John Macmurray

Abstracts of papers to be presented on October 18th 2025

Macmurray and the crisis of the western civilisation
Paul Gee

In this presentation I look at Macmurray’s work in the context of the evolution of European thought. I argue that Macmurray was attempting to pre-empt a crisis – one which is perhaps now increasingly evident to all of us in the form of increasing societal tensions. I focus particularly on Macmurray’s radical reframing of the concept of reason which I see as a key contribution.
For Macmurray, reason is not just about thinking: it applies also to emotion and to our relationships with others. He argues that reason and rationality are ultimately about being real, as well as acting in terms of what is real in the world.
The presentation is intended to provide a springboard for discussion. The plan is for the short lecture to be available as a video in the week before the seminar so that participants can engage with it before the event. At the seminar I will provide a cut down version of the presentation to give plenty of time for conversation.

Knowing
Gordon Ferguson

The paper makes use of Macmurray’s philosophy of action and relationship to explore the possibilities of how we know. A purely cognitive understanding of knowing, based on observing the world and thinking about what is observed leads to only one form of knowing, which I call ‘knowing about’. Although Gilbert Ryle explores ‘knowing how’ in his book The Concept Of Mind, as the title suggests, it is looking at the concept from a cognitive point of view, the primacy of thought. Assuming with Macmurray the primacy of action leads to two more possible ways of knowing: through action or direct engagement with the world, which I call ‘knowing of’, or more fully ‘knowing the being of’, in my view a much richer understanding then the merely cognitive ‘knowing how’; and through our relationships, which I call ‘knowing with’.

Nicaea to Now: A Religion For The Future
Mary MacCallum Sullivan
Psychotherapist and Psychotherapy teacher, Scotland
The loss of religion for our society has allowed a kind of ‘paganism’ that is the consumerist mode of being. We are adrift in a barren postmodern wilderness of chaos and dis-order, where the voices of despair call out for ‘strong leadership’- a demand which is, for whatever reasons, unmeetable. Christianity – or for that matter, religion – has nothing to say.

The decision of Christianity taken at Nicaea created a problem: the idea that Jesus was ‘God in human disguise’. Jesus as God could then be ‘followed’, instead of emulated, which would entail grasping the responsibility to continue his work, using his teachings to critically engage with the material reality of the world as we find it. The task of religion in our time is more urgent than ever: ‘to create and sustain the intention to realise the community of all mankind’. If we insist, as Macmurray did, on a religion that is ‘for persons’ rather than ‘for God’, centred on ethics and human suffering rather than the hope for heaven, I am suggesting that a re-turn, with Macmurray, based on his ‘Search for a Faith’(1945) talks, to the core of the Jesus teaching offers a way ‘back’ that may prefigure hope for the future.

Two Kinds of Hope: A Macmurrian Approach to Religious Education in Troubled Times
Julian Stern
Professor of Education and Religion
Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln, UK

The Scottish philosopher John Macmurray wrote extensively about religion. Having been brought up within a Presbyterian household, he was disillusioned by institutional religion as a result of his experiences of World War One and the attitude of churches to that war. Later in his life, he lived in a Quaker community, and his writings are well represented in the Society of Friends’ Quaker Faith & Practice. Macmurray’s philosophy is often described as a religious philosophy, as religion is so central to his views on personhood and community. He wrote extensively on education, and although he wrote little about religious education (a subject he saw as a matter of training in a specific religion, or what we might now call ‘confessional’ religious education), his writing about hope in religion, when combined with his general educational philosophy, provides a valuable lesson in what I wish to refer to as the ‘two kinds of hope’ evident in different forms of religion, religious education, and schooling as a whole. One kind of hope is – as I will describe it – a falsely utopian hope, a trick to help people forget about real troubles and challenges; the other kind of hope is – for me – a realistic (if still uncertain) hope, perhaps a ‘realistic utopian’ hope. All religious and non-religious traditions have elements of both kinds of hope. I recommend that, in troubled times (and, to be clear, all times are troubled times), religious education has an obligation to explore both kinds of hope.