J.N. Findlay

Theosophy

During this period Findlay joined the Theosophical Society, which had been founded by Madame H. P. Blavatsky in 1875, and which Findlay later described as melding the philosophies of Hinduism, Buddhism and strains of Gnosticism, Orphism, Kabbalism, Sufism, with an interesting, if definite, charlatanism.  Findlay notes that the society was later plagued by  scandals and was ultimately repuidiated by J. Krishnamurti, the man the movement had heralded as the “World Teacher.”

 

Findlay’s early involvement in theosophy, while perhaps a source of embarrassment for an academic philosopher, nonetheless made its mark upon him, as it led him to embrace a perennial philosophy, which at various times has appeared under the guise of Platonism, Neoplatonism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and the Kabbalah, a philosophy which entails that the world of appearances is simply the outermost layer of being that has its center in an undifferentiated and infinite ground, and for which Findlay himself much later sought to provide a rational foundation in his Gifford Lectures at St. Andrews in 1964-5 and 1965-6, subsequently published as The Discipline of the Cave and The Transcendence of the Cave.

 

Findlay spent five years in the Theosophical movement, during which time he engaged in the practice of Rajat Yoga, immersed himself in Hindu and Buddhist writings, and having an unusual affinity for languages (he had excelled in Dutch, German, French, Greek and Latin) even taught himself sufficient Sanskrit to read parts of the Bhagavad-Gita in the original.

Findlay attributed to the mental discipline of his early Yoga practice a refinement in his powers of introspection that he was later to use to advantage in countering what he regarded to be the amateur, pseudo-introspection of philosophers like Wittgenstein and Gilbert Ryle. While Findlay later rejected  some of the more “mythical” aspects of his yogic/mystical experiences in favor of his own brand of “rational mysticism,” (and even had a period during which he believed he had constructed a valid disproof of the existence of God) he later wrote that “a general openness to what I shall call the Uncreated Light has never left me” (My Life, p. 12).

Findlay’s experiences with, and his ultimate rejection of the specificities of the theosophical movement (e.g. the godlike “elderly brethren” said to be in communication with the leaders of the movement from their abode high in Tibet) led him to reject all particular religious doctrines. He wrote, “I came to feel that there would be something essentially wrong and even irreligious in venerating anything, however exalted, that was...tainted with specificity and contingency” (My Life, p. 12).

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

From: Ken Bandy [mailto:[email protected]]
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

University Years

During his years in the Theosophical Movement Findlay worked towards his B.A. and M.A. degrees in Pretoria, where under W. A. Macfayden and others he studied classics and the history of philosophy. At the time, in an effort to find backing for his  Theosophical commitments, he took a particular interest in Plato, Spinoza, Kant and Hegel.  He relates that at the close of this period he embraced the Fichtean notion of an “all-positing, self-positing Ego,” a doctrine that he brought with him to England when he was awarded a Rhodes scholarship in 1923. 

Findlay’s sojourn at Oxford, from 1924-27, provided him, for the first time, with intellectual friendships with a large group of peers, and he devoted himself there to the study of ancient history and a close reading of Plato and Aristotle in the original Greek.  His estimate of the “Dons” at Oxford, however, was less than flattering, and he “found it rather a waste of time to listen to the last breathings of Oxford idealism, in the discourse of Joseph, Joachim, Paton and Collingwood, the last infected with the infinite emptiness of Croce” (My Life, p. 17).  Already at Oxford Findlay was beginning to develop definite philosophical ideas and what was to become a lifelong penchant for stating his opinions (regarding both ideas and those who proffered them) in uncensored terms.  

 

At Oxford, however, Findlay ultimately abandoned his version of Fichtean philosophy, as he began to doubt “whether anything in [him] could have posited the world as [he] found it,” and with this doubt he abandoned his zeal for epistemological  idealism, a  zeal that he never recovered, in spite of his great admiration for both Kant and Hegel—who on Findlay’s view were not epistemological idealists.  Indeed, having been moved by certain aspects of Russell’s views in Our Knowledge of the External World, and the Analysis of Mind, Findlay went in a realist direction, albeit one that allowed for the metaphysical reality of ideas, values, and even realms that most realists regard as purely mental.

