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 (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 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 It also contains a previously unpublished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.
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