Iris Murdoch

Iris Murdoch was an Irish-born British philosopher and novelist who taught at Oxford and published twenty-six novels. In The Sovereignty of Good (1970) she challenged the dominant picture of morality as a matter of choices made by a free will, arguing that moral life consists chiefly in attention: the patient, loving effort to see other people and situations justly. Character, on this view, is formed by what one learns to see, and the Good is a real, transcendent standard.

Key ideas

• Moral life goes on continually in how we look at things, not only at moments of explicit choice.
• Attention, a just and loving gaze directed at reality, is the characteristic moral activity; her example is a mother-in-law who learns to see her daughter-in-law anew.
• The ego's fantasies distort perception, and virtue involves 'unselfing', for which art and nature are aids.
• The Good is sovereign and transcendent, a standard we are drawn towards but never fully grasp.

Major works

• Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (1953)
• Under the Net (1954, novel)
• The Sovereignty of Good (1970)
• Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992)

In the conversation

• Discussion Murdoch’s mother-in-law: is moral change mostly a matter of learning to see someone differently? Claire Dubois · 5 replies
• Discussion Do I see that an old woman is being humiliated, or do I infer it? Moral perception on a night shift Elin Hedqvist · 5 replies
• Debate Novels give us moral knowledge that no argument can deliver Keisha Monroe · 5 replies