The teaching of H. Evan Runner [NOTE 1] can best be grasped as an expression of two central themes which take on their full meaning only in relation to each other. The first is the idea of the Law or the creation order as the inescapable context and condition for all human action and thought. Because of God's all-encompassing creation order, human life in its totality is to be understood as response. Life is religion -- Runner never tired of stressing this point.
This notion of response to the divine creation order might be confused with a nineteenth-century pantheism or idealism if it were not linked with the second major theme in Runner's thinking -- that of the antithesis. Human life as response to God and his creation order is not to be conceived of simply as a groping for truth, a pilgrimage in which some people get farther than others, with all of them traveling toward the same destination. No, Runner always stressed the necessity and unavoidability of choosing a direction. Either man worships the Creator and turns to Jesus Christ, or he turns his back on the Creator by abasing himself before the creature and worshiping a vain idol. There is no third alternative. Despite all the efforts undertaken in the name of ecumenism and inter-faith dialogue, the gulf between these two religious directions can never be overcome.
It has been Runner's fate to be much misunderstood -- by his own students as well as by his critics. Generally speaking, those who have misunderstood him have tended to work with one of the two central themes mentioned above (i.e. the creation order and the antithesis) without the other. In this essay I shall endeavor to lay some of the misconceptions to rest by distinguishing Runner's position from a certain other position (or family of positions) contrary to his own. More specifically, I will argue that the current tendency to defend the notion of a religious input or impulse in science on the basis of an epistemological pluralism or pluralism of viewpoints departs from Runner's thinking in that it proceeds from a conception of religion as unnormed subjectivity, a conception that owes its inspiration to historicism and the German intellectual tradition in particular.
Later in the essay I will tackle the much more difficult question of the creation order as the neglected theme for Christian philosophical inquiry. This will involve some reflection on the relation between history and truth. To bring out Runner's own stand on this matter, which has often been misunderstood and even confused with the very historicism he combated, I will make a detour through the thinking of Nietzsche, Dilthey and Heidegger. Runner's concerns as a critic of the Western intellectual tradition parallel Heidegger's in an interesting respect -- and also draw criticisms much like the ones aimed at Heidegger.
In recent discussions about the relevance of faith and commitment to science and scholarship, we find more and more recognition that there is indeed a link between one's worldview and one's scientific and philosophical work. To the extent that ground has truly been gained here, those who are committed to integrally Christian scholarship will rejoice. Still, a word of caution may be in order. Could it be that the relativism and subjectivism developed especially within the German philosophical tradition is responsible for many of the changes underway? If the new openness to the notion of a link between faith and science is indeed a result of the influence of historicism and subjectivism, Christian thinkers would do well to pause before embracing it as a higher wisdom. Just what does all the emphasis on "viewpoint" and "worldview" considerations mean?
It may well be that some earlier ideals of objectivity are being given up, but the suggestion that no scientific formulation can rise above the stream of history and subjectivity surely does not advance the cause of Christian theorizing. A pluralist emphasis in the sense of a diversity of philosophical outlooks that stand unreconciled over against each other is not what the philosophical tradition of which Runner, Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven are spokesmen has been pleading for. The pluralism which the Philosophy of the Law-Idea exemplifies is first of all a recognition that the basic institutions in human society enjoy a sovereignty within certain bounds and therefore may not dictate to one another, and secondly, an ontological thesis that expands the mind/matter distinction into a series of irreducible levels of being, law and functioning which together enjoy a unity and interrelatedness that seem to elude mind and matter conceived of as entirely separate modes of reality.
Pluralism in the subjectivist sense is really not a defense of Christian theorizing at all; it represents rather a trivialization and relativization of any effort to appeal to the Word of God as the foundation for an adequate understanding of reality. In recent pluralist accounts of Christian theorizing, the appeal to the Word of God (the norm for our theorizing) has all too often been replaced by an appeal to Christian faith (which is really a subjective response to the norm for our believing). When such an approach is taken, we do indeed wind up with a connection between faith and science, but our theorizing is then rooted in and based upon the subjectivity of man rather than the everywhere-valid Word of God.
