Throughout his life, Professor of Philosophy, John Muirhead, sought to put his ethical principles into practice. Indeed, whilst philosophers are often caricatured as people who are ‘brilliant at dealing with very abstract thought… but hopeless at dealing with the practicalities of life’, by contrast, John Muirhead aimed to bring ‘theory into relation with life’. He embodied the humanist values of compassion, inclusion, and social reform, ensuring these beliefs were not just theoretical ideals, but lived principles. In 1886, along with civil servant James Bonar, and Liberal Party politician John Murray Macdonald, he was one of the founding members of the UK’s first ethical society, the London Ethical Society.
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