Published Books
Towards Self-Meaning (with Garrett Barden), Halifax, New York: Herder and Herder, 1969.
“In this series of intriguing exercises in personal knowledge, Garrett Barden and Philip McShane invite their readers to begin the long-term, personal experiment in ‘the high daring of self-reflection’ that is philosophy. They challenge us to participate directly inthe arduous, solitary, often frustrating quest for wisdom that is reflected in the history of human consciousness.”
The Shaping of the Foundations: Being at Home in the Transcendental Method, Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1976.
“It has become acceptable to consider that we are in a new age of theology. But that new age is no less a precarious beginning than was the new age which died with Aquinas in 1274. The new age pivots on the emergence of a community committed to the self-searching of generalized empirical method: to those who struggle for that emergence this book is dedicated.”
Lonergan’s Challenge to the University and the Economy, Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1980.
“To seriously notice that spontaneous human procedure is indeed opaque is the beginnings of the conversion factor that is so necessary and so absent. Such advertence can blossom into an adventure of understanding feelingfully the proceedor that is me, alone and in history, within an Iliad, continuously redefining that odyssey and Iliad.”
“Language emerges in you, in Helen Keller, in civilization with a Big Bang. McShane cuts beyond current nonsense about language learning by focusing on the roots of that Big Bang in human creativity and speech. The result is a new and radical view of language.”
Beyond Establishment Economics: No Thank-you Mankiw (with Bruce Anderson), Halifax, Nova Scotia: Axial, Press, 2002.
“This is a critical attack on Gregory Makiw’s acclaimed first year economics text, which is representative of the present culture of irrelevant economic education. The remedy to this lies in a fresh understanding of the rhythms of production.”
“This book is an explosive, yet pragmatic, push beyond the vulgur destructiveness of present economics. What is missing is vision. A new enlightened opposition will gradually replace the present stupefaction of classes, the global abuse of citizens.”
Introduction to Critical Thinking (with Alessandra Drage and John Benton), Halifax, Nova Scotia: Axial, Press, 2005.
“This book reaches out to a wide audience with an introductory question, ‘What is critical thinking?’ The authors take seriously the Socratic slogans “know thyself” and “the unexamined life is not worth living.”
Intoducción al Pensamiento Crítico (with Allessandra Gillis Drage and John Benton), James Duffy and Karla Nahmmacher (trans.), Madrid: Plaza y Valdés, 2011.
Introducción al Pensamiento Crítico es una obra que tiene alcance a una amplia gama de audiencias, desde estudiantes hasta profesores.” Se toma muy en serio los slogans socráticos: “conócete a ti mismo” y “la vida sin examinarse no vale la pena vivirla.”
Before the dawn comes round
Here in the night dead-hushed with all its glamours
The music without sound
The solitude clamours
John of the Cross (1542-1591), Songs between the Soul and the Bridegroom
Lack in the Beingstalk: A Giants Causeway, Vancouver: Axial Publishing, 2007.
“What is the lack mentioned in the title of this book? It is mainly a lack of global collaboration in the search for genuine progress, peace and economic quality. The lack relates to isolation both of the individuals and of disciplines, in philosophy and theology —the topics of this book—as well as in other areas.”
“This book provides a unique introduction to a sane and correct view of the basis of economic analysis. The second part of the work adds the specification of a global collaboration that is necessary if we are to face the complex problems of our times and future millenia.”
Bernard Lonergan: His Life and Leading Ideas (with Pierrot Lambert), Vancouver: Axial Publishing, 2010 (second printing 2013).
“This is the story of the strange man Bernard Lonergan (1904–1984) who is slowly being recognized as a hidden genius of the twentieth century. His structuring of the key pattern of global collaboration will ground an effective cherising of humanity and its planetary home.”
“This short book points to a revolution in religion and its study. Above all there is the revolution that identifies study, at its best, as a self-contemplative wondering reach towards ALL, be that ALL envisaged as Atman or Allah or an Unknown Cosmic Friendliness.”
Futurology Express, Vancouver: Axial Publishing, 2013.
