John Findlay 1903 – 1987
John Niemeyer Findlay was a South African-born philosopher whose long career took him from Pretoria and Otago to Newcastle, King's College London, the University of Texas, Yale, and Boston University. He was an exceptional reader of Plato, Hegel, Husserl, and Wittgenstein and produced influential studies of each. His paper Can God's Existence Be Disproved? became a celebrated provocation in the philosophy of religion, while his Values and Intentions, Hegel: A Re-Examination, and Plato: The Written and Unwritten Doctrines articulated a sustained axiology of intentional acts and a fresh reading of the great metaphysical traditions.
Key facts
- Nationality
- South African
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Analytic
Selected quotes
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Attributed to John Findlay:
“The ontological argument, properly understood, may be a disproof rather than a proof.”
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Attributed to John Findlay:
“Values are objective, but inseparable from acts of valuing.”
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Attributed to John Findlay:
“Hegel is the philosopher of mediation, not of mystification.”
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Attributed to John Findlay:
“Plato's forms remain the most living of philosophical hypotheses.”
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Attributed to John Findlay:
“The mind is essentially intentional; thoughts are about something.”