Anthony Tol

Who is Anthony Tol?

Dr. Anthony Tol served in the Documentation Center of the VU University in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, as an archivist for the collection of materials assembled there for 19th Century historical developments in that country. Tol did his undergraduate studies at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan, and then received his PhD in philosophy under D. H. Th. Vollenhoven, professor of philosophy at VU. Tony Tol became an active proponent of a method for study of the history of Western philosophy and its systematics, the method which Vollenhoven had empirically built-up by studying 16,000 individual philosophers over the course of theoretical thought in the West. Called by Vollenhoven the Consequent Problem-Historical Method, the approach proved fascinating to Tol, who became one of its prime users in his own philosophical research and a theorizer of the development of the philosophical movement which had given it birth. The movement gave rise to the school of thought known as Reformational philosophy, founded by Vollenhoven and his colleague at VU University, professor of law Herman Dooyeweerd.