Association for Reformational Philosophy
Published July 6th, 2008 in UncategorizedThe Association for Reformational Philosophy, formerly the Association for Calvinistic Philosophy, was incorporated in the Netherlands where the majority of its members are still located along with the Foundation (Stichting in Dutch) and the Centre for Reformational Philosophy. The Dutch title of the Association was changed from Vereniging voor Calvinistische Wijsbegeerte to Vereniging voor Reformatorische Wijsbegeerte (VRW). The Association was formed as a result of the interest that rallied into a movement for Christian philosophy subsequent to the publication in 1933 of D. H. Th. Vollenhoven’s Het Calvinisme en de Reformatie der Wijsbegeerte (Calvinism and the Reformation of Philosophy), and the additional interest generated by the 1935-36 publication of Herman Dooyeweerd’s three volumes De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee (The Philosophy of the Law-Idea, often abbreviated “WdW”).
The change of name represents a long-gathering process of clarification, under the chairmanship of Vollenhoven, professor of philosophy at the Free University of Amsterdam, who remained in office for many years; and articulated by Dooyeweerd, professor of jurisprudence at the same university, in terms of a desire to function as a “reformational-ecumenical” movement in philosophy in dialogue with related projects in the philosophical foundations of the sciences, and concerned with an integrative encyclopedia of the sciences.
The VRW maintains a website in Dutch and English, and numbers about 600 members today. Early on, a large group of the Association formed a separate organization to initiate the Foundation for External Professorial Chairs for Calvinistic Philosophy at state universities of the Netherlands (Stichting voor Bijzondere Leerstoelen voor Calvinistische Wijsbegeerte). Today, there are seven such chairs occupied by VRW-related professors at the following Dutch universities (in parentheses) as a matter of Dutch national law for universities:
Prof.dr. Marc de Vries (Delft)
Prof.dr. Maarten Verkerk (Eindhoven)
Prof.dr.ir. Egbert Schuurman (Wageningen)
Prof.dr. Gerrit Glas (Leiden)
Prof.dr. Jan Hoogland (Twente)
Prof.dr. Roel Kuiper (Rotterdam)
The presence of these externally-mandated Chairs in Philosophy in state-university philosophy faculties, can be made a bit more poignant by an example of what the VRW movement initiated when it was still the Vereniging voor Calvinistische Wijsbegeerte. Today the oldest and perhaps still most prestigious university in the Netherlands, the University of Leiden, has in its Philosophy Faculty eleven regular professorial chairs, and thanks to the law fought for and to the continuing energy of the Foundation for External Chairs sponsored by the Vollenhoven-led VCW/VRW, there are additionally today at Leiden University, four external chairs: one each for Reformational philosophy, for philosophy in relation to the Catholic life-way, for the Metaphysics of Theosophy, and for the philosophical anthropology and principles of Humanism.
External links
- Association for Reformational Philosophy :both English and Dutch web sites
166 Comments to “Association for Reformational Philosophy”
Please Wait
Leave a Reply
You must log in to post a comment.