector F.J.J. Buytendijk the questions of the psychic aspect of human and animal life. Both Vollenhoven and the two-years-younger Herman Dooyeweerd

Herman Dooyeweerd

Herman Dooyeweerd was a Dutch juridical scholar by training, who by vocation was a philosopher and the founder of the philosophy of the cosmonomic idea. He received early support for his work from his brother-in-law D. H. Th. Vollenhoven...

 had been educated at the Gereformeerd Gymnasium (an academic highschool in Amsterdam) and both studied straight through the VU curriculum to achieve their doctorates, with the younger Dooyeweerd always two years behind. ³

Vollenhoven first met Hermina Maria ('Mein') Dooyeweerd, a secretary, a year after he became a VU student in 1911; Mein typed a report for Vollenhoven on a summer evangelization project in Amsterdam during 1912. Once aware of Mein, Vollenhoven also became better acquainted with her younger brother Herman. Theo and Mein married in 1918; and fourteen days after, September 27, Vollenhoven obtained his doctoral degree; his dissertation supervisor and "promotor" (as the Dutch say) was Prof Geesink.

Thus the two emerging philosophers became more than friends but also brothers-in-law, while later they also became colleagues as professors at VU. For a while in Den Haag, Vollenhoven was also Dooyeweerd's pastor. In 1926, Vollenhoven received an appointment as professor of philosophy at VU, the first full-time appointment in the discipline. By 1933, he served as VU's first University Dean, a rotating position, and published Calvinism and the Reformation of Philosophy (not translated, Het Calvinisme en de Reformatie van de Wijsbegeerte). Two years later Herman Dooyeweerd

Herman Dooyeweerd

Herman Dooyeweerd was a Dutch juridical scholar by training, who by vocation was a philosopher and the founder of the philosophy of the cosmonomic idea. He received early support for his work from his brother-in-law D. H. Th. Vollenhoven...

 published a first full-dress statement of their philosophy, although by no means did they agree on everything.[3] The three-volume work was entitled De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee (The Philosophy of the Law-Idea, often abbreviated "WdW"). Both scholars surged forward as a team to lead the intellectual movement that crystallised around it.

As a result of the interest that the WdW generated, together Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd founded the Association for Calvinist Philosophy (ARP) (Vereningen voor Calvinistsche Wijsbegeerte), which soon counted some 500 members. Vollenhoven was the first president of the association, and remained in that office until his retirement in 1963.

Vollenhoven played a very large role in the development of the ARP, and mentored most of the philosophers who emerged from this intellectual movement for much of the time, while Dooyeweerd mentored students in the specialty of jurisprudence.

Problem-Historical Method

As professor of philosophy at the VU, Vollenhoven realized that a systematic/thetical approach implied a critical framework for understanding and evaluating the philosophical work of others. Philosophical systematics requires a close historical reading of the entire common tradition of Western philosophy

Western philosophy

Western philosophy is the philosophical thought and work of the Western or Occidental world, as distinct from Eastern or Oriental philosophies and the varieties of indigenous philosophies....

, from the early Greeks

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

 onward. Vollenhoven was well equipped by his classical studies for this pursuit of an adequate historiographical

Historiography

Historiography refers either to the study of the history and methodology of history as a discipline, or to a body of historical work on a specialized topic...

 backup for a systematic philosophy that sought to be meaningfully and distinctively Christian. So, he started from scratch and worked methodically, employing the tools that he had garnered.

As his horizon grew in those early years of his professorship, Vollenhoven envisioned writing nothing less than an entire history of Western Philosophy. He sketched out ideas for a ten-volume work and actually produced the first volume covering the fragments of the Pre-Socratics; published as the first volume of Gescheidenis der Wijsbegeerte: Deel I (History of Philosophy). This was to be the proof to the academic community and the government that he was competent to undertake the ambitious program of the full ten-volume work that he envisioned. In the mean time he carried a full teaching load of course offerings for undergraduate philosophy majors and graduate students in philosophy.

However, by the time his first volume appeared in 1950, his method was so innovative and unfamiliar that the editors, reviewers, and most of all the fellow academics in the field who sat on the committee to approve the government grants for "pure research" reacted negatively to his offering. Recovering from this keen disappointment⁴, Vollenhoven was nevertheless able to use his first volume as a textbook at the VU; and an American student of his, H. Evan Runner

H. Evan Runner

Howard Evan Runner, often referred to as H. Evan Runner, was professor of philosophy at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA from 1951 until his retirement in 1981....

, later created an English translation in mimeo form to use as a course syllabus at Calvin College

Calvin College

Calvin College is a comprehensive liberal arts college located in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Founded in 1876, Calvin College is an educational institution of the Christian Reformed Church and stands in the Reformed tradition of Protestantism...

