Three Ways of Idealizing the World

There are three ways of idealizing the world. There is idealization through purely intellectual and logical processes, in which reasoning alone attempts to prove that the world has characters that satisfy our highest aspirations. There are, again, moments of intense emotional appreciation when, through a happy conjunction of the state of the self and of the surrounding world, the beauty and harmony of existence is disclosed in experiences which are the immediate consummation of all for which we long. Then there is an idealization through actions that are directed by thought, such as are manifested in the works of fine art and in all human relations perfected by loving care. The first path has been taken by many philosophies. The second while it lasts is the most engaging. It sets the measure of our ideas of possibilities that are to be realized by intelligent endeavor. But its objects depend upon fortune and are insecure. The third method represents the way of deliberate quest for security of the values that are enjoyed by grace in our happy moments.

John Dewey, The Quest for Certainty, Chapter XI

Lux Aurumque

Edward Esch's most famous poem -- and, indeed, as far as I can tell, his only extant poem at all -- is the following:

Light of Gold

Light,
warm and heavy as pure gold
and the angels sing softly
to the new-born baby.

It is most famous, however, not in its original English but in its translation into Latin by Charles Anthony Silvestri:

Lux Aurumque

Lux
calida gravisque pura velut aurum
Et canunt angeli molliter
modo natum.

The reason is that the composer Eric Whitacre liked Esch's poem, and wanted to set it to music, but thought it would sound better in Latin. And that eventually led to this project:



Which isn't too bad a fate for a minor poem of no clear provenance.

The Flight of an Aeroplane

What Bacon omitted was the play of a free imagination, controlled by the requirements of coherence and logic. The true method of discovery is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts from the ground of particular observation; it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization; and it again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation.

Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, Chapter I, Section I.

Totum Simul

This is related to the quotation from Pringle-Pattison that I recently posted:

There is, I understand, some doubt about the genuineness of the letter in which Mozart is supposed to speak of his ability to hear his own compositions “all at once” by an interior audition, and of the incommunicable rapture of the experience. Yet I imagine it is not really doubtful that the great artist in every kind must really possess some such power of envisaging as a totum simul, however imperfectly, what he can only convey to us by means of a detail which he has to elaborate, and we to “follow,” in the form of long-drawn-out successiveness. Not to speak of the vision of the artist himself, which is, after all, the artist’s secret, if we consider only our own imperfect appreciation and enjoyment of the artist’s work when it is already there for us, it seems to me that as we learn to appreciate better, the work we appreciate and enjoy steadily sheds its successiveness. There was first a stage in which single stanzas of the poem, single scenes, or even speeches, of the drama, single phrases of the melody, were all that could fill our minds at one time; appreciation of the whole as a unity with structure had to be won with difficulty and the aid of conscious recollection and reflection. This is afterwards succeeded by a stage at which the impression is made by an interrelated whole, and our judgement of appreciation passed primarily on the whole as such, with a conscious immediacy.

To take an illustration which I purposely make childishly simple. I suppose we all know the sort of person who reads a great work of fiction in the mood appropriate to a railway detective story, for the sake of its surprises, and would have his enjoyment spoiled by any chance remark disclosing the turn the story will take. I had once myself a friend of this type; it was impossible to discuss or describe in his company any work of fiction he had not read, because, as he used to say, “I might some day want to read the book myself, and I shall get no pleasure from it if I know beforehand what is coming”. In men of this kind, whose enjoyment depends almost wholly on being perpetually taken by surprise, I suppose we might say the appreciation of narrative and dramatic art is at its lowest. To one who wants to appreciate the art of the story, or the play, the element of mere surprise is a hindrance; it is an advantage to him to know beforehand what the incidents to be treated are, that he may be free to concentrate his attention on the structure of the whole. And, similarly, the great artists are those who depend least for their effects on the administering of pure surprises. What shocks are there in the Iliad, or, again, in Tom Jones? Could either of these works be rightly appreciated by anyone hearing the narrative for the first time? Fielding, I know, does contrive to keep up a mystery, though a fairly transparent one, through the story. But how much does it contribute to the real merits of his tale, or which of us would find his appreciation of the book affected if the author had taken the reader into his confidence from the start? It cannot even be said that Fielding has at least availed himself, for artistic effect, of the uncertainty whether his hero will eventually be rewarded with the hand of his mistress. Anyone aware of the literary tradition to which the book belongs knows from the outset that the pair are meant to make a match of it. For the matter of that, most of us, I believe, would not in the least mind if they did not. What we really care for is that the end of the story, be it what it may, shall be of a piece with what has gone before.

