“Witty and profound” musings on questions of art and religion from a celebrated novelist known for her philosophical explorations (Library Journal). For centuries, the works of Plato, featuring his mentor and teacher Socrates, have illuminated philosophical discussions. In Acastos: Two Platonic Dialogues, acclaimed philosopher, poet, and writer Iris Murdoch turns her keen eye to the value of art, knowledge, and faith, with two dramatic conversations featuring Plato and Socrates. “Art and Eros”: After witnessing a theatrical performance, Socrates and (...) his pupils—Callistos, Acastos, Mantias, Deximenes, and Plato—undertake a quest to uncover the meaning and worth of artistic endeavors. “Above the Gods”: The celebration of a religious festival leads to a lively discussion of the gods and their place in society, as Socrates, along with several of his followers, talk about the morality of religion, wisdom, and righteousness. Told through vivid characterizations and lively discourse, Acastos is at once a “profound and satisfying” exploration of the Socratic method and an enjoyable example of theatrical writing from a Man Booker Prize–winning novelist known for her studies with Ludwig Wittgenstein and her philosophy lectures at Oxford University, as well as for such works of fiction as The Sea, The Sea and The Black Prince (Kirkus Reviews). (shrink)

This book explores Iris Murdoch as a philosopher who, through her distinctive methodology, exploits the advantages of having a mind on the borders of literature and politics in her early career writings (pre-The Sovereignty of Good). By focusing on a single decade of Murdoch’s early career, Jamieson tracks connections between her views on the state of literature and politics in postwar Britain and her approach to the philosophy of mind and moral philosophy. Furthermore, this close study reveals (...) that, far from a stylistic quirk, Murdoch’s use of metaphors, analogies, and other literary devices is internal to her methodology. Finally, rather than asking what Murdoch’s views are, this work will ask “what is Murdoch trying to achieve with her writings and public lectures, and how does she go about this?” By answering the latter question, we will have a new strategy for interpreting her writings more generally. The book contributes to the growing body of scholarship focusing on Iris Murdoch’s philosophical writings, and on women in the history of analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Iris Murdoch was a notable philosopher before she was a notable novelist and her work was brave, brilliant, and independent. She made her name first for her challenges to Gilbert Ryle and behaviourism, and later for her book on Sartre, but she had the greatest impact with her work in moral philosophy—and especially her book The Sovereignty of Good. She turned expectantly from British linguistic philosophy to continental existentialism, but was dissatisfied there too; she devised a philosophy and (...) a style of philosophy that were distinctively her own. Murdoch aimed to draw out the implications, for metaphysics and the conception of the world, of rejecting the standard dichotomy of language into the 'descriptive' and the 'emotive'. She aimed, in Wittgensteinian spirit, to describe the phenomena of moral thinking more accurately than the 'linguistic behaviourists' like R. M. Hare. This 'empiricist' task could be acheived, Murdoch thought, only with help from the idealist tradition of Kant, Hegel, and Bradley. And she combined with this a moral psychology, or theory of motivation, that went back to Plato, but was influenced by Freud and Simone Weil. Murdoch's impact can be seen in the moral philosophy of John McDowell and, in different ways, in Richard Rorty and Charles Taylor, as well as in the recent movements under the headings of moral realism, particularism, moral perception, and virtue theory. This volume brings together essays by critics and admirers of Murdoch's work, and includes a longer Introduction on Murdoch's career, reception, and achievement. It also contains a previously unpublished chapter from the book on Heidegger that Murdoch had been working on shortly before her death, and a Memoir by her husband John Bayley. It gives not only an introduction to Murdoch's important philosophical life and work, but also a picture of British philosophy in one of its heydays and at an important moment of transition.Readership: Students and scholars of philosophy and literature. (shrink)

Iris Murdoch was one of the best-known philosophers and novelists of the post-war period. In this book, Sabina Lovibond explores the tangled issue of Murdoch's stance towards gender and feminism, drawing upon the evidence of her fiction, philosophy, and other public statements. As well as analysing Murdoch's own attitudes, _Iris Murdoch, Gender and Philosophy_ is also a critical enquiry into the way we picture intellectual, and especially philosophical, activity. Appealing to the idea of a 'social (...) imaginary' within which Murdoch's work is located, Lovibond examines the sense of incongruity or dissonance that may still affect our image of a woman philosopher, even where egalitarian views officially hold sway. The first thorough exploration of Murdoch and gender, _Iris Murdoch, Gender and Philosophy _is a fresh contribution to debates in feminist philosophy and gender studies, and essential reading for anyone interested in Murdoch's literary and philosophical writing. (shrink)

Iris Murdoch, Philosopher Meets Novelist aims to gather some of the worlds present experts on Iris Murdoch, in an effort to promote dialogue between philosophy and literature. This is due not only to the nature of Iris Murdochs work itself, but also to our belief that within Humanistic Studies there is a constant need for breaking down disciplinarian barriers and reaching a deeper, fuller awareness of human thinking. Thus, the book brings together scholars from (...) a variety of fields and placesBrazil, England, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, Taiwan, and the United Statesand testifies to the interest that the work of Murdoch continues to inspire. The book is divided into two major sections: Part A, Reading Philosophies in Literature, includes articles focusing on Iris Murdochs philosophical concerns and their general influence in her work; Part B, Reading Literature through Philosophy, is intended as a sort of application ground, a series of case-studies wherein authors depart from novels to retrieve the underlying philosophical thinking. (shrink)

