Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd
The main influences on Vollenhoven's thought were the VU's founder Abraham Kuyper and leading theologian Herman Bavinck who both taught a theistic realism, along with a number of other VU professors and outside sources — Anema taught a transcendental realism, Wilhelm Geesink introduced Vollenhoven to the critical philosophy of Kant, Jan Woltjer taught him Classical languages and the literature and philosophy those languages carried, Woltjer also brought Vollenhoven into awareness of the modern natural-scientific theories of Lorentz, van der Waals, and Einstein. The professor of medical thought L. Bouman raised the questions of body and soul, and the lector F.J.J. Buytendijk the questions of the psychic aspect of human and animal life. Both Vollenhoven and the two-years-younger Herman Dooyeweerd had been educated at the Gereformeerd Gymnasium (an academic highschool in Amsterdam) and both studied straight through the VU curriculum to achieve their doctorates, with the younger Dooyeweerd always two years behind. 3
Vollenhoven first met Hermina Maria ('Mein') Dooyeweerd, a secretary, a year after he became a VU student in 1911; Mein typed a report for Vollenhoven on a summer evangelization project in Amsterdam during 1912. Once aware of Mein, Vollenhoven also became better acquainted with her younger brother Herman. Theo and Mein married in 1918; and fourteen days after, September 27, Vollenhoven obtained his doctoral degree; his dissertation supervisor and "promotor" (as the Dutch say) was Prof Geesink.
Thus the two emerging philosophers became more than friends but also brothers-in-law, while later they also became colleagues as professors at VU. For a while in Den Haag, Vollenhoven was also Dooyeweerd's pastor. In 1926, Vollenhoven received an appointment as professor of philosophy at VU, the first full-time appointment in the discipline. By 1933, he served as VU's first University Dean, a rotating position, and published Calvinism and the Reformation of Philosophy (not translated, Het Calvinisme en de Reformatie van de Wijsbegeerte). Two years later Herman Dooyeweerd published a first full-dress statement of their philosophy, although by no means did they agree on everything. The three-volume work was entitled De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee (The Philosophy of the Law-Idea, often abbreviated "WdW"). Both scholars surged forward as a team to lead the intellectual movement that crystallised around it.
As a result of the interest that the WdW generated, together Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd founded the Association for Calvinist Philosophy (ARP) (Vereningen voor Calvinistsche Wijsbegeerte), which soon counted some 500 members. Vollenhoven was the first president of the association, and remained in that office until his retirement in 1963.
Vollenhoven played a very large role in the development of the ARP, and mentored most of the philosophers who emerged from this intellectual movement for much of the time, while Dooyeweerd mentored students in the specialty of jurisprudence.
Read more about this topic: D. H. Th. Vollenhoven