Guides for the Journey: John MacMurray, Bernard Lonergan, and James Fowler [Paperback]

David G. Creamer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 19, 1996

Guides for the Journey is an introduction to the lives and thoughts of three significant thinkers: John Macmurray, Bernard Lonergan, and James Fowler. The book shows how their work is helpful in interpreting our lives and the world in which we live. Written for the introductory student or reader, this book makes Macmurray, Lonergan, and Fowler's work more accessible and is the first book to actually compare the thought of the three. Throughout the book, quotations from their writings help the reader to absorb and appreciate the texture and meaning of their work. Readers are not presumed to be familiar with philosophy or the meaning of technical terms used. An index and a glossary of names and key terms provide easy reference tools. Endnotes and a bibliography will stimulate further reading on the subject. Guides for the Journey is highly appropriate for university courses in religion as well as religious workshops and lectures. Contents: List of Tables; Preface; Acknowledgments; Introduction; Endnotes; John Macmurray (1891-1976); Endnotes; Macmurray's Characterization of the Personal Life; Endnotes; Bernard Lonergan; Endnotes; Lonergan's Understanding of Understanding; Endnotes; James Fowler (b.1940); Endnotes; Fowler's Faith Development Theory; Endnotes; A Summing Up; Endnotes; Glossary; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

Review

...presentd a remarkably readable essay on each of the three thinkers...a rare book in its clarity and passion...provides the general readerand introductory student with excellent briefings on the three scholars presented while at the same time proposing a deeply felt synthesis which engages the more sophisticated reader.>>> (Humanities )

...presentd a remarkably readable essay on each of the three thinkers...a rare book in its clarity and passion...provides the general readerand introductory student with excellent briefings on the three scholars presented while at the same time proposing a deeply felt synthesis which engages the more sophisticated reader. (Humanities )

About the Author

David G. Creamer, S.J. is Assistant Professor of Education and Assistant Professor of Arts at the University of Manitoba in Canada.

Product Details

• Paperback: 236 pages
• Publisher: University Press Of America (March 19, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0761801820
• ISBN-13: 978-0761801825
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #921,103 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding introduction to Lonergan and Macmurray, & Fowler, June 28, 2003

By 

Neil Hinrichsen (Knysna South Africa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Guides for the Journey: John MacMurray, Bernard Lonergan, and James Fowler (Paperback)

I read a review elsewhere on the Web that said that this book had one of the clearest, most succinct introductions to Bernard Lonergan's thought ever written, and I was not disappointed - this book opened up the whole world of Lonergan's thought for me, and provided a great foundation for exploring it further. (If you haven't discovered Lonergan's thought yet, let me encourage you to do so - whet your appetite at the Bernard Lonergan Web Site...by reading the Introduction to 'The Lonergan Reader' - and then buy Guides to the Journey).

Even more exciting was discovering the thought of John Macmurray, the first thinker that Creamer profiles. (The book consists of two chapters for each thinker - one an introduction to their life, and the second to their ideas, and concludes with a chapter exploring common themes).

Macmurray firstly proposes action, and not thought, as the fundamental basis for understanding what it is to be human. When Descartes says "I think", he is then already divorced from the world. One can ONLY exist in interaction with others and other things, it is absurd to imagine a person as existing in a universe where there is nothing else whatsoever. Action is the full state of the human being, and thinking is a lesser, abstracted state. As Creamer puts it, "Action is a full concrete activity of the Self employing all our capacities whereas thought is constituted by the exclusion of some of our powers and a WITHDRAWAL into an activity which is less concrete and less complex... a theory of knowledge is derived from and included in a theory of action."

Secondly, Macmurray proposes another enormous paradigm shift for Western philosophy by saying that we cannot fully understand individuals in isolation, but only in relation to others. "Relationship is constitutive of human living for Macmurray: '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.' The idea of an isolated agent is self-contradictory; any agent is necessarily in relationship."

These two central tenets are explicated respectively in Macmurray's two major works, "The Self as Agent" and "Persons in Relation" (also published together as "The Form of the Personal") which I immediately went out and bought and read after reading this book. Macmurray's writing is crystal clear, and filled with other fascinating points, such as his distinction between intellectual and emotional representations, in chapter 9 of "The Self as Agent", that I found immensely valuable for my own work...

The book also contains a well-written introduction to the much more widely known James Fowler and his theory of stages of faith. The concluding chapter lays out fascinating parallels between the works of these three thinkers. Each chapter is also followed by extensive footnotes, which I found to be extremely useful as well.

Highly recommended.