Articulating the good of liberal education—what we should teach and why we should teach it—is necessary to resist the subversion of liberal education to economic or political ends and the mania for measurable skills. I argue that Iris Murdoch’s philosophical writings enrich the work of contemporary Aristotelians, such as Joseph Dunne and Alasdair MacIntyre, on these issues. For Murdoch, studies in the arts and intellectual subjects, by connecting students to the inescapable contingency and finitude of human (...) existence, contribute to the cultivation of intellectual and moral virtues and thus to human flourishing. (shrink)

Mary Midgley, Iris Murdoch, Gertrude Anscombe and Philippa Foot studied together in Oxford during the war, at a time when most of the men had left the university, leaving it to them for themselves. These unique circumstances where decisive for the fact that they all went on to become successful philosophers and were able to develop their own original philosophical theories, opposing the philosophical dogmas of their time, Midgley later wrote. This claim is the point of departure for (...) this article. It has three purposes: First I try to say something about the circumstances that made it possible to develop such alternatives, and second, I try to say something about what they consist in. Finally, I ask what this story can teach us about inclusion of women in philosophy today. (shrink)

Centring on human perception, attunement to others, and a transcendent conception of the good, Iris Murdoch's intervention in moral philosophy remains an insightful and evocative source for ethical theory. Discerning some pervasive dualisms that hamper its coherence and development, I suggest that her work finds a generative conversation partner in the contemporary metaphysician, William Desmond. Desmond's thought offers promising avenues to overcome these dualisms by repositioning the source and nature of value and by theorising an anti-reductive, relational ontology. (...) Staging a constructive encounter between these two thinkers that preserves Murdoch's distinct prioritisation of attention and individuality within a Desmond-inspired metaphysics, I present a synthetic ethical approach that promotes the ideal of attending to an other—in the givenness of its particularity, manifold surplus, and constitutive relationality—as good in itself. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. By IRIS MURDOCH. Harmondsworth: Allen Lane; New York: Viking, 1992. $35.00. Dame Iris Murdoch is familiar to most people as a witty and en· gaging novelist whose twenty-four hooks of fiction can he read on a variety of levels. They are wonderful stories, hut the philosophically acute reader will also enjoy Murdoch's judgments, polemics, and inhouse (...) jokes about philosophers and philosophical views. Comparatively few people are aware of Murdoch's previous scholarly studies: Sartre, Romantic Rationalist, The Sovereignty of the Good, The Fire and the Sun; and Acastos. Even so, those familiar with these hooks will recognize the profound impact she has had on debates within moral philosophy. She has been at the forefront of the move· ment that has rehabilitated the central importance of such notions as goodness, the Good, virtue, and the moral life as a journey. So it is not surprising that Murdoch has returned to the genre of philosophical argument to advance her views on the relationship between metaphysics and morals. But it is surprising that her argument exhibits neither the clarity of thought characteristic of the analytic philosophy in which she was trained nor the dramatic narrative of her novels. Indeed the hook reads like a collage of lecture notes, complete with extensive quotations from other people's thoughts with minimal com· mentary. Further, the chapter titles (e.g., " Fact and Value," " Schopenhauer," " Consciousness and Thought-I," " Derrida and Struc· turalism," " Consciousness and Thought-II," "Notes on Will and Duty," " Axioms, Duties, Eros," " Void ") shed little light on the overall structure or argument of the hook. One cannot help hut have the impression that Murdoch spent less time crafting the argument of this hook than she does in crafting the story line and characters of her novels. This is not to say, of course, that there is not much to he learned from Murdoch's perspective. She is remarkably erudite, and her discussion of various themes, figures, and issues often yields fascinating insights. But the whole is considerably less than the sum of its often interesting parts. I have already suggested that this is partly because of the structure and style in which the hook is written. But the hook 687 688 BOOK REVIEWS is also disappointing, and perhaps more determinatively, because of the overall perspective she seeks to deploy and defend. Readers of Murdoch's work have heretofore often wondered about the relationship between her avowed Platonism and her interest in Christianity. Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals has the virtue of clarifying that relationship, hut the result is unpersuasive. At the heart of Murdoch's Platonism is her recasting of the allegory of the cave from The Republic. The moral life is an arduous struggle to ascend from the cave (represented, as in her earlier works, by " the fat, relentless ego ") by a dispossession of the self so that we can apprehend a little less imperfectly the perfect form of the Good. As Murdoch puts it, Plato assumes the internal relation of value, truth, cogmtion. Virtue (as compassion, humility, courage) involves a desire for and achievement of truth instead of falsehood, reality instead of appearance. Goodness involves truth.seeking knowledge and ipso facto a discipline of desire. ' Getting things right ', as in meticulous grammar or mathematics, is truth-seeking as virtue. Learning anything properly demands (virtuous ) attention. Here the idea of truth plays a crucial role (as it does also in Kant) and reality emerges as the object of truthful vision, and virtuous action as the product of such vision. This is a picture of the omnipresence of morality and evaluation in human life (p. 39). Such a depiction ought to resonate quite deeply with Christians, something not lost on Murdoch when she writes a few pages earlier: "There are innumerable points at which we have to detach ourselves, to change our orientation, to redirect our desire and refresh and purify our energy, to keep on looking in the right direction: to attend upon the grace that comes through faith " (p. 25). But Murdoch's "grace" and her "truth-seeking as virtue," among other themes, involve something quite different from what Christians... (shrink)

Iris Murdoch was not only one of post-war Britain's most celebrated and prolific novelists - she was also an influential philosopher, whose work was concerned with the question of the good and how we can see our moral worlds more clearly. Murdoch believed that paying attention to art is a way for us to become less self-centred, and this book argues that cinema is the perfect form of art to enable us to do this. Bringing together (...) class='Hi'>Murdoch's moral philosophy and contemporary cinema to build a dialogue about vision, ethics and love, author Lucy Bolton encourages us to view cinema as a way of studying other worlds and moral journeys, and to reflect upon their ethical significance in the world of the film and in our daily lives. (shrink)

