Name: Jack McKinney
Epoch: Early 20th Century (the \'Long Early Twentieth Century\')
Grouping Field: Humanities (Ideas Formatted as Ideas) and Social Science (Models)
Location Grouping: Individual\'s Work Location
Map Coordinates: 27°29\'42.0\"S 153°05\'44.3\"E
Years At Location: 1945-1946
One Historical Setting: Mr. Jack Philip McKinney, care of Mrs W. Stanley\'s home, Old Cleveland Road, Carina [exact location TBA] (1943)
Jack McKinney is a very little known writer, who would published substantive and scholarly philosophy later in his life – and whose extraordinary work would have been lost to history had it not been for his famous wife, Judith Wright.
Jack McKinney lived in Surfers Paradise in the 1930s, and Tamborine Mountain in the 1950s with his second wife Judith Wright. McKinney was more known for his short stories and radio serials. Although untrained, but well-read, McKinney did publish noteworthy philosophical articles and books. His smaller book, The Challenge of Reason, was published in Brisbane in 1950, with his substantive work, The Structure of Modern Thought, was published in London in 1971. Jack Smart, the distinguished Australian philosopher, and the father of the Australian materialist school, praised the larger McKinney book as a ‘fresh and original’ presentation of the ‘striking and important idea that knowledge is an interpersonal thing’. His work was better than the formal philosophers who lived in Brisbane during his lifetime: Michael Fletcher, Thomas Thatcher, and William Marquis Kyle. Their academic philosophy was largely out-dated, and McKinney was more in tune with the contemporary philosophy of his time. Although on the surface there is little that links McKinney to Brisbane, it appears that he did spent some fair amount of time in Brisbane. McKinney and Wright married at the Brisbane General Register Office, and McKinney died on 6 December 1966 at Greenslopes.
Judith Wright McKinney, ‘McKinney, Jack Philip (1891–1966)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mckinney-jack-philip-10995/text19551, published first in hardcopy 2000, accessed online 3 November 2017. This article was first published in hardcopy in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 15, (MUP), 2000.
McKinney, J.P. (Jack Philip). The Challenge of Reason, Brisbane, The Mountain Press, 1950.
McKinney, J.P. (Jack Philip). The Structure of Modern Thought, London, Catto & Windus, 1971.
McKinney, Meredith; Clarke, Patricia. The Equal Heart and Mind: Letters between Judith Wright and Jack McKinney, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, Qld, 2004.
Composition of Jack McKinney from Blackman’s Portrait. Neville Buch
