Herman Dooyeweerd approached time in terms of order. By contrast, Dirk Vollenhoven saw time as continuous change and becoming. Hendrik Hart, in his article “Problems of Time: An Essay,” attempts to steer a middle course between Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven. However, Hart did not sufficiently take into account that temporality is primarily continuous succession in duration and continuous duration in succession. Nor has he been able to come to terms with the root of cosmic time.

Directly after his first article for Philosophia Reformata (Dooyeweerd 1936a), Dooyeweerd published a long article in two installments about cosmic time. The first was entitled “Het tijdsprobleem en zijn antinomieën op het immanentiestandpunt i” (Dooyeweerd 1936b); its translation, entitled “The Problem of Time and Its Antinomies on the Immanence Standpoint,” was later published in Dooyeweerd (2017). This first installment lays out the basis of Dooyeweerd’s idea of transcendental time and can be regarded as a complete article in itself. According to (...) Dooyeweerd (1953–1958, 1:28), the idea of cosmic time constitutes the basis of his theory of reality. In this article, we will take a close look at the significance of cosmic time in Dooyeweerd’s conception. (shrink)