A. E. Taylor, The Faith of a Moralist, volume 1, chapter IX

Watering-Down

A besetting temptation of the scientific apologist for religion is to take some of its current expressions and after clearing away crudities of thought (which must necessarily be associated with anything adapted to the everyday needs of humanity) to water down the meaning until little is left that could possibly be in opposition to science or to anything else. If the revised interpretation had first been presented no one would have raised vigorous criticism; on the other hand no one would have been stirred to any great spiritual enthusiasm. It is the less easy to steer clear of this temptation because it is necessarily a question of degree. Clearly if we are to extract from the tenets of a hundred different sects any coherent view to be defended some at least of them must be submitted to a watering-down process.

Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, Conclusion.

I Wish

I write like
Oscar Wilde

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Which would be lovely, but I suspect is not true. I put in the Consummate Art post to get this one. But when I put the Teaching of Texts post, I get Dan Brown, which is considerably less lovely. Indeed, I get a different author for just about every post, so I'm not sure what the underlying idea is. But this was the coolest one, so it goes here. (hat-tip)

The Prescience of an Immanent Destiny

The 'eternal act' by which the universe subsists can only be thought of by us as process continually renewed; and although, to the synoptic view, the end cannot be separated from the beginning, as it is to the finite individual within the process, the type of experience suggested is not one in which the stages are viewed side by side as in a fixed picture, but one in which the whole is felt in every part, and every part is real as an element in the whole.

Hence it is, I think, that the analogy of a work of art—a great drama or story—often seems to bring us nearest to what we feel must be the truth. For here, too, there is no such thing as a detached event, a mere present. In a great tragedy everything that happens is organic to the whole; the action which passes on the stage at any moment depends for its significance on all that has gone before, and we forefeel in it the future issues which are being decided. When we read or witness a play for the first time, and the course of the action is unknown to us, this sense of the solidarity of the whole, the prescience of an immanent destiny working itself out in individual scenes—in a word or a glance—naturally grows as we proceed, and reaches its maximum of intensity as we approach the close. The infinite pathos of Othello is all uttered in the parting cry, 'No way but this'. But in the case of Greek tragedy, where the legendary basis was familiar to the spectators, or in the case of any modern masterpiece where the end and the outline of the plot are known to us beforehand, this perception of the meaning of the whole as articulated in the individual incidents is present to the reader or the spectator of the piece from the very outset. And the same thing is true when we hear the opening chords of a well-known symphony; we hear them not as single chords but as elements in a great musical structure, prophetic, as it were, of all the thought and emotion that is to follow. The former case, where the End is gradually disclosed to us—divined by us—as we proceed, represents our human, finite attitude towards the future; the second, which may be supposed to reproduce that of the original poet or composer, is perhaps the nearest analogue we have to the divine apprehension of the temporal.

Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison, The Idea of God in the Light of Recent Philosophy, Lecture 18.

Three Poem Drafts

All very rough stuff. The third one, the roughest of all, was actually inspired by this post.

Fruits

Squeeze the fruit of life, they said,
drain its every drop.
But in the end a rotting pulp
was all that was left, and sterile seeds
that vanished in the morning.
The fruit that made the future
ripened slowly on the bough,
and over-ripened, fell,
decayed, to give the world
a birthing of new trees.

Examen

O God, you are thrice holy as you dwell in endless light;
send down your flawless splendor to your children in the night,
for if you do not aid us, how empty is our song!
And how clearly all our virtue but a mask to hide our wrong.
When I think upon my life, Lord, I should weep with tears of shame:
each moment hides a weakness by which I've failed your holy name:
when nations look upon me they should see Christ Crucified,
yet often how it seems that I am nothing but a lie!
Should I not become a living sign of endless, holy grace?
But my life is more a symbol of the failing of our race.
With your sanguine power flowing, Lord, cast out this sin in me
as the music of your Spirit moves in psalmic melody.

