Philosophical Readings for "Protestant-Ethicals," by M D Stafleu

readings in "Protestant Ethics"

Marinus Dirk Stafleu
Relations and Characters in Protestant Philosophy
electronic text 2006

outline

√ Introduction

Part I. Culture: What makes people different?

√ Labour  - completed
Playing
Speaking and listening
Reasoning
Believing

Part II. Civilization: How should people deal with their differences?

Companionship
Mutual service
Leadership
Justice
Loving care

Part III. History: Experimental philosophy, a case study

Isolation of a field of science
Searching for objectivity
Technical progress
Searching for universal laws
The hidden structure of matter
Philosophy of experiment

Part IV. Evolution: Relations and characters in 20th-century science

Theory of characters
Sets
Symmetry
Periodic motion
Physical characters
Biotic characters
Inventory of behaviour characters

Cited Literature
Name index

Corporations USA: Healthcare Insurance industry's structure, allegedly makes inevitable a single-payer health system

 Part I -- Healthcare Insurance Businesses have Achilles Heal

"The inevitability of an American single-payer health system," by Rick Ungar. Ungar's article, vital to understanding the capitalism oi American healthcare appeared on the Policy Page, True/Slant (Sep20,2k9). This article, tho not from my own viewpoint, I recommend strongly as vital reading in these days.

Virtually all large health insurance companies are publicly held; and public companies have a life force that is unlike any other. They are driven by the desire of current management to show improved profits of about 10% each year so as to sustain share price increases for the shareholders and compensation increases for management. Also understand that while public companies like to talk about the “long term”, the phrase has no true meaning to them.

Management and shareholders worry about this year’s numbers with an eye towards next year’s – and that is as far as it goes. Most shareholders and managers have no expectation of being around in the ‘long term.’ [Especially at the scale of coporations that are "too large too fail."]

Thus, while current management [personnel] of the large health insurance companies may very well realize that they cannot sustain their business model for the longer term, this is not something they can afford to worry about.

Interspersed commentary by rW1, rW2 economics reporter / opinionater /ranter, EconoMix, 
and Albert Gedraitis (rW publisher):

Here at last I/we found a clear, concise ins+t into the American economy -- such that the specific healthcare-insurance industry and its permissible corporate forms instance a valid exception to the general rule presumably established for enterprises otherwise ("free enterprises generally but not specifically in regard to healthcare-industry free enterprises").
Ungar:

Their shareholders want returns on their investment as management wants boosts to their compensation and they are looking for it now. The future will be someone else’s problem.

Take virtually any failed industry in America and you will see that the dynamic set forth above is inevitably true. Whoever ran General Motors before the CEO in charge when the industry fell apart probably knew what was down the road for the company. But it wasn’t his problem. An adept shareholder in GM who got out five years ago, really didn’t care where the industry was headed, nor did a CEO who had no plans to be around when the balls in the air crashed to the ground.

So, when the price of health insurance reaches the point where most Americans truly cannot afford it – and the numbers make it more than clear that the point will be reached and reasonably soon – what then?

Will ‘free marketers’ be out there arguing that we should just let the health insurers fail? After all,that’s how a pure, capitalist system is designed to work, right?

So severely distinguishing, Ungar has laid bare how the general capitalist investment ethos in North America, is deadly to the specific corporate interface between healthcare itself and insurance tailored to the task of the separate and sovereign sphere of providing that medical professional care (a signficicant part of "healthcare") in regard to the role of specifically medical healthcare insurance.

Unstated presupposition of the Ungar article: the only options for reform of American healthcare insurance is either the single-payer system (a socialist conception in origin -- but not necessarily socialist when advocated today, lest we fall prey to the genetistic fallacy [Albert Wolters] which often crops up in theoretical thawt and policy decision-making and -advocating) or an alleviated free-market system (on behalf of which many "conservative" public thinkers and rhetoricians are making extreme claims today--compare the social conservative duo of Russell Kirk and Hadley Arkes, cited as beyond the scope of David Koyzis in his piece "Why I am not a Social Conservative" aimed at moralistic "pet" issues, a citation supplemented by Francis Beckwith who lists George Gilder, Francis Canavan, Robert P. George).  An unalleviated Capitalism,  a system that generates human misery as a byproduct of its many good achievements, such a Capitalism ossified now into an absolutist ideology brayed aloud by some of the oxen on FoxNews -- regarding healthcare insurance, of all things!

