Julian Findlay

I am addressing you this evening in a somewhat unfamiliar theme: that of “logical values” or “values in speaking.” I do so since the points I want to raise come up very constantly in contemporary discussion, and yet are seldom made the object of explicit reflection. There are, it is plain, a large number of qualities which appeal to us in our utterances, whether in the setting forth of our notions in words, or in the weaving of such words into sentences. And they may be said to appeal to us in a peculiar manner, and to satisfy a special set of interests in us, which we may group together as the “logical side” of our nature. Thus most people would say that clarity, relevance, coherence, solid significance and simplicity were merits in speaking, and that so also was truthful conformity to the facts of experience, whether in their general outline or their concrete detail. And everyone would admit readily that such excellences “belonged together,” that they were somehow akin, and that they differed profoundly from such virtues in speaking as poetic felicity, practical helpfulness, or moral and religious inspiration. And most people would also be willing to say, with a great deal of obscurity and most puzzling conviction, that the appeal of such qualities wasn't “merely momentary and personal,” but had something “solid” and “universal” about it, that a man would be foolish not to value such qualities, and that he couldn't help valuing them if he only thought of them sufficiently. And we should recommend such qualities to the approval of others with an air of earnestness and authority, setting them on a level, in this respect, with those other excellences that are called “ethical” and “aesthetic.” But while we could back our recommendation in the last two types of case with a great deal of systematic doctrine, built up in centuries of reflection, we should have little to bring forward in the former case, since the excellences that I want to call “logical,” though often acknowledged, have seldom been made the objects of systematic reflection. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the “true” has generally been ranged alongside of the “good” and the “beautiful” as a species of “ultimate value.”

Sir David Ross, Ladies And Gentlemen: I Have chosen as the topic of this inaugural lecture that of “having in mind,” the manner or manners in which things come before us in consciousness, are present to our thoughts, or are in some way “there for us.” Alternatively, I might say that I want to consider whatever may be involved in saying that we can turn our thoughts in this or that direction, that we can let them dwell on this or that actuality or possibility, whether what we thus concern ourselves with be picked out from our present environment, or reached for beyond it. I like this second “active” way of describing my subject-matter much less than my first, impersonal way of speaking, for reasons that I shall try to make plain in the course of this lecture. I wish, in short, to give you a tentative anatomy of our conscious life, and to sketch the fundamental dimensions into which it may be differentiated. This task is important, since the puzzles which concern the presence of objects to our minds are of a peculiarly deep-seated and refractory sort: they are also puzzles which infect our treatment of practically all other philosophical questions. It is not that certain arbitrarily chosen ways of speaking confuse us, which could be readily bettered by keeping our eyes on the facts: it is rather as if our subject-matter itself confused us, and tempted us to describe it in ways which only serve to deepen mystery and perplexity, and which ultimately plunge us into nonsense.

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

Professor Findlay in this book, originally published in 1961, set out to justify, and to some extent carry out, a ‘material value-ethic’, ie. A systematic setting forth of the ends of rational action. The book is in the tradition of Moore, Rashfall, Ross, Scheler and Hartmann though it avoids altogether dogmatic intuitive methods. It argues that an organised framework of ends of action follows from the attitude underlying our moral pronouncements, and that this framework, while allowing personal elaboration, is not a matter for individual decision. The relations connecting our fundamental value-judgements with one another, and the frames of mind behind them, are not rigorously deductive but are sufficiently compelling to be called logical. Something of a ‘transcendental deduction’ of a well-ordered family for our basic heads of valuation is both possible and necessary. The work is further critical of the notion of obligation which has been extended far beyond legal contracts and understandings. The book also contains a chapter on religion

The background and purpose of this paper require some explanation. It is not the product of a New Testament scholar, able to weigh and balance theories as to date, origin and doctrinal background of the text attributed to St John, nor to assess the identification of its author with the beloved Disciple elsewhere mentioned or with the author of the Apocalypse, nor to consider his relationship to Gnostics or Stoics or Essenes or other influences in the contemporary Jewish or Christian ambience. It is only the effort of one who recognizes in St John's Gospel, if read with an appropriate hermeneutic, a supreme mystico-religious document which can provide guidance at every turn of the spiritual life, but which, if read in another manner, becomes only the expression of a hard-line particularism, which is not less unacceptable in that it acclaims a particular standing in a special relation to another particular on which we all depend for our existence and for all our properties. Conceive of God, or the supreme object of worship, as a particular among particulars, and as much other than ourselves as other things and persons are other, and religious reverence becomes a repugnant form of heteronomous idolatry, wrought up, moreover, with the blind acceptance of a large number of historic and cosmic myths. But conceive of God as being something beyond category-differences, and which as much transcends particularity as it transcends any form of abstract universality, and which incorporates in strict identity all those values of Truth, Love, Beauty, Justice, etc. which are all simply universality in action, and which, moreover, as much transcends personality and personal relationships as it also may have in them its supreme expression, and religion and worship at once acquire a perfect sense and reference