Tom Phillips' painting for the dustjacket of the hardback edition of Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals depicts a faintly translucent, darkly-coloured, multi-layered lattice of letters, in which each character abuts directly upon others above, below and beside it, each overwrites or is overwritten by others of varying dimensions, but none is immediately decipherable as part of a word; and at the centre of this array is a geometrically precise, illuminated circle—perhaps emanating from a light located behind or under (...) the layers of letters, perhaps from one directed at them from above. This image is open to many interpretations. It could represent the sun from Plato's myth of the cave shining through the dialogue in which he presents it ; it could also represent the light of Miss Murdoch's attention playing over the palimpsest of texts that make up the Western tradition of metaphysical thought. But for anyone encountering it upon closing the book after a first reading, it may also seem very precisely to crystallize one's initial impression of that text. (shrink)

Dooley provides background information for each of the interviews, along with a thorough index.

Murdoch's study attempts to analyse and evaluate the different strands of Sartre's rich and complex oeuvre. Combining the objectivity of the scholar with a profound interest in contemporary problems, Iris Murdoch places Sartre's achievement in the perspective of philosophical, political and aesthetic thought, showing the ambiguities and dangers inherent in his position. -- Book jacket.

I feel there are demons around.' Everyone is thinking about Julius King. For comfortable, long-married Hilda and Rupert, he is a mystery. For Morgan, Hilda's tormented sister, he is an obsession. For Morgan's abandoned husband, Tallis, he is the source of ruin. For Simon and Axel, deeply in love, he stirs up jealousy and unease. What is Julius thinking about? He's thinking about Hilda, Rupert, Morgan, Tallis, Simon and Axel, and they will not all survive his malevolent attention. WITH AN (...) INTRODUCTION BY GARTH GREENWELL VINTAGE CLASSICS MURDOCH: Funny, subversive, fearless and fiercely intelligent, Iris Murdoch was one of the great writers of the twentieth century. To celebrate her centenary Vintage Classics presents special editions of her greatest and most timeless novels. (shrink)

The decline of religion and ever increasing influence of science pose acute ethical issues for us all. Can we reject the literal truth of the Gospels yet still retain a Christian morality? Can we defend any 'moral values' against the constant encroachments of technology? Indeed, are we in danger of losing most of the qualities which make us truly human? Here, drawing on a novelist's insight into art, literature and abnormal psychology, Iris Murdoch conducts an ongoing debate with (...) major writers, thinkers and theologians—from Augustine to Wittgenstein, Shakespeare to Sartre, Plato to Derrida—to provide fresh and compelling answers to these crucial questions. (shrink)

The past few decades have seen a turn to the empirical in applied ethics. This article makes two contributions to debates on this turn: one with regard to methodology and the other with regard to scope. First, it considers empirical bioethics, which arose out of a protest against abstract theorizing in moral philosophy and a call for more sensitivity to lived experience. Though by now an established field, methodological discussions are still centred around the question of how empirical research can (...) inform normative analysis. This article proposes an answer to this question that is based on Iris Murdoch’s criticism of the fact/value distinction and Cora Diamond’s concept of reflective empiricism. Second, the discussion takes as a point of departure a study on genome-edited farmed salmon that uses qualitative research interviews and focus groups. Although there are several animal ethics studies based in empirical data, there are few works on the methodological challenges raised by empirical ethics in this area. The article contributes to these discussions by arguing that reflective empiricism can constitute a methodological approach to animal ethics. (shrink)

Iris Murdoch once observed: 'philosophy is often a matter of finding occasions on which to say the obvious'. What was obvious to Murdoch, and to all those who read her work, is that Good transcends everything - even God. Throughout her distinguished and prolific writing career, she explored questions of Good and Bad, myth and morality. The framework for Murdoch's questions - and her own conclusions - can be found here.

In the essays which make up The Sovereignty of Good, Iris Murdoch gives us a picture of moral life in which ‘the metaphor of vision [is] almost irresistibly suggested’. This chapter aims to clarify the role played by the metaphor of vision in Murdoch’s philosophical thinking. I’ll examine two different things which might be meant by the term ‘moral vision’: vision of moral things or vision which is itself moral. The suggestion will be that whilst both capture (...) something important about Murdoch’s work, each may mislead about what is distinctive in her views. For Murdoch, I shall suggest, there is no distinctively moral vision. There is only vision: a loving gaze directed upon the reality of others. (shrink)

This paper provides a brief overview of Iris Murdoch's central notion of love as just attention, introduces the reader to a few contemporary debates around her account, and shows that for Murdoch, love is not opposed to morality, but at its heart.