. There were also the better parts of two further volumes extant and a pile of notes for the later volumes, but at this point, Vollenhoven changed direction.

Critical Problem-Historical Method

Prof. Vollenhoven started work on what became the Schematic Charts⁵ for the history of Western Philosophy according to what he now began calling his Consequent Problem-Historical Method to distinguish it from other methods with less rigour and less sense of the scope of problems to be explored and connections to be clarified. The Schematisch Kaarten (Schematic Charts) finally appeared in Dutch long after Vollenhoven's retirement and death in 1978, posthumously in 2000. This was due to the devoted work of Dr Kor Bril who did the lion's share of the editorial work and devised the celebrated visual display that makes the work so effective as a reference source on every philosopher's desktop, assisted by (now Dr) P. Boonstra. This belated publication, still in Dutch only, constitutes a veritable revolution in our knowledge of the 16,000 philosophers whose views it classifies and briefly charactrises, based on close empirical attention to the fragments and the works the thinkers offered, each in his or her day.

The Netherlands

Vollenhoven's successor as historian of philosophy at the VU was Jacob Klapwijk

Jacob Klapwijk

Jacob Klapwijk studied under D. H. Th. Vollenhoven in philosophy at the VU University in Amsterdam. Klapwijk's dissertation was written on Ernst Troeltsch , the German theologian and philosopher of "radical historicality" who gave us the sociological distinction between Church, Sect and Mysticism...

. Dr. Klapwijk picked up many of the loose ends in Vollenhoven's prodigious work, especially those around a central distinction within the new philosophy — namely, the problem that can be approached in terms of an antithesis/common-grace distinction with its theological overcast, and the problem of radicality/normalcy within the history of Western philosophy, which leads to an inquiry regarding reformational philosophy's place within its broader context, synchronically and diachronically. In Vollenhoven, these questions were often reduced to the label of "synthetist thought", the presumed synthesis of a pure Christian ideational system, problem by problem, with the contaminants of a purely antithetical pagan, atheist, or humanist position. Klapwijk took up a careful attention to Vollenhoven's blind spots on these important issues, making the larger burden of Vollenhoven more accessible. As additional professors were added to the Faculty of Philosophy over the years at VU, a line of thinkers using Vollenhoven's Method continued to develop, so that not only did Chairs in the Faculty grow in number, but Chairs devoted to the history of philosophy increased in number and specialization. In the Chair devoted to the Presocratics and Classical Greek philosophers, Dr Abraham Bos has become world-renowned for his re-writing the book on Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

, principally by exhuming the popular philosophical writings by which Aristotle continued to be known after his philosophical works disappeared for a few centuries. The works of Aristotle which were quoted, sometimes at length, by Cicero and many others, have been exhumed by Bos and subjected to philosophical analysis and evaluation. This development stresses the importance of the addressee of a given work by a philosopher, not least of all Aristotle. Such a consideration berings literary, rhetorical, stylistic, and genre issues into the proper concerns of philosophy proper.

Two scholars of immigrant families to Canada who had studied under H. Evan Runner

H. Evan Runner

Howard Evan Runner, often referred to as H. Evan Runner, was professor of philosophy at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA from 1951 until his retirement in 1981....

 at Calvin College (Grand Rapids, Michigan) journeyed back to their country of birth to the Free University to study philosophy under Vollenhoven, and while writing their dissertations received employent in the Center for Historical Documentation at VU. They are again Netherlanders, returned former emigrants. They continued to work in the Documentation Center, using it as a base to further knowledge of Vollenhoven's Consequent Problem-Historical Method. Dr Anthony Tol

Anthony Tol

Dr. Anthony Tol served in the Documentation Center of the VU University in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, as an archivist for the collection of materials assembled there for 19th Century historical developments in that country. Tol did his undergraduate studies at Calvin College, Grand Rapids,...

 is one; he had an avenue of interest based in Vollenhoven's attention to mathematics, as well as Vollenhoven's overall work at developing his Method for the entire history of Western philosophy. Dr Kor Bril is the other; in addition to his work in the Center's Archives, Bril more than any other over twenty years brought to fruition the publication of Vollenhoven's Schematic Charts (later, Dr P. J. Boonstra also helped in this project). Dordt College Press which is seeing several titles of Vollenhovian scholarship through to publication in the Spring of 2005.

