Introduction
Welcome to a study guide for Herman Dooyeweerd’s In the Twilight of Western Thought. 
It is at the moment a working document. If any one has any comments, criticism or suggestions please make them! A version of the guide is also available at www.newcritique.com. Paul Otto’s excellent paper examining the different versions of the book is now available: ‘In the twilight of Dooyeweerd’s corpus‘ Philosophia Reformata 70 (1).
Introduction to In the Twilight of Western Thought
Dooyeweerd’s book In the Twilight of Western Thought had its origins in a series of lectures that Dooyeweerd delivered in the United States during 1958. The lecture tour was sponsored by the Reformed Fellowship. Dooyeweerd’s original handwritten lectures notes were typed and edited for publication by Dr Henry van Til.
The book comprises eight chapters. The first two chapters examine what Dooyeweerd called the ‘pretended autonomy of theoretical thought’; the next two look at ‘historicism’ (an example of apostate thought); the next three examine the relation between philosophy and religion; and the final one examines anthropology.
Twilight has been published in three editions. The first in 1960 by Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company. An errata sheet was distributed with this edition identifying a number of typographical mistakes. In 1965 a second edition appeared, published by Craig Press (this was reprinted in 1968, 1972, 1975 and 1980), this book took into account the errors identified in the first edition including a mislaced paragraph.
The most recent edition, of 1999, was edited by James K. A. Smith and incorporated into the Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd (Series B, Volume 4), published under the general editorship of D. F. M. Strauss by Edwin Mellen Press. Unfortunately, this edition did not take into account the errors found in the first edition.
Paul Otto (2005) has traced the development of the book from its first incarnation in 1960 to the most recent in 1999. He has identified a number of variations (see the table here – reproduced with the author’s kind permission) between the editions.
