There follows my review from the John Macmurray Newsletter 30, Autumn 2012, of Esther McIntosh's book John Macmurray's Religious Philosophy (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011). In my view Macmurray's thought contains some views deriving ultimately from Hegel, in particular the Form of the Personal, whilst other ideas are adopted from French phenomenology and the British idealist tradition. The review follows the structure of the book and addresses in turn: the nature of persons; child development; society and politics; and religion.
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Esther
McIntosh
John
Macmurray’s Religious Philosophy: what it means to be a person. Farnham:
Ashgate, 2011
This book is a comprehensive survey of John Macmurray’s
philosophy and some of its social implications, though one whose own utopian
agenda in my view would lead to a self-effacement of Western Christianity. Only
some of this can be traced back to Macmurray. It also has an up-to-date bibliography and
interesting discussions of the slowly accumulating critical literature on
Macmurray.
There are four parts, each divided into two chapters, and a
conclusion. The first part is a critical account of Macmurray’s overarching philosophical
theme of the nature of persons. The succeeding three parts analyse its
implications for child development, politics, and religion respectively. Each chapter contains an exposition of
Macmurray’s ideas on a specific area, drawn from works written at different
periods of his life, accompanied by discussions relating these to issues and
debates of Macmurray’s era and our contemporary intellectual and practical
situation.
Influences
There is a brief discussion at the outset of Macmurray’s
influences. Here Esther McIntosh notes that: “it is possible to argue that
Macmurray’s philosophy is rooted in British idealism, while going beyond it”
(page 7). She notes later that: “Macmurray rarely offers any account of his
influences, giving the impression that a greater extent of his work is independent
of scholarly influences than is likely to be the case” (page 206). This endorses
my own view (JMF Newsletter 24) with reference to the British Idealist Edward
Caird, but I wonder if more might have been made of the relationship in the
course of the book. For example, the discussions of Stoic theories of reason
and passion which give rise to the theory of the primacy of agency in mental
life in both Macmurray and Caird are not related to each other.
The Nature of Persons
Turning firstly to the most abstractly philosophical part of
the book, the main philosophical assertions here are the primacy of action in
mental life and the potential rationality of the emotions. McIntosh regards Macmurray’s discovery of the
“form of the personal” (a positive that contains its own negative) as
needlessly formulaic, but thinks that she can “extract the underlying concepts
from the form given to them”, which is a “holistic and relational account of
the person” (page 9). Her perception of
the form of the personal as “contrived” (page 210) contrasts with Macmurray’s own
view that the form is useful and perhaps necessary in detecting mechanical or
organic misinterpretations of personal experience. It may be that these currently carry less
weight in social theory or practice, but the return of Darwinian ideas in
evolutionary psychology, including in social theories of religion, [1]
may indicate new or revived fields for its application.
She draws comparisons between Macmurray’s rejection of mind-body
dualism and various similar moves by philosophers in the analytic tradition,
such as Stuart Hampshire and GEM Anscombe. I wonder though, if a comparison
with the contemporary representative of Idealism, R G Collingwood, might not
have been equally illuminating, for example on the concept of a philosophical
form [2]
which was not present in the linguistic philosophy or descriptive metaphysics
then predominant in Oxford. The same might be said of Collingwood’s
incorporation of historical content into the philosophical analysis of
concepts. A similar case might be made for a comparison with Collingwood’s
conservative contemporary Michael Oakshott. [3]
Child development
The second part begins by describing the child’s helplessness
and dependence to illustrate the relational nature of the individual person.
McIntosh relates this to Macmurray’s form of the personal, here and in the
following chapter on growth to adulthood. She describes fear as a necessary
stimulus in the parent producing actions in the parent through the love of the
parent for the child. In regard to
another negative emotion, hate, she cites Macmurray’s likening of this to
original sin. She uses the interplay of positive and negative emotions (hate, fear
and love) again to illustrate the logical form of the personal.
She writes: “Although Macmurray’s form of the personal
reflects analytic theory, his description of the carer-child relationship
resembles Continental philosophy” (page 75) and cites Emmanuel Levinas and Martin
Buber in support of this. However, behind these 20th century figures, albeit at
a distance, we may discern the common tradition of German idealism that led
also through its British interpreters and developers – Macmurray’s teachers -
to some of the philosophical ideas found in Macmurray himself. Soon after, she
refers to Macmurray’s “intriguing combination of Analytical and Continental
philosophical styles” (page 94), but this 20th century contrast of
method and geography is scarcely applicable to the earlier British Idealism
from which Macmurray draws.
There are some intriguing references in this second part to
the reception of Macmurray’s ideas in psychological literature and to
criticisms found therein, for example that of Hodgkin who thinks Macmurray
underestimates authority and distance as aspects of the parent-child
relationship. I would have enjoyed reading more about this.
Society and Politics
With growth to adulthood comes participation in society and hence
McIntosh turns in the third part of her book to expound Macmurray’s views on society
and politics. In Macmurray’s view, these are based on negative apperceptions,
their positive correlate being the idea of community which is addressed in the
culminating chapters on religion. The ongoing presence of the idea of
philosophical form here is indicated in Macmurray’s comparison of the childhood
love, aggression and submission with the communal, pragmatic and contemplative
structures of adult life. These are identified again with the historical
Hebrew, Roman and Greek contributions to modern Western society and literature,
reappearing in Macmurray’s discussions of the spirit of Christianity, state
sovereignty and legal sanctions in the theories of Hobbes and Rousseau and the
ethics of Stoicism. Once again, McIntosh sees here an “enigmatic tripartism”
(page 115), observing that “suspiciously neat trios (triads) of categorisation
are a commonplace in Macmurray’s writings” (ibid).