We see, then, that the contemporary "pluralism" that allows faith to inspire science is inadequate. This "pluralism" leaves "religion" too much as an undefined, unnormed concept. Runner's thesis that religion takes in all of life and does not simply represent a certain domain of feeling or intuition or moral sense leaves no room for the uncritical acceptance of human subjectivity and creativity in the "pluralist" outlook. Religion does indeed come to expression in feeling and in ethical awareness, but never in a manner that allows of no application of normative criteria by which it is judged. Human religiosity, as response to God's all-encompassing Word for his creation and creatures, is never a law unto itself. Therefore the detection of a religious impulse at work in theoretical thought is never enough to qualify the thought in question as Christian, that is, as a faithful response to the Word of the God who made the heavens and the earth.
The Philosophy of the Law-Idea has traditionally sought to circumvent such a subjectivistic misunderstanding of the link between faith and science by emphasizing the necessity of developing a full-fledged systematic philosophy as a foundation for integral Christian theorizing, a philosophy in which the nature of saving faith in Jesus Christ could also be dealt with. This emphasis on the importance of a systematic Christian philosophy was fully shared by Runner. A mere "inspirational" link between religious sentiment and a set of philosophical and theoretical ideas does not establish much either for or against those ideas. The motives in the heart of a thinker -- however laudable -- are not uppermost in our judgment of his thought. Hence it is sometimes necessary to take a markedly negative stance over against the theoretical work of someone known to be a dedicated Christian.
Thinkers in the tradition of the Philosophy of the Law-Idea are sometimes accused of teaching a lifeless system, a set of categories to be applied in wooden fashion. The charge of "scholasticism" is occasionally raised, and people ask what all those categories and distinctions are good for.
Whatever one might say of other philosophers who use the Law-Idea, Runner has always worked with the systematic components of his philosophical position in a vibrant way. Moreover, he has never suggested to his students that one ought to concentrate on the Philosophy of the Law-Idea to the exclusion of other systems of thought or to the neglect of experientially-oriented investigation. On the contrary, Runner has constantly pointed his students to intellectual and cultural developments in the present and the past that seemed worthy of careful consideration. He made it clear in his teaching that genuine progress in Christian philosophizing and theorizing was possible only for those who were willing to go far afield in their search for fresh insights, refinements and applications of the central themes of Christian philosophy.
Runner himself exemplified this enthusiasm for broad-ranging study. His own interests were dazzlingly broad, and he demonstrated an ability to find significance in all sorts of far-flung scholarly discussions. In his own work he liked to trace the history of the thinking about the topic under discussion, and his students were often curious to see just how far back he would go in his approach to the subject.
This commitment to a historical approach gave rise to an interesting misunderstanding. How could a thinker who proceeded from the Philosophy of the Law-Idea concern himself so deeply with historical developments in culture and thought? Perhaps he was not really what he claimed to be. I well remember attending a conference some years ago at which Runner presented some material against the customary historical background, only to be accused of "historicism"!
This charge represented a serious misunderstanding of what Runner was trying to say. Yet it is worth reflecting on, for the link between history and truth in Runner's teaching has been misconstrued by various of his critics. Although he was keenly aware of the threat of historicism, Runner did not maintain that the Christian thinker can somehow step outside the historical process in his effort to grasp theoretical truth: the truth with which Christian philosophy and science are concerned is intimately connected with the realm of history and culture. To get the nature of the link between history and truth before us, then, let us make a brief excursion into the thinking of Nietzsche.
The historicism charge was formulated eloquently by Nietzsche more than a hundred years ago in an "untimely essay" which he entitled "Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie fuer das Leben" (On the Usefulness and Disadvantages of History for Life). One might conceivably wonder whether Nietzsche was actually addressing historicism, for he did not make use of the term, which only came into general circulation some time later. But whatever one might say about the broad and narrow varieties of historicism, it is clear that what Nietzsche had in mind as he wrote was the widespread notion that history is somehow the main pathway to wisdom and truth.
