James Findlay

This paper is an attempt to clarify our talk about minds and thoughts—our own minds and the thoughts which run through them and which we know directly, as well as the minds of other people and the thoughts with which we credit them. We do so in order to be able to characterize satisfactorily our whole performance in talking about minds and thoughts, the rules according to which such talk operates and the goals it purports to reach. We also hope to evaluate, in the light of such a characterization, a number of more elaborate ways of speaking about minds and thoughts, so as to become clear as to their advantages or disadvantages in comparison with more ordinary ways of speaking. The whole investigation is well worth undertaking, since it has long been evident that our talk about mind and thought is, to a peculiar extent, liable to become the seat of certain deep perplexities, which do not arise when we deal with unusual material on the borderlines of knowledge, but which tend, rather, to obtrude themselves in commonplace situations, and to trouble our grasp of the most obvious notions and the most evident truths. Such perplexities, broadly covered by the word “philosophical,” are rendered very stubborn by their objects and their origin. For when we are dealing with things remote, strange and intricate, we have at least a firm foothold in the well-known, simple and near, and a clear set of terms to talk with; but we hardly seem to have a perch to hop to, or any intelligible language left to talk in, when the obvious itself begins to present difficulties. And it is also characteristic of most of the difficulties we are considering that in them the burning zone of perplexity seems to shift erratically from issue to issue, that each expedient adopted to meet them involves us in new problems, that men cannot ever agree as to the best expedient or the least serious difficulty, and that, in the outcome, they resemble nothing so much as a set of sleepers under inadequate coverings, some of whom prefer exposure in one place, while others prefer it in another.

This is a much-needed reissue of the standard English translation of Hegel's Philosophy of Nature, originally published in 1970. The Philosophy of Nature is the second part of Hegel's Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, all of which is now available in English from OUP. Hegel's aim in this work is to interpret the varied phenomena of Nature from the standpoint of a dialectical logic. Those who still think of Hegel as a merely a priori philosopher will here find abundant evidence that he was keenly interested in and very well informed about empirical science. The Philosophy of Nature is integral to his philosophical system and deserves the most serious attention. Students and scholars of Hegel and the history of European philosophy will welcome the availability of this important text, which also includes a translation of Hegel's Zusatze or lecture notes.

First published in 1966, The Discipline of the Cave is the first series of a course of Gifford lectures on philosophical issues.. J N Findlay’s lectures use the image of the Cave to show how familiarity is full of restrictions, and involves puzzles and discrepancies unable to be resolved or removed. Such philosophical perplexities may be a result of the misunderstanding and abuse of ordinary ways of thinking and speaking. They may also be a way of ‘drawing us towards being’, providing proof of the absurdity of ordinary thought, speech and experience unless modified and added to in ways which may point beyond it. What may be called a mystical and otherworldly element may need to be introduced into or rendered explicit in all our experience in order to give a viable sense to the most commonplace human utterances and activities