This book draws on Iris Murdoch's philosophy to explore questions related to the importance of attention in ethics. In doing so, it also engages with Murdoch's ideas about the existence of a moral reality, the importance of love, and the necessity but also the difficulty, for most of us, of fighting against our natural self-centred tendencies. Why is attention important to morality? This book argues that many moral failures and moral achievements can be explained by attention. Not (...) only our actions and choices, but the possibilities we choose among, and even the meaning what we perceive, are to a large extent determined by whether we pay attention, and what we attend do. In this way, the book argues that attention is fundamental, though often overlooked, in morality. While the book's discussion of attention revolves primarily around Murdoch's thought, it also engages significantly with Simone Weil, who introduced the concept of attention in a spiritual context. The book also engages with contemporary debates concerning moral perception and motivation, empirical psychology, animal ethics, and Buddhist philosophy. The Ethics of Attention will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working on Iris Murdoch, Simone Weil, ethics and moral psychology, and the philosophy of attention. (shrink)

The article discusses Iris Murdoch’s philosophical relationship to Buddhism. First, we argue that Murdoch was not, and did not identify herself as, a Buddhist. Then we suggest caution regarding Murdoch’s interpretations of Buddhism. On the one hand, she applies the limited viewpoint of her era. On the other hand, her approach is motivated by insights tracing affinities between Buddhism and Husserl’s and Sartre’s analyses of consciousness, as well as Platonic ideas of unselfing and self-purification. Murdoch’s (...) reflections on Buddhism serve primarily a complex argument about the role of religion in our moral lives, as these reflect the rapidly changing Western cultural environment. She envisages the possibility for Christianity to learn from Buddhism and move closer towards demythologisation and a radical, loving commitment to the others here and now. While Murdoch’s observations may not be accurate as a ‘diagnosis of our times’, they serve as a valuable opening for reflecting on our lives in the suggested terms. They are also inspiring in their optimism that there is the possibility to learn from others (other cultures, other religions) for the better. The ‘muddled’ nature of our reality does not thwart this possibility of learning; it only makes its particular steps unpredictable. (shrink)

Iris Murdoch holds that the best sort of life is a figurative death of the self. This figurative death is informed by an acceptance of real mortality. A recognition of mortality is supposed to help redirect our attention away from self and towards others. Yet these others are also mortal but (unlike the self) remain worthy of love, care and consideration. That is to say, the significance of mortality for Murdoch depends on whose mortality is at issue, (...) whether it is the mortality of the self or of the other that is in question. My rejection of two ways of making sense of this self/other asymmetry is used to motivate the view that her attitude towards death requires a prior commitment to unselfing. And this is a problematic moral project. (shrink)

Scholars who have attempted to explain Iris Murdoch’s moral realism have done so in widely divergent ways, some characterizing her as a classical moral realist, others as a pragmatic moral realist, and still others as a “reflexive realist.”See, e.g., respectively, Fergus Kerr, “Back to Plato with Iris Murdoch,” in Immortal Longings: Versions of Transcending Humanity (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1997), 68–88; Sami Pihlstrom, Pragmatic Moral Realism: A Transcendental Defence (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005); and Maria Antonaccio, (...) Picturing the Human: The Moral Thought of Iris Murdoch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). For the purpose of this article, I follow Maria Antonaccio’s characterization of these realisms. See pages 3–4. None of these attempts, however, capture adequately Murdoch’s distinctive position. In an effort to improve upon these accounts, this article argues that a proper characterization of Murdoch’s view must regard her as developing a version of m. (shrink)

The novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch and the painter Harry Weinberger engaged in over twenty years of close friendship and intellectual discourse, centred on sustained discussion of the practice, teaching and morality of art. This book presents a reappraisal of Murdoch’s novels – chiefly, three mature novels, The Sea, The Sea (1978), Nuns and Soldiers (1980) and The Good Apprentice (1985), and two enigmatic late novels, The Green Knight (1993) and Jackson’s Dilemma (1995) – which are perceived (...) through the prism of her discourse with Weinberger. It draws on a run of almost 400 letters from Murdoch to Weinberger, and on Murdoch’s philosophical writings, Weinberger’s private writings, the remarks of both artists in interviews, and other material relating to their views on art and art history, much of which is unpublished and has received no previous critical attention. Scrutiny of their shared values, methods and the imagistic dialogue that takes place in their art provides original perspectives on Murdoch’s creativity, and new ways of understanding her experimentation with the visual arts. This book offers a new line of enquiry into Murdoch's novels, and into the relationship between literature and the visual arts. (shrink)

Many students who sign up for undergraduate‐level philosophy arrive with the expectation that moral philosophy is concerned with how one should act in the concrete and familiar situations of everyday life. Yet moral philosophers are often motivated by an ideal of neutrality, and adopt a detached perspective to achieve a scientific view of the competing moral theories. To concretise the points of disagreement they present highly specific examples that are abstracted from daily reality. There is something odd about the image (...) of morality that comes into view. What kind of guidance about how to act in concrete and familiar situations can this form of theorising bring about? This paper examines Iris Murdoch’s account of moral perception as an alternative starting point. Murdoch offers a perspective that is conceptually prior to the separation of thought from action, one that addresses the agent on the level of perception. While accounts of moral perception are often criticized for proposing a complacent moral theory that is inherently conservative, I argue that Murdoch’s account offers a radical – or tragic – form of perfectionism. While moral philosophy cannot provide sufficient reasons to act, Murdoch shows that it can, like art, make us practical, capable of acting. (shrink)

: Richard Moran argues that Iris Murdoch is an Existentialist who pretends not to be. His support for this view will be shown to depend on his attempt to assimilate Iris Murdoch's discussion of moral ‘vision’ in the parable of the Mother in Law to Sartre's thought on ‘choice’ and ‘orientation’. Discussing both Moran's Murdoch exegesis and Sartre's Being and Nothingness, I develop the Sartrean view to which Moran hopes to assimilate Murdoch, before pointing (...) out how Moran's assimilation fails. Murdoch's thought that when M is just and loving she sees D ‘as she really is’ cannot be accommodated on Sartre's picture. I develop this point of disagreement between Murdoch and Sartre, and argue that Murdoch has not as Moran claims made a misattribution to Sartre of an unsituated will, but has instead offered a penetrating critique of the central theme of Sartre's epistemology. (shrink)

