John Macmurray

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What it Means to be a Person

The Religious Philosophy of John Macmurray

Macmurray’s focus on agency and relationality allows for a non-dogmatic and non idealistic understanding of religion as being about the fulfilment of positive person-to-person relationships.

Saturday 20th October 2012
10.30am-4.30pm

The Friends’ Meeting House
43 St Giles
Oxford OX1 3LW Click for directions

Main address:
‘Religion in Public: Macmurray on Religion and Politics’
by Esther McIntosh, Research fellow at the Faculty of Education and Theology, York St. John University, and author of ‘John Macmurray’s Religious Philosophy – What it means to be a Person’.

Panel Discussion:
John Macmurray – a philosopher for the 21st Century
John Macmurray’s philosophy may have been neglected in the last century, but is finding increasing sway in psychology, mental health, sociology, emotional education, bioethics, politics and feminist theology.

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Expediency or Conviction?
How to Engage People in a Common Cause

Some comparisons between the thought of John Macmurray, and obersvations made in the Common Cause report.

John Macmurray:

“The concentration of interest upon instrumental values involves a growing unawareness of and in-sensitiveness to intrinsic values; and our sensitiveness to intrinsic values is the measure of our civilisation.”

Science Out Of Bounds in ‘Religion Art & Science’, The Forward Lectures, 1960; Liverpool Press, 1961; p 25.

Common Cause:

“civil society organisations must champion some long-held (but
insufficiently esteemed) values, while seeking to diminish the primacy of many values which are now prominent”

John Macmurray:

“My purpose has been to challenge …… the assumption that the Self is …. a ‘knowing subject’, …. [and] that the Self is an isolated individual”

The Self As Agent, 1957, published by Faber and Faber, 1995, p11-12

Common Cause:

“There is mounting evidence from a range of studies in cognitive science that the dominant ‘Enlightenment model’ of human decision-making is extremely incomplete.”

John Macmurray:

“…if reason is the capacity to act in terms of the nature of the object, it is emotion which stands directly behind activity determining its substance and direction, while thought is related to action indirectly and through emotion, detemrining only its form, and that only partially.”

Reason and Emotion, 1935, published by Humanities Press, 1992,

Common Cause:

“There is mounting evidence that facts play only a partial role in shaping people’s judgment. Emotion is often far more important.

Expediency or Conviction?
How to Engage People in a Common Cause

Speakers:
Morning: Dr. Tom Crompton, Change Strategist, WWF-UK
Author of “Common Cause – The Case for Working with our Cultural Values”.

WWF-UK has partnered with four other organisations – Climate Outreach and Information Network (COIN), Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), Friends of the Earth (FOE) and Oxfam – to explore the central importance of cultural values in underpinning concern about the issues upon which we each work.

Click here for the Common Cause Website

Afternoon: Dr. Richard Allen, Member of the Fellowship and Chairman of The Society for Post-Critical and Personalist Studies (SPCPS).
SPCPS aims to promote interest in, and further application of, the personalist way of thinking in philosophy and other disciplines.

Expediency or Conviction?
How to Engage People in a Common Cause

10:30 Arrival and registration, with tea and coffee
11:00 Introduction to the day
11:05 Tom Crompton
12:00 Questions

1:00 Buffet LUNCH – hopefully in the garden

2:00 Announcements
2:05 Richard Allen
2:45 Questions
3:15 Plenary Session

4:00 Tea
Disperse by 5:00

Back
Location of Oxford Quaker Meeting House, 43 St Giles, OX1 3LW
and directions from the train station (15 min walk)

View Oxford train station to Meeting House in a larger map

Oxford park and ride
Parking in the beautiful historic city centre is frustrating enough at the best of times, so why not take the stress out of parking by using one of Oxford’s 5 park and ride sites? – Click for details

Expediency or Conviction?
How to Engage People in a Common Cause

The philosphy of John Macmurray, which places persons as actors relating to the world, rather than the conventional approach of persons as thinkers observing the world, can enable campaigning groups to better understand how to motivate and enlist supporters.

Saturday 15th October 2011
10.30am-4.30pm
The Friends’ Meeting House, 43 St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3LW Click for directions

Speakers:
Morning: Dr. Tom Crompton, Change Strategist, WWF-UK
Author of “Common Cause – The Case for Working with our Cultural Values”.

Afternoon: Dr. Richard Allen, Member of the Fellowship and Chairman of The Society for Post-Critical and Personalist Studies (SPCPS).

Click for details on:

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