Thought
While an undergraduate at Calvin College, Wolterstorff was greatly influenced by professors Harry Jellema, Henry Stob and Henry Zylstra, who introduced him to schools of thought that have dominated his mature thinking: Reformed theology and common sense philosophy (these have also influenced the thinking of Wolterstorff's friend and colleague Alvin Plantinga, another alumnus of Calvin College).
Wolterstorff builds upon the ideas of the Scottish common sense philosopher Thomas Reid, who approached knowledge "from the bottom-up". Instead of reasoning about transcendental conditions of knowledge, Wolterstorff suggests that knowledge and our knowing faculties are not the subject of our research but have to be seen as its starting point. Wolterstorff rejects classical foundationalism and instead sees knowledge as based upon insights in reality which are direct and indubitable.
Read more about this topic: Nicholas Wolterstorff
Famous quotes containing the word thought:
“I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.”
—Edmund Burke (17291797)
“Quintilian [educational writer in Rome around A.D. 100] thought that the earliest years of the childs life were crucial. Education should start earlier than age seven, within the family. It should not be so hard as to give the child an aversion to learning. Rather, these early lessons would take the form of playthat embryonic notion of kindergarten.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“I am the love killer,
I am murdering the music we thought so special,
that blazed between us, over and over.
I am murdering me, where I kneeled at your kiss.
I am pushing knives through the hands
that created two into one.”
—Anne Sexton (19281974)