O God, you are most holy with your goodness ever-same
and who would stand before you if you chose to render blame?
Not I, my King, most surely I would drown beneath the sea
of times when I have fallen short of where our hearts should be.
The love that I have given has not always come from you;
my hope is streaked with cowardice that runs it through and through;
in all my faith how truly rare are glory's little gleams;
and prudence in me shifts around like faces in a dream;
my courage, not a martyr's, is but mostly comfort tame;
and moderation flees away like children in a game.
With your sanguine power flowing, Lord, cast out this sin in me
as the music of your Spirit moves in psalmic melody.

Susan Pevensie

We once saw beyond the thing to the Thought
in the Mind of the Maker of all
and visions of light in snow-laden wood
almost came at our bidding and call.
And the light of the gods was bright in all things
and their songs on the wind were still heard;
while mer-people chanted the music that rang
in the echoes of waters and birds.
Doors we would find that, more than mere doors,
were the gates to the gardens of grace,
and paintings could lead to ships that were fair:
on the waves of the storm they would race.
The horn of a train might call us to war,
where we valiantly took up our sword:
of Thoughts in the One we were still aware,
and of power that fell from the Word.
And that was the thing that made us mature,
giving freedom of thought to the child;
and that was the thing that God made to endure,
the thing that preserved us from guile.
But children are free in thought, not in will;
our paths by the world were then ruled,
and we all were then bound to wishers who wished
but the best; but some wishers are fools.
And now? We are grown; our wills are our own,
but our minds have no vision to see,
and dreams are all dreamed in the darkness alone
with a thought that is no longer free.
Now all of our graces are dollars and names,
all our worries are cold and mundane,
and words are just marks; no Pentecost flame
gives them power to brighten the brain.
But once all the marks were emblems of truths,
like a language the world itself spoke,
and once we saw through the thing to the Thought
that the angels in morning invoked.
And Susan was there; her eyes were our own,
but more gentle, like soft summer sea.
She was crowned in bright gold, and on her fair throne
she was utterly, perfectly free.
And Susan saw through the thing to the Thought
in the Mind of the Maker of all.
She passed through the door, with the darkness she fought,
and her horn with salvation would call.
But now? No sign can capture of her
in the realms of the Upward and In;
of Susan the dryads still carry no word
of the paths where her footsteps have been.
But you and I went in days long ago
on this path of the burden of men,
and a Susan behind this face that I know
in the mirror reminds of my sins,
how I, who had seen past the thing to the Thought
in the Mind of the Maker of all
and felt the desire for goodness from God
(to which all this creation still calls),
now toil in the dust from which we all came,
with dark sweat and the thorns in my side,
and slave for a mark made of gold from which comes
the only freedom in which I can pride.
And you, once when you with suddenness wept --
in your face I saw Susan return.
Her sadness was there, and tears in the depths
that are liquid, but nonetheless burn.
As Susan is lost, so we too are lost,
and her loss is the loss that we bear.
But even Susan may yet find the pearl of great cost
and a chance beyond courage to dare,
to see through the thing to the glorious Word
that is spoken by He who made all;
and the horn of salvation may someday be heard
as Susan sounds out the great call!

Gifts and Graces

We need not, indeed, think of goods which are totally and in principle apart from experience, e.g. a world of beauty inaccessible to any and every mind, finite or infinite. Such a world could be neither beautiful nor a good. But it is true that in considering the characters of perfection we are driven more and more to recognise how far the roots of a finite mind extend beyond itself; and morality, goodness, the affirmation of fundamental values, passes continuously into gifts and graces due to nature or history. We should not like to make health or good luck a part of moral goodness, though they are certainly not unconnected with it. Yet if we try to rule out from goodness all external gifts and graces, physical endowments, education, age and country, ability to learn and to act, we shall find that we have ruled out moral excellence itself. The conclusion is forced upon us that morality, even if expanded to the compass of all mental and bodily excellence, is still only a relative point of view, one which cannot be pushed to the point of conceiving the finite creature, in, by, and of himself, as fully equipped with the conditions and constituents of goodness. Goodness passes continuously into goods, and goods into gifts.
The individual, though responsible, has nevertheless his roots deep in the universe beyond him.

