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Iris on Safari: A Personal Record

John Bayley

in Iris Murdoch, Philosopher

This chapter presents a short memoir of Iris Murdoch as lecturer and traveller—and her relations, among other things, to God, to power (and Elias Canetti), and to what Philippa Foot has called ... More

This chapter presents a short memoir of Iris Murdoch as lecturer and traveller—and her relations, among other things, to God, to power (and Elias Canetti), and to what Philippa Foot has called “Natural Goodness”.Less

‘A Mechanism of Attachments’: The Self in Iris Murdoch

Julia T. Meszaros

in Selfless Love and Human Flourishing in Paul Tillich and Iris Murdoch

Chapter 6 examines Iris Murdoch’s understanding of the self. It is shown that Murdoch accepts modern insights into the disunited and fluctuant nature of the self, yet also attempts to salvage some ... More

Chapter 6 examines Iris Murdoch’s understanding of the self. It is shown that Murdoch accepts modern insights into the disunited and fluctuant nature of the self, yet also attempts to salvage some degree of individual self-being as indispensable for the possibility of moral progress. Drawing on Sartre, Freud, and Plato, she proposes to hold this tension by distinguishing between self and ego, and by highlighting the extent to which individual selfhood is tied to the moral quality of consciousness and desire. Murdoch effectively conceptualizes the self as a mechanism of attachments that is governed by a fallible erotic desire for transcendent Good. This implies the claim that true and flourishing selfhood hinges on leaving behind the illusion of a self-contained ego and of freedom as willful self-assertion, and on entering into a loving relation with the o/Other.Less

Social Convention and Neurosis as Obstacles to Moral Freedom

Margaret Holland

in Iris Murdoch, Philosopher

One of the notable themes in Iris Murdoch’s philosophical work is her focus on the role of inner moral activity, particularly her use of the concept of ‘moral attention.’ Through an examination of ... More

One of the notable themes in Iris Murdoch’s philosophical work is her focus on the role of inner moral activity, particularly her use of the concept of ‘moral attention.’ Through an examination of Murdoch’s comments on the roles social convention and neurosis play as obstacles to moral awareness, this chapter sheds light on Murdoch’s suggestion that moral attention both reduces choices and increases freedom. Murdoch’s distinction between fantasy and imagination is discussed in the context of their relation to moral freedom. Finally, the relation Murdoch sees between imagination and freedom provides the context for understanding her suggestion that an improved quality of attention diminishes one’s choices.Less

The New Platonists

Martin Puchner

in The Drama of Ideas: Platonic Provocations in Theater and Philosophy

The influence of Plato on modern philosophy is immense. Through his dramatic writing, he is a constant reminder of the tangible, the personal, and the concrete. This chapter advocates a way of ... More

The influence of Plato on modern philosophy is immense. Through his dramatic writing, he is a constant reminder of the tangible, the personal, and the concrete. This chapter advocates a way of rethinking Plato in modern times through a discussion of contemporary Platonism. This objective is attained by presenting a number of contemporary philosophers who are self-declared Platonists. This chapter discusses in detail three Platonists that were inclined towards dramatic Platonism: Iris Murdoch and her critique of language philosophy and relativism, Martha Nussbaum and her program that accords intelligence to emotions and envisions the work of emotions as some kind of Platonist ascent, and Alain Badiou and his approach to dramatic Platonism with continental philosophy.Less

Visual Metaphors in Murdoch’s Moral Philosophy

Lawrence Blum

in Iris Murdoch, Philosopher

Visual metaphors—attention, perception, seeing, looking, and vision—play a central role in Murdoch’s moral philosophy and moral psychology. This chapter distinguishes three importantly distinct ... More

Visual metaphors—attention, perception, seeing, looking, and vision—play a central role in Murdoch’s moral philosophy and moral psychology. This chapter distinguishes three importantly distinct phenomena that Murdoch fails consistently to mark: (1) a conscious and successful perception of moral reality (often called “attention”); (2) a focused act of attention that contributes to structuring the world of value as seen by an individual agent, but which can be distorted so that it is not focused on moral reality; (3) the habitual and unselfconscious way of taking in the world around us that has been structured by various forces, including but not limited to (1) and (2). In her account of why people fail to grasp moral reality, Murdoch privileges individual psychological obstacles (illusion, fantasy, self-centered distortion) but neglects social forms of obstacles-stereotypes about race- or class-based groups, for example-that also contribute to (3) and distort moral perception.Less

