"[3] Degenaar started to study theology and philosophy in 1943 at the University of Stellenbosch, where he obtained his MA degree in 1948 with a thesis entitled Kennis as Lewe (Life of knowledge), advised by Professor Freddie Kirsten.
He continued to study Dutch, and graduated with a doctoral dissertation on Max Scheler's ethics advised by Helmuth Plessner.
In 1984 he was awarded the Stalsprys; in 1998 the NP van Wyk Louw medal; and in 2004 the Order of Ikhamanga for his "excellent contribution to philosophy and literature, his intellectual honesty and principled role in the broad struggle to resist conformity to the apartheid ideology.
He lectures on the works of Søren Kierkegaard, and through his courses and writings of Albert Camus and Martin Heidegger he introduced South Africans to existentialism.
He also questioned the twentieth century ideologies of nationalism, liberalism and socialism and investigate the feasibility of a pluralistic democracy in South Africa.