Although the neural bases of the brain associated with movement disorders in children with developmental coordination disorder are becoming clearer, the information is not sufficient because of the lack of extensive brain function research. Therefore, it is controversial about effective intervention methods focusing on brain function. One of the rehabilitation techniques for movement disorders involves intervention using motor imagery. MI is often used for movement disorders, but most studies involve adults and healthy children, and the MI method for children (...) with DCD has not been studied in detail. Therefore, a review was conducted to clarify the neuroscientific basis of the methodology of intervention using MI for children with DCD. The neuroimaging review included 20 magnetic resonance imaging studies, and the neurorehabilitation review included four MI intervention studies. In addition to previously reported neural bases, our results indicate decreased activity of the bilateral thalamus, decreased connectivity of the sensory-motor cortex and the left posterior middle temporal gyrus, bilateral posterior cingulate cortex, precuneus, cerebellum, and basal ganglia, loss of connectivity superiority in the abovementioned areas. Furthermore, reduction of gray matter volume in the right superior frontal gyrus and middle frontal gyrus, lower fractional anisotropy, and axial diffusivity in regions of white matter pathways were found in DCD. As a result of the review, children with DCD had less activation of the left brain, especially those with mirror neurons system and sensory integration functions. On the contrary, the area important for the visual space processing of the right brain was activated. Regarding of characteristic of the MI methods was that children observed a video related to motor skills before the intervention. Also, they performed visual-motor tasks before MI training sessions. Adding action observation during MI activates the MNS, and performing visual-motor tasks activates the basal ganglia. These methods may improve the deactivated brain regions of children with DCD and may be useful as conditioning before starting training. Furthermore, we propose a process for sharing the contents of MI with the therapist in language and determining exercise strategies. (shrink)

Among the possible ways of gaining moral knowledge, moral perception figures as a controversial yet fruitful option. If moral perception is possible, moral disagreement is addressed not by appealing to principles but to the process and the objects of perception, and moral progress occurs not through deliberation but by refining one’s perceptual faculties. The possibility of “seeing clearly and justly” is at the heart of Iris Murdoch’s thought, but Murdoch herself does not put forth a systematic argument (...) for this view. In this paper I propose an argument for moral perception based on Murdoch’s philosophy, while engaging with contemporary debates in moral perception. The key idea I take from Murdoch is that perception is conceptually laden, where concepts are understood as ways of grasping the world according to human concerns. Murdoch’s position enables us to solve a difficult tension: explaining the motivating force of perception while maintaining objectivity in ethics. This view of moral perception also constitutes a radical position in the debate, where even the most optimistic defenses appeal to the supervenience of values on facts. If Murdoch is right, however, we perceive complex properties, including values, directly, so that appeal to supervenience becomes unnecessary and some of the grounds for the very distinction between fact and value are put into question. (shrink)

This essay provides a broad overview of Dame Iris Murdoch's work in moral philosophy. Although Murdoch is best known as a novelist, the focus here will be on her philosophic work. Throughout her life, Murdoch (1919–99) characterized herself as a Platonic realist and attacked other approaches to moral philosophy for obscuring our understanding of what she calls “the moral life” – roughly, our attempts to understand, evaluate, and improve ourselves and our lives together. While most philosophers (...) are skeptical about her positive views, many also believe we can enrich our moral theories by engaging with her work and attending to the aspects of ordinary moral life it highlights. (shrink)

This exploration of the crucially important role played by remorse in Iris Murdoch’s philosophical, theological, and political thinking identifies it as a critical concept in her moral psychology and a recurrent theme in her art. Through engagement with Simone Weil, current theories of remorse, trauma theory and Holocaust studies, it offers fresh perspectives on Murdoch’s fiction – particularly the late novels, her radio play The One Alone, and her monograph Heidegger.

Art plays a significant role in Iris Murdoch’s moral philosophy, a major part of which may be interpreted as a proposal for the revision of religious belief. In this paper, I identify within Murdoch’s philosophical writings five distinct but related ways in which great art can assist moral/religious belief and practice: art can reveal to us “the world as we were never able so clearly to see it before”; this revelatory capacity provides us with evidence for the (...) existence of the Good, a metaphor for a transcendent reality of which God was also a symbol; art is a “hall of reflection” in which “everything under the sun can be examined and considered”; art provides us with an analogue for the way in which we should try to perceive our world; and art enables us to transcend our selfish concerns. I consider three possible objections: that Murdoch’s theory is not applicable to all forms of art; that the meaning of works of art is often ambiguous; and that there is disagreement about what constitutes a great work of art. I argue that none of these objections are decisive, and that all forms of art have at least the potential to furnish us with important tools for developing the insight required to live a moral/religious life. (shrink)

This is a welcome volume. The many footnotes of praise for Iris Murdoch’s philosophical work were for many years not matched by actual discussion of it. This collection, long incubated and containing essays by many well-known figures with a continuing interest in Murdoch’s work, is one of several recent signs of this imbalance’s being righted. Anyone interested in Murdoch’s philosophical thinking—spilling over into ways it informs her novels—will find plenty to engage him here. A ninety-two page (...) introduction by Justin Broackes gives us a carefully plotted historical context for appreciating Murdoch’s work, detailed summaries of her main philosophical writings, and also fertile, wide-ranging, and .. (shrink)

Iris Murdoch develops a version of the Ontological Argument as a moral argument for the existence of a transcendent and perfect Platonic Good. I argue that her version of the argument over-emphasises moral goodness as a distant and intangible ideal to which we are inevitably attracted, and towards which we may progress, but which, apart from occasional revelations in saintly lives and great art, is normally only available in glimpses and intimations, and which remains mysterious. The argument is (...) better construed as concerning the moral reality of human beings as sacred or inviolable, and the moral demands this makes upon us—a reality that is proximate, palpable, inescapable and highly familiar. (shrink)