Part II -- Dooyeweerd-style critique healthcare-insurance  businesses

The necessity of disclosing the internal structural principle of an exceptional phenotype of a particular societal sphere, the sphere of business in its phenotype devoted to healthcare insurance by means of stockmarket-traded corporations; that phenotype will here be referred to simply as "American healthcare insurance companies" (but referring chiefly to megacorporations like Cigna, Aetna, Humana and similar entities traded on the stockmarket), this necessity presses upon all who are concerned with viable solutions in the present wave of interest in healthcare reform in the USA.

... The internal structural principle that typifies those business enterprises that have come to dominate the economics of healthcare as an industry, with spiralling costs to premium-payers in the USA is an important consideration when we are beset these days thawtless Conservatives and Liberals obfuscating the analysis that Protestant philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd has suggested.  Practically, we all must face "the rising spiral of healthcare insurance costs."

But healthcare insurance is surely built around what Dooyeweerd woud call a typically hybrided entity -- where, in this case, the aspect of medicalcare costs (optimatic-economic aspect of medicalcare) are enkaptically intertwined with the general socioeconomic climate and, precisely, a specialty profit-driven finance industry, the healthcare-insurance speciality of the finance industry.

Not that all the enterprises in healthcare insurance are profit-driven. There are some splendid examples of non-profit healthcare insurance companies. A few authentic "mutuals," like Northwest Mutual Insurance (as advertized on FoxNews channels) and some successful other forms of co-op structures in this industrial sector and speciality.

But the greedy metacorps that interlope into what shoud be rather the zone of a type that is carefully regulated to balance the intertwined symbiotic enkapses that constitute it in its uniqueness of type (displaying a duality at its core, its internal structural principle [Dooyeweerd], a zone with legislated incentives to balance that intra-industrial contrast and tension, just as in D's celebrated citation of the hybrided phenotype of the family farm (a business enterprise hybrided with a specific family community and structure).   Of course, sometimes a family farm proves itself dysfunctional as a family as a result of its particular configuration, but often family farms are quite functional as both family and as farm business, as one, aside from the rapidly changing economic climate and situation in which it is located, both  societally and ecologically.




Awareness that the healthcare insurance company can be organized differently from the firms that Ungar puts his finger on, in regard to the current mis-structration and antinormativity of the main greedy capitalist corporations dominating the industrial sector for some time.  These two moments of greed-capitalism today are keys to why the whole healthcare-insurance industry is unusually vulnerable to the determinants of stockmarket-traded corporations conceived more largely across all American industries.

I think Ungar locates two precise structuring principles that dominate the dominant type of megacorps in the health insurance industry; he shows what I mean by antinormative so-called "free enterprise" businesses gone amuck in the healthcare insurance field.

-- EconoMix

Pisteutics: Reformed denoms: South Africa's "Reformed family" in disarray

I found this article of great value in working to understand the Reformed situation in South Africa. It originates with Ecumenical News International via Ekklesia (a UK liberalationist journal). "South African churches still living with difficult legacy of apartheid" (May27,2k9)

A South African church suspended in 1982 from the World Alliance of Reformed Churches because of its support for apartheid, is "still not ready for readmission", a meeting of the grouping's executive committee in Geneva has been told - write Stephen Brown and Hans Pienaar.

The Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van Afrika (Dutch Reformed Church of Africa), or NHKA, had been excluded from the global Reformed Alliance because of the theological and biblical backing the church gave to the system of white domination under which South Africa was governed from 1948 until the early 1990s.

The church has applied to rejoin WARC but the Alliance's executive committee said in 2005 that the NHKA first needed to demonstrate to the churches in South Africa and the world that it has renounced apartheid "fully and completely".

WARC general secretary, the Rev Setri Nyomi, presenting his report on 23 May to the 2009 executive committee meeting in Geneva, noted that a WARC team had visited South Africa in March to meet the denomination.

"Our discussions showed a deep division in the church about moving beyond apartheid," said Nyomi, a Presbyterian from Ghana, in his report. "It was our determination that they were not ready for readmission." In comments to the Geneva meeting, Nyomi noted, however, "There were a few voices that … were committed to challenge the leadership of their church."

Five of the NHKA's leading theologians, writing in an article in South Africa's Afrikaans-language press early in March declared their "shame and hurt" that the NHKA has not yet officially declared apartheid "unevangelical" and "evil".

In 2007 the NHKA's general commission, or synod, had a motion calling for such a declaration on its agenda. But emotions ran so high before the meeting even began, the matter was taken off the agenda.

