ABSTRACT

Iris Murdoch was a philosopher and novelist of extraordinary breadth and originality whose work defies simple categorisation. Her philosophical writing engages with an astonishingly wide range of figures, from Plato and Kant to Sartre and Heidegger, and her work increasingly inspires debate in ethics, aesthetics, religion and literature.

The Murdochian Mind is an outstanding reference source to the full span of Murdoch's philosophical work, comprising thirty-seven specially commissioned chapters written by an international team of leading scholars. Divided into five clear parts, the volume covers the following areas:

  • A guide to Murdoch's key philosophical texts, including The Sovereignty of Good and Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals
  • Core themes and concepts in Murdoch's philosophy, such as love, moral vision, and attention.
  • Murdoch's engagement with the history of philosophy, including Plato, Kant, Hegel, Simone Weil and Wittgenstein
  • Interdisciplinary connections with art, literature, and religion, including Judaism, Buddhism, and Christianity
  • Murdoch and contemporary philosophical debates, including feminism, virtue ethics, and metaethics
  • The application of Murdoch’s thought to applied ethics, including animal ethics, psychiatric ethics, and the environment.

Although recent years have seen a blossoming of interest in Murdoch’s philosophy, The Murdochian Mind is the first volume to do justice to the incredibly rich and wide-ranging nature of her work. As such it will be of great interest to students of philosophy, especially ethics and aesthetics, as well as those in related disciplines such as literature, religion and gender studies.

chapter |23 pages

Introduction

part 1|88 pages

Reading Murdoch

chapter 3|13 pages

How to Read The Fire and the Sun

chapter 4|12 pages

How to Read Acastos

Murdoch's Platonic dialogues

chapter 7|5 pages

Murdoch and Me

A personal reflection

part 2|123 pages

Core themes and concepts

chapter 8|13 pages

Thinking, Language, and Concepts

chapter 9|14 pages

Inwardness in Ethics 1

chapter 10|14 pages

Moral Vision

chapter 11|13 pages

Attention

chapter 12|14 pages

Love

chapter 13|14 pages

Virtue 1

chapter 14|12 pages

The Good

chapter 15|14 pages

The Ontological Argument

chapter 16|13 pages

Care for the Ordinary

part 3|107 pages

Critical encounters

chapter 17|14 pages

Murdoch and Plato

chapter 18|13 pages

Murdoch and Kant

chapter 19|14 pages

Murdoch and Hegel

chapter 20|12 pages

Murdoch and Heidegger

chapter 21|14 pages

Murdoch and Sartre

chapter 22|12 pages

Murdoch and Weil

chapter 24|13 pages

Murdoch and K. E. Løgstrup

part 4|106 pages

Art, religion, and politics

chapter 25|16 pages

Art, Beauty, and Morality

chapter 26|13 pages

Is Murdoch a Philosophical Novelist?

chapter 27|6 pages

Writing Morally

chapter 28|13 pages

Murdoch and Christianity

chapter 29|14 pages

Murdoch and Buddhism

chapter 31|14 pages

Murdoch and Politics

chapter 32|13 pages

Murdoch and Feminism

part 5|68 pages

Contemporary moral issues

chapter 33|15 pages

Nature and the Environment

chapter 34|11 pages

Loving Attention to Animals

chapter 35|14 pages

Psychiatric Ethics

chapter 36|12 pages

Moral Injury

chapter 37|14 pages

Civility