ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author provides a brief intellectual autobiography in which he tries to trace the meanders in the development of his thinking. This might help to explain how he came to think about various issues in the course of his life and why he came to think in the way he do. The philosophy course at Stellenbosch at the time consisted of a thorough survey of the history of philosophy from the pre-Socratics to the existentialists. America is a country of immigrants and American society is geared to absorbing strangers. In South Africa a number of Afrikaner nationalists found the Kuyperian ideal congenial. By looking on the Afrikaners as a Calvinist ‘pillar’ of South African society, they could justify their political aim of fostering the separate identity of the Afrikaners as opposed to the English and in due course also to the black population in South Africa.
