Abstract

This dissertation is the first systematic and comprehensive treatment of Iris Murdoch's moral philosophy in the context of contemporary religious and philosophical ethics. Its task is threefold: to present the central themes of Murdoch's ethics as she develops them in relation to Anglo-American linguistic empiricism and Sartrean existentialism; to demonstrate the contemporary relevance of her thought among current options in ethics; and to outline its constructive implications for future ethical inquiry. ;The central argument is that Murdoch's thought signals a compelling challenge facing current ethical inquiry: the effort to redescribe the moral self and its relation to the good. Against contemporary thinkers in the Kantian tradition who argue that human moral identity is constituted by the self's choices apart from any substantive conception of the good, Murdoch acknowledges that moral identity is constituted by a prior framework of value. Yet she disputes contemporary communitarian and narrative ethics which argue that moral identity is wholly constituted by its formation within particular communities and social practices. Murdoch offers an alternative to both positions by arguing that moral identity is constituted transcendentally in correlation with an idea of the good. She retrieves a metaphysical conception of ethics based on this fundamental correlation. ;The crucial argument Murdoch uses to support this claim is a version of the ontological proof, which conceives the good as part of the structure of human consciousness. On this basis, Murdoch's metaphysical realism must be understood as "reflexive" in nature. That is, the good is discovered through the medium of consciousness as it reflects on itself; yet the act of reflexivity reveals the good to be a perfection that transcends consciousness. Thus consciousness in Murdoch's view contains an implicit ideal of perfected moral knowledge by which it is also evaluated. ;The dissertation concludes with an assessment of Murdoch's position and its constructive implications for future ethical inquiry. These include the possibility of a retrieval of the notion of consciousness beyond the contemporary turn to language; a reconceptualization of the relation of ethical theory to aesthetic and religious modes of discourse; and renewed attention to the ethics of political liberalism