It is my intention in this paper to present an overview of the personalistic philosophy of John Macmurray. To help place his thought in context I will begin with a few comments on personalism as a philosophy. After looking in more detail at Macmurray’s understanding of the nature of the human person, I will conclude by suggesting that in Macmurray’s thought we are being reminded of something which is necessary for a proper understanding of the human person; namely, that it is an essential that as human beings we are in relationship with others.

The quest to understand the essential nature of the human being has a long history in philosophy. One of the ways of coming to such an understanding can be seen in the philosophy of personalism. It is correct to say that, as a philosophical movement, personalism remains somehow unfashionable. For example in the latest edition of The Oxford Companion to Philosophy published in 1995, although the text runs to more than 1000 pages, there is not even a single line devoted to the subject of personalism.

Personalism is concerned to analyse the meaning and nature of human existence, but it is ready to acknowledge that in many ways the human being always will remain a mystery that can never be fully explained or understood.

Personalism, as a philosophy, has many faces. Some personalists are idealists, believing that reality is constituted by consciousness, while others claim to be realistic personalists arguing that the natural order is created by God and not constituted by human consciousness. It may be true that most personalists are theists, but a belief in God is not necessary to all personalist philosophies.

What all personalists would share in common is their belief that the human person should be the ontological and epistemological starting point of philosophical reflection. They are concerned to investigate the status and dignity of the human being as person. The dignity and value of the human person should provide the foundation for all subsequent philosophical analysis.

For personalists, the value of each person is to be found not in an individual’s contribution to society or in one’s talents and achievements, but in the ontological significance of their being. Several aspects of the human being show the proper dignity of each human being, namely, the faculties of intelligence, creativity and freedom. The capacity for love is often understood to be the most wonderful feature of human existence. Our ability to know the world in which we live is seen, too, as an aspect of our inherent dignity. Finally, the physical and genetic uniqueness of each person is a mark of human dignity. Each person can be seen as an original and unique expression of human nature. This allows us to appreciate the irreplaceable value of all human persons. Taking all these aspects together, it becomes clear that each person ought to be affirmed for his or her own sake.

Personalism also focuses on the social character of human life. It is one of Macmurray’s major beliefs that to be a person mans we are in relation with one another: personal being is necessarily relational. Community becomes an important element of personalist thought, uderstanding community to be not an aggregate of individuals but a unity of persons.

Personalism obviously has profound ethical implications both for each person and for society as a whole. In the political context, persons and their lives are more important than any political system or structure. In a world often seen as growing increasingly depersonalised the value of the human person is to be safeguarded.

While we may see a real consensus among personalist thinkers about the primacy and the dignity of the human person, there is room, too, for a wide variety of opinions regarding the question of the existence and nature of God. There are no formalised agreements about methods and definitions; even the definition of personhood remains for many a matter of debate.

Macmurray was born in Scotland in 1891. He came from a strong religious background and his faith was to remain of great importance to him throughout his life. In 1909 he went to the University of Glasgow to study Classics, and in 1913 moved to Balliol College, Oxford.

The war years of 1914-1918 were to prove of great importance to his philosophical development. Macmurray believed that any civilization which could produce the horrors of the Great War must be deeply flawed in its values and assumptions. The sight of so many people being killed for nothing more than a few metres of land filled him with horror and deepened his commitment to the idea that each person is of infinite value.

During the war he was invited to preach at a church in London, and he used the opportunity to call for reconciliation and peace. His words were not welcome, and the hatred of these supposedly good Christian people was enough for Macmurray to turn away from all institutional religion. Only in the last few years of his life did he join the Society of Friends ("Quakers").

From 1919 to 1921 Macmurray was professor of philosophy at the University of Witwatersrand, after which he returned to Balliol College for seven years. 1n 1928 he became Professor of Mind and Logic at University College, London. In the following years he published many works on the nature of communism, on science and religion, and on the idea of the personal life. In Interpreting the Universe, published in 1933, he argued that a mechanistic or organic interpretations of life cannot do full justice to human experience.

In 1944 Macmurray became Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, a post he held until his retirement in 1958. The highpoint of his academic career was the invitation to give the Gifford Lectures in 1953-54. Based on his understanding of the form of the personal, these lectures were subsequently published in two volumes, The Self as Agent and Persons in Relation. Macmurray died in June, 1976, at the age of eighty-five.

