Johan Peter Albertus Mekkes (23 April 1898, Harderwijk – 26 July 1987, The Hague) was a Dutch philosopher.
Mekkes´s philosophy is first of all characterized by his passionate attention to the individual subjective concreteness of human life even in its societal and historical relatedness.
Being dissatisfied with Kant´s formalism, just as much as with the scholastic tradition seeking to hold on to the reality of some supernatural form of being, he developed an integral way of thinking in which the natural and the typically human modes of experience are equally important.
His hermeneutics of meaning takes us back before the beginning of all later scholasticism, without turning to what are understood today as typical Jewish traditions.
Throughout his publications he remained in discussion, at increasingly penetrating levels, with the philosophies of Scheler, Heidegger, Jaspers, Sartre.
By keeping time, subjective individuality, and the problem of meaning in the forefront of his attention, he intended to contribute to a fundamental reformation of philosophy itself.
1915–1940 High-ranking officer in Dutch army 1928–1931 studied at the Advanced Military Academy in The Hague 1933–1940 Adjutant to the commander of the field army 1940 Dissertation ‘Development of humanistic theories of political justice’, Free University, Amsterdam 1942–1945 Imprisoned by Nazis in Stanislau POW camp.
Lectured on Dooyeweerd´s De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee to his inmates, among whom Hans Rookmaaker [1] 1945–1975 worked for Dutch equivalent of the FBI (BVD) and then taught Christian philosophy at the school of economics in Rotterdam.