John Macmurray's Religious Philosophy What it Means to be a Person [Hardcover]

Recent dissatisfaction with individualism and the problems of religious pluralism make this an opportune time to reassess the way in which we define ourselves and conduct our relationships with others. The philosophical writings of John Macmurray are a useful resource for performing this examination, and recent interest in Macmurray's work has been growing steadily.

A full-scale critical examination of Macmurray's religious philosophy has not been published and this work fills this gap, sharing his insistence that we define ourselves through action and through person-to-person relationships, while critiquing his account of the ensuing political and religious issues. The key themes in this work are the concept of the person and the ethics of personal relations.

Introduction

PART I: The Essence of the Person

1 Agency Theory

2 Education and the Emotions

PART II: Developing as a Person

3 The Human Infant

4 Growth to Adulthood

PART III: Persons and Politics

5 Societies and Communities

6 Justice and the State

PART IV: Persons and Religion

7 Against Idealism in Religion

8 Religion and Morality

Conclusion

'Esther McIntoshs new book makes a significant contribution to the increasing interest in the thought of the late and until recently vastly underappreciated philosopher, John Macmurray. Focusing on his concept of the person, McIntosh, not uncritically, elicits its implications for the development of persons from infancy to adulthood, especially against a dominant philosophy of individualism and a Cartesian emphasis on thought almost to the exclusion of action and feeling. With a background in feminist theology McIntosh is uniquely situated to bring this aspect of Macmurrays notion of tl“)