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Renewed, Dissolved, Remembered: MacKinnon and Metaphysics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Nicholas Lash
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‘I have some longstanding debts: to Donald MacKinnon, who introduced me to philosophy at Aberdeen between 1950 and 1952; to Cornelius Ernst, who got me to read Wittgenstein, together with Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, at Hawkesyard in 1957-60; and to Adolf Darlap, who helped me to understand Heidegger (much easier than understanding Wittgenstein), in Munich between 1964 and 1965’.

Serendipitously, a few days before being invited to contribute to these celebrations some remarks on that ‘longstanding debt’ to Donald MacKinnon, while sorting out some papers I came across three yellowing pages of typescript. On the top of the final page was written, in that inimitably energetic and near-illegible hand: ‘Done for Theology in July 1977, but rejected by the editors as unsuitable on the inflexible recommendation of Dr James Mark (reviews editor). DMM’. (This was by by no means the only occasion on which Donald had noted the inflexibility of one to whom he usually referred as ‘the brother of the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police’.) The spurned offering was a review of Christopher Stead’s Divine Substance, which had been published earlier that year.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 82 , Issue 969 , November 2001, pp. 486 - 498
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Kerr, Fergus, Theology after Wittgenstein (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), p. viiiGoogle Scholar.

2 Stead, Christopher, Divine Substance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Kert, Theology alter Wittgenstein, p. 122; see Ken, Fergus, ‘Idealism and realism: an old controversy dissolved’, Christ, Ethics and Tragedy. Essays in Honour of Donald MacKinnon, edited by Surin, Kenneth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 15‐33Google Scholar.I had been invited to chair the Cambridge conference but, unfortunately, was out of the country at the time.

4 Theology after, pp. 101,103; the translators in question were C. G. Luckhardt and M. A. E. Aue.

5 Ibid., pp. 102, 104–5.

6 Ibid., pp. 108, 109.

7 Ibid., pp. 114, 115.

8 Ibid., pp. 118, 120, 121.

9 Ibid., OD. 122, 123.

10 MacKinnon, Donald, ‘Idealism and Realism: an Old Controversy Renewed’, Explorations in Theology 5 (London: SCM Press, 1979), p. 138Google Scholar. The following essay in this collection, dating from 1977, was entitled: ‘The Conflict between Realism and Idealism: Remarks on the significance for the philosophy of religion of a classical philosophical controversy recently renewed’.

11 Kerr, Theology after, pp. 135,136.

12 Ibid., pp. 136, 140.

13 Ken, ‘Idealism and realism: an old controversy dissolved’, pp. 16, 20.

14 Ibid., p. 21; the reference is to Renford Bambrough, ‘Principia Metaphysica’, Philosophy, 39 (1964), p. 103.Google Scholar

15 MacKinnon, Donald, ‘John Wisdom's Paradox and Discovery’, Borderlands of Theology and Other Essays, edited by Roberts, George W. and Smucker, Donovan E. (London: Lutterworth Press, 1968), pp. 222,223Google Scholar; the first clause of the second quotation is cited by Kerr in ‘… dissolved’, p. 15. In his introductory essay to Borderlands, MacKinnon noted that ‘in philosophy my chief concern has been with the question of the limits of experience, of intelligible, descriptive discourse, with the kind of questions discussed by Kant as that philosopher is presented in Mr P. F. Strawson's recent book The Bounds of Senre and by Professor Wisdom in some of the papers contained in Paradox and Discovery’ (p. 21).

16 I do not remember any occasion at which MacKinnon pointed out that he was quoting Wittgenstein: ‘We are up against one of the great sources of philosophical bewilderment: a substantive makes us look for a thing that corresponds to it’(The Blue and Brown Books, p. 1, quoted from Kerr, Theology afer, p. 145).

17 Kerr, ‘… dissolved’, p. 24; Wittgenstein, , Philosophical Remarks (Oxford, 1975), p. 86Google Scholar, cited from Kerr, ‘… dissolved’, p. 23.

18 Kerr, ‘… dissolved’, p. 24.

19 Ibid., pp. 25, 28.

20 Ibid., p. 31, citing MacKinnon, ‘… an Old Controversy Renewed’, p. 138.

21 MacKinnon, D. M., “‘Substance” in Christology — a Cross‐bench View’, Christ, Faith and History. Cambridge Studies in Christology, edited by Sykes, S. W. and Clayton, J. P. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), pp. 279‐300, p. 280Google Scholar.

22 Ibid., p. 281.

23 Loc. cit.

24 MacKinnon, ‘John Wisdom's Padx and Discovery’, p. 224. Kerr cited the phrase ‘the ruthlessly honest meticulous realism of Moore’ in ‘… dissolved’, p. 15

25 Geach, Peter, ‘Symposium: On What There Is’, Freedom, Language, and Reality, Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume XXV (London: Harrison, 1951), pp. 134Google Scholar, 136. Amongst other instances of MacKinnon's paraphrases of this passage, see The Problem of Metaphysics (Cambridge: cambridge University Press 1974), p. 96Google Scholar; ‘The Relation of the Doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity’, Themes in Theology. The Three‐fold Cord: Philosophy, Politics and Theology (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1987), pp. 145‐167; p. 147.

26 Kerr, Theology afer, p. 141.

27 MacKinnon, The Problem of Metaphyics, p. 121.

28 Ibid., p. 136.

29 See my obituary of Donald MacKinnon in The Guardian, 5 March 1994.

30 MacKinnon, “‘Substance” in Christology’, p. 280′; Kern, Theology after, p. 187.

31 Kerr, Theology after, pp. 118, 120; see note 8 above.

32 Ibid., p. 140; see note 12 above.

33 George Steiner, ‘Tribute to Donald MacKinnon’, Theology (January/February 1995), pp. 2–9; pp. 2,3.

34 Rowan Williams, obituary of Donald MacKinnon, The Tablet, 12 March 1994.

35 Kerr, Theology after, p. 171, paraphrasing MacKinnon, Explorations in Theology, p. 147.

36 Kerr, Theology afer, pp. 147–148.

37 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Remarks, p. 86, cited from Kerr, ‘… dissolved’, p. 23; see above at note 17.