This year will be devoted to the work of Iris Murdoch (1919-1999), centring on a close reading of the three essays that make up The Sovereignty of Good (1970). In the first essay, ‘The Idea of Perfection’, Murdoch presents a ‘rival soul-picture’ to the one that (she thinks) dominates modern moral philosophy. At the centre of Murdoch’s account is not concepts of will, choice, and action, but the concepts of attention and vision, and the idea of the infinite perfectibility of both. ‘I can only choose within the world I can see, in the moral sense of “see”, which implies clear vision…’. In the second essay, ‘On “God” and “Good” ’, Murdoch, drawing on Freud and Christian thought, identifies the key obstacle to our attaining a clear vision of reality: the fantasies of ‘the fat relentless ego’. Freedom, on this view, is experienced not in the exercise of the will, but in accuracy of vision. That, Murdoch suggests, requires transcendence of self. In the final essay, ‘The Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts’, Murdoch suggests that directing our attention outwards - to the natural world, to works of art, to intellectual study, to other people - offers ‘scattered images’ of the Good, and experiences of ‘unselfing’ that are inseparable from virtue.
To prepare for this reading, will will look at Murdoch's earlier essays, including ‘Vision
and Choice in Morality’ (1956); ‘Metaphysics and Ethics’ (1957); 'Darkness of Practical Reason’ (1966); 'The Sublime and the Good' & 'The Sublime and the Good Revisited' (1959); 'Against Dryness’ (1961);
It is highly recommended that students purchase a copy of Murdoch, Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature, ed. Peter Conradi (London: Penguin, 1997).
- Module Supervisor: Steven Gormley