South Africa

Three South Africans who studied under Vollenhoven must be named as well, Dr D. F. M. Strauss

D. F. M. Strauss

D. F. M. Strauss is a South-African philosopher and the world's leading expert on the theory of modal aspects, one of the core features of the thought of the Dutch philosopher, Herman Dooyeweerd, and the movement for Reformational philosophy.Danie, to use this scholar's nickname, studied under an...

 who is the world's leading expert on this philosophy's modal-scale theory; Dr Elaine Botha, known for her philosophy of metaphor; Dr Bennie van der Walt, an outstanding activist-scholar who headed the Centre for Reformational Studies at the University of Potchestroom (now North-West University

North-West University

The North-West University is a newly merged institution from 1 January 2004 onwards with four campuses at Potchefstroom, Mafikeng, Vanderbijlpark and Mankwe. The Potchefstroom Campus is the largest, and the head office of the University is situated at this location...

), and pushed along that university's adaptation to the post-apartheid opportunities for Christian higher education in Africa. Dr Ponti Venter is a law scholar at the main campus in Potchefstroom of North-West University, who teaches in the midst of dynamic changes throughout South Africa's legal system.

North America

The first person among the newer generation to be noted for his use of Vollenhoven's consequent problem-historical method (CPHM) in the United States is John VanderStelt who had studied theology under G. C. Berkouwer at VU, but had attended Vollenhoven's lectures and read the philosopher's books, much of them available for years in mimeo editions in Dutch. With Berkouwer's retirement, VanderStelt who was already teaching philosophy at Dordt College

Dordt College

Dordt College is a private, Christian, liberal arts college located in Sioux Center, Iowa. It was founded in 1955 and is affiliated with the Christian Reformed Church. The college name is a reference to the Synod of Dort....

 (Sioux Center, Iowa), decided to write his dissertation using Vollenhoven's method in an inter-disciplinary way and geared to his American milieux. The dissertation for the University of South Africa

University of South Africa

The University of South Africa is a distance education university, with headquarters in Pretoria, South Africa. With approximately 300 000 enrolled students, it qualifies as one of the world's mega universities.-History:...

 (since Berkouwer in the meantime had retired and his successor was unfamiliar with VanderStelt's thematic) was enititled Philosophy and Scripture. A Study in Old Princeton and Westminster Theology (1978); the volume was part of the author's personal process of intellectual indigenization, as well as an important scholarly contribution.

In the North American situation, the two main exponents today of Vollenhoven's consequent problem-historical method (CPHM) are Dr John Kok

John Kok

Dr. John Kok studied as an undergraduate at Trinity Christian College near Chicago, Illinois, USA, under Drs. Maartin Vrieze and Calvin Seerveld. In 1971 he went to the Free University in Amsterdam for graduate studies under professors of philosophy Henk Van Riessen and Jacob Klapwijk, the...

 of Dordt College

Dordt College

Dordt College is a private, Christian, liberal arts college located in Sioux Center, Iowa. It was founded in 1955 and is affiliated with the Christian Reformed Church. The college name is a reference to the Synod of Dort....

, who wrote his dissertation on Vollenhoven's early development; and Dr Robert Sweetman (ICS

Institute for Christian Studies

The Institute for Christian Studies Toronto, Ontario is one of several unrelated institutions bearing that name.ICS Toronto is an independent graduate school of inter-disciplinary philosophy. At ICS, Junior Members and Senior members take part in shared learning through participatory seminars,...

, Toronto), who holds the H. Evan Runner

H. Evan Runner

Howard Evan Runner, often referred to as H. Evan Runner, was professor of philosophy at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA from 1951 until his retirement in 1981....

 Chair in the History of Philosophy, who is a Medieval philosophy specialist, and who brings an incipient theory of discourse to a gap in the archtectonics of this school of historical-philosophical thought. Sweetman stresses that beyond the Schematic Charts, there is the task and opportunity of writing historical narrative, a matter which becomes a problem of concern in itself. Philosophy and its history are always written in genres, styles, and in historical narratives of philosophy, in which considerations of voice, plot, characters, and metaphory all come into play in the realisation of the narrative structure.

The story of the slow but steady diffusion in North America of Vollenhoven's influence, along with Dooyeweerd's, remains to be told. The issue of translation of the Schematic Charts and other works of Vollenhoven into English and Spanish in particular, remains a priority task.

Footnotes

1. Post by Jan de Koning from the discussion list at the American Scientific Affiliation on his experience with Vollenhoven.
2. Biography of Ernst Cassirer
3. J. Stellingwerff Vollenhoven's biographer,
4. "Report of Divergences I" by Vollenhoven.
5. Schematic Charts

External links

• Vollenhoven Association
• Vollenhoven studies
• Vollenhoven resources
• Vollenhoven's History of the Presocratic Philosophers translated by H. Evan Runner
  H. Evan Runner
  Howard Evan Runner, often referred to as H. Evan Runner, was professor of philosophy at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA from 1951 until his retirement in 1981....