Bernard Bosanquet, The Value and Destiny of the Individual, Lecture 10

The Rose with All Its Thorns

Hope
by Christina Rossetti

Hope is like a harebell trembling from its birth,
Love is like a rose, the joy of all the earth;
Faith is like a lily lifted high and white,
Love is like a lovely rose, the world’s delight;
Harebells and sweet lilies show a thornless growth,
But the rose with all its thorns excels them both.

Nonsimile

This is the sort of funny conversation one can imagine having spontaneously. But I can't help but point out that 'A simile is like a metaphor' is not a simile; not every comparison using 'like' is a simile. Similes and metaphors are actually alike in that they are figures based on comparison of two clearly unlike things, e.g., "The clouds are like sheep grazing lazily" and "The sky's sheep grazed lazily." When you are comparing things precisely as similar, you don't have a simile; it's only a simile when you are comparing them as similar at a point where they are in some way dissimilar. "Tom is like his twin brother" is not a simile. If I say you are clever like a fox, this is not saying that you are cleverness is actually the same as that of a fox; it is saying that the proportion of your cleverness to being human (if that's what you are) is itself proportional to the proportion the cleverness attributed to the fox has to being a fox. If I say you are swift as a deer, this does not mean that you have the same kind of swiftness a deer has, which actually makes you like a deer in that respect, but that your swiftness is to you like the deer's swiftness is to it. But similes and metaphors really are alike; they are based on the same kinds of proportions or analogies, they are figures of speech, and you can go back and forth between them while barely noticing (e.g., "The clouds, like the sky's sheep, grazed lazily"). The only point at which they seriously differ , even at superficial glance, is that one explicitly compares and the other simply substitutes or identifies.

But when we look less superficially, we see that similes are metaphors; this is the only way they can remain forms of figurative language. They are metaphors where the metaphorical expression is itself comparative. That is, if you take a metaphor, e.g.,

You are a deer

The corresponding simile is also a metaphor, but where the identification is not to 'a deer' but to 'a thing deer-like in swiftness',

You are swift as a deer.

But if we made this comparison simply by stopwatch, it would not be a simile at all; it would be a mathematical equality, and no one thinks that mathematical equations are similes. Similes must be figurative; bare comparison is not enough. Only if it is still a metaphor using 'deer-like' rather than 'deer' do we actually have a simile. This does make similes difficult to distinguish from ordinary comparisons; the comparative element makes the metaphor much more vague than it otherwise would be, which can mean that it can at times be hard to distinguish from a flat literal comparison. This is perhaps why, in comparison with other kinds of metaphor, similes are often given more extensive explanations when they are actually used: we often need to compensate for the potentially confusing vagueness introduced by the comparative element.

But 'analogies are like sandwiches' is very much a simile.

Immediate Delight or Consequential Fruits

When we think certain states of mind superior to others, is it ever because of what we know concerning their organic antecedents? No! it is always for two entirely different reasons. It is either because we take an immediate delight in them; or else it is because we believe them to bring us good consequential fruits for life. When we speak disparagingly of 'feverish fancies,' surely the fever-process as such is not the ground of our disesteem- for aught we know to the contrary, 103 degrees or 104 degrees Fahrenheit might be a much more favorable temperature for truths to germinate and sprout in, than the more ordinary blood-heat of 97 or 98 degrees. It is either the disagreeableness itself of the fancies, or their inability to bear the criticisms of the convalescent hour. When we praise the thoughts which health brings, health's peculiar chemical metabolisms have nothing to do with determining our judgment. We know in fact almost nothing about these metabolisms. It is the character of inner happiness in the thoughts which stamps them as good, or else their consistency with our other opinions and their serviceability for our needs, which make them pass for true in our esteem.

William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture One . Very pragmatist in expression, of course, but the basic point -- that we don't judge whether a type of experience is reasonable or healthy on the basis of its origin but rather on the basis of what we might call its physiology and behavior -- is certainly right.

Gifford Lectures I Have Read

About six years ago I posted a list of the Gifford Lectures I've read, and I've wanted since to go back and update it. Up to 1984 I follow Jaki's list. After that time, I pull from the Gifford Lectures website, but, as the site is not wholly helpful for putting together a list like this, there are likely to be some omissions and mistakes. Bold indicates that I have read it; * indicates that, for whatever reason, I have it on my own shelves. If you notice any omissions or errors, let me know.