The theologians called for other members of the NHKA to add their names to their dissident declaration, in which it is also acknowledged that apartheid was dehumanising and caused great suffering which had to be redressed.

In his report, Nyomi referred also to mediation by the team sent to South Africa in separate discussions about the "stalemate" in the reunification of the Dutch Reformed church family, which was divided along racial lines during the apartheid period.

These discussions involve the Uniting Reformed Church of Southern Africa [which brings together Black Reformed and Coloured Reformed] and the Dutch Reformed Church (NGK), which was the white Reformed church in South Africa with the biggest membership.

Confusion in the identity of the churches can derive from the fact that the full names of the NGK and of the NHKA, which is much smaller, both translate into English as Dutch Reformed Church.

Both of them had supported the system of apartheid but the much larger NGK later rejected the racist ideology and was readmitted to the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.

The NGK is seeking reunification with the URCSA, which is itself a union of the formerly black and coloured (mixed race) branches of the Dutch Reformed family.

One of the issues hindering unification is the status of the "Belhar Confession", a doctrinal statement issued by the coloured church and later adopted by the black church, which rejected the theological and moral justification of apartheid as being a heresy.

The NGK has acknowledged that the Belhar confession was biblically grounded but declines to accept it as a fourth confession of faith, as was done by the URCSA. While the NGK leadership has been amenable to the move and most of its leadership desires it, the NGK says there is no unanimity among its lay membership over the confession.

In 2008, the URCSA declined to recommend the NGK for membership of the All Africa Conference of Churches, and its general synod placed a moratorium on any further reunification discussions. URCSA leaders insist this decision can only be rescinded at its next general synod in 2012,thereby suspending further unification moves.

While the NGK has long been a racially open church with many non-white members, its membership, tested in surveys, overwhelmingly reject the Belhar Confession as false doctrine. Many adherents claim the Belhar document is grounded in "liberation theology", long demonised by many Afrikaners.

URCSA members, on the other hand, say it would be difficult to renounce the confession as the basis for church unity. "They have to understand where we come from. The deep racism from the past still figures strongly," a URCSA source requesting anonymity told Ecumenical News International. "The inequalities produced by apartheid are still the cause of much suffering."

In his report to the WARC meeting in Geneva, Nyomi said, "Regarding the unification process, we hear both sides. We were encouraged that both agreed that what is needed includes a process towards reunification that is based on truth, restorative justice and reconciliation. It was also agreed to put in place a process of studying the Belhar Confession."

[With acknowledgements to ENI. Ecumenical News International is jointly sponsored by the World Council of Churches, the Lutheran World Federation, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the Conference of European Churches.]

History: Obscure Point: Coud RedCross' apparent meddling have resulted in only pseudo-legality for outlawing Jewish settlements

Not so long ago Owlb posted on rW page 2, a blog-entry with the prefix "Pisteutics" -- but it was a largely political text about the Settlements, Obama's targetting them, and Israel's Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu then being forced to defend the Settlements in his own Parliament but also to the world. The 'silence' and the 'holocaustizing' of 4,000 years of Jewish and Judaic present in Israel

In the analysis following, Moshe Dann, previously an Israeli history prof, now a journalist, contributes to Jerusalem Post (jpost.com) an op-ed piece, How settlements became 'illegal'. For history buffs, the idea of an illegalization of the already-existing settlements, as well as those that followed, can become very intriguing. I certainly was intrigued. But I'm in no position to evaluate Dann's historiographical claims--about the International Red Cross, the legalities or lack thereof in the case of its dubious legality itself in judging the situation of the time, like a duly-constituted tribunal, but not. Here is Moshe Dann's important text in our Special Features for Christian political thinkers, Christian Democrats, and Reformed Political entities around the world:

In 1967, under attack, Israel struck back and conquered the Golan Heights from Syria, the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, and Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem (the West Bank) from Jordan. Israel had been threatened with a second Holocaust, and few questioned its actions. No one spoke of a Palestinian state; there was no "Palestinian people."

Many legal experts accepted Israel's right to "occupy" and settle its historic homeland, because the areas had been illegally occupied by invading Arab countries since 1948.

One organization, however - the International Committee of the Red Cross - disagreed.

Meeting secretly in the early 1970s in Geneva, the ICRC determined that Israel was in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Based on the Hague Convention, GC IV was drawn up after World War II to protect innocent civilians and restrict brutal occupations. Unilaterally, the ICRC turned it into a weapon to delegitimize and demonize Israel.

