The Sovereignty of Good

A short book of three essays: "The Idea of Perfection", "On 'God' and 'Good'" and "The Sovereignty of Good over Other Concepts". Murdoch attacks the picture of the moral agent common to the linguistic philosophy and existentialism of her day: a bare will choosing in a neutral world of facts. Against it she argues that morality is chiefly a matter of vision, of how we see. Her best-known example is a mother-in-law, M, who comes to see her daughter-in-law, D, more justly over time, without any outward change in behaviour; that inner work is moral activity. Borrowing from Simone Weil, Murdoch calls the needed effort "attention": a just and loving gaze directed at a reality outside the self. The main enemy is the anxious, self-serving ego. Practices such as noticing a kestrel, learning a language and looking at art can help "unselfing". Finally she defends a Platonic idea of the Good, transcendent and never fully grasped.

It turns ethics from a theory of choices into a matter of seeing others clearly and fighting self-absorption, and it remains one of the most readable and quoted books of twentieth-century moral philosophy.