In Why Iris Murdoch Matters Gary Browning draws on as yet unpublished archival material to present an unrivalled overview of Murdoch's work and thought. Browning argues for Murdoch's position amongst the key theorists of modern life, and discusses in detail her engagement with the notion of late modernity. Her multiple perspectives on art, philosophy, religion, politics and the self all relate to how she understands the nature of late modernity. Browning lucidly illustrates that through both her (...) thought and fiction we can grasp the significance of issues that remain of paramount importance today: the possibilities of a moral life without foundations, the meaning of philosophy in a post-metaphysical age, the prospects of politics without ideological certainties and the significance of art after realism. A totally original work arguing persuasively that Iris Murdoch not only matters but is absolutely central to how we think through the contemporary age."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

It is often remarked that Iris Murdoch’s thought deeply influenced the landscape of twentieth-century moral philosophy. It is certainly true that she inspired a generation of Anglo-American philosophers who sought to critique the moral philosophy of their day. However, these philosophers drew almost exclusively from her early philosophical thought, most notably The Sovereignty of Good. When it came to Murdoch’s second book, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (MGM), moral philosophers and scholars alike found it hard to (...) place within contemporary moral philosophy.Our aim in this paper is to offer a reading of MGM that is resolute in its commitment to do justice to the book’s resistance against domestication within standard moral philosophy, while taking Murdoch at her word when she writes that her “whole argument can be read as moral philosophy” (MGM, 740). This commitment allows us to read MGM as an integrated unity. More importantly, it allows us to reassess Murdoch’s place in twentieth-century philosophy and to propose MGM as one of the works seeking to transform it. Our hope is that our reading will interest any philosopher who feels that something essential is missing in current typical practices in the discipline. (shrink)

Iris Murdoch on philosophy and literature: morality and the limits of text The paper discusses Murdoch’s view on philosophy and literature. It poses two questions. The first question is how Murdoch distinguishes between these two disciplines. Murdoch defends a separation of the two, whereas in fact she crosses borders. Moreover, Murdoch holds that both philosophy and literature are seeking truth. Therefore, I argue, for Murdoch, philosophy and literature are similar from a moral philosophical (...) standpoint. The second question is whether literary and philosophical reflections reach their limits when it comes to describing ultimate moral matters? Here, Murdoch’s concept of textuality is central. I explain Murdoch’s philosophical concept of text by analysing her thoughts on the ban on writing as shown in the novel The Message to the Planet and in philosophical essays, in particular The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists. Next, referring to Murdoch’s objections to Derrida’s theory of text, I argue that Murdoch’s concept of text is not strong enough to protect her view from moralism. I suggest that perhaps the moralism can be overcome if further analysis of Murdoch’s work would disclose the role of an alternative, expressionist concept of text. (shrink)

It is often remarked that Iris Murdoch’s thought deeply influenced the landscape of twentieth-century moral philosophy. It is certainly true that she inspired a generation of Anglo-American philosophers who sought to critique the moral philosophy of their day. However, these philosophers drew almost exclusively from her early philosophical thought, most notably The Sovereignty of Good. When it came to Murdoch’s second book, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (MGM), moral philosophers and scholars alike found it hard to (...) place within contemporary moral philosophy.Our aim in this paper is to offer a reading of MGM that is resolute in its commitment to do justice to the book’s resistance against domestication within standard moral philosophy, while taking Murdoch at her word when she writes that her “whole argument can be read as moral philosophy” (MGM, 740). This commitment allows us to read MGM as an integrated unity. More importantly, it allows us to reassess Murdoch’s place in twentieth-century philosophy and to propose MGM as one of the works seeking to transform it. Our hope is that our reading will interest any philosopher who feels that something essential is missing in current typical practices in the discipline. (shrink)

Ensayo publicado bajo el título "Love and Vision: Iris Murdoch on Eros and the Individual" en: M. Antonaccio y W. Schweiker, Iris Murdoch and the Search for Human Goodness, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1996, pp. 29-53. El objetivo del este ensayo es analizar el lugar que ocupa el amor er.tico en la obra de Iris Murdoch y, en especial, su relaci.n con el descubrimiento moral. Para ello se contraponen dos modelos: el expuesto (...) por Plat.n en el diálogo Fedro y el que opera en la Divina Comedia de Dante. Este an.lisis comparativo servir. de criterio para el examen de los argumentos de la propia Murdoch sobre el amor y permitir. iluminar la procedencia y los matices de la idea de amor erótico que se ponen en funcionamiento en dos de sus más célebres novelas, La máquina del amor sagrado y profano y El príncipe negro. (shrink)

It is not unusual for even the very greatest polemics to proceed through some unfairness toward what they attack, indeed to draw strength from the very distortions which they impose upon their targets. In the same way that a good caricature of a person’s face enables us to see something that we feel was genuinely there to be seen all along, a conviction that persists in the face of, and may indeed be sustained by, our ongoing sense of the discrepancy (...) between the picture and the reality. Some such distortion may be necessary in order to point to or make visible a feature that is perfectly present, but is obscured by the mass of other details. In the case of ideas and systems of thought there is an additional reason for a positive concern with distortion, and that is that we do not encounter ideas in a social or intellectual void. Rather, they come to us through their admirers, detractors, followers and opponents. The social and intellectual reception and dissemination of Plato, or Marx, or the Bible are now and forever part of the meaning of those texts, and this remains true however demonstrable it may be that their reception involves a large distortion of what is actually there in those texts. To concern oneself with them must also be to concern oneself with what both their advocates and opponents have made of them, and in this or that context this image may be of greater social and intellectual importance than the question of strictly ‘correct’ readings. And of course for no contemporary school of philosophy has the social and cultural milieu of its reception been more important to its identity as a trend of thought than in the case of Existentialism, particularly in its French, Sartrean form. Today, of course, it has been a fact of intellectual life within the Academy for over 30 years that Existentialism has no friends, and is.. (shrink)

