Religious Ground Motives Behind Human Thought
= concept developed by the Dutch 'Reformational' philosopher, Herman Dooyeweerd
Definition
From the Wikipedia:
"A religious ground motive is a spiritual driving force that impels each thinker to interpret reality under its influence. Dooyeweerd wrote that, in the case of thinkers who presume that human thought is autonomous, who operate by the dictum that it does not matter whether God exists or not, such a thinker's basic commitment to autonomous thought forces him to pick out some aspect of the creation as the origin of all meaning. In doing so, the supposedly autonomous thinker is made captive to a kind of idol of his own making, which bends his understanding to conform to its dictates, according to Dooyeweerd."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Dooyeweerd)
Description
From the Wikipedia:
"A religious ground motive is a spiritual driving force that impels each thinker to interpret reality under its influence. Dooyeweerd wrote that, in the case of thinkers who presume that human thought is autonomous, who operate by the dictum that it does not matter whether God exists or not, such a thinker's basic commitment to autonomous thought forces him to pick out some aspect of the creation as the origin of all meaning. In doing so, the supposedly autonomous thinker is made captive to a kind of idol of his own making, which bends his understanding to conform to its dictates, according to Dooyeweerd.
Although he self-consciously exposes the religious nature of his philosophy, Dooyeweerd suggests that in fact, all thought is inescapably religious in character. This religious stamp is disguised when the supposed origin of meaning, toward which various thinkers direct their thought, is not called God, but is rather said to be some aspect of creation. This, he suggests, explains why humanistic science will produce bitterly conflicting ideologies. It helps to locate the "antithesis", the source of irreducible differences, between various perspectives. The "antithesis" must be accounted for as a foundational issue, in any complete philosophy, and this antithesis is religious in nature, according to Dooyeweerd."
(Wikipedia: Herman Dooyeweerd)
More information
Dooyeweerd's Theory of Ground Motives and Religious Presuppositions
Dooyeweerd's concept of ground motives was an attempt to understand the deep motivating forces that have steered or influenced Western thinking over the last 2,500 years since the days of the early Greek thinkers.
Inspired by Kuyper's view of world views, he identified four:
- Matter-Form (Greek)
- Creation, Fall, Redemption (Hebrew)
- Nature-Grace (Mediaeval Roman Catholic; Scholastic)
- Determinism-Freedom (Modern; Renaissance-Enlightenment to today)