Education for Personal Life: J ohn M ac M urray on Why Learning to be Human Requires Emotional Discipline

In this article I discuss the philosophy of J ohn M ac M urray, and in particular, his little‐examined writings on discipline and emotion education. It is argued that discipline is a vital element in the emotion education M acMurray thought central to learning to be human, because for him it takes concerted effort to overcome the human tendency toward egocentricity. It is maintained that M ac M urray's philosophy of education is of contemporary significance for at least two reasons. On the one hand it suggests an alternative vision for humanistic education. While liberal educationists such as O akeshott and Peters stressed that the pursuit of knowledge and understanding was the main way in which persons could develop their humanity M ac M urray instead emphasised that persons can only learn to become human by pursuing other‐centred relationships. On the other hand his philosophy can also reveal the limitations in much contemporary debate in emotion education which critics (such as E cclestone and C lack) suggest increasingly aims at little more than helping pupils feel better about themselves. According to MacMurray a genuine emotion education can enlarge humanity by supporting persons to feel and act for the sake of others rather than think about themselves. Despite sympathy for MacMurray's account of the purposes of education it is nonetheless concluded that the pursuit of knowledge as an end in itself does not necessarily constitute a negative expression of human agency (as MacMurray asserts)—but rather that the disciplined pursuit of knowledge may also form part of any education concerned to enrich human life.