As far as is known, the ICRC did not rely on any legal precedents; it made up "the law."

Judge and jury, its decisions lacked the pretense of due process. Since all decisions and protocols of the ICRC in this matter are closed, even the identities of the people involved are secret. And there is no appeal. Without transparency or judicial ethics, ICRC rulings became "international law." Its condemnations of Israel provide the basis for accusing Israel of "illegal occupation" of all territory conquered in 1967.

Although most of the international community, its NGOs and institutions accept the authority of the ICRC and other institutions, such as the International Court of Justice, as sole arbiters of what is "legal," or not, it's strange that some Israeli politicians and jurists cannot defend Israel's legal claim to the territories. And Israel's case is strong.

ADOPTED IN 1945, the UN Charter (Article 80) states: "...nothing in this Chapter shall be construed in or of itself to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which members of the United Nations may respectively be parties."

This means that the designation of "Palestine" as a "Jewish National Home," incorporated in the British Mandate and established by international agreements adopted by the League of Nations and US Congress, guarantees Israel's sovereign rights in this area. All Jewish settlement, therefore, was and is legal.

Two years later, amid growing civil war, the UN proposed a division of Palestine between Jews and Arabs - changing the terms of the Mandate; the Jews accepted, the Arabs launched a war of extermination.

When Britain ended the Mandate and left, the State of Israel was proclaimed and local mobs who had been attacking Jews for years were joined by five Arab armies. The armistice in 1949 - for Jews, independence, for Arabs, nakba (tragedy) - did not result in a Palestinian state, because the Arabs did not want it. Arab leaders never accepted Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state - most refuse to do so today.

Pressured by Russia and the Arab states, the Security Council adopted Resolution 242, which spoke of Israel's military withdrawal from some - not all - of these conquered territories in the context of a final peace agreement. The question of sovereignty remained elusive and problematic.

Israel's political echelon and Supreme Court refrained from asserting full sovereignty over the newly acquired areas but, in the absence of any reciprocal gestures, agreed to allow Jews to return to Jerusalem's Old City and Gush Etzion, where a flourishing group of settlements had been wiped out in 1947. Striking a compromise, it allowed the building of Kiryat Arba, near Hebron, where the Jewish community had been wiped out in Arab riots of 1929; Jews were permitted to pray at the Cave of Machpela, an ancient building containing the tombs of Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs, for the first time in 700 years.

Although free to leave UNRWA refugee camps, with new opportunities and challenges, Palestinians did not call for statehood or peace with Israel. The PLO, which claimed to represent Palestinians, was dedicated to terrorism, not nation-building.

FOR SOME, this is not a "legal" issue, but a moral one: Jews should not rule over ("occupy") others. So Israel withdrew unilaterally from nearly all "Palestinian" cities, towns and villages and turned over vast tracts of land to the PA/PLO as part of the Oslo Accords in 1994 and a few years later in the Wye and Hebron agreements.

When Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, it became a bastion of Hamas. "Land for peace" in reality means "land for terrorism."

Influenced by these events, incited by Islamists, encouraged by Israeli concessions and seeking to undermine the state, Israeli Arabs identify as "Palestinians," demanding an end to "Jewish occupation" and discrimination, and the destruction of the state itself.

Others contend that "Israel's Jewish and democratic" nature will be threatened if it continues to include large numbers of Arabs who are not loyal and do not identify with the state. But nearly all "Palestinians" live under PA, not Israeli rule. The dispute now, therefore, is over territory, not people.

Predictions of an "Arab demographic time bomb" have not proven realistic or accurate. Moreover, allowing Arab residents full civil and humanitarian rights, without political rights, as exist in most other countries, could be considered in conjunction with resettling Arab "refugees" in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, etc., dismantling UNRWA camps and ending terrorism and incitement against Israel.

That a second (or third) Arab Palestinian state would be an existential threat to Israel seems obvious. "Land for peace" has failed. Why then promote it?

I think it's important to hear this viewpoint among Israelis, as expressed so succinctly and clearly by journalist Dann. Obama targetted the Settlements, speaking as tho a truly justic policy toward them coud be presupposed.

I am no Christian Zionist (I shudder at most of what they say and do).

I am neither typical of the Liberation Theology viewpoint in regard to Israel constructed as a "colonial settler state."

My analysis is based on my USA heritage of a historical connection between State, Church, and Synogogue. I'm thinking of President George Washington's letter to the Judaic synagogue in Rhode Island. In that document of one of the Founders, the historical root of a special friendship between two nations, America and Israel, may be seen. The relation of the USA to its own citizens of Judaic faith was carried over with a special force to support the establishment of the State of Israel.