Iris Murdoch believes that unselfing is required for virtue, as it takes us out of our egoistic preoccupations, and connects us to the Good in the world. Love is a form of unselfing, illustrating how close attention to another, and the way they really are, again, takes us out of a narrow focus on the self. Though this view of love runs counter to a view that those in love often overlook flaws in their loved ones, or at (...) least down-play them, I argue that it is compatible with Murdoch's view that love can overlook some flaws, ones that do not speak to the loved one's true self. Unselfing requires that we don't engage in selfish delusion, but a softer view of our loved ones is permitted. (shrink)

Is shame an accomplice of external oppressive values or an introspective emotion that reveals one’s true moral character? We track these conflicting intuitions about shame and argue that they point to several understudied social features of shame. We then lay out a more nuanced and inclusive view of shame that accounts for meaningful life-long interactions between self and community. This view emphasizes both personal agency in navigating shame-related experiences and the social challenges to such agency, namely the social structures and (...) values that breed shame for some people while exempting others. We argue that individuals demonstrate their agency in managing the emotion of shame not just through their private attitudes, by accepting, negotiating, or rejecting specific values, but also through social action, by identifying with some communities and distancing themselves from others. In pointing out that shame is a double-edged sword—harmful in ways not discussed before, yet also morally potent by propelling individual agency—we hope to add much-needed complexity to the discussion of shame. (shrink)

Originally, the idea of interviewing Iris Marion Young in Barcelona came about after she accepted an invitation to give a public lecture at the Law School of Pompeu Fabra University in May 2002. I had first met Iris back in 1999, at a conference in Bristol, England, and I was impressed deeply by her personality and ideas. We kept in touch since then and exchanged papers and ideas. She was very keen to come to Spain (it seems that (...) her mother had lived some years in Mallorca) and she finally travelled to Barcelona with her husband and daughter in spring 2002. The lecture, which she entitled "Women, War, and Peace," was meant to be the closing session of a course on Gender and the Law, and was also part of a series of seminars annually organized by the legal philosophy department (the Albert Calsamiglia Seminar). Her work was quite well-known among several Catalan philosophers and political scientists and professor Angel Castiñeira-who, at the time, was the director of Idees (Ideas), a Catalan journal published by the Centre d'Estudis de Temes Contemporanis (Center for the Study of Contemporary Issues)-suggested that she could give a second lecture, which they would publish together with an interview I could prepare. She accepted both proposals, and I started to think of a questionnaire for the interview while I was at Queen's University in Canada earlier that year. Idil Boran, a philosopher and good friend who did her doctorate at Queen's, offered to help me with this endeavour, since she also admired Iris as both a scholar and a person. Together we prepared the questions and sent them to her once she was back in Chicago, as there was not time to conduct the interview in person while she was in Barcelona. In fall 2002, she sent some answers to our questions, but the document was unfortunately incomplete. She was busy at the time, so we didn't want to pressure her to finish the interview. Eventually, the editors of Idees decided to publish the manifest about the war in Iraq subscribed by a large number of American Intellectuals together with fragments of Iris's (antiwar) lectures and an article that she wrote together with Daniel Archibugi, "Envisioning a Global Rule of Law." The interview was thus left unpublished. Both Idil and I thought it would be worthwhile to publish it somewhere else, but, for one reason or another, Iris didn't have the time to complete it and we kept postponing the project. At some point, she said that the questions she left unanswered were too complex or challenging to give a short or quick answer, and that she would need to reflect on them to provide detailed responses. Later, we learned she was ill and we didn't feel it was right to insist on those questions being answered. The issue came up again when she accepted to participate as a keynote speaker at the World Congress of Legal Philosophy held in Granada in June 2005. She then said she would come first to Barcelona (where she and Nancy Fraser had been invited to a workshop by the Catalan Women Institute) and suggested we could sit in a cafe and talk about the issues left out in those unanswered questions. Unfortunately, she had to cancel this trip because of her medical treatment, and I did not have the privilege of sharing time with her again. The following series of questions and responses are the product of this rather extended interview process. (shrink)

This study addresses the dynamical nature of a “representation‐hungry” cognitive task involving an imagined action. In our experiment, participants were handed rods that systematically increased or decreased in length on subsequent trials. Participants were asked to judge whether or not they thought they could reach for a distant object with the hand‐held rod. The results are in agreement with a dynamical model, extended from Tuller, Case, Ding, and Kelso (1994). The dynamical effects observed in this study suggest that predictive judgments (...) regarding the possibility or impossibility of a certain action can be understood in terms of dynamically evolving basins of attraction instead of as depending on representational structures. (shrink)