It is significant that he issued his warning in the name of "life." Nietzsche's essay is no academic discussion of historical method. He opens by quoting Goethe: "I hate everything that merely instructs me without increasing or directly quickening my activity." Complaining about "jaded idlers in the garden of knowledge," he goes on to argue that the study of history "beyond a certain point mutilates and degrades life." Hence there is a sense in which history must not just be ignored but "hated," as a "costly and superfluous luxury." [NOTE 2] Nietzsche tells us that life is a higher power than knowledge. Ever the classicist, he contrasts "esse" with "vivere," and man the "cogital" with man the "animal." [NOTE 3] European man, all but buried under a mountain of superfluous, useless learning, culture and knowledge, struggles to rise to his feet. If only he can shake off the "malady" which Nietzsche describes as an "excess of history," [NOTE 4] there will be room for new life to take root, and from the new life can arise a new culture.
Nietzsche does not paint a flattering picture of the German and European of his day. Mercilessly he exposes the superficiality of the quest for truth in history and culture. In his eagerness to possess what everyone else possesses, modern man "runs through art galleries." [NOTE 5] Nietzsche scorns such an approach to history and culture and brands it "historical education." He complains that
... knowledge of culture is forced into the young mind [of the student] in the form of historical knowledge; which means that his head is filled with an enormous mass of ideas, taken secondhand from past times and peoples, not from immediate contact with life. ... It is the same mad method that carries our young artists off to picture galleries instead of the studio of a master, and above all the one studio of the only master, Nature. As if one could discover by a hasty rush through history the ideas and techniques of past times and their individual outlook on life! For life itself is a kind of handicraft that must be learned thoroughly and industriously, and diligently practiced, if we are not to have mere botchers and babblers as the issue of it all! [NOTE 6]
The way to remain faithful to Nature and the earth and to recover life is to learn to feel "unhistorically," which is only another way of saying that the power of "forgetting" is very much needed. "Life" is "absolutely impossible without forgetfulness." The preoccupation with history "injures and finally destroys the living thing, be it a man or a people or a system of culture." [NOTE 7] The power of forgetting is the art of "drawing a limited horizon about oneself." [NOTE 8] The great "fighters against history" know how this is done, for they
... troubled themselves very little about the "thus it is," in order that they might follow a "thus it must be" with greater joy and greater pride. Not to drag their generation to the grave, but to found a new one -- that is the motive that ever drives them onward; and even if they are born late, there is a way of living by which they can forget it -- and future generations will know them only as the first-comers. [NOTE 9]
Nietzsche was concerned about cultural revitalization -- and rightly so. Hence he compared historical culture to the "grayness" of old age, [NOTE 10] calling upon his fellows to set aside "secondhand thought, secondhand learning, secondhand action" [NOTE 11] and reminding them that they could not have the "flower" of genuine culture without the root or the stalk. [NOTE 12] Life, knowledge and culture are nourished by Nature and the earth, and not solely by preserved products of previous lives -- subjectivity objectified and cut off from its ground. History and culture are useful only to the extent that they serve to bring us into living contact with the source of culture. Because of the excess of history, man must "dig himself out," as it were, in order to breathe freely again.
Among the contemporaries of Nietzsche who felt the sting of his criticism was Wilhelm Dilthey, who perhaps epitomized the reverential attitude toward history that Nietzsche made light of. Dilthey commented on Nietzsche at various points, arguing that Nietzsche failed to circumvent or get behind history in his effort to establish a direct relation with the soil from which culture springs: "In vain did Nietzsche seek his original nature, his a-historical essence, in solitary self-observation. He peeled off one skin after another. And what was left? Still only something historically conditioned: the features of the Renaissance man of power." [NOTE 13]
The question that must be raised in connection with Dilthey and his tradition is how, and under what circumstances, we are able to transcend or rise above the stream of human subjectivity which finds expression in a history or culture. Because Dilthey was at bottom a pantheist, the line of criticism involved in this question did not pose a serious problem for him. [NOTE 14] Yet, for those who cannot follow Dilthey in his pantheism, there is the very real danger of becoming lost or swallowed up in history. Like Nietzsche, Dilthey professed to be a philosopher of "life," but his concept of "life" was thoroughly historical and cultural (geistig). Thus he perceived no genuine opposition between history and culture on the one hand and life on the other. Life presents itself to us as history and culture and then draws us into its sweep.
