John Niemeyer Findlay
Encyclopedia
John Niemeyer Findlay, known as J. N. Findlay, (Pretoria
, 25 November 1903–27 September 1987) was a South African philosopher.
, Findlay received a Rhodes scholarship
to Balliol College Oxford for the years 1924-1926 before completing his doctorate in 1933 at Graz
, where he studied under Ernst Mally
. From 1926-66 he was professor of philosophy
at the University of Pretoria
, the University of Otago
in New Zealand, Rhodes University College
, Grahamstown, the University of Natal
, Pietermartizburg, King’s College, Newcastle upon Tyne, and King's College London
. Following retirement from his chair at London (1966) and a year at the University of Texas at Austin
, Findlay continued to teach full-time for more than twenty years, first as Clark Professor of Moral Philosophy and Metaphysics at Yale University
(1967-1972), then as University Professor and Borden Parker Bowne Professor of Philosophy (succeeding Peter Bertocci) at Boston University
(1972-1987).
He was president of the Aristotelian Society
from 1955 to 1956 and president of the Metaphysical Society of America
from 1974 to 1975, as well as a Fellow of both the British Academy
and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
. He was also an Editorial Advisor of the journal Dionysius
. A chair for visiting professors at Boston University carries his name, as does a biennial award given for the best book in metaphysics, as judged by the Metaphysical Society of America
. But above all, Findlay betrayed a great commitment to the welfare and formation of generations of students (Leroy S. Rouner was fond of introducing him as "Plotinus
incarnate"), teaching philosophy full-time in one academic classroom after another for sixty-two consecutive years.
, linguistic analysis, and ordinary language philosophy
were the core academic ideas, Findlay championed phenomenology, revived Hegelianism
, and wrote works that were inspired by Theosophy
, 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," 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
. In 2011 Findlay's major work on Plato along with both volumes of his "cave lectures" returned into print courtesy of the Routledge Revivals series http://routledge-ny.com/books/search/author/john_niemeyer_findlay/.
was not yet taken as the basis of a philosophical system, covering in fact for loose subjectivism
. To Findlay, the work was also one of the peaks of philosophy generally, suggesting superior alternatives both for overly minimalistic or naturalistic
efforts in ontology
and for Ordinary Language treatments of consciousness
and thought. Findlay also wrote addenda to translations of Hegel's Logic and Phenomenology of Spirit.
. 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.
Pretoria
Pretoria is a city located in the northern part of Gauteng Province, South Africa. It is one of the country's three capital cities, serving as the executive and de facto national capital; the others are Cape Town, the legislative capital, and Bloemfontein, the judicial capital.Pretoria is...
, 25 November 1903–27 September 1987) was a South African philosopher.
Education and Career
After reading classics and philosophy as a boy and at the University of PretoriaUniversity of Pretoria
The University of Pretoria is a multi campus public research university located in Pretoria, the administrative and de facto capital of South Africa...
, Findlay received a Rhodes scholarship
Rhodes Scholarship
The Rhodes Scholarship, named after Cecil Rhodes, is an international postgraduate award for study at the University of Oxford. It was the first large-scale programme of international scholarships, and is widely considered the "world's most prestigious scholarship" by many public sources such as...
to Balliol College Oxford for the years 1924-1926 before completing his doctorate in 1933 at Graz
University of Graz
The University of Graz , a university located in Graz, Austria, is the second-largest and second-oldest university in Austria....
, where he studied under Ernst Mally
Ernst Mally
Ernst Mally was an Austrian philosopher affiliated with the so-called Graz School of phenomenology. A pupil of Alexius Meinong, he was one of the founders of deontic logic and is mainly known for his contributions in that field of research.- Life :Mally was born in the town of Kranj in the Duchy...
. From 1926-66 he was professor of philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
at the University of Pretoria
University of Pretoria
The University of Pretoria is a multi campus public research university located in Pretoria, the administrative and de facto capital of South Africa...
, the University of Otago
University of Otago
The University of Otago in Dunedin is New Zealand's oldest university with over 22,000 students enrolled during 2010.The university has New Zealand's highest average research quality and in New Zealand is second only to the University of Auckland in the number of A rated academic researchers it...
in New Zealand, Rhodes University College
Rhodes University
Rhodes University is a public research university located in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, established in 1904. It is the province’s oldest university, and is one of the four universities in the province...
, Grahamstown, the University of Natal
University of KwaZulu-Natal
The University of KwaZulu-Natal or UKZN is a university with five campuses all located in the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. It was formed on 1 January 2004 after the merger between the University of Natal and the University of Durban-Westville.-History:-University of...
, Pietermartizburg, King’s College, Newcastle upon Tyne, and King's College London
King's College London
King's College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. King's has a claim to being the third oldest university in England, having been founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, and...
. Following retirement from his chair at London (1966) and a year at the University of Texas at Austin
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...
