J.N. Findlay

On Philosophical Scholarship

“Scholarly comment is excellent when directed to thought that is philosophically important by those capable of truly entering into it: it is idle and pernicious when directed to thought that is no longer a live option, or which is not capable of being made such by the philosophical commentator.” (Towards A Neo-Neo-Platonism, Ascent to the Absolute, p. 248)

From Everett Shorey, Yale College, Class of 1973

I too stumbled on your website for JN Findlay. I was a Yale undergraduate in the early 1970's and took his seminar on Plotinus and then his course on Hegel's Logic. I was (and am) an atrociously dim student of philosophy so I probably absorbed less of the nuance of Findlay's thinking than most.

Findlay, for he always spoke of himself in the third person, was for me an inspirational teacher. He was not chummy with students. Rather, he conveyed a true love of his subject and a desire for all of us to share that enthusiasm. He took out of fashion philosophy seriously. He expected us, his students, to do so too.

My memories of Findlay come from those classes. In the Plotinus course there were about eight of us: several classicists who intended to read the text in the original, some graduate students and at least one clueless undergraduate. On the first day, Findlay came in wearing his characteristic suit, took of his glasses, held them behind his back and paced around lecturing. He lectured to the blackboard. He lectured out the window. He lectured everywhere except facing us. He talked about German philosophers, he talked about English ones. He talked about Findlay. I was fascinated. At the distance of 40 years, I have not the slightest idea about neon-Platonic philosophy, but at the time I was entranced.

As I remember, his last class at Yale was on Hegel's Logic. He could have been reading the phone book and I would have taken it. Daniel Breazeale seems to have been in the same class as a graduate student. I have no memory of the other students, except there were probably thirty or so. Findlay wrote his lectures on the board and we all copied madly. I suppose I had some vague vision of The Blue and Brown books. I am sure that the concept of dialectic influenced my later thinking, otherwise Hegel is rather a blur. I seem to remember my paper was on ratio. Mostly I remember a charismatic man and his obvious enthusiasm for his subject.

I also remember being invited to his home for dinner, curried eggs I think. This was the one of the very few times such a thing happened. Again, the warmth from this gesture has helped me reach out to others throughout my career.

On leaving Yale, I quickly abandoned the study of Philosophy but retained a sense of the importance of ideas. I also cherish the joy and excitement of pursuing knowledge and understanding as worthy goals just on their own. Findlay was a major exemplar of that.

Everett Shorey
Yale College, Class of 1973

Hegel on the Beginning Dependent Upon the End

“For Hegel” the spiritual, the ideal, the self-conscious which is the ultimate meaning of everything, does not lie at the beginning of thought and being, but rather at their end: we may decide that it is the logical and ontological Alpha of the cosmos, but only after it has first emerged as its logical and ontological Omega” (Hegel and Teleology, Ascent to the Absolute, p. 132).

“[For Hegel] the content of the Absolute Idea, the goal of the dialectic, is simply said to be ‘the system of which we have been hitherto studying the development’, i.e. dialectic itself, where the end of the journey is simply seen to be the journey itself, and the method that has been followed on the journey (”Hegel and Teleology, Ascent to the Absolute, p. 135).

From Dave Needham

I first read Findlay's book on Hegel at Northern Illinois University about 1971.  Soon I read his "Cave" books too.  About 1972, there was an American Philosophical Association conference in Milwaukee and Donald Verene, David Lovekin, myself and some others went to enjoy it.  Findlay delivered a brilliant paper on Hegel's Absolute which we loved.  In counterpoint, another speaker delivered a paper with an different view.  The second speaker's paper was boring, and my friends and I were quietly chatting and paying little attention.  Suddenly I elbowed my friends and drew their attention back to the front stage. 

While the second speaker was delivering the boring speech, Findlay was folding paper napkins into rabbits and making them hop around on the table.  It was a perfect commentary on the paper being delivered.  We could hardly keep from laughing out loud.

Later, at the afternoon reception the crowd around Findlay was about four people deep, mostly university students, all eager to ask questions and hear what Findlay was saying.  I could see that I wasn't able to get anywhere near him, but then I noticed his glass was empty.  I asked the waiter what Findlay was drinking, got a gin and tonic from the bar,  squeezed to the front of the pack and handed him the drink.  Clearly he appreciated my action over the questions from the other people.

Findlay was a great philosopher and obviously a great person.  I wish I could have taken his classes.  Hopefully, his ideas and books will be appreciated by more philosophy students and writers.


Thank you for the website,
Dave Needham
Centennial, CO

From Thomas Mizzoni

I  attended BU from 1974-1979. I began as a physics major, ended with a biology degree, and ironically took more philosophy courses than I did science.

