Versions
This book started off life as lecture to the Anti-Revolutionaire Jongeren Actie (ARJA) ‘De Christelijke Staatsidee’ (Appledoorn, 3 October, 1936). It was then published in an expanded form (56 pages) by Libertas, Rotterdam in 1936.
In 1968 Craig Press published the first English translation in their University Series, Historical Studies; the editor was Rousas J. Rushdoony. John Kraay, a graduate of Calvin College and at the time a graduate student in philosophy at the VU in Amsterdam, was the translator. In his translators’ preface (pp. v-vi in the 1968 version) he notes that it was H. Evan Runner who encouraged him to translate it and students of Runner’s Groen Van Prinsterer Society who arranged publication with the Craig Press. Kraay also translated the Wedge Press version of Dooyeweerd’s Roots of Western Culture.
It was reprinted by Craig Press several times, including in 1975 and 1978.
It has subsequently been republished in two books by Edwin Mellen under the auspices of the Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd:
In Essays in Legal, Social, and Political Philosophy. Ed. by Alan M. Cameron et al. The Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd, Series B, Volume 2 (1997), pp. 121–55.
In Political Philosophy. Ed. by Daniël Strauss. The Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd, Series D, Volume 1 (2004), pp. 17–47.
