Access to the full content is only available to members of institutions that have purchased access. If you belong to such an institution, please log in or find out more about how to order.


Print

Contents

Murdoch, Iris (1919–99)

DOI
10.4324/9780415249126-L136-1
Published
2002
DOI: 10.4324/9780415249126-L136-1
Version: v1,  Published online: 2002
Retrieved March 29, 2024, from https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/biographical/murdoch-iris-1919-99/v-1

Article Summary

Iris Murdoch was an Oxford moral philosopher and a prolific novelist. Her philosophy was marked by a strong sense of the moral significance of our inner lives: the quality of our seeing, feeling and imagining is significant, both in itself and as a background for our active lives. Moral effort, Murdoch believed, consists mainly in the struggle against our natural egoism. She thought ethics should discuss the techniques of this struggle and took a particular interest in the role art might play in such a context. Insisting on the irreducible plurality of the moral ‘field of force’, Murdoch did not develop a moral theory; yet she also believed that moral experience is haunted by a sense of unity. Her thought revolved around this tension. Inspired by Plato, she referred to this unity as ‘Good’ and understood it as a distant perfect reality present in imperfect human lives as a baffling but magnetic force. The phenomena and problems that had Murdoch’s philosophical interest were also explored in her fiction, despite her insistence that she was not a philosophical novelist.

Print
Citing this article:
Norgaard, Thomas. Murdoch, Iris (1919–99), 2002, doi:10.4324/9780415249126-L136-1. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Taylor and Francis, https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/biographical/murdoch-iris-1919-99/v-1.
Copyright © 1998-2024 Routledge.

Related Articles