 

Prof. Findlay was a true inspiration on so many levels.   His classes and lectures were mesmerizing. He had a wry humor.  He taught as I imagined professors taught in the 19^th century. He was eloquent, assumed his students were intelligent; there was no dumbing down of the material as is so often the case today.  To this day, over 30 years later, he is one of treasured memories I have of my education.  I think of him often, as philosophy is still my passion.  I was surprised and so pleased to find your website.  I just happened to Google his name and came across it.  Do keep up the good work.  You are right:  he should not be as obscure as he currently is. Time will rectify that.  I think much of 20^th century philosophy went way off track to the point of absurdity. 

 

Thomas Mizzoni

On Idolatry

“One cannot rationally worship this or that excellent thing or person, however eminent or august: only Goodness Itself, Beauty Itself, Truth Itself, and so on are rationally venerable, and to bow one’s knee to an instance is to commit idolatry” (Towards a Neoneoplatonism," Ascent to the Absolute, p. 267).

On the Logic of Mysticism

: “I think that, while mysticism and its logic can be developed in an undisciplined way, in which no attempt is made to achieve genuine consistency, and contradictions are even reverenced as stigmata of higher truth, mysticism can also be developed in a manner which has complete logical viability, even if it involves many concepts strange to ordinary thought and reflection. The logic of a mystical absolute is the logic of a limiting case, and we must not expect a limiting case to behave in the same logical manner as a case which does not fall at the limit (The Logic of Mysticism, Ascent to the Absolute, p. 179).

“I think that, while mysticism and its logic can be developed in an undisciplined way, in which no attempt is made to achieve genuine consistency, and contradictions are even reverenced as stigmata of higher truth, mysticism can also be developed in a manner which has complete logical viability, even if it involves many concepts strange to ordinary thought and reflection. The logic of a mystical absolute is the logic of a limiting case, and we must not expect a limiting case to behave in the same logical manner as a case which does not fall at the limit (The Logic of Mysticism, Ascent to the Absolute, p. 179).

"I myself am a philosopher who is utterly uninterested in anything which is a mere matter of fact, externally observed, even if it is a fact connected with what people think and say…Philosophy is to me the bringing forth, not the mere registration or discovery, of conceptions which are what I should call intelligible unities, whose various components hang together necessarily, or with some approach to rational necessity, and which alone can illuminate the complex windings of fact…I think the business of philosophers is to make concepts more of a notional unity, involving a deeper belongingness, than do the concepts which occur in ordinary usage” (The Logic of Mysticism, Ascent to the Absolute, p. 171-2).

“mysticism is essentially a frame of mind connected with an absolute of some sort, meaning by an absolute an object of very peculiar type having very peculiar logical properties” (The Logic of Mysticism, Ascent to the Absolute, p. 171).

“Above all, what characterizes mysticism is a refusal to accept and use the notions of identity and diversity which the ordinary logic applies so confidently, whether in the relation of finite objects to the absolute, or of finite objects to one another…there can be no a, b, c, d, e, etc. which are not simply different names and guises of the same absolute, and which do not really differ from each other otherwise than as to morning star differs from the evening star. To take the notion of an absolute quite seriously is in fact to put the ordinary notion of diversity, and with it the ordinary notion of identity, out of action” (The Logic of Mysticism, Ascent to the Absolute, p. 173).

“The only sort of identity that can be ultimately admitted is one that can be stretched in varying degrees, which can come nearer and nearer to the limit of sheer diversity, otherness, without ever reaching it.  We may say, if we like, that the absolute may be alienated from itself in different degrees in different forms or phases, and these in different degrees from one another, without ever reaching the breaking-point of sheer diversity. What we ordinarily wish to say will appear in a new form.  What we ordinarily wish to say will appear in a new form in a fully developed mystical logic, in which all absurdity will be carefully circumvented. But a mystical logic, like any other logic, takes a long time in construction, and, before it is fully developed, there will be phases in which we shall seem merely to be subverting ordinary forms of expression, without putting anything effective or lucid in their place” (The Logic of Mysticism, Ascent to the Absolute, p. 173-4).

"...we may well move towards a Spinozistic logic in which, instead of saying things about separate finite logical subjects, we say them in a somewhat transformed guise of a single logical subject in so far as it is expressed in this or that modification. Instaed of saying John is tall, and Paul is fat, we may say that the absolute is tall in its Johannine aspect, fat in its Pauline one” (The Logic of Mysticism, Ascent to the Absolute, p. 176).

The Requirement of a Unitive Absolute

“…mystical unity at the limit or centre of things alone guarantees that coherence and continuity at the periphery which is involved in all our basic rational enterprises.”  Here Findlay cites questions about the “valid conception of the structure of all space and time from the small specimens given to us…the character and behavior of an individual from the small segment known to us [and our belief in] “that affinity with our minds and concepts that will enable us to plumb their secrets.”