The standpoints of Nietzsche and Dilthey confront each other unreconciled. The debate has been carried further in the twentieth century, of course, by such figures as Heidegger and Gadamer. Must Christian philosophy associate itself with Nietzsche in his call for a judicious forgetting? This might seem an attractive route to follow, given the widespread Christian rejection of the excesses of our secular culture. Or should Christian philosophy follow the lead of Dilthey by always seeking to advance by drawing strength from the power of the past? Such an approach would surely appeal to the Christian respect for tradition.
These two alternatives deserve careful consideration. But we must not forget to ask whether there is perhaps a way between them.
For twentieth-century Christians, then, the choice between Nietzsche's appeal to forget the past and Dilthey's effort to retain it might seem attractive. Whereas earlier Christian thinkers might have been inclined to adopt an attitude like Dilthey's, many more recent Christians take a largely negative stance toward the philosophical tradition. Don't modern Thomists sometimes leave us with the impression that they regard the entire modern era in philosophy as a wandering in a trackless wasteland?
Before drawing the conclusion that the choice between Nietzsche and Dilthey is an unavoidable fork in the road, we would do well to pause and look at another rebel against the philosophical tradition -- Martin Heidegger, whose thinking does not fit the pattern of Nietzsche's "forgetting." It seems to me that Heidegger's approach to the tradition has considerable relevance for the question of history and truth and thus can help us understand the teaching of H. Evan Runner and the philosophical agenda which the Philosophy of the Law-Idea has set for itself.
Heidegger is often perceived as a philosopher who likes to make things needlessly difficult. Like Nietzsche, he sees history and the tradition as a serious obstacle to genuine thought and culture. Yet he does not draw Nietzsche's conclusion that a judicious forgetting is called for. On the other hand, he does not side with Dilthey either and appeal for a treasuring of the great tradition of German and European culture. In fact, he is markedly critical especially of the technological impulse in European (and North American) civilization. Heidegger's thinking has helped to give birth to a new approach in hermeneutics articulated mainly by H.G. Gadamer, and in this new approach, Dilthey comes in for some telling criticism. [NOTE 15] Dilthey, it seems, ran aground in history and never managed to get beyond it or transcend it.
Heidegger steers a route of his own between Nietzsche and Dilthey. And in the process he incurs the ire of many a professional philosopher accustomed to a more conventional approach. Richard Rorty notes:
Philosophers who envy scientists think that philosophy should deal only with problems formulatable in neutral terms -- terms satisfactory to all those who argue for competing solutions. Without common problems and without argument, it would seem, we have no professional discipline, nor even a method for disciplining our own thoughts. Without discipline, we presumably have mysticism, or poetry, or inspiration -- at any rate, something that permits an escape from our intellectual responsibilities. Heidegger is frequently criticized for having avoided these responsibilities. [NOTE 16]
Heidegger, it appears, will neither explain himself in terms that others can understand nor come out and fight for his position. Rorty comments:
... Heidegger has done as good a job of putting potential critics on the defensive as any philosopher in history. There is no standard by which one can measure him without begging the question against him. His remarks about the tradition, and his remarks about the limitations the tradition has imposed on the vocabulary and imagination of his contemporaries, are beautifully designed to make one feel foolish when one tries to find a bit of common ground on which to start an argument. [NOTE 17]
Yet Heidegger does not just stay in his own corner, minding his own business, oblivious to what others think. Despite his rejection of the philosophical (or metaphysical) tradition, he has spent an inordinate amount of time commenting on it. And his comments have provoked great controversy. Many philosophers, operating on the widely accepted premise that a thinker must be explained in terms of his own intentions and in such a manner that he would recognize that he has been dealt with fairly, have chided Heidegger for his treatment of the history of philosophy. The most famous quarrel revolves around the book on Kant, entitled Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. Heidegger himself is alleged to have said of this book: "It may not be good Kant, but it's excellent Heidegger." [NOTE 18] There may be something to this rather cavalier explanation, but in actual fact there is much more that Heidegger can -- and does -- say in his own defense. When a philosopher deals with a philosophical text, he explains, it is sometimes necessary to "do violence" to the text. One must probe deeper to determine what the philosopher in question really intended to say:
It is true that in order to wrest from the actual words that which these words "intend to say," every interpretation must necessarily resort to violence. This violence, however, should not be confused with an action that is wholly arbitrary. The interpretation must be animated and guided by the power of an illuminative idea. Only through the power of this idea can interpretation risk that which is always audacious, namely, entrusting itself to the secret elan of a work, in order by this elan to get through to the unsaid and to attempt to find an expression for it. The directive idea itself is confirmed by its own power of illumination. [NOTE 19]
This approach to Kant drew from Ernst Cassirer the complaint that Heidegger was functioning not as a "commentator" but as a "usurper," using Kant for his own purposes. [NOTE 20]
Heidegger has not gone out of his way to defend his treatment of the history of philosophy. But those who are well acquainted with his thought have stressed that there is more to his seemingly highhanded treatment of past philosophers than meets the eye. It is not just a question of accurate interpretation, of finding out what the thinker in question was struggling to say. In the words of William J. Richardson, Heidegger was trying "... to comprehend and express not what another thinker thought/said, but what he did not think/say, could not think/say, and why he could not think/say it." Richardson observes: "It is the unsaid in a thinker which is his true 'doctrine,' his 'supreme gift'...." [NOTE 21]
Heidegger is reminiscent of Hegel in a number of respects. Both are suspicious of refutation as ordinarily understood. Hegel hoped to include apparent error in an aufgehoben version of the truth as formulated from a higher standpoint, whereas for Heidegger refutation simply does not come into the picture in any essential way. It is often the case that when a philosopher is deeply, profoundly, off the track, his error requires careful consideration.
Hegel and Heidegger are also alike in linking truth and history. Despite his critique of the tradition, then, Heidegger cannot join Nietzsche in appealing for a forgetting, a casting off of history. Crisis and conflict in history make room for revelation -- a revelation through which Being may perhaps emerge from its hiddenness. Despite the emphasis on "waiting" and "Gelassenheit" as the posture to be taken, we never seek to simply "start over," as though through an act of will we could become youthful, Nietzschean Greeks.
The conclusion suggested by the Heideggerian enterprise is that the question of Being is not to be posed apart from the tradition. The "overcoming" of metaphysics and the "destruction" of ontology are apparently needed to prepare for what Heidegger hopes is to come. How was the question of Being lost from view? It appears that we can find out only if we examine the twists and turns taken by the concept of truth. Hence we are obliged to trace the route that leads from the Greeks to the modern interpretation of Being as will, with its destructive consequences in technology. To ignore the tradition is to run the risk of perpetuating it.
I have dealt with Heidegger's approach to the history of philosophy because it parallels some key themes in Runner's teaching and may help shed light on them. Many of the criticisms directed against Runner are similar to the critiques of Heidegger by disgruntled "outsiders" unable to get their bearings in Heidegger's works. As we saw earlier, some philosophers complain that Heidegger does not allow for "common ground," for a "neutral" formulation of the problems with which philosophy deals, a formulation which would allow different philosophical schools to simply compete in seeking the best solutions. Likewise, Runner has always stressed that the formulation of a philosophical question cannot be separated from one's basic philosophical stance, just as in apologetics the believer and the unbeliever do not jointly set out to answer the (neutral) question whether the evidence presented by reason and the senses entitles us to believe in the God of the Scriptures. [NOTE 22]
If the problems of philosophy cannot be formulated in neutral terms, surely the material or Gegenstand with which the philosopher concerns himself is common to all. This, at least, was the conviction of Dilthey, who also devoted considerable attention to what might be called the "philosophy of the history of philosophy." [NOTE 23] Dilthey assures us that all philosophers
... have before them one and the same world, the reality that appears in consciousness. The sun of Homer shines forever. Plato beheld the same reality as Thales. From this it follows that the unity of all philosophies is grounded ultimately in the identity (Selbigkeit) of the outer and inner world. Because of this identity, the same basic relationships are seen again and again.[NOTE 24]
There is some truth to Dilthey's claim, of course: God's sun has shone on the just and the unjust, on ancient Greeks and contemporary North Americans. But Runner does not regard it as helpful or accurate to declare that all thinkers philosophize about the very same world. As a historical thinker, Runner emphasizes that cultural and historical unfolding must always be taken into account. Hence Plato did not behold the very same reality as Thales two centuries before him, and we do not philosophize about the very same world that Hegel surveyed when he was a professor in Berlin early in the nineteenth century. The historical dimension of reality may never be left out of the picture.