EDINBURGH
1888-1890 J. H. Stirling, Philosophy and Theology
1890-1892 G. G. Stokes, Natural Theology
1892-1893 O. Pfleiderer, Philosophy and Development of Religion
1894-1896 A. C. Fraser, Philosophy of Theism
1896-1898 C. P. Tiele, Elements of the Science of Religion
1900-1902 W. James, *The Varieties of Religious Experience
1903-1904 H. M. Gwatkin, The Knowledge of God and Its Historical Development
1905-1906 S. S. Laurie, On God and Man
1909-1910 W. W. Fowler, The Religious Experience of the Roman People
1910-1912 B. Bosanquet, The Principle of Individuality and Value ; The Value and Destiny of the Individual
1913-1914 H. Bergson
1915-1916 W. M. Ramsay, Asianic Elements in Greek Civilization
1919-1921 G. F. Stout, Mind and Matter, God and Nature
1921-1923 A. Pringle-Pattison, The Idea of God in the Light of Recent Philosophy ; The Idea of Immortality
1926-1927 A. S. Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World
1927-1928 A. N. Whitehead, *Process and Reality
1928-1929 J. Dewey, The Quest for Certainty
1930-1931 N. Soderblom, *The Living God
1932-1934 E. R. Bevan, Symbolism and Belief ; Holy Images
1934-1935 A. Schweitzer
1937-1938 C. S. Sherrington, Man on His Nature
1938-1940 R. Niebuhr, *The Nature and Destiny of Man
1940-1941 O. Kraus
1947-1949 C. Dawson, Religion and Culture ; Religion and the Rise of Western Culture
1949-1950 N. Bohr
1950-1952 C. E. Raven, Natural Religion and Christian Theology
1952-1953 A. J. Toynbee, An Historian's Approach to Religion
1954-1955 R. Bultmann, History and Eschatology
1956-1957 A. Farrer, The Freedom of Will
1957-1959 W. Kohler
1959-1960 R. D. Maclennan
1961-1962 J. Baillie, The Sense of the Presence of God
1962-1964 D. Daube
1964-1966 D. M. Mackinnon
1966-1968 H. D. Lewis, The Elusive Mind ; The Elusive Self ; Freedom and Alienation
1968-1970 W. H. F. Barnes
1970-1971 E. L. Mascall, The Openness of Being
1971-1973 PANEL (A. Kenny, H. C. Longuet-Higgins, and C. H. Waddington) The Nature of Mind ; The Development of Mind
1973-1974 O. Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind
1974-1976 S. L. Jaki, The Road of Science and the Ways to God
1976-1977 J. P. Jossua, Pierre Bayle ou l'obsession du mal
1977-1979 J. C. Eccles, The Human Mystery ; The Human Psyche
1979-1980 N. R. Smart, Beyond Ideology
1980-1981 S. H. Nasr, Knowledge and the Sacred
1981-1982 I. Murdoch, *Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals
1982-1983 D. Daiches, God and the Poets
1983-1984 M. A. Arbib and M. Hesse, The Construction of Reality
1984-1985 J. Moltmann, God in Creation
1985-1986 P. Ricoeur, Oneself as Another
1986-1987 J. H. Hick, An Interpretation of Religion
1987-1988 A. MacIntyre, *Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry
1988-1989 R. Panikkar
1989-1990 M. Douglas; M. Midgley, Science as Salvation
1990-1991 J. Barr, Biblical Faith and Natural Theology
1991-1992 A. Schimmel, Deciphering the Signs of God
1992-1993 M. Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought
1993-1994 J. Polkinghorne, Faith of a Physicist
1995-1996 G. A. Cohen, If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich?
1996-1997 R. Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind
1997-1998 H. R. Roston III, Genes, Genesis, and God
1998-1999 C. M. Taylor, Living in a Secular Age
1999-2000 D. Tracy, This Side of God
2000-2001 O. O'Neill, Autonomy and Trust in Bioethics
2001-2002 M. Arkoun, The Unthought in Contemporary Islamic Thought
2002-2003 M. Ignatieff, The Lesser Evil
2003-2004 J. W. van Huyssteen, Alone in the World?
2004-2005 N. Chomsky, Illegal but Legitimate

