Nicholas Wolterstorff | |
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| Born | Nicholas Paul Wolterstorff (1932-01-21)January 21, 1932 (age 93) |
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| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | |
| Thesis | Whitehead's Theory of Individuals (1956) |
| Academic advisor | Donald Cary Williams[1] |
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| Doctoral students | Phillip Cary |
| Notable ideas | Reformed epistemology |
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Nicholas Paul Wolterstorff (born January 21, 1932) is an Americanphilosopher andtheologian. He is currently Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology atYale University.[2] A prolific writer with wide-ranging philosophical and theological interests, he has written books onaesthetics,epistemology,political philosophy,philosophy of religion,metaphysics, andphilosophy of education. InFaith and Rationality, Wolterstorff,Alvin Plantinga, andWilliam Alston developed and expanded upon a view ofreligious epistemology that has come to be known asReformed epistemology.[3] He also helped to establish the journalFaith and Philosophy and theSociety of Christian Philosophers.
Wolterstorff was born on January 21, 1932,[4] to Dutch emigrants in a small farming community in southwestMinnesota.[5][6] After earning hisBA in philosophy atCalvin University,Grand Rapids,Michigan, in 1953, he enteredHarvard University, where he earned hisMA andPhD in philosophy, completing his studies in 1956. He then spent a year at theUniversity of Cambridge, where he metC. D. Broad. From 1957 to 1959, he was an instructor in philosophy atYale University. Then he took the post of Professor of Philosophy atCalvin College and taught for 30 years.[5] He is now teaching at Yale as Noah Porter Professor Emeritus Philosophical Theology.
In 1987 Wolterstorff publishedLament for a Son after the untimely death of his 25-year-old son Eric in a mountain climbing accident. In a series of short essays, Wolterstorff recounts how he drew on his Christian faith to cope with his grief. Wolterstorff explained that he published the book "in the hope that it will be of help to some of those who find themselves with us in the company of mourners."[7]
He has been a visiting professor atHarvard University,Princeton University, Yale University, theUniversity of Oxford, theUniversity of Notre Dame, theUniversity of Texas, theUniversity of Michigan,Temple University, the Free University of Amsterdam (Vrije Universiteit), and theUniversity of Virginia. In 2007, he received an honorary Doctorate in Philosophy fromVrije Universiteit Amsterdam.[8] He has been retired since June 2002.
Wolterstorff published hismemoir withWilliam B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. in 2019, illustrating the close relationship between his personal life and his academic career.[9]
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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.
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While an undergraduate at Calvin College, Wolterstorff was greatly influenced by professorsWilliam Harry Jellema, Henry Stob, and Henry Zylstra, who introduced him to schools of thought that have dominated his mature thinking: Reformed theology andcommon sense philosophy. (These have also influenced the thinking of his friend and colleagueAlvin Plantinga, another alumnus of Calvin College).
Wolterstorff builds upon the ideas of the Scottish common-sense philosopherThomas Reid, who approached knowledge "from the bottom-up". Instead of reasoning abouttranscendental 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 classicalfoundationalism and instead sees knowledge as based upon insights in reality which are direct and indubitable.[5] InJustice in Love, he rejects fundamentist notions of Christianity that hold to the necessity of the penal substitutionary atonement and justification by faith alone.
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| Preceded by | Gifford Lecturer at theUniversity of St Andrews 1995 | Succeeded by |
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| Preceded by | President of theSociety of Christian Philosophers 1992–1995 | Succeeded by |
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