The Ethics of Attention: Engaging the Real with Iris Murdoch and Simone Weil

This book draws on Iris Murdoch’s philosophy to explore questions related to the importance of attention in ethics. In doing so, it also engages with Murdoch’s ideas about the existence of a moral reality, the importance of love, and the necessity but also the difficulty, for most of us, of fighting against our natural self-centred tendencies.

Why is attention important to morality? This book argues that many moral failures and moral achievements can be explained by attention. Not only our a...