John Caird‐Theologian and Philosopher

Extract

John Henry Muirhead once said that British Idealism was from the first in essence a philosophy of religion. He saw it as an appeal to the ideas of the German Post-Kantians for the purpose of defending religious belief against the many new challenges mounted to it during the second half of the nineteenth century, challenges which had rendered untenable the less critical faith of preceding generations. Muirhead’s interpretation could be disputed, for it is not clear that it accurately describes the principal motivation of all members of the British Idealist school, but if there is truth in it, and I think that there is, nowhere is this more so than in the case of the Scottish theologian and philosopher, John Caird, for Caird’s entire oeuvre revolved around the project of reconciling Christianity and Idealism.

A celebrated preacher, then innovative professor of theology and finally much respected Principal of Glasgow University, John Caird was in his time a well-known and highly regarded figure. Today however his work is almost entirely forgotten, along with that of many others in the idealist movement; such ways of thinking having passed from favour as completely as they once held dominance of the intellectual scene. Yet we run the risk of misunderstanding our history, and thus our own present, if we insist on simply turning our faces from certain eras of thought or movements of ideas and deeming them fallow or uninteresting. For that way we simply construct a history which reflects our current prejudices but never can challenge them. In this paper I shall outline the work of John Caird in an attempt to show why it deserves to be remembered, but first let me provide just a few biographical details.