The Self as Agent

Macmurray is in my opinion one of the most neglected philosophers of the 20th century. His exceptionally lucid work lays the ground for a comprehensive non-Cartesian view of the world. 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. 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 with Others. Macmurray corresponded with Martin Buber, and his thought essentially extends Buber's vision. 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"). 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". A great short introduction to Macmurray and his work can be found in David Creamer's book "Guides to the Journey".