J. N. Findlay

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John Niemeyer Findlay
King's College, Newcastle
King's College London
University of Texas at Austin
Doctoral advisorErnst Mally
Notable studentsArthur Prior[1]
Main interests
Metaphysics, ethics
Notable ideas
Rational mysticism

John Niemeyer Findlay

philosopher
.

Education and career

Findlay read classics and philosophy as a boy and then at the Transvaal University College,[3][4] (the forerunner of the University of Pretoria).[5]

He then received a

Peter Bertocci) at Boston University (1972–1987).[6][7][8][9]

Findlay was president of the

Clarence Irving Lewis.[12]

Findlay's autobiographical essay "Confessions of Theory and Life" is printed in Transcendence and the Sacred (1981).[13] Findlay's "My Life” is found in Studies in the Philosophy of J. N. Findlay (1985).[14]

Work

Rational mysticism

At a time when

Theosophy,[15] Buddhism, Plotinus, and Idealism. In his books published in the 1960s, including two series of Gifford Lectures, Findlay developed rational mysticism. According to this mystical system, "the philosophical perplexities, e.g., concerning universals and particulars, mind and body, knowledge and its objects, the knowledge of other minds,".[16] as well as those of free will and determinism, causality and teleology, morality and justice, and the existence of temporal objects, are human experiences of deep antinomies and absurdities about the world. Findlay's conclusion is that these necessitate the postulation of higher spheres, or "latitudes", where objects' individuality, categorical distinctiveness and material constraints are diminishing, lesser in each latitude than in the one below it. On the highest spheres, existence is evaluative and meaningful more than anything else, and Findlay identifies it with the idea of The Absolute.[17]

Husserl and Hegel

Findlay translated into English

Hegel's Logic and Phenomenology of Spirit
.

Wittgenstein

Findlay was first a follower, and then an outspoken critic of Ludwig Wittgenstein.[20] He denounced his three theories of meaning, arguing against the idea of Use, prominent in Wittgenstein's later period and in his followers, that it is insufficient for an analysis of meaning without such notions as connotation and denotation, implication, syntax and most originally, pre-existent meanings, in the mind or the external world, that determine linguistic ones, such as Husserl has evoked. Findlay credits Wittgenstein with great formal, aesthetic and literary appeal, and of directing well-deserved attention to Semantics and its difficulties.[21]

Works

Books

Articles/book chapters

Translations

  • Logical Investigations (Logische Untersuchungen), by Edmund Husserl, with an introduction by J.N. Findlay, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. (1970)

Notes

  1. ISBN 978-0-08-046303-2
    .
  2. ^ John R. Shook (ed.), Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers, Thoemmes, 2005, p. 779.
  3. ISBN 978-0-19-975466-3
    , retrieved 6 May 2022, In 1919, as he began undergraduate studies at Transvaal University College, he became fascinated with the Theosophical Society's blend of Oriental religious beliefs, which developed into a serious study of Hindu, Buddhist, and Neoplatonist writings. Findlay earned a BA at Transvaal in 1922 and an MA in 1924.
  4. ISBN 978-1-84371-096-7. He was educated at Pretoria High School for Boys and Transvaal University College [...] on the award of a Rhodes Scholarship, from 1924 to 1926 he studied at Balliol College, Oxford, [...] At Oxford he gained a first in the school of literae humaniores. Over his career as a philosophical teacher he held various posts in different countries, beginning in 1927 as lecturer in philosophy at Transvaal University College. During this time, after two extended research visits, he was awarded a doctorate by the University of Graz in Austria for his work on Brentano
    .
  5. ^ "Foundation Years: 1889 – 1929 | Article | University of Pretoria". www.up.ac.za. Retrieved 6 May 2022.
  6. ^ Howard, Alana. "Biography". Gifford Lecture Series. Archived from the original on 20 April 2008. Retrieved 10 July 2008.
  7. doi:10.5840/owl198819245
  8. ^ "Awards – Department of Philosophy at Boston University". Archived from the original on 14 May 2008. Retrieved 10 July 2008.
  9. OCLC 38862354
    .
  10. ^ "John Niemeyer Findlay". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 12 May 2022. John Niemeyer Findlay (1903 – 1987) Boston University; Boston, MA Philosopher; Educator AREA Humanities and Arts SPECIALTY Philosophy and Religious Studies ELECTED 1975
  11. ^ '"I owe to [Findlay’s] teaching, directly or indirectly, all that I know of either Logic or Ethics" (A. N. Prior).
  12. ^ "Underappreciated philosophers active in the U.S. from roughly 1900 through mid-century?". Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog. Retrieved 7 August 2019.
  13. ISBN 978-0-268-01841-2 – via Internet Archive
    .
  14. ISBN 978-0-87395-795-3 – via Internet Archive
    .
  15. ^ "[My Gifford Lectures] ... represent my attempt to cull an eternal, necessary theosophy from the defective theosophic teaching of my adolescence" (Studies in the Philosophy of J. N. Findlay, p. 45). Findlay's Gifford Lectures also may well constitute the most comprehensive defense of the doctrine of the transmigration of the soul (reincarnation) in 20th-century academic philosophy.
  16. ^ Findlay, J. N. (1966), "Preface", written at London, The Transcendence of the Cave, New York: Humanities Press (published 1967), archived from the original on 21 April 2014
  17. ^ Drob, Sanford L, Findlay's Rational Mysticism: An Introduction
  18. ISBN 0-415-24189-8
  19. ^ Ryle, Gilbert; Findlay, J. N. (1961), "Symposium: Use, Usage and Meaning" (PDF), Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, vol. 35, p. 240, retrieved 14 June 2008
  20. ^ see Findlay's Wittgenstein: A Critique, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984
  21. ^ Ryle, Gilbert; Findlay, J. N. (1961), "Symposium: Use, Usage and Meaning" (PDF), Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, vol. 35, pp. 231–242, retrieved 14 June 2008
  22. ^ Findlay's findings herein are summarized in his "Plato's Unwritten Dialectic of the One and the Great and Small" (1983). The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter. 113. (available as an Open Access download).

References

External links

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