 

For a time, as a postgraduate student  at Oxford, Findlay took up the aim of Buddhist Scholarship, but was discouraged from doing so by the Pali scholar, Mrs. Rhys Davids, who informed him that there would be little opportunity for an academic position in this field.  Instead, Findlay studied Plotinus under Clement Webb, and began the project of reconstructing Plato's "unwritten doctrines," as they are described in Aristotle's Metaphysics , a project that was to culminate nearly 40 years later in Findlay's 1974 book, Plato: The Written and Unwritten Doctrines, a work which argued that Plato conceived of the "ideas" as a hierachical arrangement,  mathematically generated from a single "One," which Plato identified with the idea of the Good,  and which Findlay connected to the program of Russell and Whitehead in their Principia Mathematica

Many Alternative Philosophies

...it would in no sense be a genuine reproach to philosophy if there weren't any single, absolutely right account of things, but rather a large number of alternative accounts, of varying excellence, which illuminate the 'facts' from different angles. For where usage is settled, and we have only to apply it to empirical material, it is impossible to talk very differently without also talking contradictorily.  But where usage is unsettled and creative, as it always is and must be in philosophy, there are far fewer cases of such grosss incompatibility. We should, perhaps, no more regret that things can be spoken of metaphysically in a large number of distinct manners, than that things can be painted in a large number of distinct styles, or lived in a large number of distinct and different ways ("Values in Speaking," Language, Mind and Value, p. 126-7)

Analytic and Synthetic Philosophy

Philosophy may be said to be a critical examination of fundamental concepts and principles, that is, concepts and principles which structure all or nearly all of our experience, all our language and its essential grammar and every thing or theme that we can know or think of.  It is also in some of its exercises attempts to revise and to simplify and tidy up such fundamental concepts and principles …[which] may lead further to the attempt to integrate them into a systematic unity in which differing sorts of things are brought under as few main heads as possible, and ideally under a single, ultimate head, and in which there is as much mutual dependence and close interconnection between things and sorts of things and facts as possible, and as little left unexplained and unexplainable, and having to be swallowed as a mere fact, as possible. This second aspect of philosophy is constructive or speculative or synthetic … (Philosophy as a Discipline, The Philosophical Forum, Vol. XXXVI, No. 2, Summer, 2005, p. 141).

Nature of Philosophy

Plato's World View

The nature of the Platonic view of the world is to be an outlook in which concrete instances, whether they be things, events or situations or whatever, are seen as in the deepest sense parasitic upon what may be called ‘Ideal Contents’, and not as is commonly thought, vice versa.  It is, further, a view in which such Ideal Contents form an integrated Order, ranging from Contents of the most generic to the most highly specific, arranged according to affinities, distances and dependencies which spring wholly from what they are, and could not any point be otherwise.  All these Ideal Contents and all their ideal relations are such as to reveal themselves perspicuously to a thought which looks for them in the right manner, though they are not in any sense constituted by or for such a thought (Plato: The Written and Unwritten Doctrines, p. 351).

 

What is essential to the great Platonic revolution is not the erection of predicates into a new sort of logical subjects, though we may seek to express it by doing just this: it is rather the recognition that predicates, senses, universals are the primary stuff, if one may so put it, of experience and reality, that so-called particulars are as such unidentifiable and undiscoverable, their whole being consisting, if one may so phrase it, in instantiating Natures or in having things said of them (Plato: The Written and Unwritten Doctrines, p. 355).

Platonism and God

And Platonism, despite surface-semblances to the contrary, is in fact the only philosophy tailored to fit the Judaeo-Christian religious need for a unique, single, absolutely surpassing, all-disposing source of everything. For an instantial God, even if emptily said to have made Heaven and Earth and Man out of nothing and even if expressing His being in the superb blankness of ‘I am that I am,’ will always remain one among others, a particular being jealous of possible rivals, who might very well not have existed, and exhibiting a particularity in his disposition…There can indeed be nothing sacrosanct about any particular…God, in short, to deserve the self-prostration accorded for Him by the Jews, or the unreserved love demanded for Him by Jesus, would have to be, not a particular case of Justice, or Understanding, or Power or Beauty etc. by Justice itself, the Understanding itself, the infinite Might and Loveliness etc. which are necessarily unique and surpassing, in that they are of a different logical type from their parasitic instances…True religion, it may be argued, is the logical passion par excellence, and the logical pattern into which it breathes that passion tends to have a Platonic tinge (Plato: The Written and Unwritten Doctrines, p. 378-80).

The Value Firmament, Part I, a Lecture by S. Drob

In this lecture to his doctoral students in clinical psychology, Sanford Drob draws upon the work of J.N. Findlay and others to  make the case for conceiving “ethics,” including professional ethics,  in axiological terms. He briefly discusses some of the many questions that are raised by axiology, and outlines a  theoretical system that promises to provide a coherent picture of what might be called the dimensions of value and what Findlay spoke of as the “value firmament.” 

