I have recently completed a reading of Marcel E Verburg’s massive book, Herman Dooyeweerd: The Life and Work of a Christian Philosopher (Paideia Press, 2015). For those unfamiliar with him, Dooyeweerd (1894-1977) taught jurisprudence for decades at the Free University of Amsterdam, a Christian university established by Abraham Kuyper in 1880. As an undergraduate, I came into contact with his unique philosophical school, known in Dutch as De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee and in English as the Philosophy of the Law-Idea. Eventually I would write a dissertation at the University of Notre Dame on Dooyeweerd’s political thought, comparing it with that of neo-Thomist philosopher Yves René Simon (1903-1961). (more…)
