To perceive tragedy without the loss of hope: Donald MacKinnon’s moral realism
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Date
25/06/2016Author
Bowyer, Andrew Derek
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Abstract
Donald MacKinnon (1913-1994) is arguably one of the most influential Anglican theologians
in the British context in the second half of the 20th century. His writings reveal a restive and
unsystematic thinker, yet there is a good case to be made that a series of reoccurring
questions – ‘obsessions’ might better suit MacKinnon’s temperament –appear throughout.
These relate to the demands of moral realism, the tensions between the philosophical
positions of realism and idealism generally, and the perennially disruptive presence of Christ,
whose redemptive significance cannot be fully appreciated apart from a tragic ascription.
The first chapter proposes a new lens through which MacKinnon’s project may be viewed. It
will characterise his work as a form of ‘therapeutic’ philosophy that combines a call for
intense interiority and moral realism in a way that sees these notions as mutually involved
and reinforcing. As the chapter progresses the extent to which Kant lies behind much of
MacKinnon’s therapeutic language of ‘purgation’ and ‘illumination’ will become clear. So
too the fact that moral realism becomes, for MacKinnon, both the end of a certain therapeutic
discipline and a commitment that shapes his engagement with philosophy and theology at
every level. It characterises a ‘form of life’. MacKinnon never sets out a systematic defence
of moral realism nor for his insistence that the tension between idealism and realism is at
once a) something crucial for theologians to confront explicitly, b) a tension that necessarily
exists and remains perennially unsolved, and c) results in the continued need for a language
of metaphysics. Yet, these ideas occur again and again throughout his corpus. They emerge
as philosophical inevitabilities from within the task of continued description and redescription
of human experience in all its historical particularity. An examination of the key
influences on MacKinnon follows in Chapter 2, and it is here we can detect one of the
sources of MacKinnon’s restiveness as he seeks to imbibe insights from a confident moral
apologic theology of the previous generation, while at the same time respecting the ways in
which the analytical turn had highlighted the impossibility of such projects. The rest of the
thesis is spent looking at various domains in which MacKinnon’s therapeutic moral realism
comes to the fore. These include his understanding of Christ (Chapter 3), his convictions as to
the indispensability of good literature for moral philosophy (Chapter 4) and his response to
Wittgenstein as he sought to articulate his own distinctive moral and theological convictions
(Chapter 5). The thesis concludes with words of affirmation and critique, having shown
MacKinnon to represent a compelling voice in support of catholic humanism that remains
provocative into the 21st century.
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