The ‘Dark Background of Difference’: Love and the Refugee in Iris Murdoch

Lyndsey Stonebridge

in The Judicial Imagination: Writing After Nuremberg

Iris Murdoch worked in the UNRRA camps, and her early novels are crowded with exiles, refugees and displaced persons. It is suggested that Murdoch's early writings are an attempt to grasp the elusive ... More

Iris Murdoch worked in the UNRRA camps, and her early novels are crowded with exiles, refugees and displaced persons. It is suggested that Murdoch's early writings are an attempt to grasp the elusive figure that appears inbetween the withdrawal and the granting of rights: the refugee or displaced person, or, as Murdoch would probably put it, the human individual. The refugee in Murdoch's writing becomes not only a limit concept of political, juridical and speaking life, but of fiction too, and of the very possibility of a moral novel-writing. This chapter turns its attention to literary ethics in Murdoch through The Flight from the Enchanter. Where Murdoch's love ultimately depends on the unpredictable hazards of the liberal self, Franz Baermann Steiner's ethics are those of the ritual and taboo that were his subjects of study and his grounds for belief.Less

Iris Murdoch on Nobility and Moral Value

Roger Crisp

in Iris Murdoch, Philosopher

The chapter begins with a discussion of Murdoch’s preference for attention to detail over general moral theory. An example of heroic action is then provided to facilitate such attention, and it is ... More

The chapter begins with a discussion of Murdoch’s preference for attention to detail over general moral theory. An example of heroic action is then provided to facilitate such attention, and it is discussed in the light of utilitarianism, Kantian ethics, and virtue ethics. Problems with each approach are explained against the background of Murdoch’s emphasis on the importance of nobility or moral value, and the chapter concludes that a central issue in philosophical ethics must be whether the appearance of such value is veridical.Less

Angst Across the Channel: Existentialism in Britain

Martin Woessner

in Situating Existentialism: Key Texts in Context

This chapter examines how existentialism was received, constructed, and reconstructed in Britain, and how it challenged the dry academicism of the analytic tradition’s emphasis on logical positivism ... More

This chapter examines how existentialism was received, constructed, and reconstructed in Britain, and how it challenged the dry academicism of the analytic tradition’s emphasis on logical positivism and empiricism. It considers the London debut of Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot and how it became the most famous link between existentialism and the theater of the absurd. Godot’s characters were snipped from vaudevillian types, and their dialogue ultimately goes nowhere but still manages to provide glosses on death, language, God, and providence. Beckett thus seamlessly merged the droll with the profound. In more formal terms, existentialism was introduced to British philosophy by two German Jewish émigrés, Werner Brock and F. H. Heinemann. Outside the academy, however, it was the novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch who popularized existentialism by introducing Jean-Paul Sartre and the themes of the Paris school to British readers. The chapter concludes by discussing the wider cultural reception of existentialism in Britain via the works of such popular authors as Colin Wilson and R. D. Laing.Less

‘For every Foot its own Shoe’: Method and Moral Theory in the Philosophy of Iris Murdoch

Julia Driver

in Iris Murdoch, Philosopher

This chapter explores Murdoch’s views attacking principle based ethics and argues that, while her concerns point to genuine problems for some principle based approaches, particularism is the wrong ... More

This chapter explores Murdoch’s views attacking principle based ethics and argues that, while her concerns point to genuine problems for some principle based approaches, particularism is the wrong lesson to take away from these concerns. When Murdoch rejects theory, she is really rejecting a kind of methodology that approaches ethical issues and problems in an antiseptic and streamlined way. For her, the antidote to this form of theorizing was ‘experience.’ However, ‘experience’ doesn’t require actually living through moral problems oneself. Rather, it simply requires the agent to carefully reflect on a variety of moral issues, but consider those moral issues in a full, rich, context rather than via stripped down implausible scenarios.Less

