From Ken Bandy Who Studied With Findlay at Kings College 1957-60

From: Ken Bandy [mailto:notedken@yahoo.co.uk]
Sent: Fri 7/4/2008 4:29 AM
To: Sandy Drob
Subject: J N Findlay

It was good to read your tribute to J N Findlay. I was his student at King's College London 1957-60. Had I been at University College under A J Ayer instead I would have missed so much that was disregarded in those days except by JNF.

You describe him very well except that when I knew him he had at least a modicum of grey hair.

He was always very approachable for us students and even took us to lunch at the Strand Palace Hotel in our last term- at his own expense I think.

 

Your description of him walking around writing on blackboards- sometimes just dashes-evokes fond memories. I remember one occasion when he actually fell of the end of the platform while talking and drawing dashes at the same time. 

 

My fondest memory is when I was in my first year and he asked me out of the blue- "Surely Bandy you don't have an anthropomorphic view of god?"  and I guessed that the answer should be "No" although afterwards I wanted to have said "Yes" and I don't suppose he would have minded if I had.

The undergraduates were also invited to his seminars for the postgraduates and at the time we were studying "Intention" by GEM Anscombe. Findlay gave it a very detailed inspection for us.

I remember visiting him at his home in Hampstead after I had graduated to tell him that I had reluctantly decided not to go ahead with my PhD. He greeted me on the doorstep with "Good heavens Bandy, you look like a ghost"  such was the straightforward conversation of this very subtle thinker.  
 

Ken Bandy

7/4/2008 

From Daniel Breazeale Who Studied With Findlay at Yale (late 1960s)

December 13, 2008

I stumbled upon your J.N. Findlay website quite by accident this morning; but I am glad I did, since I enjoyed browsing there for a pleasant half hour. 

So let me express my gratitude by sharing a few of my own recollections of Prof. Findlay.

I was a PhD student of Philosophy at Yale from 1966 to 1971, a classmate of Doug Lackey, whom you mention on site.  I took only one class with Findlay, but it was unforgettable: a class on Hegel's Logic, in which the entire class read the Lesser Logic (in the Wallace translation) and each student had to prepare a presentation on a specific section of the text, based on the Science of Logic. 

What I most remember about that class is Findlay's peculiar and peculiarly effective method of "lecturing while writing and erasing," which you describe so well.  At some point early in the semester he began distributing his lectures in rather crudely typed and mimeographed form at the beginning of each class (shades of Fichte and the Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre!), and then proceeded to read them to us while again writing them on the board.  We could not believe it, but it turned out to be most effective!   My nearly complete set of those often-reread mimeographed lectures is one of my most cherished mementos of my years in New Haven.

I recall how one day in class, in the course of a discussion of Hegel's critical account of "mechanism" Findlay, blustering in his usual red-faced manner, sputtered -- nay, fairly hissed -- that defenders of a mechanistic world picture absurdly "wanted to think of themselves as bicycles." Case closed, he seemed to be saying!

Another memory: Findlay never failed to attend any of the well-attended guest lecturers sponsored by the philosophy department during those years and he invariably was among the first to stand up and pose a question to the speaker.  Invariably as well, his was the most penetrating question.  On more than one occasion I witnessed speakers reduced to near silence by the same.  My friends and I joked that if we were ever to be in a situation of reading a professional paper and saw Findlay in the audience, we would simply refuse to go on.

Finally, I recall very well the farewell bash for Findlay held at the Yale College (Branford?) with which he was associated.  He gave a talk to a very large audience, consisting almost entirely of students. I think only one member of the Yale philosophy faculty (Karsten Harries) had the courtesy to attend.  But what was memorable was the substance of the lecture, in which Findlay spoke positively about psychotrophic drugs (this was the late sixties, remember?) and connected drug experiences to his own rational mysticism, to Platonism, etc.  He was not, of course, advocating drug usage, but he showed an understanding and appreciation of what was happening then in the youth culture that completly escaped colleagues half his age.  It was a brave thing to do.

I don't think I made much of a personal impression upon Findlay. (I will never forget the disappointment of receiving back my 40 page term paper on Hegel's Logic of Essence with no comments except a grade of A on the last page and the sentence "I can find nothing to disagree with in this paper.")   But he made an indelible one upon me. 

Thank you for your web site
Dan Breazeale


--
Daniel Breazeale
Professor and Acting Chair
Department of Philosophy
University of Kentucky
Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences

From Arnold Kalnitsky

I was pleasantly surprised to stumble upon your tribute site while searching for any possible links or studies pertaining to J. N. Findlay. Back in 1977 in my graduate studies days I was preparing to defend a Master's thesis focused on Platonic cosmogony, and in my research, came across  the two volumes of Prof. Findlay's Gifford Lectures. His unique and somewhat idiosyncratic modernist reconstruction/revision of the Platonic/Neoplatonic  metaphysical orientation was a stimulating and enlightening experience. As well as providing richness of content, the boldness of his philosophical stance was a welcome relief from the majority of doctrinaire reiterations of the fashionable mainstream schools. The mix of phenomenological method, "neo-Neoplatonism," legitimized religious/spiritual experience and sweeping Hegelian perspective certainly is a unique synthesis emerging from an intellectual environment not prone to endorse such a direction.

Admittedly, much of his writing is packed with ideas that require continued deciphering and thoughtful evaluation, but the effort certainly is rewarding. Recently I found an out of print edition of Ascent to the Absolute, which while more diverse in subject matter, amplifies the themes of his Gifford Lectures. It's too bad that he has not been accorded more recognition as an original thinker and that his speculative works are not discussed more pervasively. However, the Gifford Lectures have retained a certain prestige throughout their history, and perhaps the Discipline of the Cave and the Transcendence of the Cave will be revisited and incorporated to some degree in contemporary discourse. I myself am working on a modest project that has been facilitated by ideas and theories of Findlay's that have helped clarify my thoughts and opened up interesting lines of speculation. Again, thanks for the web site, the personal anecdotes, and then overview of his ideas. It's nice to find a current reference about a figure who was markedly influential in my own education.

 

Regards,

 

Dr. Arnold Kalnitsky

Canadian Academy of Independent Scholars, August 1, 2007

Dr Kalnitsky subsequently added:

As a specialist in the history and philosophy of religion, I'm intrigued at how Findlay dealt so comprehensively with themes that have subsequently appeared in many "new age" and transpersonal contexts - yet is virtually never acknowledged, referred to, or even listed in bibliographies. Even in the more serious thinkers of that genre. I think there are a number of sociological reasons for this - but that's another long and convoluted story. Interestingly, someone like Whitehead has been appropriated by many and used in diverse contexts largely because isolated quotes or portions of theories can be interpreted loosely enough and cloaked in seeming scientific credibility to superficially blend into many tenuous theoeretical constructs.

August 4, 2007