A recurrent refrain in these discussions of society, as
throughout the book, is the stress on equality.
We are informed for example that Macmurray’s declining interest in
communism was the result of awareness of “realities of inequality in the
Communist countries of the east” (page 5).
We are told that “In essence, the personal life is a life of freedom and
equality” (page 99) and that “real freedom requires real equality” (page 135).
Elsewhere though, McIntosh herself concedes that “economically diverse individuals
do manage to relate on an equal basis” (page 135) and later she warns against
“assuming we are all alike” (page 212). There seems to be a conflict here,
resolution of which would perhaps require a greater recognition of cultural,
historical and other differences between individuals and communities and the
need for the sense of distance adverted to by Hodgkin as a precondition of
respect.
In his discussion of politics, Macmurray is constrained to
find a place for the negative correlates of his preferred positive religious
form of apperception. This leads to a consideration of justice, which Macmurray
characterises as a lower limit of acceptable behaviour enforced by society on
its members. In his accustomed terminology, it is a necessary, constitutive,
negative moment of morality.
One characteristic aspect of McIntosh’s account of
Macmurray’s politics is the extent to which she draws on Macmurray’s wartime
pamphlets, particularly Challenge to the
Churches (1941) and Constructive
Democracy (1943) and next to that his pre-war trilogy on communism and Conditions of Freedom (1953). This
confirms for me the extent to which the terms of our contemporary political
discourse were set in the heat of battle and its immediate aftermath rather
than in the cooler light of reflection that might now be attainable.
Religion
As in Hegel though, beyond the political sphere there is a
sphere of voluntary endeavour through which we enter into the sphere of
religion.
McIntosh queries why Macmurray “asserts that it is religion
that maintains community and not culture in general” (page 142). Macmurray does
endorse a social account of religion similar to that of Weber and Durkheim, at
the expense of acknowledging the source of its social influence in its power to
evoke the idea of transcendence. She finds a source of this in Macmurray’s
response to Marx’s critique of the idealism of Hegel’s philosophy. This leads
him to criticise Hegel for “a certain absorption in ideas” (page 152) under the
sway of which practical activity is represented as “subordinate to mental
activity” (ibid).
Macmurray objects to Marx that religion is in fact primarily
practical and gives as an instance the Hebrew prophetic tradition. In Hegel
himself though, the ideas of the Logic are embodied in practical experience as
well as pure thought and Marx’s own account of practical activity includes an
ideational component. The contrast is rather the absence of transcendence in
Marx’s analysis and the consequent elevation of the political that Macmurray in
a partisan spirit considers a failing more of the right. These are my thoughts,
but McIntosh concurs to some extent in calling Macmurray’s argument
“patronising and confusing” and accusing him of offering a “reductionist
account of religion” (page 171). There could have been room here for an account
of the theory of Christian transcendence in the theology of Macmurray’s
colleague at Edinburgh, Thomas F Torrance.
The final chapter on religion addresses the historical
development of Christianity more directly. McIntosh draws attention to
Macmurray’s view in the Clue to History
(1938) of a divergence between institutional Christianity and the original
Christian intention of which he claims to be the interpreter. This she thinks,
“seems to be somewhat contrived” (page 187). She notes again the this-worldly
focus of his thought, saying that he “lacks an eschatology” (page 194) and
“views Jesus basically as an exceptional figure” (page 195), another prophet or
sage.
Despite these critical notes though, she seems to endorse
the substance of his thought and even seeks to move away from Christianity as a
means of extending community in modern Britain. Thus she writes with apparent resignation
that “perhaps during his era he [Macmurray] could still envisage Britain and
even Europe as predominantly Christian” (page 196). I cannot but contrast the
rejection here of “self-abasement” (page 183) with reference to domestic
violence, with her view that Macmurray’s emphasis on Christianity is “a
hindrance to extending community in view of the reality of religious pluralism”
(page 208) and that “we would do well therefore, to do to others as they would
be done by” (page 212). Of the same stamp is her gratuitous endorsement of a
pro-diversity British lobby group (page 211). Put together, these views bear
the risk of turning European Christianity into the religion of the political or
ecclesiastical doormat.
At one point, McIntosh fruitfully cites Aristotle on
friendship. [4] Another Aristotelian idea that might play a
mediating role here is that of man as a “rational animal”. There is a tension
in Macmurray between the ideal of community that he finds first in the family,
which whatever its full nature has unmistakeable biological roots, his
rejection of the extension of the analogous biological idea of race into
politics in his rejection of (ethnic) nationalism, combined with his wish to
recapture something of the closeness of family life in the ideal of a universal
religious community. In this last project, our rational nature is predestined
for a final victory over our animal nature, not after death but in this world.
However, the origins and nature of this universalising project
are not themselves either examined historically or subjected to more than
marginal criticism, as they were by Macmurray’s fellow Scot John Anderson of
Sydney. Nonetheless, there is food for thought here for any serious interpreter
of Macmurray and the ambition of relating his literary inheritance to
contemporary debates is sound.
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