Nicholas Wolterstorff

Nicholas Wolterstorff
Born	(1932-01-21) January 21, 1932 Bigelow, Minnesota
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Analytic
Academic advisors	Donald Cary Williams
Main interests	Epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of religion, aesthetics, political philosophy
Notable ideas	Reformed epistemology
Influences Alvin Plantinga · Thomas Reid · Abraham Kuyper · Augustine · John Calvin
Influenced Kendall Walton

Nicholas Wolterstorff (born January 21, 1932) is an American philosopher and a liturgical theologian. He is currently Noah Porter Professor Emeritus Philosophical Theology at Yale University. A prolific writer with wide-ranging philosophical and theological interests, he has written books on aesthetics, epistemology, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and philosophy of education. In Faith and Rationality, Wolterstorff, Alvin Plantinga, and William Alston developed and expanded upon a view of religious epistemology that has come to be known as Reformed epistemology. He also helped to establish the journal Faith and Philosophy and the Society of Christian Philosophers.

Wolterstorff speaking in a conference in South Korea, May 24, 2014

Biography

Wolterstorff was born in 1932 to Dutch emigrants in a small farming community in southwest Minnesota. After earning his BA in philosophy at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1953, he entered Harvard University, where he earned his M.A. and PhD in philosophy, completing his studies 1956. He then spent a year at the University of Cambridge, where he met C. D. Broad. From 1957 to 1959, he was an instructor in philosophy at Yale University. Then he took the post of Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College and taught for 30 years. He is now teaching at Yale as Noah Porter Professor Emeritus Philosophical Theology.

He has been a visiting professor at Harvard University, Princeton University, Yale University, Oxford University, University of Notre Dame, University of Texas, University of Michigan, Temple University, the Free University of Amsterdam (Vrije Universiteit), and the University of Virginia. In 2007, he received an Honorary Doctorate in Philosophy from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He has been retired since June 2002.

Professional distinctions

• Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, 1953
• Harvard Foundation Fellowship, 1954
• Josiah Royce Memorial Fellowship, Harvard University, 1954
• Fulbright Scholarship, 1957
• President of the American Philosophical Association (Central Division)
• President of the Society of Christian Philosophers
• Senior Fellow, Institute for Advanced Study in Culture, University of Virginia, 2005

Endowed lectureships

• Kuyper Lectures, Free University of Amsterdam, 1981
• Wilde Lectures, Oxford University, 1993
• Gifford Lectures: "Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology", St Andrews University, 1995
• Tate-Willson Lectures, Southern Methodist University, 1991
• Stone Lectures, Princeton Theological Seminary, 1998
• Lectures at Southern Seminary, Lecture #2, Lecture #3, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2000
• Taylor Lectures, Yale University, 2001
• Laing Lectures, Regent College, 2007

Personal life

Nicholas Wolterstorff lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with his wife Claire. He has four grown children. His oldest son died in a mountain climbing accident at age 25. He has seven grandchildren.

Thought

While an undergraduate at Calvin College, Wolterstorff was greatly influenced by professors William 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 his 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. He rejects classical foundationalism and instead sees knowledge as based upon insights in reality which are direct and indubitable.

Bibliography

Selected writings

• On Universals: An Essay in Ontology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1970.
• Reason within the Bounds of Religion. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1976. 2nd ed. 1984
• Works and Worlds of Art. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1980.
• Art in Action: Toward a Christian Aesthetic. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1980. 2nd ed. 1995
• Educating for Responsible Action. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1980.
• Until Justice and Peace Embrace. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. 1983. 2nd ed. 1994.
• Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God (ed. with Alvin Plantinga). Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 1984.
• Lament for a Son. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1987.
• "Suffering Love" in Philosophy and the Christian Faith (ed.Thomas V. Morris). Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 1988.
• Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim That God Speaks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1995.
• John Locke and the Ethics of Belief. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1996.
• Religion in the Public Square (with Robert Audi). Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. 1997.
• Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2001.
• Educating for Life: Reflections on Christian Teaching and Learning. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. 2002.
• "An Engagement with Rorty" in The Journal of Religious Ethics, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Spring, 2003), pp. 129–139.
• Educating for Shalom: Essays on Christian Higher Education. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 2004.
• Justice: Rights and Wrongs. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2008.
• Inquiring about God: Selected Essays, Volume I (ed. Terence Cuneo). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2009.
• Practices of Belief: Selected Essays, Volume II (ed. Terence Cuneo). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2009.
• Justice in Love. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 2011.
• The Mighty and the Almighty: An Essay in Political Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2012.
• Understanding Liberal Democracy: Essays in Political Philosophy (ed. Terence Cuneo). Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2012.
• Art Rethought: The Social Practices of Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2015.
• Acting Liturgically: Philosophical Reflections on Religious Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2018. ISBN 9780198805380

Secondary

• Sloane, Andrew, On Being A Christian in the Academy: Nicholas Wolterstorff and the Practice of Christian Scholarship, Paternoster, Carlisle UK, 2003.

See also

• American philosophy
• Christian philosophy
• List of American philosophers

External links

• Faculty page at Yale
• Interview from The Christian Century.
• "The Irony of It All" in The Hedgehog Review vol. 9, no. 3 (Fall 2007). Article discussing human dignity and justice.
• Lecture at Calvin College on "How Calvin Fathered a Renaissance in Christian Philosophy".
• Wolterstorff's Spiritual Autobiography from Clark, Kelly James, Philosophers Who Believe (Intervarsity Press, 1993).
• Theology and Ethics Contains many PDF files of Wolterstorff's work not available elsewhere.
• Art in Action: New Thoughts Lecture at the 2009 International Arts Movement.
• Lectures by Wolterstorff from the C.S. Lewis Institute.
• Faith and Philosophy
• Society of Christian Philosophers