, Findlay continued to teach full-time for more than twenty years, first as Clark Professor of Moral Philosophy and Metaphysics at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
(1967-1972), then as University Professor and Borden Parker Bowne Professor of Philosophy (succeeding Peter Bertocci) at Boston University
Boston University
Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...
(1972-1987).
He was president of the Aristotelian Society
Aristotelian Society
The Aristotelian Society for the Systematic Study of Philosophy was founded at a meeting on 19 April 1880, at 17 Bloomsbury Square which resolved "to constitute a society of about twenty and to include ladies; the society to meet fortnightly, on Mondays at 8 o'clock, at the rooms of the Spelling...
from 1955 to 1956 and president of the Metaphysical Society of America
Metaphysical Society of America
The Metaphysical Society of America is a philosophical organization founded by Paul Weiss in 1950 for promoting the study of metaphysics. The society is a member of the American Council of Learned Societies...
from 1974 to 1975, as well as a Fellow of both the British Academy
British Academy
The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national body for the humanities and the social sciences. Its purpose is to inspire, recognise and support excellence in the humanities and social sciences, throughout the UK and internationally, and to champion their role and value.It receives an annual...
and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
. He was also an Editorial Advisor of the journal Dionysius
Dionysius (journal)
Dionysius is a scholarly journal published by the Department of Classics at Dalhousie University. It was established originally in 1977, and a new series began in 1998. It publishes articles on the history of ancient philosophy and theology, and has a special interest in the Aristotelian and...
. A chair for visiting professors at Boston University carries his name, as does a biennial award given for the best book in metaphysics, as judged by the Metaphysical Society of America
Metaphysical Society of America
The Metaphysical Society of America is a philosophical organization founded by Paul Weiss in 1950 for promoting the study of metaphysics. The society is a member of the American Council of Learned Societies...
. But above all, Findlay betrayed a great commitment to the welfare and formation of generations of students (Leroy S. Rouner was fond of introducing him as "Plotinus
Plotinus
Plotinus was a major philosopher of the ancient world. In his system of theory there are the three principles: the One, the Intellect, and the Soul. His teacher was Ammonius Saccas and he is of the Platonic tradition...
incarnate"), teaching philosophy full-time in one academic classroom after another for sixty-two consecutive years.
Rational Mysticism
At a time when scientific materialism, positivismPositivism
Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....
, linguistic analysis, and ordinary language philosophy
Ordinary language philosophy
Ordinary language philosophy is a philosophical school that approaches traditional philosophical problems as rooted in misunderstandings philosophers develop by distorting or forgetting what words actually mean in everyday use....
were the core academic ideas, Findlay championed phenomenology, revived Hegelianism
Hegelianism
Hegelianism is a collective term for schools of thought following or referring to G. W. F. Hegel's philosophy which can be summed up by the dictum that "the rational alone is real", which means that all reality is capable of being expressed in rational categories...
, and wrote works that were inspired by Theosophy
Theosophy
Theosophy, in its modern presentation, is a spiritual philosophy developed since the late 19th century. Its major themes were originally described mainly by Helena Blavatsky , co-founder of the Theosophical Society...
, Buddhism
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
, Plotinus, and Idealism
Idealism
In philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...
. In his books published in the 1960s, including two series of Gifford Lectures
Gifford Lectures
The Gifford Lectures were established by the will of Adam Lord Gifford . They were established to "promote and diffuse the study of Natural Theology in the widest sense of the term — in other words, the knowledge of God." The term natural theology as used by Gifford means theology supported...
, Findlay developed Rational Mysticism. According to this mystical
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
system, "the philosophical perplexities, e.g., concerning universals and particulars, mind and body, knowledge and its objects, the knowledge of other minds," 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
Antinomy
Antinomy literally means the mutual incompatibility, real or apparent, of two laws. It is a term used in logic and epistemology....
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
Absolute (philosophy)
The Absolute is the concept of an unconditional reality which transcends limited, conditional, everyday existence. It is sometimes used as an alternate term for "God" or "the Divine", especially, but by no means exclusively, by those who feel that the term "God" lends itself too easily to...
. In 2011 Findlay's major work on Plato along with both volumes of his "cave lectures" returned into print courtesy of the Routledge Revivals series http://routledge-ny.com/books/search/author/john_niemeyer_findlay/.
Husserl
Findlay translated into English Husserl's Logische Untersuchungen (Logical Investigations), which he regarded as the author's best work, representing a developmental stage when the idea of phenomenological bracketingBracketing (phenomenology)
Bracketing is a term derived from Edmund Husserl for the act of suspending judgment about the natural world that precedes phenomenological analysis....
was not yet taken as the basis of a philosophical system, covering in fact for loose subjectivism
Subjectivism
Subjectivism is a philosophical tenet that accords primacy to subjective experience as fundamental of all measure and law. In extreme forms like Solipsism, it may hold that the nature and existence of every object depends solely on someone's subjective awareness of it...
