John Niemeyer Findlay

John Niemeyer Findlay
Born 25 November 1903
Pretoria, Transvaal
Died 27 September 1987
Nationality South African
Alma mater University of Pretoria
University of Graz
Spouse(s) Aileen Hawthorn
Era 20th-century philosophy
Region Western Philosophy
School Analytic philosophy

John Niemeyer Findlay (/ˈfɪndli/; 25 November 1903 – 27 September 1987), usually cited as J. N. Findlay, was a South African philosopher.

Education and career

After reading classics and philosophy as a boy and at the University of Pretoria, 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 to 1966 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).[1][2][3] 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. Findlay betrayed a great commitment to the welfare and formation[4] of generations of students (Leroy S. Rouner was fond of introducing him as "Plotinus incarnate"), teaching philosophy in one college classroom after another for sixty-two consecutive academic years. On 10 September 2012 Findlay was voted the 8th "most underappreciated philosopher active in the U.S. from roughly 1900 through mid-century" in a poll conducted among readers of Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog, finishing behind George Santayana, Alfred North Whitehead, and Clarence Irving Lewis.

Findlay's autobiographical essay, 'Confessions of Theory and Life', is printed in Transcendence and the Sacred, ed. A.M. Olson & L.S. Rouner, Notre Dame & London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981, pp. 176-92.

Rational mysticism

At a time when scientific materialism, positivism, linguistic analysis, and ordinary language philosophy were the core academic ideas, Findlay championed phenomenology, revived Hegelianism, and wrote works that were inspired by Theosophy,[5] 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,"[6] 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.[7] In 2012 Findlay's major work on Plato along with both volumes of his "cave lectures" returned into print courtesy of the Routledge Revivals series .

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 bracketing 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.[8][9] Findlay also contributed final editing and wrote addenda to translations of Hegel's Logic and Phenomenology of Spirit. In 2013 Oxford University Press added Findlay's Kant book to the list of works it now reprints on demand ; and in 2014 Routledge Library Editions: Philosophy of Mind reissued Findlay's magnum opus .

Wittgenstein

Findlay was first a follower, and then an outspoken critic, of Ludwig Wittgenstein. 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.[10]

Works

Books

Articles

Notes

  1. ↑ Howard, Alana. "Biography". Gifford Lecture Series. Retrieved 2008-07-10.
  2. ↑ Harris, Errol (Spring 1988), "In Memoriam: John Niemeyer Findlay", Owl of Minerva 19 (2), pp. 252–253
  3. ↑ "Awards • Department of Philosophy at Boston University". Retrieved 2008-07-10.
  4. ↑ '"I owe to [Findlay’s] teaching, directly or indirectly, all that I know of either Logic or Ethics" (A. N. Prior).
  5. ↑ "[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.
  6. ↑ Findlay, J. N. (1966), "Preface", written at London, The Transcendence of the Cave, New York: Humanities Press (published 1967)
  7. ↑ Drob, Sanford L, Findlay's Rational Mysticism: An Introduction
  8. ↑ Findlay, J. N. (1970), "Translator's Introduction (Abridged)", written at New Haven, Connecticut, in Moran, Dermot, Logical Investigations I, New York: Routledge (published 2001), ISBN 0-415-24189-8
  9. ↑ Ryle, Gilbert; Findlay, J. N. (1961), "Symposium: Use, Usage and Meaning" (PDF), Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes 35, p. 240, retrieved 2008-06-14
  10. ↑ Ryle, Gilbert; Findlay, J. N. (1961), "Symposium: Use, Usage and Meaning" (PDF), Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes 35, pp. 231–242, retrieved 2008-06-14

References

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, March 31, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.