LAUSR

are the reasons that direct our will, not something ‘beyond the human’. Humanism, then, does not depend on an implicit theological underpinning. What it does need, he thinks, is something akin to the idea of meditative ‘prayer’ as a way of dwelling on the possibilities of compassion, the notion of ‘an inner conversion, a metanoia’, the ‘experience of the passions receding . . . in favour of a responsive awareness of the presence of others’ (p. 119). Humanism can profitably draw from the resources of the many and varied religious and philosophical traditions ‘thought of as precisely expressions of human possibilities marked and developed through our human capacity for art, literature and imagination’ (p. 187). McGhee’s philosophical engagement with Buddhism, in previous work as well as in this book, has been extremely fruitful and impressive. It is to be hoped that others, including the readerships to whom this book is addressed, will be persuaded by him of the value of such engagement.