Monday, June 03, 2019

Bill Vallicella Remembers His Teacher John Niemeyer Findlay

In a recent post, my friend Bill Vallicella remembers his teacher John  Niemeyer Findlay for the words that his teacher wrote:
For it is not only Findlay's characteristic patterns once so amply instantiated here below that I now ponder lovingly, but the actual words he wrote, many of them printed, some of them hand-written, that strikingly singular voluminous flow of Baroque articulation so beautifully expressive of a wealth of thoughts. In his books, I have the man still, and presumably at his best, even if he himself, long dead as an instance, has made the transcensive move from the Cave's chiaroscuro to the limpid light wherein he now, something of a Platonic Form himself, beholds the forma formarum, the Form of all Forms.
I won't claim to understand everything Bill has written here, but what interests me is Bill's preference for the particular man, John  Niemeyer  Findlay, as that particular man's actually expressed words reveal him in that particularity.

I do have a question, though. Is Bill's point about Findlay best expressed as "the actual words he wrote," or would Bill's point about Findlay be better expressed as "the words he actually wrote"?

Each expression lends itself to misunderstanding.

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2 Comments:

At 2:43 AM, Blogger Carter Kaplan said...

Maybe Bill Vallicella will consider writing something for Emanations?

 
At 6:50 AM, Blogger Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

We'll see. He knows I've posted on his thoughts.

Jeffery Hodges

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