GLASGOW
1888-1892 F. M. Muller, Natural Religion ; Physical Religion ; Anthropological Religion ; Theosophy or Psychological Religion
1892-1894 W. Wallace, Lectures and Essays
1894-1896 J. Caird, The Fundamental Ideas of Christianity
1897-1898 A. B. Bruce, The Providential Order of the World ; The Moral Order of the World
1900-1902 E. Caird, The Evolution of Religion ; The Evolution of Theology
1903-1905 E. Boutroux, Science and Religion in Contemporary Philosophy
1907-1908 A. C. Bradley, Ideals of Religion
1910-1912 J. Watson, The Interpretation of Religious Experience
1913-1915 A. J. Balfour, Theism and Humanism
1916-1918 S. Alexander, Space, Time and Deity
1919-1921 H. Jones, A Faith that Enquires
1922-1923 A. J. Balfour, Theism and Thought
1923-1925 W. P. Paterson, The Nature of Religion
1927-1928 J. S. Haldane, The Sciences and Philosophy
1929-1931 J. A. Smith
1932-1933 W. Temple, Nature, Man and God
1935-1937 W. M. Dixon, The Human Situation
1937-1938 W. E. Hocking
1938-1940 J. Laird, Theism and Cosmology ; Mind and Deity
1946-1948 R. B. Perry, Realms of Value
1949-1950 H. H. Farmer, Revelation and Religion ; Reconciliation and Religion
1952-1954 J. Macmurray, The Self as Agent ; Persons in Relations
1955-1956 L. Hodgson, For Faith and Freedom
1959-1961 C. F. Weizsacker, The Relevance of Science
1962-1963 C. W. Hendel
1965-1967 H. Butterfield
1971-1972 R. W. Southern
1974-1975 B. G. Mitchell, Morality, Religious and Secular
1979-1980 S. Brenner
1981-1982 S. Clark, From Athens to Jerusalem
1981-1982 C. J. Larner, The Thinking Peasant
1982-1983 A. J. Sanford, Models, Mind and Man
1982-1983 P. Drew
1983-1984 A. D. Galloway
1984-1985 C. Sagan, The Varieties of Scientific Experience
1985-1986 D. M. MacKay, Behind the Eye
1986-1987 PANEL
1989-1990 G. Steiner, Grammars of Creation
1991-1992 M. Warnock, Imagination and Understanding
1993-1994 J. S. K. Ward, Religion and Revelation
1995-1996 J. H. Brooke and G. Cantor, Reconstructing Nature
1997-1998 R. J. Berry, God's Book of Works
1999-2000 R. McInerny, Characters in Search of an Author
2000-2001 PANEL
2002-2003 S. Blackburn, *Truth

ST. ANDREWS
1888-1890 A Lang, The Making of Religion
1890-1891 E. Caird
1894-1896 L. Campbell, Religion in Greek Literature
1899-1901 R. A. Lanciani, New Tales of Old Rome
1902-1904 R. B. Haldane, The Pathway to Reality
1907-1909 J. Ward, The Realm of Ends
1911-1913 J. G. Frazer, The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead
1914-1916 J. A. Thomson, The System of Animate Nature
1917-1919 W. R. Inge, The Philosophy of Plotinus
1919-1920 L. R. Farnell, Greek Hero Cults and Ideas of Immortality
1926-1928 A. E. Taylor, The Faith of a Moralist
1929-1930 C. Gore, The Philosophy of the Good Life
1932-1933 R. R. Marett, *Faith, Hope and Charity in Primitive Religion ; Sacraments of Simple Folk
1935-1936 H. H. Henson, Christian Morality
1936-1937 W. Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers
1937-1938 W. G. De Burgh, From Morality to Religion
1938-1939 J. Bidez, Eos
1939-1940 R. Kroner, The Primacy of Faith
1946-1948 E. Brunner, Christianity and Civilization
1948-1949 A. M. Macbeath, Experiments in Living
1951-1953 B. Blanshard, Reason and Goodness ; Reason and Belief
1953-1955 C. A. Campbell, On Selfhood and Godhood
1955-1956 W. C. Heisenberg, *Physics and Philosophy
1956-1958 V. A. Demant
1958-1960 G. H. von Wright, Norm and Action
1960-1962 S. Runciman, The Church in Captivity
1962-1963 H. Chadwick
1964-1966 J. N. Findlay, The Discipline of the Cave ; The Transcendence of the Cave
1967-1969 R. C. Zaehner, Concordant Discord
1970-1971 W. H. Thorpe, Animal Nature and Human Nature
1972-1973 A. J. Ayer, The Central Questions of Philosophy
1975-1976 R. Hooykaas, Fact, Faith, and Fiction
1977-1978 D. Stafford-Clark
1980-1981 G. Vlastos
1982-1983 D. G. Charlton
1983-1984 J. Macquarrie, In Search of Deity
1984-1985 A. Grunbaum
1986-1987 A. Flew, The Logic of Mortality
1988-1989 W. Burkert, Creation of the Sacred
1990-1991 H. Putnam, Renewing Philosophy
1992-1993 A. Peacocke, Theology for a Scientific Age
1994-1995 N. Wolterstorff, Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology
1996-1997 M. Dummett, Thought and Reality
1998-1999 M. M. Adams, Christ and Horrors
2000-2001 S. M. Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe
2001-2002 P. van Inwagen, The Problem of Evil
2004-2005 A. Plantinga, Science and Religion

