Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals

by Iris Murdoch

Overview

The acclaimed author of The Good Apprentice draws on the entire history of philosophy--and particularly on Plato and Kant--to formulate her own model of morality and demonstrate how thoroughly it is bound up with our daily lives. "An utterly absorbing book."--The Wall Street Journal.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101495797
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/01/1994
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	528
File size:	638 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) was born in Dublin and brought up in London. She studied philosophy at Cambridge and was a philosophy fellow at St. Anne's College for 20 years. She published her first novel in 1954 and was instantly recognized as a major talent. She went on to publish more than 26 novels, as well as works of philosophy, plays, and poetry.

Table of Contents

Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals1. Conceptions of Unity. Art
2. Fact and Value
3. Schopenhauer
4. Art and Religion
5. Comic and Tragic
6. Consciousness and Thought - I
7. Derrida and Structuralism
8. Consciousness and Thought - II
9. Wittgenstein and the Inner Life
10. Notes on Will and Duty
11. Imagination
12. Morals and Politics
13. The Ontological Proof
14. Descartes and Kant
15. Martin Buber and God
16. Morality and Religion
17. Axioms, Duties, Eros
18. Void
19. Metaphysics: A Summary
Acknowledgments
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Iris Murdoch has written a book which concerns all of us as human beings … There are pages here that one wants to embrace her for, pages that say things of fundamental human importance in a way that they have never quite been said before"
—Noel Malcolm in the Sunday Telegraph

"This is philosophy dragged from the cloister, dusted down and made freshly relevant to suffering and egoism, death and religious ecstasy … and how we feel compasison for others"
—Terry Eagleton in the Guardian

"Gripping … it enchants with a clause that sets you daydreaming, captivates with a stream of thought, empowers with reminiscences"
—Ian Hacking in the London Review of Books

"Anyone who has even the slightest interest in philosophical matters will find Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals an utterly absorbing book"
—The Wall Street Journal

"Remarkable … Iris Murdoch has once again put us all in her debt."
—Alasdair MacIntyre in The New York Times Book Review

Editorial Reviews

The most conspicuous citizens of our epoch, according to Murdoch, are ``demonic individuals,'' egoistic go-getters in pursuit of money, fame, power and sex. The English novelist-philosopher sketches a new morality that would end the compartmentalization of public from private, work from pleasure and aesthetic from ethical concerns. Plato's view of the cosmos, as Murdoch interprets it, speaks to our age and can help us forge a religion without a personal God. Religion should be ``demythologized,'' she urges, adding that religious thinking ought to incorporate the transcendental experiences of mystics, artists and poets. This dense, demanding treatise engages the ideas of Plato, Kant, Wittgenstein, Schopenhauer, Simone Weil, Nietzsche, Jung and structuralists. For diligent readers, it presents many riches as Murdoch ranges from Shakespearean tragedy to Martin Buber's philosophy and the nature of imagination. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This book is about the interplay of metaphysical images in art, religon, and especially morals. Morality is fundamental to human nature and is to be understood, according to distinguished novelist and philosophy professor Murdoch, not merely in piecemeal analysis but in the broad synthesis of metaphysical categories that set the order and pattern of our moral experience and our concepts thereof. Moral discernment comes from concentrated attention and appears ex nihilo , as by a kind of grace that leads us from contingent detail toward a perfection that we (allegedly) know intuitively. The work draws significant influence from Plato and Kant and also discusses aspects of Schopenhauer, Wittgenstein, and Buber in detail. Far-ranging and rich with well-chosen examples, this insightful book challenges us to think more clearly about its subject.-- Robert Hoffman, York Coll., CUNY

Library Journal

It would be both foolhardy or unjust to attempt to summarize the argument of Murdoch's dense and difficult philosophical essay. Indeed, summarizing a single chapter would fast become an exercise in reductionism and a betrayal of the book's supple argument. After years of thoughtfulness and spiritual commitment, Murdoch has come to accept that the very concepts of morality and metaphysics are by no means easy to justify, and she knows very well that the widespread use of them signifies, on the surface, little more than the fact that old habits (and superstitions) die hard. But as everyone who has read her knows, she is a traditionalist of sorts, who believes the old language said something that newer languages fail to account for, and as much as anything, this is the significance of her philosphical work. Along the difficult and winding way we have to encounter not only Plato, Kant, Kierkegaard, and Hegel, but Buddhist philosphers, Schopenhuaer, Derrida, Valery, and Simone Weil. Philosophy has almost argued itself out of existence; it has become fragmented into schools of rival influence, and coopted by dry academics. The very manner in which Murdoch writes--sideways-shifting, gathering, progressing slowly to the point, as if to make the argument grow out of the cogitation rather than be its master--reveals the sort of thinking she wants to restore. But does she struggle in vain? Most philosophers of reputation would find her work intelligent but quaint, and for now they have control of the academy. But for many students of philosophy this is what philosophy should be, and their struggle with this subtle and noble book will prove nothing less than a labor of love.

Stuart Whitwell

"Remarkable—Iris Murdoch has once again put us all in her debt." —The New York Times Book Review 

"Anyone who has even the slightest interest in philosophical matters will find Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals an utterly absorbing book." —The Wall Street Journal 

"Lively, witty, and spellbinding, written by a sleuth on the trail of the meaning of Life." —Peter Mullen, The Daily Mail

"Sets you daydreaming, captivates with a stream of thought, empowers with reminiscences." —London Review of Books 

"Gripping . . . Iris Murdoch has written a book which concerns all of us as human beings . . . There are pages here that one wants to embrace her for, pages that say things of fundamental human importance in a way that they have never quite been said before." —Noel Malcolm, The Sunday Telegraph

"Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals is a prodigious roller coaster of a book, a journey through philosophy, religion, literature, art—less a guide than a gigantic survey, a mapping, providing readers with the means to find their own ways . . . I know of no other writer who could have covered such large areas with such authority, nor had the courage to treat fashion with such disdain." —Nicholas Mosley, The Daily Telegraph

"A large, elaborate and visionary philosophical essay . . . richly stimulating . . . this is a significant book, lambent with insights, intelligence, and profound concern." —A. C. Grayling, The Financial Times 

"Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals is really a much needed Guide to Life. 'Good is the reality of which God is the dream' is a line of simple beauty, distilling philosophical insight into purest poetry." —Josephine Hart, The Sunday Express

"It is a great congested work, a foaming sourcebook, about life, imagination, tragedy, philosophy, morality, religion, and art." —Galen Strawson, The Independent on Sunday 

From the Publisher