"The equality of nations" does not apply to any nation's special closeness to the general welfare of another particular country and people. Friendship between two countries and nations allows room for unevenhandedness in America's forming a policy favouring Israel over any other interest in the territory.

America has not had such a friendship with any Islamic country, rather our Marines were put into service against the Arab Islamic pirates of the Barbary Coast. "From the hall of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli ..."

Literary: New Criterion litmag: Free Speech in an age of jihad -- a special pamphlet with a variety of writers

Free speech in an age of jihad

The reprint is $4, and $2 shipping and handling (more for international orders). Additional copies will be shipped at $1 additional shipping and handling per copy. For education discounts on orders of 25 or more, please call our assistant to the editors at (212) 247-6980,

----------------- also ----------------------

Libel tourism, “hate speech” & political freedom

With essays by
Roger Kimball, 1; Stanley Kurtz, 5; Robert Spencer, 16;
Andrew C. McCarthy, 23; & Mark Steyn, 32

Responses from
Rachel Ehrenfeld, Brooke Goldstein, Ezra Levant,
Ibn Warraq, Steven Emerson, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.,
Claudia Rosett, Robert H. Bork, Daniel Kornstein
& John J. Walsh

Enviro: Christians: UK's Steve Bishop writes up some of his own struggle for a Christian perspective on ecological crises

Steve Bishop, An Accidental Blog, reviews at considerable length the case made by an apparently excellent book, Environmental Stewardship: Critical Perspectives - Past and Present edited by R. J. Berry (T&TClark International [ISBN 9780567030184] xii+348; £39.99).

Rather than discuss (argue with?) the book which is itself a collection of views, or with the presentation and critical observations and questions that this reformational thinker-reviewer offers, I thawt I'd just let readers know of Bishop's reflective take on this already reflective book. It may whet your appetite to get a copy for yourself. In any case, the review will go a long way in stimulating your own musings on this urgent set of concerns for the global home of humanity, God's good earth.

-- Albert Gedraitis, publisher, refWrite

Philosophy: Government: The idea of "Open Govt" based on new techs and seemingly absolute transparency

Yeah, its all blamed on "technology enthusiasts" but there's more to this philosophical surge than the tech which enables it.GovernmentExecutive.com carries an engaging article by Robert Brodsky [rbrodsky "at" govexec "dot" com] Open government advocates map out future of citizen governance (Jun29,2k9).

>NEW YORK CITY-- Technology enthusiasts on Monday gathered at a jazz concert hall in Manhattan to plot ways to increase government transparency and accountability.

The young and technocratic audience at the sixth annual Personal Democracy Forum -- virtually every participant was working on a laptop or iPhone or Tweeting -- generally gave the Obama administration credit for moving the transparency ball forward with sites such as Recovery.gov and Data.gov.

The speakers, however, agreed that the new platforms are only the first step in a revolutionary change that will sweep across government in much the same way Craigslist and Wikipedia changed the private sector.

"We need for transparency to be the default government," said Jeff Jarvis, a columnist and blogger and the author of What Would Google Do? (Collins Business, 2009). "We need a government that is searchable, clickable and linkable."

I think the whole philosophoical underpinnings of this orientation are self-contradictory. It woud isolate communities, pulverize them electorally, and individualize citizens. From this the idea of every citizen forming an opinion on everything and voting on every issue, the very idea is exhausting. The model of "citizen" here is a super-informed and/or super-manipulated everyman, with no delegation of representation by voters who instead themselves must look at everything (transparency) and v?o?t?e?. Quite a notion of voter to be sure. So, having the notion of "open government" linked to that of "direct democracy" (so-called) is not only anti-representation but also anti-democratic except in the most extreme philosophically individualist concept of democracy. It only puts total responsiblity on everywoman/man, a responsibility I for one dont want to shoulder. This presupposition of "total individual responsiblity" in government, your responsiblity for everything that can happen or has happened in the governing of a given country is quite pernicious and intellectually dishonest. It is the preferred drug of activists, presently left activists, but if enacted woud become also the drug of r+twing activists. My point here: the direct democracy approach favors activists who have illusions about how much responsiblity they can take-on in an advanced h+ly-differentiated democratic society. So, under the transparency movement, beware of the other presuppositions of this advocacy that are the reverse of democracy, by destroying the importance of representation.