It was Macmurray’s ardent belief that traditional academic philosophy was unable adequately to describe the nature of the human person. One can see his whole life as an attempt to come to a deeper and more adequate understanding of the person. This lifelong attempt finds its most mature voice in the above-mentioned Gifford Lectures. Macmurray offered this very succinct summary of his overall thesis:

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. (The Self as Agent, 14-15)

 

Macmurray’s starting point was to attempt to show that philosophy ever since the time of Descartes had moved in a fundamentally wrong direction. In making an analysis of modern Western philosophy, he suggests that we find two distinct phases, the one dominated by a mechanistic view of the world and of the human person, the other dominated by an organic view of the world and of the person. Neither view is adequate.

Macmurray used Descartes’ philosophy as the clearest expression of the mechanistic view of the world. According to Macmurray’s interpretation of Descartes, the method of doubting everything leads to the single insight of Cogito ergo sum, (I think, therefore I am). This has become for many the real starting point of modern philosophy. While Macmurray agreed that all philosophical thought is theoretical by its very nature, he argued that Descartes’ insight leaves us with only the concept of an isolated, purely thinking being. If we are to understand the human individual as no more than a detached consciousness, then it becomes impossible for us to explain human action. Moreover, it becomes difficult to understand the existence of other human beings, and even more so the existence of God. By accepting the fundamental principles of Descartes we are left with a dualism between mind and body which is impossible to overcome. In the process of knowing I, as subject, am removed from the material world that I seek to know as object. For Macmurray, it is this radical distinction between subject and object is what is most objectionable in the philosophy of Descartes.

Macmurray sees a second movement in modern philosophy which can be described as organic, with Kant as its best representative. Kant was critical of rationalism, arguing that we cannot come to a proper understanding of the world by thought alone. We can come to true knowledge only through a synthesis of what we experience through the senses and concepts or categories of pure thought. These exist in our minds and are imposed on our sense experience to make sense of the world.

But Kant argues that these categories of pure thought or categories of understanding are in the mind of the knower rather than aspects of things as they really are in themselves. The result is that what we can know through this process is only the world as it appears to us, and not the world as it is in itself. This noumenal world is, to all effects, beyond the capacities of human knowledge.

Macmurray’s criticism of Kant is that he is not able to make any proper connection between a thing as it is in itself and that thing as it appears to me. He is unable to show that the real object out there and the knowledge of that object which I have in my mind actually do correspond.

Like Descartes, Kant understands the knowing subject to be absolutely separate from the object, which is the major problem for modern philosophy. Therefore Macmurray feels the need to offer an alternative vision which will overcome the problem of dualism by substituting the idea of a thinking by that of a doing subject or an agent. He proposes to reject dualism through asserting the primacy of the practical.

We should substitute the I do for the I think as our starting point and centre of reference, and do our thinking from the standpoint of action. (The Self as Agent, 84)

 

Macmurray is not here denying the importance of thinking. But he sees it as only one of our human qualities. Action is a more fundamental and, therefore, more appropriate expression of what it is to be a human being. He asserts that while thought cannot logically explain action, the latter by its very nature includes the activity of thinking. Therefore, action is a much more inclusive concept than thought. Any theory of knowledge is derived from, and also included within, a theory of action. Macmurray believes that the human being that reflects and the human being that acts is always the same human being. Action and thought are properly understood as simply different modes of activity.

Macmurray is anxious to avoid the temptation to understand the agent or the person in simply egocentric terms, which he finds prevalent in much of modern philosophy. He asserts that the Self is neither a substance nor an organism only, but a person. The major problem for contemporary philosophy is to come to an adequate understanding of the form of the personal.