ABERDEEN
1889-1891 E. B. Tylor
1891-1892 A. M. Fairbarin, The Philosophy of the Christian Religion
1896-1898 J. Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism
1898-1900 J. Royce, The World and the Individual
1900-1902 A. H. Sayce, The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia
1905-1906 J. Adam, The Religious Teachers of Greece
1907-1909 H. Driesch, The Science and Philosophy of Organism
1909-1910 W. Ridgeway
1911-1913 A. Pringle-Pattison
1913-1915 W. R. Sorley, *Moral Values and the Idea of God
1917-1919 C. C. Webb, God and Personality ; Divine Personality and Human Life
1921-1922 E. W. Hobson, The Domain of Natural Science
1924-1926 W. Mitchell, The Place of Minds in the World
1927-1929 E. W. Barnes, Scientific Theory and Religion
1930-1932 E. Gilson, *The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy
1935-1936 W. D. Ross, Foundations of Ethics
1936-1938 K. Barth, The Knowledge of God and the Service of God according to the Teaching of the Reformation
1938/39, 1946/47 A. D. Nock
1947-1948 J. Wisdom
1948-1950 G. Marcel, The Mystery of Being
1951-1952 M. Polanyi, Personal Knowledge
1952-1954 P. Tillich, Systematic Theology
1956-1958 H. A. Hodges
1960-1962 H. H. Price, Belief
1963-1965 A. C. Hardy, The Living Stream ; The Divine Flame
1965-1966 R. Aron
1966-1968 T. M. Knox, Action ; Layman's Quest
1969-1970 A. T. van Leeuwen, Critique of Heaven ; Critique of Earth
1972-1974 H. Arendt, The Life of the Mind
1975-1977 J. Z. Young, Programs of the Brain
1979-1980 F. C. Copleston, Religion and the One
1981-1983 A. Hultkrantz
1983-1984 R. Swinburne, The Evolution of the Soul
1984-1985 F. J. Dyson, Infinite in All Directions
1987-1988 A. Plantinga, Warrant: The Current Debate ; Warrant and Proper Function ; Warranted Christian Belief
1989-1990 I. G. Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science ; Ethics in an Age of Technology
1992-1993 J. Pelikan, Christianity and Classical Culture
1994-1995 A. Broadie, The Shadow of Scotus
1997-1998 R. Stannard, The God Experiment
2000-2001 J. S. Habgood, The Concept of Nature
2002-2003 E. Stump, Wandering in the Darkness
2003-2004 J. Haldane, Mind, Soul, and Deity

Of course, not all of them 'stick' equally well; and there are some that I really didn't like, although perhaps a few of them would improve on second reading. Some of the ones I liked quite a bit, and would recommend quite generally, are:

William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
Nathan Soderblom, The Living God
H. D. Lewis, The Elusive Mind and The Elusive Self
Stanley Jaki, The Road of Science and the Ways to God
Iris Murdoch, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals
David Daiches, God and the Poets
Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry
Arthur Balfour, Theism and Humanism and Theism and Thought
George Steiner, Grammars of Creation
R. R. Marett, Faith, Hope, and Charity in Primitive Religion
Warren Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy
Etienne Gilson, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy
Jaroslav Pelikan, Christianity and Classical Culture

How about you? Are there any you've read that you'd recommend?