Like Heidegger, Runner emphasizes that a meaningful encounter with the philosophy of the past requires a grasp of the fundamental issue in philosophy -- and not just a grasp of what the thinker in question happened to regard as the fundamental issue. For Heidegger the main question is Being itself -- how it has been forgotten and obscured. Hence Heidegger is interested not just in what a thinker said but also what he left unsaid -- or could not say. For Runner the key philosophical issue is that of the Law. When approaching a philosopher in the past, one must always ask what he does about the Law -- how he seeks to account for it, or perhaps even tries to ignore it by identifying normativity with subjectivity or objectivity.
The use of such an approach entails that in some cases we will reach conclusions about a certain thinker that will be called into question by proponents of the traditional approach according to which the historian of philosophy must understand and explain past philosophers first and foremost in terms of their own themes and emphases. Runner, well aware of these considerations, has therefore devoted extensive attention to the question of methodology in his own teaching in the area of history of philosophy. His intention, he made it known to the students, was not to somehow "do violence" to the text or to claim past philosophers as grist for his own philosophical mill but to discover what was really going on back there in the mental struggles in which thinkers engaged. Every past philosopher bumped up against the normativity of the creation order, however he might choose to describe it or account for it. How did he respond to the creation order? What room did he leave for the Law in his philosophical system? These were the questions which Runner sought to answer in his own work in history of philosophy.
Runner's recipe for genuine philosophical progress in the twentieth century, then, is neither to put the past behind us by deliberately forgetting much of it (Nietzsche) nor to absorb and preserve a great deal of it by accepting it on its own terms (Dilthey). The direction pointed out by Runner was rather that we are to pursue the truth by thinking historically in a double sense. We first watch to see how the creation order does or does not receive proper recognition in the historical and cultural unfolding process. Then we observe how the creation order -- whether generally recognized or not -- makes itself felt in theoretical and philosophical reflection on reality, a reflection that cannot help but take cultural and historical unfolding into account.
The Law of God as it impinges on man in all his doings must be the central theme of our philosophizing, Runner stressed. Yet it never presents itself to us in an isolated way for direct inspection; we never study it by itself. It is to be known mainly in its effects. In short, it is like the wind: we never catch sight of it, but we certainly feel its operation.
Here again the parallel with Heidegger comes to mind. Just as Being remains hidden for Heidegger, curiously unaccounted for and conspicuous by its absence, Runner maintains that the creation order is suppressed, distorted and concealed in the thinking of many philosophers. We must recover the (normative) truth of God's Word by bringing the creation order to light again and giving it a central place in our theoretical reflection. This we do by adopting a historical approach to culture and thinking. Such (historical) reflection is an indispensable part of the basis of Christian philosophy and also of Christian theoretical reflection in other disciplines.
Once these philosophical and historical lessons sink in, we see why Runner, as a Christian philosopher, has sent his students out to study a stunning array of cultural phenomena and historical topics. The (normative) truth of reality, he stressed, must be understood in terms of God's creation order. And that creation order becomes familiar especially through the history of its effects on man, thought and culture. It is this recognition that makes the entire realm of culture and history intensely relevant to Christian scholarship. What is called for, then, is an open approach to Christian philosophizing, an approach that does not allow for a narrow scholasticism or a preoccupation with the categories of a certain system of thought embraced as superior to all others. Such is the legacy of Runner's teaching.
