Abstract
Herman Dooyeweerd was one of those rare philosophers whose work was encyclopaedic, highly theoretical yet surprisingly practical, and meticulously detailed. It was also unashamedly Christian, tracing an intellectual pedigree back through Abraham Kuyper to Johannes Althusius. Yet beyond a small cadre of devotees, his thinking in general, and his social and political thought in particular, receive inadequate attention. This neglect is unfortunate, for not only is Dooyeweerd arguably one of the great Christian philosophers of the twentieth century, but his social and political theory offers a rich conceptual schema that could make important contributions to contemporary discourse in this field.
How may we account for this inattention? It could be due, in part, to the Dutch Reformed dialect in which Dooyeweerd and his followers often express themselves. It could also result, again in part, from uninitiated readers attempting to tackle his work firsthand and then suffering intellectual fatigue when encountering his dense prose, conceptual complexity and semantic inventiveness. But I think the principal reason is that little secondary literature which simultaneously introduces and applies Dooyeweerd’s social and political thought in a constructive, critical and engaging manner has been produced. Chaplin corrects this deficiency.
The opening chapters summarise the basic conceptual contours of Dooyeweerd’s social and political thought. In brief, this entails a recovery of civil society that is both Christian and pluriform in character. Civil society consists of a series of distinct but overlapping social spheres. A person may, for instance, be part of a familial sphere as well as a number of broader commercial and cultural spheres. As Chaplin indicates, this pluralistic understanding of a differentiated yet interdependent society is derived from a variety of biblical, theological and philosophical sources. Some of the principal ones include what Dooyeweerd identifies as the biblical ground motive, and the foundational philosophical ideas of meaning, time and law.
The following chapters involve a deeper explication of Dooyeweerd’s principal philosophical themes of cultural development, social pluralism and social structures. A culture discloses certain normative claims about the ordering of human affairs. A culture, however, is not monolithic, but is necessarily both pluriform and integrative, for without the former there is no differentiation and without the latter there is no culture to be shared. It should be noted in this respect that Chaplin’s account of pluralism, individualism and universalism is particularly insightful.
The concluding chapters concentrate on the relationship between civil society and the state. The principal purpose of the state is to safeguard and promote the social spheres comprising civil society. It fulfils this purpose by being lawful, active, limited, and above all just. Consequently, the power of the state should only be asserted for the sake of justice. To oversimplify, a failed state results when this power is misused. On the one hand, a state may try to define, over-regulate or unduly restrict the social spheres, thereby effectively diminishing the pluriform character of civil society. On the other hand, a state may do too little to sustain conditions in which the social spheres can flourish, thereby effectively diminishing their integrative functions. In both instances the state acts unjustly, resulting in an impoverished and ineffectual civil society.
The chief strength of this book is that it indicates how Dooyeweerd’s conceptual architecture may be used to fashion some contributions to contemporary social and political thought that are confessedly Christian. As Chaplin demonstrates, Christians may participate in contemporary debates without forsaking their core theological and moral convictions, while at the same time affirming the pluralistic composition of the disputants. Chaplin accomplishes this demonstration rather nicely in the final chapter by bringing Dooyeweerd into conversation with a wide range of social and political theorists. This conversation revolves around the closely related questions of defining what civil society is or should be, and what its purpose is or should be. In assessing three possible models that he identifies as protective, integrative and transformative, Chaplin offers an impressive method for how Christian social and political thought can and should participate in broader public conversations and debates. In doing so he also discloses the strengths of Dooyeweerd’s work that can be drawn upon, and the weaknesses that should be corrected or avoided.
Moreover, inspired by one such strength, Chaplin maintains that the recovery of a more robust civil society would help create a much needed public space to mediate the private and political. The category of the public is in danger of vanishing from both Christian and secular social and political thought, leaving in its wake a contentious relationship between the political and private. Consequently, in light of this emerging void, Christian social and political thought too often sides with either progressive or reactionary versions of late liberalism—alliances that in both instances often prove incompatible with core theological and moral Christian convictions. Chaplin has, in drawing upon Dooyeweerd, offered a better way to proceed.
In short, Chaplin has written a masterful book. He has partaken deeply of a profoundly Christian theorist, and the fruit of his reflection is an incisive text written in a palatable idiom that is (largely) free of the original Dutch Reformed dialect and convoluted linguistic inventions. More importantly, it is a rare author who can, in one book, introduce and summarise the work of a great thinker, critically assess the value of that thinking, and then utilise it in fashioning his own constructive proposal—and do all that in a clear and engaging manner. I am not a member of the small guild of Dooyeweerdian aficionados, but I regard myself as a friendly observer and eavesdropper. I hope that readers of this book will be enticed to partake more, of both the work of the figure it expounds and that of the expositor.