Reformatorische Wijsbegeerte

ook wel Wijsbegeerte der wetsidee genoemd. Zie ook Wikipedia

Herman is de bedenker van de Wijsbegeerte der wetsidee. Voor een korte biografie en introductie tot zijn denken, zie een artikelvan Rene Woudenburg over hem op de website van de Stichting van de Reformatorische Wijsbegeerte. Voor uitvoerige informatie zie The Dooyeweerd Centre for Christian Philosophy

Van Til's filosofie is nauw verwant aan die van Dooyeweerd, doch verschilt nog op een aantal belangrijke punten.
voor een preliminary critique op deze Amsterdamse filosofie zie dit artikel van John M. Frame

He criticised Dooyeweerd for being not antithetical enough with regard to non-Christian thought. Dooyeweerd proposed three parts to a transcendental critique: [Bron: http://www.isi.salford.ac.uk/dooy/critiques.html]

• Account for abstraction; Dooyeweerd's answer was that the analytic aspect 'opposes' other aspects to bring this about.
• Account for synthesis between the analytic and other aspect, to form a theoretical concept.
• Account for critical self-reflection.

Dooyeweerd held that antithesis between Christian and non-Christian thought comes about at the third stage. Van Til held that it occurs at all stages. An account of this debate can be found in Choi's thesis 

Van Til holds the view that there is a complete hiatus between Christian and non-Christian thinking, and that even the analytical processes of abstraction are distorted in non-Christian thought. If we take theorizing to be multi-aspectual then it is of course affected by our pistic commitment, and Van Til might be right. But if we consider only the analytical aspect of our theorizing, then it is not so dominated by pistic commitment and Dooyeweerd might be right. However, this critique of Dooyeweerd's position seems to be relevant only to Christian thinkers who want to find a complete hiatus between their way of thinking and what they lump together into non-Christian ways of thinking.

Bruce Wearne, in an email on ThinkNet, April 20 2005, discussed Van Til's reservations about Dooyeweerd's 'second way to a transcendental critique' , which cannot be ignored as part of the historical legacy of reception of Dooyeweerd's thought. Was it not Van Til with others who encouraged the translation of the WdW? And so when NCTT appears with its 'second way' Van Til found himself caught in cognitive dissonance.

Vander Stelt's discussion in Philosophy and Scripture (1978 p.269) indicates that Van Til's reservations about Dooyeweerd were somehow included in his second thoughts about G C Berkouwer and Abraham Kuyper as well. Nevertheless, the 'second way' seems to have been other than what Van Til had understood as Calvinistic philosophy when he had read the WdW back in the 1930s and it seems he was unaware of this when he wrote his WTJ review of NC in 1955. It was later therefore that a concern developed about Dooyeweerd's theoretical analysis going 'off the rails'. Dooyeweerd in NCTT suggests that the transcendental critique needed refinement lest his philosophy promote a dogmatic anti-dogmatism.

By drawing attention to what Dooyeweerd wrote in 1949 , BW considers that Dooyeweerd already answered Van Til's criticisms before they even appeared.