Reading Iris Murdoch's Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals

286 Pages·2019·2.925 MB·English

by  Nora Hämäläinen, Gillian Dooley

Reading Iris Murdoch’s
Metaphysics as
a Guide to Morals
Edited by
Nora Hämäläinen · Gillian Dooley
Reading Iris Murdoch’s Metaphysics
as a Guide to Morals
Nora Hämäläinen · Gillian Dooley
Editors
Reading Iris
Murdoch’s Metaphysics
as a Guide to Morals
Editors
Nora Hämäläinen Gillian Dooley
University of Pardubice Flinders University
Pardubice, Czech Republic Adelaide, SA, Australia
ISBN 978-3-030-18966-2 ISBN 978-3-030-18967-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18967-9
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2019
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To the memory of Kate Larson 1961–2018
A
cknowledgements
This publication was supported within the project of Operational
Programme Research, Development and Education (OP VVV/OP
RDE), ‘Centre for Ethics as Study in Human Value’, registration No.
CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/15_003/0000425, co-financed by the European
Regional Development Fund and the state budget of the Czech Republic.
vii
c
ontents
1 Reading Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals:
An Introduction 1
Nora Hämäläinen and Gillian Dooley
2 The Gifford-Driven Genesis and Subliminal Stylistic
Construction of Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals 17
Frances White
3 Unity and Art in a Mood of Scepticism
(MGM Chapter 1) 33
Niklas Forsberg
4 Murdoch’s Question of the Work of Art: The Dialogue
Between Western and Japanese Conceptions of Unity
(MGM Chapters 1 and 8) 51
Fiona Tomkinson
5 Fact and Value (MGM Chapter 2) 67
Craig Taylor
6 Schopenhauer and the Mystical Solution of the Riddle
(MGM Chapter 3) 79
Mariëtte Willemsen
ix
x CONTENTS
7 Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals: The Debate Between
Literature and Philosophy 93
Gillian Dooley
8 Disciplines of Attention: Iris Murdoch on
Consciousness, Criticism, and Thought
(MGM Chapters 6–8) 107
David J. Fine
9 Iris Murdoch as Educator 125
Megan Jane Laverty
10 ‘I Think I Disagree’: Murdoch on Wittgenstein
and Inner Life (MGM Chapter 9) 145
Anne-Marie Søndergaard Christensen
11 ‘We Are Fantasising Imaginative Animals’
(MGM Chapter 11) 163
Hannah Marije Altorf
12 The Metaphysics of Morals and Politics
(MGM Chapter 12) 179
Gary Browning
13 Iris Murdoch’s Ontological Argument
(MGM Chapter 13) 195
Andrew Gleeson
14 Vision and Encounter in Moral Thinking
(MGM Chapter 15) 209
Christopher Cordner
15 The Urge to Write: Of Murdoch on Plato’s Demiurge 227
David Robjant
CONTENTS xi
16 Fields of Force: Murdoch on Axioms, Duties,
and Eros (MGM Chapter 17) 243
Mark Hopwood
17 Which Void? (MGM Chapter 18) 261
Nora Hämäläinen
Index 277
n c
otes on ontributors
Hannah Marije Altorf is Reader in Philosophy at St. Mary’s University,
Strawberry Hill, London. She has written on the philosophical and lit-
erary works of Iris Murdoch and on different forms of philosophical
dialogue. She is the author of Iris Murdoch and the Art of Imagining
(Continuum, 2008) and together with Mariëtte Willemsen she translated
The Sovereignty of Good into Dutch (Boom, 2003).
Gary Browning is Professor of Political Philosophy at Oxford Brookes
University and Associate Dean of Research in the Faculty of Humanities
and Social Sciences. He has written a number of books including Why
Iris Murdoch Matters: Making Sense of Experience in Modern Times
(Bloomsbury, 2018), A History of Modern Political Thought: The Question
of Interpretation (Oxford University Press, 2014), Plato and Hegel: Two
Modes of Philosophizing About Politics (Routledge, 2012), and Global
Theory from Kant to Hardt and Negri (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
Anne-Marie Søndergaard Christensen is Associate Professor in
Philosophy at the University of Southern Denmark. She has published
widely on the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and ethics, especially
Wittgensteinian ethics and virtue ethics.
Christopher Cordner is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the
University of Melbourne. His main area of philosophical interest is ethics,
including its classical Greek and Judaeo-Christian heritage, and its overlap
with art and aesthetics. He is currently writing a book on simple goodness.
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