“It is well-known that, on a metaphysic of radical independence and atomism, all these questions admit of no satisfactory answer.  Whereas, on a mystical basis, the profound fit and mutual accommodation of alienated, peripheral things is precisely what is to be expected…” (The Logic of Mysticism, Ascent to the Absolute, p. 180).

“…on a mystical basis, our understanding of others rests on the fact that they are not absolutely others, but only variously alienated forms of the same ultimate, pervasive unity…((The Logic of Mysticism, Ascent to the Absolute, p. 181).

“All our higher valuations of impersonal benevolence, of justice, of knowledge, of beauty, of virtue are…attitudes having their roots in a transcendence of the separate individual and his contingent interests, and in a rise to higher-order interests which make an appeal to everyone and consider the state of everyone. The supreme dignity and authority of these valuations is much more understandable on a mystical than on an unmystical basis: a moralist like Schopenhauer, for example, bases all morality on a profound suprapersonal identity” ((The Logic of Mysticism, Ascent to the Absolute, p. 181).

Thge Origin of Values in Mystical Unity

“All our higher valuations of impersonal benevolence, of justice, of knowledge, of beauty, of virtue are…attitudes having their roots in a transcendence of the separate individual and his contingent interests, and in a rise to higher-order interests which make an appeal to everyone and consider the state of everyone. The supreme dignity and authority of these valuations is much more understandable on a mystical than on an unmystical basis: a moralist like Schopenhauer, for example, bases all morality on a profound suprapersonal identity” ((The Logic of Mysticism, Ascent to the Absolute, p. 181).

Mysticism and Alienation

“There are…forms of mysticism [e.g.  those of Meister Eckhart and Hegel] which make alienation and deep-identity mutually dependent: the absolute must alienate itself in limited, instantial forms so that it may steadily reduce and overcome their alienation, and in so doing truly possess and enjoy and recognize itself …I should go further in thinking that a fully developed working mysticism demands a developed other-worldly cosmology, in which numerous states of being are postulated which mediate between the extremes of alienation, characteristic of this world and the extreme of unity characteristic of a mystical ecstasy”  (The Logic of Mysticism, Ascent to the Absolute, p. 182).

On Plotinus' Vision

We shall then have bodies, as long as we want them, but they will be our own bodies, pejoratively called shades, that will express our every whim and stirring, we shall have a concentrated, gistful grasp of things remote and complex that will not need to be spelled out in laborious inferences or explorations, and we shall be able to share one another’s feelings in a manner which will make solipsism a laughable superstition, All this has been described in some of the most unforgettably gorgeous passages in Plotinus, and it is all much too good not to be true” (“Towards a Neo-Neoplatonism” Ascent to the Absolute, p. 266).

Findlay's Nachlass

The following essays were derived from Findlay’s lecture notes, which were distributed to students at Boston University in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Findlay, J. N. (2005). Philosophy as a Discipline. The Philosophical Forum, Volume 36, Issue 2, pp. 141 – 148.

Findlay, J. N. (2005a). Aristotle and Eideticism. The Philosophical Forum, Volume 36, Issue 4, pp. 349 – 365.

Findlay, J. N. (2006). Aristotle and Eideticism II. The Philosophical Forum, Volume 37, Issue 3, pp. 333 – 386

Findlay, J. N. (2006a). Notes on Spinoza and Absolute Truth. The Philosophical Forum, Volume 37, Issue 4, pp. 427 – 437.

Findlay, J. N. (2007). Notes on Plato’s Timaeus,  The Philosophical Forum, Volume 38, Issue 2, pp. 159 – 171.

Findlay, J. N. (2007a). Notes on Kant’s Prolegomena. The Philosophical Forum, Volume 38, Issue 3, pp. 289 – 308.

Findlay, J. N. (2007b). Hegel’s Philosophy: The Logic. The Philosophical Forum, Volume 38, Issue 4, pp. 387 - 459

Findlay, J. N. (2009). Wittgenstein and His Tractatus.  The Philosophical Forum, Volume 39, Issue 1, pp. 85 - 94  

Findlay, J. N. (2012). Notes on the Ideen of Husserl. The Philosophical Forum, Volume 43, Issue 1, pp. 65 – 89.

The Certainty and Transcendence of Death

“Death, the final epitome of senselessness, is the most distressing of all the appearances of the cave, and its impossibility can only be understood and enjoyed in a setting in which its possibility and even its certainty have at first been brought vividly before us.  The sublime uncertainty of the draught of hemlock, the dark doubts of the stormy night under the Bodhi-tree, the anguish at Gethsemane and Calvary, are not dispensable preliminaries to the serene safety they lead to: they are part of, preserved in, the latter.  It is only on a background of despairing skepticism that supreme dedication is possible, a dedication which can live in and for the mere possibilities which a deepening insight will then show to be the only possibilities, and hence the necessities of all being” (The Absolute and Rational Eschatology, Ascent to the Absolute, p. 77).