In Persons in Relation, Macmurray attempts to clarify his understanding of the form of the personal. Having previously suggested that the self exists as an agent or someone who acts, and not simply as a thinking object, he now argues that the self who is agent does not exist in isolation from other agents. To be a human being is to live in relationship with other human beings:

The thesis we have to expound and to sustain is that the self is constituted by its relation to the Other; that it has its being in its relationship; and that this relationship is necessarily personal. (Persons in Relation, 17)

 

Macmurray attempts to justify his claims that the idea of the person in relation with other persons constitutes the most appropriate understanding of the human being. He begins with a consideration of the relationship between mother and child. It is clear that a baby is totally helpless and, therefore, totally dependent on others if it is even to live. For Macmurray, this dependence is not to be understood simply in biological terms. The baby has the need for personal care, to be touched and embraced. It is this need for personal care and love from the mother figure that helps us to see the primacy of relationships in our lives. Macmurray considers relationship to be the constitutive element of life.

We need one another to be ourselves. This complete and unlimited dependence of each of us upon the others is the central and crucial fact of personal existence. Individual independence is an illusion; and the independent individual, the isolated self, is a nonentity. (Persons in Relation, 211)

 

The image of the mother and child relationship serves as a symbol of the fact that to be a human person is to be in relationship with others. Macmurray now moves on to suggest that the idea of being in relationship necessarily involves the intention of being in relationship with others. Relationships are not simply matters of fact.

The intention of being in relationship with another person provides the opportunity for friendship, which becomes the hallmark of what it is to be a person in relation with others. The idea of community is a more appropriate expression of our being than that of society. Macmurray, therefore, suggests that the visions of society offered by Hobbes and Rousseau are inadequate because they are aimed only at the protection of individuals in the pursuit of their private interests. The underlying motive behind the views of both Hobbes and Rouseau is that, as human beings, we live in constant fear of others. In such a climate friendship becomes difficult to attain and to maintain. Friendship and community offer us a far greater degree of personal freedom.

A community is for the sake of friendship and presupposes love. But it is only in friendship that persons are free in relation; if the relationship is based on fear we are constrained in it and not free. (Persons in Relation, 151)

 

We can more clearly understand what it is to be a person when we see that community offers a better quality of life than does society. The characteristics of friendship are what best describe the basic structure of community.

In friendship, the relationship between people is heterocentric. Each person acts and feels and thinks with a real love and concern for the other, and not in the first place for oneself. Each person realizes oneself in and through the other. They are related as equals, and this equality is intentional. Also, in friendship both involved are able to realize their freedom as agents. Since they have no need to live in fear of the other, or to act out of fear of the other, each is able to be fully himself.

Macmurray believes that equality and freedom, both essential qualities of friendship, are constitutive of community. To achieve real community, the equality and freedom offered in real friendship is to be offered to everyone with whom we are in personal relation. This vision of a community of friends enables Macmurray to formulate the ideal of the personal.

It is a universal community of persons in which each cares for all the others and no one for himself. This ideal of the personal is also the condition of freedom . . . for every person. (Persons in Relation, 159)

 

Up to this point Macmurray has attempted to show that human beings are constituted by their relations with one another. He now suggests that this picture, in itself, is incomplete without making some reference to the common world which is shared by all human beings. A community of agents is necessarily part of the world in which it acts. Human beings are not simply persons in communion with one another, but also elements of the natural world.

How is our relation to the world to be conceived? Macmurray argues that we must conceive this relationship, too, in personal terms. The universe is a personal universe. But the idea of a personal universe forces us to ask whether God exists, which takes us to Macmurray’s notion that religion is central to any understanding of the personal life and of community life.

Macmurray remains well aware that community is always a fragile notion. It is all too easy for relations to break down and for fear of others to overcome our friendship with them. It is in maintaining the bonds of friendship and community that religion proves worthwhile and necessary.

Macmurray believes that religion is a universal human experience which must be properly taken into account if we are to understand the true nature of human being. While we can attempt to understand human nature from a simply material or organic view, these remain inadequate without the form of the personal. Religion is concerned with those aspects of human experience which make us persons and not simply matter or organisms.

He goes on to develop the reasons why religion is an essential element of human life. In the first place we note the universality of religion in the human society. For Macmurray this is an indication that the source of religion lies in some characteristic of human being which is both common and universal. The fact that religion is to be seen as a purely human experience suggests that it must be personal. Macmurray further argues that, from a historical point of view, all the various cultural expressions of humanity have developed out of religious experience. Finally, he suggests that religion is, in intention, inclusive of all members of the society to which it refers. Religion, therefore, is characteristically inclusive and universal, and therefore helpful in creating real community. Any religion which fails to offer inclusiveness and universality is necessarily inadequate and erroneous.

