Environmental and Community Sustainability - A Dooyeweerdian Perspective

Sustainability is a major possible application area for Dooyeweerdian philosophy, especially his notion of irreducible aspects. It might be able to offer us:

a principled understanding of sustainability
a conceptual tool by which to manage, predict, plan for and evaluate sustainability.

It recognises the special nature and responsibility of humankind while seeking holistic balance with all the Creation. It promises to avoid the extremes of, on the one hand, 'deep ecology', and on the other, seeing it all in financial terms - or any other extremes that might appear.

This page, only just started, contains an overview; later versions will give more detail.

Understanding Sustainability

The basic notion is based on the Shalom Hypothesis, that if we function well in all aspects, in harmony, then there will be positive benefit for all, both human and non-human, both individual and community/society, both short and long term. If the Hypothesis is correct, then any poor functioning in any aspect will jeopardize overall sustainability.

For example, obviously, if we theaten our ability to feed ourselves or keep healthy then sustainability suffers, if our economy collapses, then sustainability suffers. But, less obviously, if the social climate is one of hatred, the moral climate is one of selfishness, or the community or society has zero morale, then here too perhaps sustainability could suffer.

This is because the aspects:

are irreducible to each other, and hence we cannot afford to ignore any but must attend to all,
are intertwined, so that each contains echoes of the others and later aspects depend on earlier ones - in short, interconnectedness!

Dooyeweerd's suite of aspects is his best guess at what the aspects are. We can see how a Dutch farmer has employed an aspectual analysis in devising strategy for his farm at Eemlandhoeve.

Patrizia Lombardi has undertaken research at the University of Salford, U.K., to work these aspects out in the context of urban planning. In her Ph.D. thesis, Understanding Sustainability in the Built Environment. A Framework for Evaluation in Urban Planning and Design (1999), she discusses various approaches to sustainability and then suggests how Dooyeweerdian philosophy could help provide a broader and more robust approach. She ends by setting out specific questions relating to every aspect that may be posed of an urban situation to reflect on its sustainability. She not only used Dooyeweerd's theory of modal aspects, but also his theory of time in order to deal with the notion of (human) 'progress' in the context of sustainability.

Her work has been criticised as lacking empirical basis, and for taking too 'western' an approach. However, Lombardi was a pioneer, and it remains to others to take her work forward.

A Conceptual Tool for Sustainability

Based on Lombardi's work, the KACTUS project at the University of Salford is seeking to not only refine her multi-aspectual understanding of sustainability, but also to produce a prototype conceptual tool for planning and evaluation. This will take the form of a knowledge based system hosted on the Internet as a knowledge server (hit that link for a demo KBS that encapsulates Lombardi's questions; send comments about its potential to "sust @ basden . u-net . com"). The KACTUS project is due to complete in September 2004, but they hope to have a demonstration version of the KBS available by October 2002.

This page is part of a collection that discusses application of Herman Dooyeweerd's ideas, within The Dooyeweerd Pages, which explain, explore and discuss Dooyeweerd's interesting philosophy. Email questions or comments would be welcome to Dooy @ basden . u-net . com.

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Created: 15 July 2002. Last updated: