John Niemeyer Findlay

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John Niemeyer Findlay, known as J. N. Findlay, (Pretoria, 25 November 1903–1987) was a South African philosopher. He was professor of philosophy at the University of Otago in New Zealand, King's College in London, Yale, the University of Texas at Austin, and Boston University. He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1955 to 1956. A chair for visiting professors at Boston University carries his name, as well as an award for the best book in metaphysics, by The Metaphysical Society of America.

Findlay was educated in Oxford and Graz, were he studied under Ernst Mally. 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 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,"[1] 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.[2]

Findlay translated into English Husserl's Logische Untersuchungen (Logical Investigations), which he regarded as the author's best work, as it represents a stage in his development when the idea of phenomenological bracketing was not yet taken as the basis of a philosophical system, covering in fact for loose subjectivism. The work is also, in his view, one of the peaks of philosophy in general, and it suggests superior alternatives both for overly minimalistic or naturalistic efforts in ontology and for Ordinary Language treatments of consciousness and thought.[3][4] Findlay has also written addenda to the translations of Hegel's Logic and Phenomenology of Spirit.

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 the notions of connotation and denotation, implication, syntax and 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 diverting a well deserved attention to Semantics and its difficulties.[5]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Findlay, J. N. (1966), “Preface”, written at London, The Transcendence of the Cave, New York: Humanities Press (published 1967) 
  2. ^ Drob, Sanford L, Findlay's Rational Mysticism: An Introduction, <http://www.jnfindlay.com/findlay/about/index.html> 
  3. ^ Findlay, J. N. (1970), “Translator's Introduction (Abridged)”, written at New Haven, Connecticut, in Moran, Dermot, Logical Investigations, vol. I, New York: Routledge, 2001, ISBN 0-415-24189-8 
  4. ^ Ryle, Gilbert & Findlay, J. N. (1961), “Symposium: Use, Usage and Meaning”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes 35: 240, <http://www.sfu.ca/~jeffpell/Phil467/RyleUseUsage61.pdf>. Retrieved on 14 June 2008 
  5. ^ Ryle, Gilbert & Findlay, J. N. (1961), “Symposium: Use, Usage and Meaning”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes 35: 231-242, <http://www.sfu.ca/~jeffpell/Phil467/RyleUseUsage61.pdf>. Retrieved on 14 June 2008 

[edit] Works

[edit] 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, 1961
  • The Discipline of the Cave, London: Allen & Unwin/New York: Humanities Press, 1966 (Gifford Lectures 1964–1965 [1])
  • The Transcendence of the Cave, London: Allen & Unwin/New York: Humanities Press, 1967 (Gifford Lectures 1965–1966 [2])
  • 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

[edit] Articles

[edit] Bibliography

  • Robert S. Cohen, Richard M. Martin, and Merold Westphal (eds.), Studies in the Philosophy of J.N. Findlay, Albany NY: State University of New York Press, 1985 (Includes autobiographical note by Findlay and his account of encounters with Wittgenstein). ISBN 978-0873957953
  • Michele Marchetto, L'etica impersonale: La teoria dei valori di John Niemeyer Findlay, Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 1989. ISBN 978-8871041384; Eng. tr. 1989, Impersonal Ethics: John Niemeyer Findlay's Value-theory, Avebury, 1996. ISBN 978-1859722725
  • Bockja Kim, Morality as the End of Philosophy: The Teleological Dialectic of the Good in J.N. Findlay's Philosophy of Religion, University Press of America, 1999. ISBN 978-0761814900

[edit] External links

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