Now, representation does require reform. What we have now is representatives who dont even read the bills they compile. We've been lied to about a basic facet of transparency where a legal provision of posting on an accessible webpage woud protect us from tyrants who woud slip by us absurdly-written (rather, compiled) legislation, never posted a week in advance, and therefore opaque. Not transparent, not translucent.

Philosophy of Law: Case Study: New Zealand, in a forthcoming study by Alan Cameron

integrative jurisprudence:

an interdisciplinary conceptual orientation
for the study of law


Alan Cameron's abstract, intro and outline (recent) to his forthcoming book. With some opening comments by Albert Gedraitis (May26,2k9)

Based at the School of Accounting and Commercial Law, under the Faculty of Commerce and Administration, Victoria University of Wellington in Wellington, New Zealand, Senior Lecturer Cameron locates his academic speciality in commercial law.

Perhaps even more importantly to many of us reformationals around the world, Cameron functions actively as a leading Juridical scholar, a professional in juridics who "reflects on the nature of law in relation to the distinctives of the New Zealand legal tradition and the wider legal developments around the world."

He is "a critical proponent of the Juridical philosophy developed by past professor of law at the Free University in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Dr Herman Dooyeweerd." Cameron, in his forthcoming book Integrative Jurisprudence, presents a path-breaking, creative reading of a famous Dutch scholar's philosophy of law, as mentioned, a philosophy that is transforming itself into an international philosophy of law now invigorated by finely detailed study of the exemplary legal system of New Zealand -- where common law necessarily includes both the main public jurisprudence and the large-indigenous population's own rules-wisdom, the latter both in the oral tradition of the Maori people, and nowadays sometimes written down. The two systems necessarily have collided at times, but both systems must interact and learn from their mistakes along the way. [I've taken much of the foregoing material from the Wikipedia entry, Alan Cameron (legal scholar)."]

Cameron is well-acquainted with his mentor's Encyclopedia of the Science of Law [Volume I (English translation 2003, Mellen Press; Dutch original, Encyclopaedie der Rechtswetenschap (Studentenraad, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, 1946-1967).)] Encyclopedia I has been published in English now for 6 years. Further, Cameron has worked at studying the full shelf of remaining volumes (5 in total), accessing partial translations as the forward-work proceeds by a team headed by philosopher and Dooyeweerd specialist, Dr Danie Strauss.

In Cameron's forthcoming study of Dooyeweerd's law philosophy, the law scholar purposely thinks thru his own country's legal system in all its uniqueness (difference and sameness) in relation to the other states and conditions of the world to which New Zealand must relate; in the course of which he sets up a dynamic relation between D's thawt, C's own contributions where, besides appropriating ins+ts, he may go even beyond his mentor with many new juridical ins+ts, and he does all this in in building his multidimensional understanding of his country and its legal system.

Readers may also want to hunt down as a kind of sampler, Cameron's recent paper, "Dooyeweerd on Law and Morality: Legal ethics -- a test case" (available in .PDF format for digital download).

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INTEGRATIVE JURISPRUDENCE:
AN INTERDISCIPLINARY CONCEPTUAL ORIENTATION FOR THE STUDY OF LAW

by Alan Cameron

Abstract
The book is an exposition of the jurisprudential perspective set forth in the Encyclopaedie der Rechtwetenschap (Encyclopedia of the Science of Law), a multi-volume jurisprudential conceptual framework and method developed by the late Professor Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977). It is found in dictaten (typed and bound notes) produced by the Student Council at the Free University of Amsterdam for his students during his tenure of the Chair in Jurisprudence and Old Dutch Law in the Faculty of Law at the Free University of Amsterdam from 1926 until 1964). The Encyclopaedie was itself a particular application of an original general philosophical system (Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea) that emerged from Dooyeweerd’s initial wrestling with neo-Kantian legal theory. Its maturest expression was published in English as A New Critique of Theoretical Thought.

This application of the encyclopaedic method in this book contains some revisions and refinements of Dooyeweerd’s philosophical categories and method. These are largely attributable to developments introduced by Prof. DFM Strauss to whom I owe a debt of gratitude in developing my own understanding of Dooyeweerd’s general philosophy and his philosophy of law. Only the introductory part of Dooyeweerd’s major jurisprudential work has appeared in English to date, Encyclopedia of the Science of Law: Introduction (Mellen 2002), the first of four substantial volumes to be published in English. This exposition however, draws heavily on the substantive parts of the Encyclopedia contained in the unpublished volumes.