The Scope of Ethics: Dialogue with Slote and Murdoch

Stephen C. Angle

in Sagehood: The Contemporary Significance of Neo-Confucian Philosophy

Despite the differences between Michael Slote and Iris Murdoch—and between them and the book's Neo-Confucian sources—Slote and Murdoch make excellent conversation partners on the subject of harmony, ... More

Despite the differences between Michael Slote and Iris Murdoch—and between them and the book's Neo-Confucian sources—Slote and Murdoch make excellent conversation partners on the subject of harmony, offering important insights and clarifications, while at the same time they are rewarded with ideas from the Confucian tradition that complement or improve their own views. The key points of dialogue include the following: (1) Drawing on Slote, Confucians can distinguish between particularist and aggregative caring, which solves a long-standing problem about caring for strangers. (2) Drawing on the Confucians, Slote can better-ground his idea of “balanced caring” by recognizing the reverence we should have for what the Neo-Confucians call universal coherence. (3) After a few qualifications, Murdoch can help us (and Slote) to see how reverence for universal coherence can indeed play needed justificatory and motivational roles, but (4) Murdoch's appeal to a transcendent notion of Good needs either serious modification or rejection. Finally, (5) both Slote and Murdoch can learn from the Neo-Confucians about the proper ways in which we should value ourselves.Less

Murdoch and the Monolith

Jami Bartlett

in Object Lessons: The Novel As a Theory of Reference

This chapter returns the concept of the novel as a theory of reference to its beginning, and argues that, for the philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch, narrative itself is a theory of reference. The ... More

This chapter returns the concept of the novel as a theory of reference to its beginning, and argues that, for the philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch, narrative itself is a theory of reference. The characters in Murdoch’s novel Under the Net find themselves enmeshed in obscure, monolithic patterns and systems they cannot see, manipulated by contingency or by the strategies of others, and resentfully complicit; Murdoch’s object of reference is literary form itself. She treats the narrative potential of objects in her philosophy, as well. Her essay “The Idea of Perfection” makes a case for the thingness of intention, arguing that a person’s intention in saying or doing something involves a behavior pattern rather than an intended object. This pattern is shown to be Murdoch’s most powerful tool as a novelist, since the description of what happens is available to characters and narratives, and refuses the hypothetical status of the unknowable inner life. Following Wittgenstein and Anscombe’s suggestion that under some descriptions an action is intentional, and under others it is not, Murdoch understands an expression of intention as given by the description of the act under which it is intended: she understands intention as a product of narration.Less

The Uniqueness of Person‐Perception

Garry L. Hagberg

in Describing Ourselves: Wittgenstein and Autobiographical Consciousness

This chapter discusses the misleading picture of the inferential perception of persons. It also discusses the connection to the other-minds problem, Goethe on the perception of expressive gestures ... More

This chapter discusses the misleading picture of the inferential perception of persons. It also discusses the connection to the other-minds problem, Goethe on the perception of expressive gestures and characteristics in art and sculpture (the Laocoon group, Leonardo's Last Supper, a Rembrandt etching), the particularly interesting case of acting, Iris Murdoch and ‘the unfrozen past’, aspect-perception and self-interpretation, and the notion of creative self-description. The chapter finishes on seeing the past in a new light.Less

Sein und Zeit: Pursuit of Being: from HEIDEGGER

Iris Murdoch

in Iris Murdoch, Philosopher

This chapter focuses on the first publication of Chapter 1 on Heidegger that Iris Murdoch left unpublished at her death: An introduction to Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927). Topics include: the ... More

This chapter focuses on the first publication of Chapter 1 on Heidegger that Iris Murdoch left unpublished at her death: An introduction to Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927). Topics include: the starting point of philosophical thought; time; contingency; states of mind; Dasein; equipment (Zeug); truth; phenomenology; logos; moods; value and morality. Connections and comparisons are drawn with Wittgenstein.Less

‘Faint with Secret Knowledge’: Love and Vision in Murdoch’s The Black Prince

Martha Nussbaum

in Iris Murdoch, Philosopher

Focusing on The Black Prince, this chapter investigates the complexities of Murdoch’s view of erotic love.