For a variety of reasons, both professional philosophers and the public at large have often come to understand "ethics" in what might be called “superego” or obligatory terms, as a restraint upon desire and satisfaction. By way of contrast, axiological ethics understands values, in both obligatory and superogatory terms, as things that we may not always be obliged to do, but which provide life with meaning and satisfaction, and which serve as the implicit background of all human activity, relationships and commerce. Axiological ethics, rather than focusing exclusively upon right and wrong, ought and ought not, focuses upon the rich tapestry of values that include creativity, compassion, beauty, spirit, etc. Further, it endeavors to ascertain, systematize and, if possible, derive from simpler principles, the values that are thought to constitute the meaning and purpose of human life, and, at least on some views, to exist objectively in the world. The relevance of the value firmament to everyday life and commerce as well as to the field of clinical psychology is considered.  

Posted, December 22, 2008.

 

Download Value Firmament S Drob, Lecture I

Findlay's Rational Mysticism: An Introduction by S. Drob

Download Findlay's Rational Mysticism by S Drob Posted in full elsewhere on this site (click "About") this article is posted here as a pdf attachment.

Hegel on Conflict: Avoidance or Resolution?

Hegel may have been right in making resolution rather than the avoidance of conflict the true goal of our conscious endeavours (Values and Intentions, p. 84).

On "Happy Endings" and the Tragedy of Existence

[Note: Quoations from Findlay's works are present throughout this website in each of the contents categories at left.]

"Ends, adding the crowning touches to total experiences, whose character is previously somewhat problematic, are obviously more important, pro tanto, than beginnings or middles: hence the supreme importance of happy endings, and the ruinous character of deeply miserable ones. It is, for this reason, one of the greatest tragedies of existence that most of us die so pitiably" (Values and Intentions, p. 237).

On Classicism and Modern Art

The exploitation of shock...cannot profitably be reiterated ad infinitum, nor for its own sake.  Perhaps the happiest of aesthetic situations would be that of a culture strong in academic traditions, but permitting also of internal revolutions, and which exploited an experience so various as to need few innovations of mere form. European art-experience prior to 1914 was possibly in this position: we have now entered the flagellating age.  It is arguable that the fallowness of mere classicism would be preferable to our present state (Values and Intentions, p. 249).

Platonism and the Mechanical Picture of Human Agency

If, per impossible, the mechanistic views of a barbarized science should turn out to be the provable truth of things, this would be a truth by which we, as practical, inventive, value- and pattern-oriented beings, could not live, and on which we should have, in all but the lowest instrumentalities, to turn our backs.  Truth of this type would neither be worth knowing or applying, and the suasions of a Nocturnal Council might not be too much in order to secure its suppression. These suggestions need not, however, be taken too seriously.  For the science which sees all things in terms of manipulative mechanisms is arguably the product of a transient manipulative phase of human society, which, even as we think and write, is busily in process of destroying itself, and creating an order in which the unified and the purposive will have as irreducible and as firm a place as the mechanically conditioned and the manipulable. In the infinitely well-ordered, stably progressive societies of the future, something like Platonism may well dominate science and practice, and the figure of Plato, with his index finger pointing skywards, and the Timaeus under his arm, may very well occupy the same central place that he takes up in Raphael's Schools of Athens (Plato, The Written and Unwritten Doctrines, p. 412).  

On the Mechanical View of Human Agency

If, per impossible, the mechanistic views of a barbarized science should turn out to be the provable truth of things, this would be a truth by which we, as practical, inventive, value- and pattern-oriented beings, could not live, and on which we should have, in all but the lowest instrumentalities, to turn our backs.  Truth of this type would neither be worth knowing or applying, and the suasions of a nocturnal Council might not be too much in order to secure its suppression. These suggestions need not, however, be taken too seriously.  For the science which sees all things in terms of manipulative mechanisms is arguably the product of a transient manipulative phase of human society, which, even as we think and write, is busily in process of destroying itself, and creating an order in which the unified and the purposive will have as irreducible and as firm a place as the mechanically conditioned and the manipulable (Plato, The Written and Unwritten Doctrines, p. 411-12)

Aristotle's Limitations

If we are to regret anything in Aristotle, it lies in his willingness to remain contented with an enumeration of separate concepts and principles and not to press onwards to the highest conceptual integrations.  It is this stopping short at a list that makes him into a clipped, truncated, dismembered Platonist, with a queer desire to parade instantialist convictions with which he is not deeply in accord, even if superb PLatonic insights are always shining forth in his writings (Plato, The Written and the Unwritten Doctrines, p. 366).