The integrative jurisprudence and it method arises out of a critique of the main traditions of Western philosophy general, legal philosophy and its roots. It rests upon a particular account of the nature of theory and theorizing in relation to its subject matter. Applied to the field of legal study it results in an original legal epistemology (theory of legal knowledge) and ontology (theory of legal phenomena).

This main focus of this book is upon the ontology in order to achieve its chief aim of providing a conceptual orientation for the study of law. Unlike other jurisprudence texts it is not intended to be merely an introduction to different theories of law and/or to a few selected traditional topics involving debates amongst contending perspectives, that is, an introduction to jurisprudence as a distinct subject of legal theory within the legal curriculum. More ambitiously, it is intended to present a view of jurisprudence as a more or less comprehensive conceptual framework for the special academic discipline of law. For that reason it will devote less attention than other jurisprudential works to the detailed examination of different legal philosophies.

Briefly stated, the integrative perspective as an ontology of law comprises three central elements: the modal or aspectual, the entitary or typical-structural and the “enkaptic” or structurally interconnecting element. However, the most original and fundamental element is that of the theory of modal aspects. A key idea in this legal philosophy is that of the jural aspect as one of a diversity of irreducible but interconnected universal aspects of social reality.

Grounded in a cosmic law theory this theory of law, understandably, is prone to be categorised within the natural law tradition of legal philosophy. However, it will be seen that there are important features of this perspective that bear a strong similarity to, or are shared in common with, key features of other traditional (e.g. analytical legal positivism) and more recent movements or schools of legal philosophy including critical legal theories, law and economics and, especially in its underlying critique of Enlightenment rationalism, postmodern legal thought, central elements of which had already been anticipated in Dooyeweerd’s philosophical critique.

Finally, an auxilliary, but nonetheless important feature of this work, is the conscious attempt by the author to utilise, though not exclusively, a wide range of New Zealand scholarly legal material – sources of law, legal doctrine and theory - to both illustrate and explicate the concepts and method employed. In this way it is hoped to give increased relevance to the exposition of the theoretical concepts for the New Zealand student; contribute towards a distinctively New Zealand jurisprudence in both the theoretical and non-theoretical senses of jurisprudence explained in the first section of the introductory chapter; and further the existing inter-disciplinary and intra-disciplinary dialogue amongst New Zealand legal and non-legal scholars. Though there is a conscious New Zealand bias in the illustrative material this should only be regarded as localised application of an approach that thinks globally as befits a true philosophy of law. This work is intended to demonstrate the possibility of its application within the common law tradition by way of illustration within the local jurisdiction. The last section which includes a discussion of international law should help to deflect criticism of parochialism in the illustrative legal subject matter.

Part One: Introduction

Chapter 1: An Overview
Nature, role and function of jurisprudence

Within the study of law jurisprudence is a term that can be used with different though related meanings. When legal scholars refer to the jurisprudence of the Treaty of Waitangi they are referring to the actual law itself as well as the “wisdom” it contains, jurisprudence in its literal meaning (legal wisdom). Jurisprudence in this sense includes the learning, principles, concepts and doctrines contained within the formal legal sources of court decisions and legislation. It may also encompass learned scholarly commentary or treatises on the law itself. However jurisprudence, taught as a distinct subject within the law curriculum, has a narrower meaning that refers to theory of law. It encompasses, both general philosophy of law as found in the history of the ideas of leading thinkers, as well as more narrowly focused theories of specific areas of law such as tort, contract, public law etc. and the concepts associated with those branches of law.

I will discuss, in this chapter subsection, debates about the place of jurisprudence in the law curriculum: – should it be compulsory? should it be in a separate course? Or should it be an essential element of all law courses? This serves as a lead-in to 1.2 where I set forth the “integrative” view of the role of jurisprudence within the study of law generally

1.2 Relation of jurisprudence to discipline of law and legal phenomena:
Neil MacCormick’s Four Quadrants of Jurisprudence will be taken as example of a view of jurisprudence in its relation to the discipline law to which the integrative approach is compared.

