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:
“Nothing that has been thought can ever be taken back.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)
“You thought you could be Mrs. de Winter. Live in her house. Walk in her steps. Take the things that were hers. But she’s too strong for you. You can’t fight her. No one ever got the better of her. Never. Never. She was beaten in the end. But it wasn’t a man. It wasn’t a woman. It was the sea!”
—Robert E. Sherwood (1896–1955)
“Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)