Inaugural Address (1926). Dieser Artikel ist nicht verfügbar.Inaugural Address (1926)

The Birth of a Reformational Philosophy: On October 15, 1926, Herman Dooyeweerd stood before the Free University of Amsterdam to deliver his inaugural address as Professor of Law. What he presented that day-and published soon after-was far more than a lecture. It was a penetrating diagnosis of the internal contradictions of humanistic thought and a bold call to recover a distinctly Christian law-idea as the foundation for science, law, and culture. In this address, Dooyeweerd traces the rise of modern humanism from Hobbes and Descartes through Leibniz, Kant, and Hegel, exposing the antinomies that fractured its lofty ideals. He demonstrates how the humanistic pursuit of scientific continuity inevitably collided with the exaltation of autonomous personality-an irresolvable tension that shaped modern philosophy, legal theory, and culture itself. Against this backdrop, Dooyeweerd sets forth the Christian alternative: a worldview anchored in God's sovereign order, in which law is not the construct of human reason but the boundary of creation itself. This translation, enriched with restored annotations and careful editorial work, makes available in English one of Dooyeweerd's earliest and most programmatic texts. Here the reader will encounter the seeds of the reformational philosophy that would occupy Dooyeweerd's life's work: a vision of reality that refuses reductionism, honors the fullness of God's creation, and provides a solid foundation for Christian scholarship and cultural engagement. A foundational text for anyone seeking to understand Dooyeweerd's philosophy and the Christian response to the crisis of modern thought.

Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977) was born in Amsterdam to Calvinistic parents whose convictions and way of life were profoundly influenced by Abraham Kuyper, the great Dutch statesman, educator and journalist, and one of the protestant leaders through which the evangelical wing of Dutch reformed protestantism emerged. Dooyeweerd is recorded to have had a prolific career as a researcher in philosophy, during which he wrote various profound literary works such as The New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Roots of Western Culture, and more. He is, without a doubt, one of the most important philosophers that the Netherlands has ever produced, comparable only perhaps with Baruch de Spinoza.