1.3 Some key features of integrative jurisprudence
This will include comparison with features of other perspectives: interdisciplinary grounded in the coherence of reality and our experience of it “transcendental-empirical”a descriptive-normative/analytical theory oriented to fit an empirical normative jural reality that nonetheless exceeds (transcends) the ability of analytical/theoretical concepts to fully capture pluralist rejects “mono-legal”/positivist theories of law and identifies a rich plurality of expressions of the jural dimension in diverse societal spheres reflected in a socio-structural taxonomy of law normative coherence the interconnection of concepts expresses the inner coherence of the jural dimension of social experience in its plural expressions
open is open to revision within and outside of its perspective to engage in dialogue with other perspectives critical solidarity acknowledges commonalities with, and contributions of, other theories from different perspectives without abandoning its own standpoint commitment-explicit exposure of root beliefs underlying the theory – the failure of other theories to identify their own root beliefs is a self-critical deficit in those theories

PART TWO: AN INTEGRATIVE VIEW OF LAW

Chapter 2: Law, Discipline of Law, Legal Theory and its Roots

2.1 What is law?

Distinguish this descriptive/analytical (theoretical) question from a related theoretical question: What is a law? and from the question for the practitioner/scholar-doctrinalist/student of law: What is the law? Is this latter “practical” question connected to the former theoretical questions? If so, how? This section does not answer these questions so much as discuss what sort of questions they are in the context of the study of law and how they interrelate. This section therefore only provides preliminary intimations of the answers to the questions that are elaborated more fully by the integrative approach in the following sections and chapters.

2.2 What is the discipline (study) of law?

2.3 What is the role of theory in the study of law? Philosophy and the academic disciplines

2.4 The reason-transcending roots of philosophical perspectives in disciplinary theories – legal theory in particular

Chapter 3: Outline of An Integrative Conceptual Perspective on Law

3.1 Basic Jural concepts: the modal dimension of law
3.1.1 Basic jural concepts: elementary
3.1.2 Basic jural concepts: complex
3.1.3 The concept of law

3.2 Basic cosmic relations expressed in the jural aspect of reality
3.2.1 Universal side and individual side
3.2.2 Norm side and fact side
3.2.3 Subject-object relation
3.2.4 Origination-duration-termination
3.3 Jural ideas
3.3.1 Jural concept and jural idea: the concept of law and the idea of justice
3.3.2 Jural morality
3.3.3 Justice as a jural-moral idea

3.4 Jural entity-type concepts: jural entities and their inter-connections
3.4.1 The diversity of human (jural) type-structures
3.4.2 Basic (modal) concepts and entity-type concepts: the role of the sociology of law
3.4.3 Jural form and substance: originating forms of law and their material sources
3.4.4 The interweaving of laws having differing material sources
3.4.5 The private-public distinction in the light of jural entity-type concepts:

3.5.1 The interweaving of private and public law

Part Three: Applications of the Integrative Perspective

Chapter 4: Contract and Contract Law: Two Jural Realities

4.1 Contract distinguished from contract law
4.2 Doctrines of contract formation and their conundra
4.3 Private and public law of contract

Chapter 5: Indigenous Law: Legal Pluralism and the Role of Cultural-Historical Differentiation

Chapter 6: The University: Interconnected Jural Plurality

Part Four: Jurisprudential Challenges

Chapter 7: Law and Justice in a Global Perspective: International Law

Chapter 8: - Know Yourself: Law’s Need of an Integrated Theory of the Human Person

Sciences: Space Explore: NASA launches Kepler Mission (agency's 10th Discovery mission) to look for Earth-like planets

KEPLER MISSION: A search for habitable planets. -- official website offers this succinct summary of the project (but don't miss the whole item "Importance of Planet Detection").

The Kepler Mission, NASA Discovery mission #10, is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets.

Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy.

Magnalia Dei!, as Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) m+t be saying.

Kepler was forced to leave his teaching post at Graz [Germany] due to the [Roman Catholic] counter Reformation because he was Lutheran and moved to Prague [Czech Republic nowadays] to work with the renowned Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe. He inherited Tycho's post as Imperial Mathematician when Tycho died in 1601. Using the precise data that Tycho had collected, Kepler discovered that the orbit of Mars was an ellipse. In 1609 he published Astronomia Nova, delineating his discoveries, which are now called Kepler's first two laws of planetary motion. And what is just as important about this work, "it is the first published account wherein a scientist documents how he has coped with the multitude of imperfect data to forge a theory of surpassing accuracy" (O. Gingerich in foreword to Johannes Kepler New Astronomy translated by W. Donahue, Cambridge Univ Press, 1992), a fundamental law of nature. Today we call this the scientific method.

Do not miss, in the just-quoted text, how the scientific method is defined, while attributing this pioneering usage of its mathematics-enriched method to Dr Kepler: "a scientist documents how he has coped with the multitude of imperfect data to forge a theory of surpassing accuracy" (O. Gingerich, in the Forward).