Description
Book SynopsisIris 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 (1953), but she had the greatest impact with her work in moral philosophy--and especially her book The Sovereignty of Good (1970). 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 idea
Trade Review[this] fine collection of essays * Jonathan Derbyshire, Literary Review *
[a] fine collection * Simon Blackburn, Times Literary Supplement *
a milestone in the history of Murdoch scholarship * Megan J. Laverty, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *
This book is so full of good things that it is difficult for a reviewer to know where to start or stop. * Hugo Meynell, The Heythrop Journal *
Table of ContentsIntroduction ; Heidegger: Sein und Zeit ; Iris on Safari ; 1. Holy Fool and Magus ; 2. 'Faint with secret knowledge' ; 3. The Virtues of Metaphysics ; 4. Iris Murdoch and Existentialism ; 5. The Exploration of Moral Life ; 6. Iris Murdoch and the Prospects for Critical Moral Perception ; 7. Social Convention and Neurosis as Obstacles to Moral Freedom ; 8. Iris Murdoch on Nobility and Moral Value ; 9. For every Foot its own Shoe ; 10. Visual Metaphors in Iris Murdoch's Moral Philosophy ; 11. Psychopathy, Empathy, & Moral Motivation ; Bibliography ; Index of Names