“This Little Red Book points to the road forward from the present crippled and crippling structures of economics and education. It reaches way beyond Mao Zedon’s little red efforts and present big blue muddlings in finance. It calls for, and is to lead to, a global collaboration of care that is some centuries away.”
“This little book is, in various ways, a natural follow-up to the book Futurology Express. It is for those who ask what, who are whats, in regard to the leaving behind of the complex chemical wonderland left on the bed or on the roadside or in the bombed mall.”
Piketty’s Plight and the Global Future, Vancouver: Axial Publishing, 2014.
“Despite its massive appeal to data, Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century is insufficiently radical to the extent that it remains trapped in muddled descriptive categories. This ‘is like a physicist searching data for traces of the Higgs particle without eyes laden with the standard model. It is like a chef reaching for new edges of taste without a subtly-minded tongue.’”
“El objetivo aquí es brindarte un entendimiento decente de una nueva esperanza global. Apunto aquí, y en los siguientes capítulos, a la brevedad, la simplicidad y la claridad. Después de haber estado debatiendo entre los distintos modos en que podía abordar el predicamento de Piketty, mi decisión sobre el libro justificó la incorporación del subtítulo.”
The Allure of the Compelling Genius of History: Teaching Young Humans Humanity and Hope, Vancouver: Axial Publishing, 2015.
McShane invites the reader “to walk in fantasy and creativity towards a fuller global caring view. It is a challenge to seed a strange effective Han Dynasty of the well of loneliness. The new dynasty of global care is to be slowly and patiently weaved round the minding of the Wholly Frail that is the Unknown Real Jesus of the symphony of history.”
“The title is, alas, more than attention-getting: it is brutally and destructively true. Of course, the stupid view is shared by Donald’s minions. How might I help you to identify the stupidity, the haughtiness, the abuse? Think, perhaps, of election or government promises regarding wages or general increasing of middleclass purchasing power. A quiet but serious pause over the non-stupid view of profit exposes the silliness, the abusiveness, the immorality.”
Economics for Everyone: Das Jus Kapital, 3rd ed., Vancouver: Axial Publishing, 2017.
“The central aim of the book is to get people to notice that the economics being taught and used to justify policies such as tinkering with interest rates leads to regular disasters, global and local, in financing and feeding and fun. Single-flow analysis has been boosted by the idiocy of considering exchanges of property as a standard of economic well-being. The gambling is now common knowledge, but it continues.”
This book is an invitation “to a chemical revolution, one that lifts us towards the positive Anthropocene, leaving behind the sick killing and dying days of the negative Anthropocene so neatly identified in 1940 by Charlie Chaplin at the conclusion of The Great Dictator: ‘Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.’”
Interpretation from A to Z, Vancouver: Axial Publishing, 2020.
“This little book moves along with many twists and turns, but it is also a straightforward help to begin to read properly the two main treatments by Lonergan of the topic of interpretation: Section 3 of chapter 17 of Insight, and chapter 7 of Method in Theology. The broad interest is in finding a full effective cultural basis of a future humanity.”
“When you ask what money is, you ask what a promise is. Now, what is a promise? Well, it is a set of operations within intentional concsiousness. One of the reasons why I wrote the little book was that the basic elements in economics are trust, promise, etc.; and just as the Greeks felt the discomfort of Socrates, so we should now begin to feel the discomfort of having a set of undefined elements within economics.”
McShane concludes that emergence and evolution are explained in terms of probabilities of emergence and probabilities of survival of recurrence-schemes. To arrive at a principle of emergence, he focused on actual procedures of empirical investigators and the type of explanation they seek. Those doing the relevant sciences—biophysics and biochemistry are his focus in the last four chapters—can verify objective randomness and emergence by attending to their performance.
“There is a broad consensus that humanity is facing an unprecedented challenge to surviving on Earth. There are large challenges of climate change and ocean garbage toxicity as well as subtler challenges of efforts to cultivate a new aesthetic. The present book asks of us to reach for the deeper grounding of all such efforts.”