This article explains Iris Murdoch's notion of moral vision and its importance as a basic concept within applied ethics. It does so by exploring the influence of Iris Murdoch upon Alasdair Maclntyre whose ideas are frequently discussed by business ethicists. Arguably, the British philosopher Iris Murdoch who wrote -amongst others -Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, along with her contemporaries, Philippa Foot and Elizabeth Anscombe, pioneered the resurgence of Aristotle's virtue ethics. Furthermore, Iris (...) Murdoch influenced Alasdair Maclntyre. Heather Widdows, in her biography of Iris Murdoch lists Alasdair Maclntyre amongst those ' thinkers she inspired'. And in his writings Maclntyre does both examine Murdoch's work and acknowledge that ' Iris Murdoch has... put us all in her debt'. Murdoch was both an influential philosopher and a successful novelist. Maclntyre has stated that ' Iris Murdoch's novels are philosophy: but they are philosophy which casts doubt on all philosophy, including her own'. I therefore explore in this article the influence of Iris Murdoch's literary work, where ' true vision occasions right conduct' upon Alasdair Maclntyre's portrayal of us as ' storytelling animals' on a 'narrative quest'. (shrink)

Previous research has shown that leaders’ narcissistic rivalry is positively associated with abusive supervision. However, it remains unclear when and how leaders high in narcissistic rivalry show abusive supervision. Building on trait activation theory and the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Concept (NARC), we assumed that leaders high in narcissistic rivalry particularly show abusive supervision in reaction to follower workplace deviance due to their tendency to devaluate others. We argued that leaders’ injury initiation motives explain why leaders high in narcissistic rivalry (...) react with abusive supervision when experiencing organization-directed or supervisor-directed deviance. However, this should not be the case for coworker-directed deviance, as leaders high in narcissistic rivalry are less likely to find such behavior violates their internal norms. We conducted two studies. In the first study, we provided participants with experimental vignettes of follower workplace deviance. In the second study, we used a mixed-methods approach and investigated leaders’ autobiographical recollections of follower workplace deviance. We found a positive direct effect of leaders’ narcissistic rivalry across both studies. Leaders high in narcissistic rivalry showed abusive supervision (intentions) in response to organization-directed deviance (Studies 1 and 2) or supervisor-directed deviance (Study 1), but not in response to coworker-directed deviance (Studies 1 and 2). Leaders’ injury initiation motives could in part explain this effect. We discuss findings in light of the NARC and devaluation of others and derive implications for theory and practice. (shrink)

In this paper, I will highlight the role played, within the group of Oxonian philosophers who revived virtue ethics beginning in the 1950s, by perhaps the most heterodox and elusive figure, Iris Murdoch. In particular, I will discuss whether Murdoch can be considered, like Anscombe and Foot, a promoter of virtue ethics, or whether points of contact with that strand are limited to the polemical goals that the philosopher and novelist shared, for a thirty-year period, with her (...) colleagues and friends. Increasingly, important differences have led scholars to treat Murdoch as a heterodox virtue ethicist or as an advocate of an entirely different theoretical framework: from Neo-Platonism, to anti-theory, to a kind of Christian Buddhism or practical mysticism. In this article, I will briefly explore some of these hypotheses and try to show how Murdoch can be seen as the proponent of a credible virtue theory, though certainly far removed from the "mainstream" Aristotelian strand. (shrink)

Productivity—the hallmark of linguistic competence—is typically attributed to algebraic rules that support broad generalizations. Past research on spoken language has documented such generalizations in both adults and infants. But whether algebraic rules form part of the linguistic competence of signers remains unknown. To address this question, here we gauge the generalization afforded by American Sign Language (ASL). As a case study, we examine reduplication (X→XX)—a rule that, inter alia, generates ASL nouns from verbs. If signers encode this rule, then they (...) should freely extend it to novel syllables, including ones with features that are unattested in ASL. And since reduplicated disyllables are preferred in ASL, such rule should favor novel reduplicated signs. Novel reduplicated signs should thus be preferred to nonreduplicative controls (in rating), and consequently, such stimuli should also be harder to classify as nonsigns (in the lexical decision task). The results of four experiments support this prediction. These findings suggest that the phonological knowledge of signers includes powerful algebraic rules. The convergence between these conclusions and previous evidence for phonological rules in spoken language suggests that the architecture of the phonological mind is partly amodal. (shrink)

What role can technology play in cultivating a disciplinary stance — raising questions, planning investigations, interpreting data and constructing explanations in a way that reflects disciplinary values and principles? How can overt and tacit expert scientific knowledge be captured, represented and used to design software that enables novices to assume a disciplinary stance in their investigations? We present The Galapagos Finches software designed to foster a biological and evolutionary stance. Our approach, Discipline-Specific Strategic Support , translates the main variable types, (...) comparison types and relationships in a discipline into manipulable objects in the interface. Pre/post-tests show how DSSS helps achieve a balance between content and process goals. A contrastive-case microanalysis of high, medium and low-achieving students' inquiry shows progress toward a disciplinary stance. Our study shows how software representations carry multiple levels of meaning, and that the efficacy of learning technologies hinges on reflection at both the navigation and disciplinary-signification levels. (shrink)

This paper challenges the claim that science is metaphysically neutral upheld by contenders of the separation of peacefully co-existent science and religion and by evolutionary theists. True, naturalistic metaphysical claims can neither be refuted nor proved and are thus distinct from empirical hypotheses. However, metaphysical assumptions not only regulate the theoretical and empirical study of nature, but are increasingly supported by the growing empirical body of science. This historically evolving interaction has contributed to the development of a naturalistic worldview that (...) renounces the necessity of a transcendent god and of purposeful design. The thesis presented here differs not only from the claims of the “separatists” and of evolutionary theists. In pointing to the metaphysical aspects of science, I also criticize the failure of some evolutionary naturalists to distinguish between empirical and metaphysical contentions. Most important, based on the examination of science suggested here, creationists’ false accusation that science is only a naturalistic dogma is refuted. Finally, the difficulties involved in the position endorsed here for the public support of evolution are acknowledged, taking into account the high religious profile of the American society and the social and political context in the US and in other countries. (shrink)