NOTE 1
Those who would like to know more about the personal side of Professor Runner's life and career would do well to read: "Interview with Dr. H. Evan Runner," prepared by Harry van Dyke and Albert M. Wolters, in Hearing and Doing: Philosophical Essays Dedicated to H. Evan Runner, edited by John Kraay and Anthony Tol (Toronto, 1979), pp. 333-361.
NOTE 2
The Use and Abuse of History, second edition, translated by Adrian Collins (Indianapolis and New York, 1957), p. 3.
NOTE 3
Nietzsche, pp. 70, 69.
NOTE 4
See Nietzsche, pp. 12, 28, 64, 65, 69, 70, 72.
NOTE 5
Nietzsche, p. 45.
NOTE 6
Nietzsche, p. 67.
NOTE 7
Nietzsche, p. 7; see also p. 6.
NOTE 8
Nietzsche, p. 69.
NOTE 9
Nietzsche, p. 54.
NOTE 10
Nietzsche, p. 48; see also pp. 64, 70.
NOTE 11
Nietzsche, p. 72; see also p. 67.
NOTE 12
Nietzsche, p. 68.
NOTE 13
"Traum," Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 8, edited by Bernhard Groethuysen (Stuttgart, 1931), p. 226. On the relation between Dilthey and Nietzsche, see J. Kamerbeek, "Dilthey versus Nietzsche," Studia Philosophica: Jahrbuch der Schweizerischen Philosophischen Gesellschaft, Vol. 10 (1950), pp. 52-84; and Georg Misch's reply, also entitled "Dilthey versus Nietzsche," Die Sammlung: Zeitschrift fuer Kultur und Erziehung, Vol. 8 (1952), pp. 378-395.
NOTE 14
I have dealt with Dilthey and the question of history at some length in my book Historical Understanding in the Thought of Wilhelm Dilthey (Toronto, Buffalo and London, 1980). See especially Chapters 7 and 8.
NOTE 15
See Gadamer's Wahrheit und Methode, second edition (Tuebingen, 1965), especially Part II.
NOTE 16
"Overcoming the Tradition: Heidegger and Dewey," in Heidegger and Modern Philosophy: Critical Essays, edited by Michael Murray (New Haven and London, 1978), p. 239.
NOTE 17
Rorty, p. 242.
NOTE 18
Heidegger to William J. Richardson, as quoted by Bernd Magnus in Heidegger's Metahistory of Philosophy (The Hague, 1970), p. 80.
NOTE 19
Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, translated by James S. Churchill (Bloomington and London, 1962), p. 207.
NOTE 20
"Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics" (originally published in 1931 in German in Kant-Studien), in Kant: Disputed Questions, edited by Moltke S. Gram (Chicago, 1967), p. 149.
NOTE 21
Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought (The Hague, 1963), pp. 22, 440.
NOTE 22
On the question of method in apologetics, see Robert Knudsen's essay in this volume and also his essay "Progressive and Regressive Tendencies in Christian Apologetics," in Jerusalem and Athens: Discussions on the Theology and Apologetics of Cornelius Van Til, edited by E.R. Geehan (Philadelphia, 1971). Also helpful in the Van Til volume are the exchange with Dooyeweerd (pp. 74ff) and the two essays discussing Van Til and Edward J. Carnell (pp. 349ff).
NOTE 23
See my essay
"Dilthey's Philosophy of the History of Philosophy," in Hearing and Doing (note 1 above), pp. 199-214.
NOTE 24 "Zur Philosophie der Philosophie," Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 8 (note 13 above), pp. 207-208.
Originally published in Life Is Religion: Essays in Honor of H. Evan Runner, ed. Henry Vander Goot (St. Catharines: Paideia Press, 1981), pp. 15-28.
http://www.redeemer.on.ca/~tplanti/p/YAJ.HTM