John Niemeyer Findlay - Rational Mysticism

Rational Mysticism

At a time when scientific materialism, positivism, linguistic analysis, and ordinary language philosophy were the core academic ideas, Findlay championed phenomenology, revived Hegelianism, and wrote works that were inspired by Theosophy, Buddhism, Plotinus, and Idealism. In his books published in the 1960s, including two series of Gifford Lectures, Findlay developed Rational Mysticism. According to this mystical system, "the philosophical perplexities, e.g., concerning universals and particulars, mind and body, knowledge and its objects, the knowledge of other minds," as well as those of free will and determinism, causality and teleology, morality and justice, and the existence of temporal objects, are human experiences of deep antinomies and absurdities about the world. Findlay's conclusion is that these necessitate the postulation of higher spheres, or "latitudes", where objects' individuality, categorical distinctiveness and material constraints are diminishing, lesser in each latitude than in the one below it. On the highest spheres, existence is evaluative and meaningful more than anything else, and Findlay identifies it with the idea of The Absolute. In 2012 Findlay's major work on Plato along with both volumes of his "cave lectures" returned into print courtesy of the Routledge Revivals series .