A Person’s Words: Literary Characters and Autobiographical Understanding

Garry L . Hagberg

in The Philosophy of Autobiography

According to a traditional Cartesian conception of selfhood, the human self, as a repository of inwardly knowable content, exists prior to and separable from any context, situation, or relation into ... More

According to a traditional Cartesian conception of selfhood, the human self, as a repository of inwardly knowable content, exists prior to and separable from any context, situation, or relation into which it contingently enters. Corresponding to this view is the conception of linguistic meaning as being wholly determined by the inward mental content of the speaker also independent of any external relations. In striking contrast to this, the relational conception of selfhood developed by the classical American pragmatists and others since sees the self as created within, and constituted by, the webs of relations into which it enters and within which it actually acquires its identity and its content. I suggest here that there is a parallel way of looking at words, and that to truly understand a person is in part to genuinely understand the webs of relations, references, allusions, connotations, cross-circumstance resonances, and so forth that give a person’s words their meaning. This, I suggest, is close to what Wittgenstein referred to as “the field of a word”, which he insisted is decisive in determining a word’s meaning. Thus the understanding of a person biographically requires an understanding, with this relation-embedded complexity, of their words.Less

Selfless Love Contested: Framing the Debate

Julia T. Meszaros

in Selfless Love and Human Flourishing in Paul Tillich and Iris Murdoch

Chapter 1 outlines the modern opposition between selfless love and human flourishing. It argues that this has either construed selfless love as promoting powerlessness and oppression, or rejected the ... More

Chapter 1 outlines the modern opposition between selfless love and human flourishing. It argues that this has either construed selfless love as promoting powerlessness and oppression, or rejected the modern concern with the needs and desires of the human individual as antithetical to Christianity. The historical roots of this opposition are briefly sketched, with particular attention to the role played by Jean-Paul Sartre’s and other modern deconstructions of the self. After a brief discussion of the pitfalls of this opposition, Paul Tillich and Iris Murdoch are introduced in an attempt to reconsider the relation between selfless love and human flourishing by paying attention to love’s anthropological foundations. It is shown why their thought lends itself to such an enquiry. The chapter ends with an outline of the book as a whole.Less

To Make This Emergence Articulate: The Beautiful, The Tragic Sublime, The Good, and The Shapes of Common Practice

Romand Coles

in In Search of Goodness

This chapter presents the recognition that alternative visions of goodness are required in a world where the dominant vision of “goodness” is deeply implicated in evil. It turns to Iris Murdoch's ... More

This chapter presents the recognition that alternative visions of goodness are required in a world where the dominant vision of “goodness” is deeply implicated in evil. It turns to Iris Murdoch's writings to display how to envision goodness differently by attending to beauty and its connections to excellence, contingency, and tragedy. Murdoch's conception of the good is rooted in an affective-aesthetic engagement with the “unself” that engenders an energetic crosscurrent in the midst of the hyperactive productions of the ego. She offers an aesthetic sensibility that greatly resists the ideological character of most aesthetic reflection. In relation to the aesthetic intensity of the land, Flagstaff was developing a rich emergent tradition of citizen action to protect and improve common goods. In Flagstaff, the crosscurrent rivulets and back eddies were shown in order to advance possibilities for undomesticated flows of more generous and receptive practice beyond the canalized mainstreams.Less

Sagely Ease and Moral Perception

Stephen C. Angle

in Sagehood: The Contemporary Significance of Neo-Confucian Philosophy

How is it possible that a sage can act with ease? According to the Analects, Confucius was able to “follow his heart's desire without overstepping the bounds” by the time he reached age seventy. The ... More

How is it possible that a sage can act with ease? According to the Analects, Confucius was able to “follow his heart's desire without overstepping the bounds” by the time he reached age seventy. The chapter explores what Wang Yangming means when he says that sages have a “mature commitment” and the relation this bears to his famous doctrine of “the unity of knowledge and action.” This interpretation then provides the grounding both for a novel understanding of Wang Yangming's philosophy itself, and the key to Neo-Confucianism's insightful account of moral perception. The chapter draws on contemporary philosophers like Murdoch and Blum to help flesh out the Neo-Confucian picture, including showing how Murdoch's famous example of a mother and her daughter-in-law (M and D) can help us to better understand the critical Neo-Confucian orientation of “looking for harmony.”Less