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Browsing Philosophy by Author "Eloff, Rèné"
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Item Open Access “Serving the 𝘷𝘰𝘭𝘬 at His feet”: an intellectual history of neo-Calvinist philosophy at the University of the Free State, 1942–1968(University of the Free State, 2024) Eloff, Rèné; Rossouw, Johann𝑬𝒏𝒈𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒉 Starting in the early 1940s a particular strand of neo-Calvinist philosophy became institutionalised at the department of philosophy and the department of political philosophy at what was successively known as the University College of the Orange Free State, the University of the Orange Free State and the University of the Free State. The neo-Calvinist philosophy in question, also referred to as “Reformational” philosophy and “Christian” philosophy, was the comprehensive philosophical system of the Dutch legal philosopher, Herman Dooyeweerd, which he called “the philosophy of the cosmonomic idea”. By 1958, this philosophical orientation had come to determine the teaching of philosophy and political philosophy at the institution to the exclusion of other philosophical orientations. During the same time, the founding figures of this Bloemfontein neo-Calvinism, H.J. Strauss and E.A. Venter wrote a number of texts in which they justified the apartheid regime that was coming into being under the National Party. Their justification of apartheid was elaborated with explicit reference to the philosophy of the cosmonomic idea. The aim of this study is to investigate how and why Dooyeweerd’s neo-Calvinist philosophy became institutionalized at the University of the Free State and how this philosophy was able to accommodate a justification of the racial ideology propagated by the National Party. I do this by situating the reception of neo-Calvinism within the development of Afrikaner nationalism in the mid-1930s, and with specific reference to the figure of H.J. Strauss. I relate the reception of neo-Calvinism to two factors: first, what Aletta Norval has described as the “dislocation of identity” experienced by Afrikaners due to the uneven development of capitalism; and second, to the attempts of nationalist intellectuals to meet the cultural claims of British Imperialism with a philosophical position that could affirm Afrikaners’ relationship to “Western civilization”, while at the same time distancing Afrikaner culture from the perceived enemies of liberalism, humanism and communism to point out an alternative course of modernisation. Finally, I investigate how this paradigm was used to allow a justification of apartheid ideology in the 1950s. ___________________________________________________________________