Abstract
In this chapter I want to show that the connection in Iris Murdoch’s thought between morality and art discloses her understanding of what it means to be a human being. She intimates that we are straddled between kinds of fate: the necessity of virtue and the necessity of death. I want to probe these necessities on three levels of reflection in order to sustain my contention about Murdoch’s work. I start with art and morals. The second level of inquiry indicates how Murdoch anticipated concerns found in current humanism even though she once called humanism a flimsy creed. Things turn on definition, of course. I will strive to indicate rightly her kind of humanistic outlook. The final level of reflection examines morality and death in order to clarify her deepest claims about human existence. This reflection on what is ultimately important is the inner aim and purpose of the chapter. ‘To do philosophy’, Murdoch once wrote, ‘is to explore one’s own temperament, and yet at the same time to attempt to discover the truth’ (SG, p. 46). Think of my inquiry as a stab at that way of thinking and on different levels of reflection.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Murdoch, ‘The Sublime and the Good’, in Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature (1997; London: Allen Lane, 1998), p. 215.
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of the Power of Judgment, ed. Paul Guyer, trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 28.
Murdoch, ‘Metaphysics and Ethics’, in Maria Antonaccio and William Schweiker (eds), Iris Murdoch and the Search for Human Goodness (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 252.
Also see Maria Antonaccio, Picturing the Human: The Moral Thought of Iris Murdoch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
Tzvetan Todorov, Imperfect Garden: The Legacy of Humanism, trans. Carol Cosman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), p. 42.
Edward W. Said, Humanism and Democratic Criticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), p. 10.
Murdoch, The Black Prince (with an introduction by Martha C. Nussbaum) (New York: Penguin, 2003), p. 359.
See, for example, Martin Luther, ‘Sermons on the Catechism’, in Martin Luther: Selections from his Writings, ed. J. Dillenberger (New York: Anchor Books, 1962), pp. 207–40.
See the end of ‘The Sovereignty of Good over Other Concepts’; Augustine’s statement of his position is in the Confessions. On ‘real joy’ see William Schweiker, Theological Ethics and Global Dynamics: In the Time of Many Worlds (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004).
See David E. Klemm and William Schweiker, Religion and the Human Future: An Essay on Theological Humanism (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008).
There is another strand of thought that seeks to avoid these sources. Schopenhauer, with whom Murdoch engages, finds remnants of Eastern thought in the Perennial Philosophy of some Western thinkers. He sees this as Asiatic and even Aryan and so the real legacy of the West. I cannot engage this option here. See Arthur Schopenhauer, The Basis of Morality, 2nd edn, trans. A.B. Bullock (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2005).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2010 William Schweiker
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Schweiker, W. (2010). The Moral Fate of Fictive Persons: On Iris Murdoch’s Humanism. In: Rowe, A., Horner, A. (eds) Iris Murdoch and Morality. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230277229_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230277229_14
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-30947-4
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-27722-9
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)