{"id":1144,"date":"2025-07-24T18:15:35","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T17:15:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/?page_id=1144"},"modified":"2025-07-27T20:05:43","modified_gmt":"2025-07-27T19:05:43","slug":"preface","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/the-foundations-of-philosophy-epistemological-self-consciousness\/preface\/","title":{"rendered":"Preface"},"content":{"rendered":"

Preface<\/h1>\n

This work is about philosophy, and what makes a philosophy distinctively Christian in character; arguing that it is indeed possible for philosophy to conceived of as first<\/em> Christian and not just philosophy done by people that happen to be Christians.<\/em>\u00a0 To that end, we must deconstruct our discipline, understanding how and why it was previously conceived and then to reconstruct it in a Christian fashion consistent with the Christian worldview.\u00a0 Philosophy to be Christian is argued to be epistemologically self-conscious<\/em> philosophy, philosophy that is not just internally coherent but philosophy that reflects the mind of the Christian God as the only true account of reality and argued in a manner<\/em> honoring to the revelation of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.\u00a0 It argues that a classical division of philosophy into metaphysics, epistemology and ethics is valid but only when conceived of in a Christian sense and integrated in the Christian worldview.\u00a0 It argues that competing philosophical and scientific accounts are coherent and successful only to the degree that they have imported consciously or unconsciously, Christian conceptions of the world; thus, rather than refuting the thesis they confirm it.\u00a0 We then apply this insight to what should be the character and practice of a Christian political philosophy.<\/p>\n

This book is based on my PhD thesis.[1]<\/sup><\/a> \u00a0Whilst the argument of the book and the thesis is almost unchanged, I do feel the book improved substantially and meaningfully on the PhD version in structure, style, and clarity.\u00a0 Most significantly, it benefitted from an additional, substantial chapter on political involvement detailed in item b. below.\u00a0 Material was reorganized or abridged to meet wordcount limitations, and the requirement to be concise helped rather than hindered the quality of the book.\u00a0 For these reasons, I would strongly encourage the interested or stimulated reader to get access to the full book version rather than just the online PhD version.\u00a0 However, the PhD version remains useful for scholars interested in the finer details, when needing to copy and paste quotations, or when chasing references, so both versions remain available.\u00a0 Likewise, a section of my blog[2]<\/a> contains material that never made it into either the final draft of the PhD or this book version but will be of interest to the technical specialist.\u00a0 In more detail, the chief differences are:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The footnotes in the PhD version were frequently verbose and added technical cross-references or commentary sometimes tangential to the main argument. For the printed version, footnotes were abridged and focused on supplementing the main argument of the text.\u00a0 Similarly, some of the very lengthy footnotes have now evolved into articles which are found on my blog with the PhD thesis.\u00a0 There was an occasional promotion of a footnote into the main text where on re-reading I thought it particularly helpful to the argument.<\/li>\n
  2. An entire chapter on political involvement was added back in after being removed from the thesis at the request of the examiners. In my view, this reflected a fundamental difference in philosophical perspective, namely that for myself, philosophy should be transformative<\/em> rather than just therapeutic<\/em> or elucidatory.\u00a0 From my perspective, the material of this chapter was where we moved from the philosophical coffee shop to the street and so is an essential<\/em> chapter, not only warranted but necessary to complete the philosophical picture I had painted.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    It was also an experience to have to rewrite in American spelling, using American punctuation rules and according to the Chicago Manual of Style guidelines\u2014starting life as an engineer, I learnt a simple numerical style of the IEEE\/IEE, as a trainee teacher I learnt the generic Humanities style, and then two more proprietary styles internal to my University school!\u00a0 Thus, whilst I have tried extremely hard to correct the manuscript in line with the CMOS conventions as modified by Wipf & Stock, there might be spelling, grammatical or typographical errors for which the responsibility will be mine alone.<\/p>\n

    Michael Macneil, Newcastle Upon Tyne, 29th<\/sup> September 2024.<\/p>\n

    [1]<\/a> Available at https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/epistemological-self-consciousness\/<\/a> .<\/p>\n

    [2]<\/a> https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/category\/thesis\/phd-appendices\/<\/a><\/p>\n

    \n
    \n
    \nAnalytical Outline<\/a>\n<\/div>\n
    \nAcknowledgments<\/a>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Preface This work is about philosophy, and what makes a philosophy distinctively Christian in character; arguing that it is indeed possible for philosophy to conceived of as first Christian and not just philosophy done by people that happen to be Christians.\u00a0 To that end, we must deconstruct our discipline, understanding how and why it was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1176,"parent":1136,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1144","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\r\nPreface - Planet M Blog<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Preface - EPISTEMOLOGICAL SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/the-foundations-of-philosophy-epistemological-self-consciousness\/preface\/\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Preface - 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