. To Findlay, the work was also one of the peaks of philosophy generally, suggesting superior alternatives both for overly minimalistic or naturalistic
Naturalism (philosophy)
Naturalism commonly refers to the philosophical viewpoint that the natural universe and its natural laws and forces operate in the universe, and that nothing exists beyond the natural universe or, if it does, it does not affect the natural universe that we know...
efforts in ontology
Ontology
Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations...
and for Ordinary Language treatments of consciousness
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
and thought. Findlay also wrote addenda to translations of Hegel's Logic and Phenomenology of Spirit.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Findlay was first a follower, and then an outspoken critic, of Ludwig WittgensteinLudwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...
. 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
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....
and its difficulties.
Books
- Meinong's Theory of Objects, Oxford University Press, 1933; 2nd ed. as Meinong's Theory of Objects and Values, 1963
- Hegel: A Re-examination, London: Allen & Unwin/New York: Macmillan, 1958
- Values and Intentions, London: Allen & Unwin, 1961
- Language, Mind and Value, London: Allen & Unwin/New York: Humanities Press, 1963
- The Discipline of the Cave, London: Allen & Unwin/New York: Humanities Press, 1966 (Gifford LecturesGifford LecturesThe Gifford Lectures were established by the will of Adam Lord Gifford . They were established to "promote and diffuse the study of Natural Theology in the widest sense of the term — in other words, the knowledge of God." The term natural theology as used by Gifford means theology supported...
1964–1965 http://www.giffordlectures.org/Browse.asp?PubID=TPDCAV&Volume=0&Issue=0&TOC=True) - The Transcendence of the Cave, London: Allen & Unwin/New York: Humanities Press, 1967 (Gifford LecturesGifford LecturesThe Gifford Lectures were established by the will of Adam Lord Gifford . They were established to "promote and diffuse the study of Natural Theology in the widest sense of the term — in other words, the knowledge of God." The term natural theology as used by Gifford means theology supported...
1965–1966 http://www.giffordlectures.org/Browse.asp?PubID=TPTCAV&Volume=0&Issue=0&TOC=True) - Axiological Ethics, London: Macmillan, 1970
- Ascent to the Absolute, London: Allen & Unwin/New York: Humanities Press, 1970
- Psyche and Cerebrum, Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1972
- Plato: The Written and Unwritten Doctrines, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul/New York: Humanities Press, 1974
- Plato and Platonism, New York: New York Times Book Co., 1976
- Kant and the Transcendental Object, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981
- Wittgenstein: A Critique, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984
Articles
- "Time: A Treatment of Some Puzzles", Australasian Journal of Psychology and PhilosophyAustralasian Journal of PhilosophyThe Australasian Journal of Philosophy , founded in Sydney in 1923 as The Australasian Journal of Psychology and Philosophy, is Australasia's oldest and most respected philosophy journal. Sponsored by the Australasian Association of Philosophy, it aims to publish the best work in the analytic...
, Vol. 19, Issue 13 (December 1941): 216-235. - "Morality by Conventions", MindMind (journal)Mind is a British journal, currently published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind Association, which deals with philosophy in the analytic tradition...
, Vol. 33, No. 210 (1944): 142-169 - "Can God's Existence Be Disproved?", MindMind (journal)Mind is a British journal, currently published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind Association, which deals with philosophy in the analytic tradition...
, Vol. 37, No. 226 (1948): 176-183; reprinted with discussion in Flew, A.Antony FlewAntony Garrard Newton Flew was a British philosopher. Belonging to the analytic and evidentialist schools of thought, he was notable for his works on the philosophy of religion....
and MacIntyre, A. C.Alasdair MacIntyreAlasdair Chalmers MacIntyre is a British philosopher primarily known for his contribution to moral and political philosophy but known also for his work in history of philosophy and theology...
, (eds.), New Essays in Philosophical Theology, New York: Macmillan, 1955 http://www.ditext.com/findlay/god.html - "Linguistic Approach to Psychophysics", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1949-1950
- "The Justification of Attitudes", MindMind (journal)Mind is a British journal, currently published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind Association, which deals with philosophy in the analytic tradition...
, Vol. 43, No. 250 (1954): 145-161 - "Use, Usage and Meaning", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, Vol. 35. (1961), pp. 223-242 http://www.sfu.ca/~jeffpell/Phil467/RyleUseUsage61.pdf
- "Foreword", in Hegel's Logic, Being Part One of The Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1830), Clarendon Press, 1975. ISBN 978-0-19-824512-4 http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/help/foreword.htm
- "Analysis of the Text", in Phenomenology of Spirit, Oxford University Press, 1977: 495-592. ISBN 978-0-19-824597-1 http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/help/findlay.htm
- "The Myths of Plato", DionysiusDionysius (journal)Dionysius is a scholarly journal published by the Department of Classics at Dalhousie University. It was established originally in 1977, and a new series began in 1998. It publishes articles on the history of ancient philosophy and theology, and has a special interest in the Aristotelian and...
, Volume II (1978): 19-34