Document: Hendrik Van Riessen, The Society of the Future (Grand Rapids, MI.: Baker Book House, n.d.).

Excerpt: The Society of the Future is the first work to appear in English by H. van Riessen, a prominent member of a school of philosophy that has developed in the Netherlands, under the leadership of Herman Dooyeweerd. Dr. Van Riessen has earned a master’s degree in engineering and a doctor’s degree in philosophy. In addition to many other publications he is the author of a 700 page treatise on Philosophy and Technique. At present he is a professor of philosophy at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. The English reader who is unfamiliar with the school of philosophy to which Dr Van Riessen belongs will be surprised, if not genuinely disturbed, by the introduction of articles of faith into an analysis of society. Van Riessen fully realizes that it is most unusual to introduce Christian beliefs into philosophical and sociological discourse. However, he is convinced that it is possible to demonstrate on philosophical grounds that a religiously value free approach to society is impossible. Such a demonstration is further available to the English reader in the four volume translation of H. Dooyeweerd’s, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, H. J. Paris, Amsterdam, and the Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co. Philadelphia. The critical reader ought to avoid a hasty and final judgment with regard to the merit of mixing sociology and religion until he has become familiar with this approach.

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