Abstract

This is the first volume of Findlay's Gifford Lectures; the second will be published as The Transcendence of the Cave. Employing a well-sustained Platonic metaphor and a modified Husserlian method, Findlay argues that the task of philosophy is to explore and find some systematic order among the "furnishings of the cave," i.e., the various types of phenomena which are irreducibly given in the Lebenswelt: bodies, sensible appearances, minds, universals, values, and the supreme value God. An overemphasis on any one of these phenomena leads to some form of reductionism: God—pantheism, minds—idealism, sensible appearances—phenomenalism, bodies—materialism. Adding a dash of Hegelian dialectic to his Husserlian method, Findlay embarks on his own exploration of the cave, an exploration which leads him through an examination of material reality to the necessity of speaking of a second order of phenomena, namely minds. In the wake of this dialectical push, Findlay engages in exceptionally sensitive analyses of sensation as the transitional point to mind, intentionality, the mind-body relation, the life of the ego, privacy, the pre-reflective, and the possibly of disembodied intelligence. One eagerly awaits the sequel in which Findlay promises to move to the successively higher viewpoints of values and God.—E. A. R.