The Platonic God

And Platonism, despite surface-semblances to the contrary, is in fact the only philosophy tailored to fit the Judaeo-Christian religious need for a unique, single, absolutely surpassing, all-disposing source of everything. For an instantial God, even if emptily said to have made Heaven and Earth and Man out of nothing and even if expressing His being in the superb blankness of ‘I am that I am,’ will always remain one among others, a particular being jealous of possible rivals, who might very well not have existed, and exhibiting a particularity in his disposition…There can indeed be nothing sacrosanct about any particular…God, in short, to deserve the self-prostration accorded for Him by the Jews, or the unreserved love demanded for Him by Jesus, would have to be, not a particular case of Justice, or Understanding, or Power or Beauty etc. by Justice itself, the Understanding itself, the infinite Might and Loveliness etc. which are necessarily unique and surpassing, in that they are of a different logical type from their parasitic instances…True religion, it may be argued, is the logical passion par excellence, and the logical pattern into which it breathes that passion tends to have a Platonic tinge (Plato: The Written and Unwritten Doctrines, p. 378-80).

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).

 

On Intentionality and "Unitive Logic"

Findlay took a strong interest in the puzzles generated by so-called “intentional objects,” “objects” that appear before, are considered by, and “intended” by consciousness. He described the “central difficulty” associated with these objects as how it can be that:

"Without really including an object, and without merely blindly tending towards it and without being at all like it, but in fact differing from it in category, and without being close to it in space or in other respects, a state of mind can none the less so unambiguously and intimately ne of a certain object that it is impossible to describe it adequately without mentioning the object in question" (Intentional Inexistence, Ascent to the Absolute, p. 244).

Findlay holds that intentional objects are ambiguous and even contradictory, as they are presumably located within the individual who intends or considers them and yet, in some sense, are identical with the “real” object that they intend (p. 243), objects that may be worlds away from the one intending them.

Findlay proposes that only a “unitive logic” can resolve the paradoxes involved in intentionality. He writes:

"Such unitive logic may be vaguely characterized as directing our thought to an horizon where opposites melt into coincidences, where identity prevails over difference, and where the ‘moment’ or aspect replaces the part or element" (Intentional Inexistence, Ascent to the Absolute, p. 245).

For Findlay, “our endless philosophical puzzles (bear witness) …to our sense of the surrounding unity which our thought-procedures require although they often so desperately fight against it” (Intentional Inexistence, Ascent to the Absolute, p. 245).  According to Findlay, the puzzles of intentionality (and other philosophical puzzles like those regarding our knowledge of other minds) are dissolved if we consider the possibility that all is essentially one, and our thoughts about an object and the object itself are each an aspect of a unified existence. For Findlay, it is mind that reintroduces the unity that had been sundered by nature. In Findlay’s unitive logic,

"It is not an empirical accident that minds arise in the world; minds represent, we may say, the world’s deep unity asserting itself over the world’s attempted dispersion, an attempted dispersion as essential to the deep unity as the latter is essential to the former" (Intentional Inexistence, Ascent to the Absolute, p. 246).

While nature disperses the objects of the universe in space, time, and category, mind has the capacity to bring them into unity—considering in the same mental act the smallest quantum of energy in the scientist’s laboratory and the nuclaer furnace of a supernova in a remote galaxy.

For Findlay, the unitive logic that is an inevitable consequence of a deep consideration of mind, forces us to take seriously the claims not only of Hegel, but “of various mystical writers, Neoplatonic, Vedantic, Mahayanist, and Contemplative-Christian, that there is and must be a whole spectrum of spiritual states varying from those of our normal waking earth-life to a state in which sensuous individuality is attenuated to a vanishing point…” (Intentional Inexistence, Ascent to the Absolute, p. 247).

For Findlay these notions were most beautifully expressed in Plotinus’ Enneads, where we read “Each thing holds all within itself, and again sees all in each other thing, so that everything is everywhere and all is all, and each all, and the glory infinite” (Quoted in Intentional Inexistence, Ascent to the Absolute, p. 247).

 

Mind-Brain Identity?

The difficulties in the way of a thoroughgoing cerebralism are logical: they rest on the difficulty of modeling something that displays remote intentionality in a medium that only displays fully actual. descriptive structures, and in modeling high-level universality, and, more importantly, the everlasting, open retreat to ever higher levels of universality, in a medium that cannot reflect all the higher-level affinities and logical properties that are thus implicated.

(Psyche and Cerebrum, Marquette University, 1972), pp. 24-5