Religion can then be understood as an expression of the celebration of communion with others:

We may define the function of religion as being to create, maintain and deepen the community of persons and to extend it without limit . . . by eliminating the dominance of fear in human relations. To achieve this would be to create a universal community of persons in which all personal relations were positively motivated, and all its members were free and equal in relation. Such a community would be the full self-realization of the personal. (Persons in Relation, 163)

 

Macmurray suggests that the individual members of a community need to have a shared belief in the religious aspect of their lives. This can come about only if the individual members have accepted the fact that their community is an intentional one, based on acting for the sake of others. Religion, therefore, itself becomes a personal reality, based on the idea of a personal Other who stands in the same mutual relationship with each member of the community. This founds the unity of a community of persons, each in personal relationship with the other members of the community.

This universal Other can be described as a universal Agent, whose action in the world and in our lives unifies the actions of each community member. The continuing intention of this universal Agent is the unity of all human beings:

In its full development, the idea of a universal personal Other is the idea of God. (Persons in Relation, 164)

 

For Macmurray the move from the I think to the I do, from the idea of the person as a disembodied thinker to that of a social agent, also involves a change in our understanding of the nature of God. Instead of understanding God as First Cause or Prime Mover, this brings one to an appreciation of God as Person, a God who acts and is in relationship with the world and with human beings.

It is possible, of course, for our religious expressions to be inadequate and sources of division rather than of unity. But a fully and properly developed understanding of religion will be in harmony with our appreciation of the necessity of relationships:

Religious reflection, when it is full-grown, must represent the original personal author of the community as the author of the world; and the life of community as a fellowship of the world – of man with Nature as well as of man with man. . . . Religion would then be simply the celebration of communion – of the fellowship of all things in God. Meanwhile, it sustains the intention to achieve this fellowship. (Persons in Relation, 165)

 

In drawing his Gifford lectures to a conclusion, Macmurray believes that, by moving our philosophical standpoint from the I think to the I do, he has been able to offer a more adequate understanding of the nature of the human person, and of our essential relatedness with one another. The primacy of relationships and of community allows him, too, to understand the world as a personal world guided by the God who remains always personal.

Macmurray completed his Gifford lectures in 1954 as the fruit of a lifelong search for the essential meaning of what it is to be a human being.

But his conclusions are not markedly different from the views that he had expressed to a friend more than twenty years before:

I shall treat personality, and the relations of persons in love as sacred and to be reverenced, and nothing else. Whatever is impersonal must not be reverenced or treated as sacred. . . .To do so is to be idolatrous, to worship as God what is not God. And to treat what is personal impersonally is to pollute a holy thing. (Introduction to Reason and Emotion, p.xv).

 

Macmurray has never been what we might term a fashionable philosopher. His whole philosophical enterprise found few friends among those who believed that the primary task of philosophy was to deal with questions of linguistics. Gilbert Ryle, a more famous contemporary philosopher of Macmurray, said that the problem with Macmurray was that he wrote and spoke too simply. Most, believing that they understood him, felt he had nothing profound to offer.

Marx said that the task of philosophy is not to understand the world but to change it. These sentiments my well be laudable, but one may ask if it is possible to change the world without having a proper understanding of it.

By attempting to come to a proper understanding of the nature of the human person, I believe that Macmurray has given us a way of changing our world. By seeing that an essential element of the human person is to be in relationship with other human persons, he has added an insight that can offer hope to a world becoming increasingly depersonalised. Alienation and isolation need not be the last word in our experience of human life. In revealing the essential relatedness of human being, Macmurray has shown that, indeed, he does have something profound to offer.

The Self as Agent. New York, Humanity Books, 1991.

Persons in Relation. London, Faber and Faber, 1961.

Freedom in the Modern World. New York, Prometheus Books, 1992.

Conditions of Freedom. New York, Humanity Books, 1993.

Interpreting the Universe. New York, Humanity Books, 1996.

Reason and Emotion. London, Faber and Faber, 1935.

Cornford, Philip. (ed.) The Personal World: John Macmurray on Self and Society. Edinburgh, Floris Books, 1997.

Creamer, David G. Guides for the Journey. Lanham, MD., University Press of America, 1996.