Herman Dooyeweerd(1984—1977) is the most famous Holland philosopher in20 thcentury. His social-political philosophy has greatly influenced Holland academic sphere. Besides, it has also considerably shaped the social-political framework of America, Canada, and West Europe. Concretely, Dooyeweerd proposes the pluralism of social authority and tries to build an equal interaction foundation for all societal communities and institutions.This dissertation aim is to discuss Dooyeweerd’s social-political philosophy deeply and systematically in order to display the overall frame work of Dooyeweerd’s social-political philosophy. Dooyeweerd is not a pure political theory scholar, but a philosopher. He has not only thought through the concepts of society, state, people,and law but also established a huge philosophical system which includes critique theory, epistemology, ontology, world view, cosmology, human nature view, society view, and state view. That is to say Dooyeweerd’s social-political philosophy is not independent of his world view and ontology.Thus, before introducing Dooyeweerd’s social-political philosophy, this dissertation starts from his philosophical critique path and ontology. Dooyeweerd is a philosopher while at the same time is a convinced Christian. For avoiding considering him as a theologian, the reflection on his ontology is especially significant.Dooyeweerd has established an authentic Christian philosophy but not theology. In detail, Christian philosophy is neither the branch and extension of theology nor the commonly understood philosophy of religion. Christian philosophy inherits the common tasks of philosophy and its main aim is to examine the deep structure of reality through systematic theory investigation. The radical difference between Christian philosophy and other philosophies is the Christian perspective and the path of examining realities. Concretely, Dooyeweerd’s Christian philosophy is not to reflect faith through rationality but reflect reality through faith and search faith reflection.With this foundation, this dissertation firstly introduces the historical background and basic concepts of Dooyeweerd’s social-political philosophy. Dooyeweerd has his own understandings toward the common concepts of social-political philosophy,different from other famous philosophers. Secondly, this dissertation discusses Dooyeweerd’s whole social-political philosophy and the basic way to divide social structures. Thirdly, this dissertation pays close attention to his view of state which is the main part of his social-political philosophy. He has granted the similar importance to state as Hegel, but avoided the set pattern of power-state. Finally, this dissertation briefly reflects Dooyeweerd’s social-political philosophy. Through the critique of liberalism’s basis tensions, this dissertation emphasizes the strong points of Dooyeweerd’s philosophy and proposes some deficiencies.This dissertation proposes though his philosophy is founded on the Christian faith, his philosophical critique path and structural analysis of social-political philosophy holds some water. This dissertation includes six chapters.The first chapter is the introduction of this dissertation which mainly reveals the dominating features and two transcendental critique paths of Dooyeweerd’s philosophical system.The second chapter is mainly about Dooyeweerd’s ontology. In this chapter, the15 modalities are mainly analyzed. The analysis includes modalities’ meanings,mutual relations, and their integrality. With this, this chapter will demonstrate some basic concepts of Dooyeweerd’s philosophy, such as analogy, norm, and non-reduction.The third chapter mainly probe into the historical and theoretical background of Dooyeweerd’s social-political philosophy and some basic concepts. This chapter is the foundation for understanding Dooyeweerd’s social-political philosophy. The basic concepts include individuality-community, part-whole, and sphere-sovereignty. This chapter mainly probes into sphere-sovereignty, since this concept is the basis of Dooyeweerd’s social-political philosophy.The fourth chapter is about Dooyeweerd’s social philosophy. His social philosophy proposes social pluralism. The societal structures and organizations are plural and every community owns its unique independence and is not a part of state.The content is divided into two parts which are institutional structures and non-institutional structures. The former includes marriage, family, church, and state while the latter is societal voluntary communities. Although Dooyeweerd regards state as one of the institutional structures, this dissertation will use the whole following chapter to discuss his state view because of state’s special essence and functions.The fifth chapter is Dooyeweerd’s state, his political philosophy. The content includes the state’s essence, power, justice, internal aim, organizational form(constitutional democracy), and integration function. His state philosophy is the most important part of his application philosophy. Though Dooyeweerd has not granted the supreme authority to state, but provided state with unique and indispensable position and function. The state is the foundation of everything. The state has not created the society, but defended the existence and harmony of society. This chapter also includes a unique concept and content of Dooyeweerd’s application philosophy which is the Christian state. Through discussion, this chapter further clarifies Dooyeweerd’s structure analysis path and emphasize the law function of state.The sixth chapter is about the reflection of Dooyeweerd’s social-political philosophy. Reflections need reference. The era in which Dooyeweerd established his social-political philosophy is the era of liberalism. Within this period, liberalism is the social force which cannot be suspended. That is to say, Dooyeweerd developed his own social-political philosophy within liberalism’s era. Thus, this chapter uses some comparisons between Dooyeweerd’s social-political philosophy and liberalism’s corresponding parts as the reflection contents of this chapter. |