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Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals was Iris Murdoch's major philosophical testament and a highly original and ambitious attempt to talk about our time. Yet in the scholarship on her philosophical work thus far it has often been left in the shade of her earlier work. This volume brings together 16 scholars who offer accessible readings of chapters and themes in the book, connecting them to Murdoch's larger oeuvre, as well as to central themes in 20th century and contemporary thought. The essays bring forth the strength, originality, and continuing relevance of Murdoch's late thought, addressing, among other matters, her thinking about the Good, the role and nature of metaphysics in the contemporary world, the roles of art in human understanding, questions of unity and plurality in thinking, the possibilities of spiritual life without God, and questions of style and sensibility in intellectual work.
List of contents
Chapter One: Introduction .- Chapter Two: The Gifford-driven genesis and subliminal stylistic construction of Metaphysics as a guide to morals.- Chapter Three: Unity and art in a mood of scepticism (MGM Chapter 1).- Chapter Four: Murdoch's question of the work of art: the dialogue between Western and Japanese conceptions of unity (MGM Chapters 1 & 8).- Chapter Five: Fact and value (MGM Chapter 2).- Chapter Six: Schopenhauer and the mystical solution of the riddle (MGM Chapter 3).- Chapter Seven: Metaphysics as a guide to morals: The debate between literature and philosophy.- Chapter Eight: Disciplines of attention: Iris Murdoch on consciousness, criticism, and thought (MGM Chapters 6-8).- Chapter Nine: Iris Murdoch as educator.- Chapter Ten: 'I think I disagree': Murdoch on Wittgenstein and inner life (MGM Chapter 17).- Chapter Eleven: 'We are fantasising imaginative animals' (MGM Chapter 11).-Chapter Twelve: The metaphysics of morals and politics (MGM Chapter 12).- Chapter Thirteen: Iris Murdoch's ontological argument (MGM Chapter 13).- Chapter Fourteen: Vision and encounter in moral thinking (MGM Chapter 15).- Chapter Fifteen: The urge to write: Of Murdoch on Plato's Demiurge.- Chapter Sixteen: Fields of force: Murdoch on axioms, duties, and Eros (MGM Chapter 17).- Chapter Seventeen: Which void? (MGM Chapter 18).
About the author
Nora Hämäläinen is a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Ethics, University of Pardubice, Czech Republic.
Gillian Dooley is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Flinders University in South Australia.
Report
"Reading Iris Murdoch's Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals is an intellectually challenging read that offers many profound and detailed interpretations of Murdoch's important mature work, invaluable to all interested readers of Murdoch." (Anne Eggert Stevns, Iris Murdoch Review, 2020)
