1. John Macmurray's thought both moved beyond and was critical of the modern tradition, whether rationalist or empiricist.
20 Facts About John Macmurray
1. 2.
John Macmurray viewed persons in terms of their relationality and agency, rather than the modern tendency to characterize them in terms of individualism and cognition.
3.
John Macmurray made contributions in the fields of political science, religion, education, and philosophy in a long career of writing, teaching, and public speaking.
4.
John Macmurray's father was employed by the Inland Revenue Department as an excise officer.
5.
In 1899 the family moved to Aberdeen, where the young John Macmurray attended Aberdeen Grammar School and Robert Gordon's College.
6.
John Macmurray was educated at the University of Glasgow, earning First-class honours in Classics and was awarded a Snell Exhibition to attend Balliol College, Oxford in 1913.
7.
When war with Germany was declared in 1914, John Macmurray enlisted in the Royal Army Medical Corps.
8.
John Macmurray married Elizabeth Hyde Campbell in London during a three-day leave in October 1916.
9.
John Macmurray was seriously wounded in battle near Arras on 28 March 1918 and was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry.
10.
John Macmurray preached on the importance of preparing for post-war reconciliation with the enemy rather than exacting vengeance.
11.
The sermon was coldly received by the congregation and John Macmurray saw their reaction as indicating a lack of true Christianity in the institutional churches.
12.
John Macmurray left Oxford to become Grote Professor of Mind and Logic at University College London, the position he held from 1928 to 1944.
13.
John Macmurray then moved to the University of Edinburgh, where he held the Chair of Moral Philosophy until his retirement in 1958.
14.
In 1970 they returned to Edinburgh, where John Macmurray died on 21 June 1976.
15.
The main themes in John Macmurray's philosophy are the primacy in human life of action over theory, and the essentially relational nature of human beings.
16.
John Macmurray summed up his philosophy in the introduction to The Self as Agent: "The simplest expression that I can find for the thesis I have tried to maintain is this: All meaningful knowledge is for the sake of action, and all meaningful action for the sake of friendship".
17.
John Macmurray argued for the importance of emotion as motivating action, and looked to infancy and early childhood for evidence of the universal desire for relationship.
18.
John Macmurray distinguished between society and community, with society being for organizations to achieve particular purposes, while community is an end in itself.
19.
In dismissing the Cogito and its legacy of the primacy of thought over action, John Macmurray saw himself as breaking with the western philosophical tradition.
20.
John Macmurray was well known in Britain before World War II for his BBC radio broadcasts on philosophy, some of which were published in his first book, Freedom in the Modern World.