Principles and positivization: Dooyeweerd and rational autonomy

Glenn Friessen replies to Michael J Moor:

This is a response to Michael J. DeMoor’s article “Rational Autonomy and Autonomous Rationality: Dooyeweerd, Kant and Fichte on Subjectivity, Objectivity and Normativity,” Philosophia Reformata 72 (2007) 105-129. DeMoor argues that although Dooyeweerd opposed Kant’s idea of the autonomy of thought, he nevertheless relied on the idea of rational autonomy for the active positivizing of norms. DeMoor finds similarities between Dooyeweerd and Fichte with respect to these three issues:

1. Our consciousness depends on reflexivity or self-consciousness;
2. The correlation between subjectivity and objectivity;
3. The autonomy or spontaneity of the agent, by which “binding norms are freely applied to oneself.”