J.N. Findlay: A
Personal Appreciation
Sanford
L. Drob
John Niemeyer Findlay (1903-1987) was one of the twentieth
century’s most unique philosophers. At a time when positivism, scientific
materialism, linguistic analysis, and ordinary language philosophy were the
academic staple in Britain
and America, Findlay
championed phenomenology, revived Hegelianism, and wrote works that were
inspired by Plotinus, Buddhism, and Absolute Idealism. In the course of a long
career that brought him to universities in South Africa and New Zealand, to
Kings College in London, Yale, the University of Texas at Austin, and Boston
University. Findlay made major
contributions to the study of Meinong, Husserl (he translated both volumes of
the Logical Investigations into English), Hegel, Plato, Wittgenstein and
Kant. His 1958 work, Hegel: A Examination, was instrumental in reviving
the interest in Hegel in the English-speaking world. His highly original
rational-mystical philosophy is detailed in four of his books, The
Discipline of the Cave, The Transcendence of the Cave, Values and
Intentions and Ascent to the Absolute. Findlay’s
command of the history of both western and eastern thought was legendary. John Silber once commented that “if all the
philosophical libraries in the world were suddenly lost, Findlay
could come closer to recapturing the history of
philosophical and religious thought, both West and East, than any other
person.”
When I first met Findlay
at Boston University
in 1978 he was well into his 70s, a short, round, balding man with a South
African accent and an unmanageable wisp of white hair at the top of his head.
He dressed in oversized, boxy, faded grey and black suits that at the time
appeared to be 20 or 30 years old. He would lecture (on Husserl , Hegel, Kant,
Plato, Wittgenstein, and Axiology) in a room with six blackboards, writing out
each of his words as he spoke them, frantically filling the boards. When he
completed the sixth blackboard he would race back to the first, erase it and
begin writing again, until he was completely out of breath and his suit, hands
and face were covered with chalk dust. Although he would occasionally pause to
answer questions or make, often brilliantly incisive, oral comments, he clearly
believed in the primacy of the written language. His own prose, particularly in
his later, "mystical" books, The Discipline of the Cave and
the Transcendence of the Cave, was written in seemingly endless, baroque
sentences (with numerous dependent clauses) which flew into the air and always
seemed to land softly and in just the right place.
While in his earlier years Findlay
had been a student and something of a follower of Wittgenstein in Cambridge,
he later developed a terrible antipathy towards Wittgenstein and was
particularly sarcastic regarding his imitators and disciples. Findlay
used to say that if one answered all of Wittgenstein's or Malcolm's rhetorical questions
in precisely the opposite manner of the way they wanted you to answer them you
would arrive at the true philosophy. For this reason he was very pleased to sit
as the chair for my doctoral
dissertation, which was a critique of Wittgenstein’s and Malcolm’s philosophy
of psychology.
Findlay was a moral vegetarian and
often spoke of himself as a follower of the Buddha. Once at a conference I saw
him turn red as he painfully voiced the view that while it was natural
for tigers and other carnivores to kill and eat their prey it was thoroughly
lamentable and in some axiological sense, wrong. He believed in what
he termed "rational mysticism" and held that it was possible for the
philosopher to use reason to "ascend to the absolute" and arrive at
those "places" which traditional mystics intuit through non-rational
means. Findlay was enormously
generous with his time and intellect. He once lent me an unpublished paper he
was writing on the nature of dialectic that was clearly an original typewritten
draft covered with his own handwritten ink notes. When I went to return it and
told him that I found it thoroughly enlightening he insisted that I keep it.
After I left Boston University
in 1981 I wrote him and phoned him occasionally and he was always so supportive
of and enthusiastic about my work. When I discovered the Kabbalah he wrote me
that he considered it one of the world's great mystical traditions and said
that he was glad that I had found an interest and a way to the absolute
that accorded so well with my own Jewish heritage. I loved Findlay both as a
human being and in the sense that one "loves" wisdom, and I feel
thoroughly blessed when I realize that he is one of those souls who seem to
live on in me, for example, whenever I put philosophical pen to paper or
consider what I regard to be the highest ideals of my creative, moral and
spiritual life.
I would be most interested in hearing from anyone with an
interest in Findlay’s philosophy or who has personal reminiscences about this
unique and wise man.
Sanford L. Drob
New York, October, 2004
S. Drob: The Philosopher and
the Rav: " J.N. Findlay, Adin Steinsaltz and the "Double Movement
" in Kabbalistic Thought
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