This paper explores the notions of hope and how individual patient autonomy can trump carefully reasoned ethical concerns and policies intended to regulate stem cell transplants. We argue that the same limits of knowledge that inform arguments to restrain and regulate unproven treatments might also undermine our ability to comprehensively dismiss or condemn them. Incautiously or indiscriminately reasoned policies and attitudes may drive critical information and data underground, impel patients away from working with clinical researchers, and tread needlessly on hope, (...) the essential motivator of patients, advocates and researchers alike. We offer recommendations to clinicians and health care providers to help balance the discourse with individuals seeking treatment while guarding against fraud, misconception, and patient harm. (shrink)

By operations on models we show how to relate completeness with respect to permissivenominal models to completeness with respect to nominal models with finite support. Models with finite support are a special case of permissive-nominal models, so the construction hinges on generating from an instance of the latter, some instance of the former in which sufficiently many inequalities are preserved between elements. We do this using an infinite generalisation of nominal atoms-abstraction. The results are of interest in their own right, (...) but also, we factor the mathematics so as to maximise the chances that it could be used off-the-shelf for other nominal reasoning systems too. Models with infinite support can be easier to work with, so it is useful to have a semi-automatic theorem to transfer results from classes of infinitely-supported nominal models to the more restricted class of models with finite support. In conclusion, we consider different permissive-nominal syntaxes and nominal models and discuss how they relate to the results proved here. (shrink)

We are used to the idea that computers operate on numbers, yet another kind of data is equally important: the syntax of formal languages, with variables, binding, and alpha-equivalence. The original application of nominal techniques, and the one with greatest prominence in this paper, is to reasoning on formal syntax with variables and binding. Variables can be modelled in many ways: for instance as numbers (since we usually take countably many of them); as links (since they may `point' to a (...) binding site in the term, where they are bound); or as functions (since they often, though not always, represent `an unknown'). None of these models is perfect. In every case for the models above, problems arise when trying to use them as a basis for a fully formal mechanical treatment of formal language. The problems are practical—but their underlying cause may be mathematical. The issue is not whether formal syntax exists, since clearly it does, so much as what kind of mathematical structure it is. To illustrate this point by a parody, logical derivations can be modelled using a Gödel encoding (i.e., injected into the natural numbers). It would be false to conclude from this that proof-theory is a branch of number theory and can be understood in terms of, say, Peano's axioms. Similarly, as it turns out, it is false to conclude from the fact that variables can be encoded e.g., as numbers, that the theory of syntax-with-binding can be understood in terms of the theory of syntax-without-binding, plus the theory of numbers (or, taking this to a logical extreme, purely in terms of the theory of numbers). It cannot; something else is going on. What that something else is, has not yet been fully understood. In nominal techniques, variables are an instance of names, and names are data. We model names using urelemente with properties that, pleasingly enough, turn out to have been investigated by Fraenkel and Mostowski in the first half of the 20th century for a completely different purpose than modelling formal language. What makes this model really interesting is that it gives names distinctive properties which can be related to useful logic and programming principles for formal syntax. Since the initial publications, advances in the mathematics and presentation have been introduced piecemeal in the literature. This paper provides in a single accessible document an updated development of the foundations of nominal techniques. This gives the reader easy access to updated results and new proofs which they would otherwise have to search across two or more papers to find, and full proofs that in other publications may have been elided. We also include some new material not appearing elsewhere. (shrink)

Michael Haneke’s film Caché explores the psychological and social effects of the intrusion of the immigrant Other into privileged Western capitalist society. Caché allegorises the intrusion of the immigrant Other through a series of intrusive and threatening non-diegetic surveillance tapes delivered to a wealthy Parisian family’s home, the subject of the surveillance. Haneke’s film undertakes a significant critique of the increasing right-wing anti-immigrant sentiment driving neo-liberal politics and ideology in the capitalist West. Here, Caché confronts the viewer with their complicity (...) in the disavowal and subjugation of the immigrant Other within their own social edifice. The significance of Caché is the film’s potential to facilitate the viewers’ confrontation with the disavowed and repressed truth of the social edifice. This confrontation enables the viewer to assume an emancipatory subjectivity which extends beyond Caché’s cinematic frame into the viewers’ own social edifice. I argue that Haneke’s film has the potential to radically alter the way viewers relate to the diegetic reality and, through the figuration of cinema, to their own social edifice. Ultimately, Caché brings to the fore the disavowed truth of both capitalist society and of privileged subjectivities, demanding a new politics based on the excluded immigrant Other. (shrink)

Nominal terms extend first-order terms with binding. They lack some properties of first- and higher-order terms: Terms must be reasoned about in a context of ‘freshness assumptions’; it is not always possible to ‘choose a fresh variable symbol’ for a nominal term; it is not always possible to ‘α-convert a bound variable symbol’ or to ‘quotient by α-equivalence’; the notion of unifier is not based just on substitution.Permissive nominal terms closely resemble nominal terms but they recover these properties, and in (...) particular the ‘always fresh’ and ‘always rename’ properties. In the permissive world, freshness contexts are elided, equality is fixed, and the notion of unifier is based on substitution alone rather than on nominal terms’ notion of unification based on substitution plus extra freshness conditions.We prove that expressivity is not lost moving to the permissive case and provide an injection of nominal terms unification problems and their solutions into permissive nominal terms problems and their solutions.We investigate the relation between permissive nominal unification and higher-order pattern unification. We show how to translate permissive nominal unification problems and solutions in a sound, complete, and optimal manner, in suitable senses which we make formal. (shrink)

In this paper we make some observations about Natural Deduction derivations [Prawitz, 1965, van Dalen, 1986, Bell and Machover, 1977]. We assume the reader is familiar with it and with proof-theory in general. Our development will be simple, even simple-minded, and concrete. However, it will also be evident that general ideas motivate our examples, and we think both our specific examples and the ideas behind them are interesting and may be useful to some readers. In a sentence, the bare technical (...) content of this paper is: Extending natural deduction with global well-formedness conditions can neatly and cheaply capture classical and intermediate logics. The interest here is in the ‘neatly’ and ‘cheaply’. By ‘neatly’ we mean ‘preserving proof-normalisation’,1 and ‘maintaining the subformula property’, and by ‘cheaply’ we mean ‘preserving the formal structure of deductions’ (so that a deduction in the original system is still, formally, a deduction in the extended system, and in particular it requires no extra effort to write just because it is in the extended system). To illustrate what we have in mind consider intuitionistic first-order logic (FOL) [van Dalen, 1986] as a paradigmatic example of a formal notion of deduction. A natural deduction derivation (or deduction) is an inductively defined tree structure where each node contains an instance of a formula. A deduction is valid when each successive node follows from its predecessors in accordance with some predetermined inference rules. A particular attraction of Natural Deduction is its clean and economical presentation. Here for example are deduction (fragments) proving A ∧ B from A and B, and ∀x. (P (x) ∧ Q(x)) from ∀x. P (x) and ∀x. Q(x): ∀x. P (x) (∀E). (shrink)

Nominal terms extend first-order terms with binding. They lack some properties of first- and higher-order terms: Terms must be reasoned about in a context of ‘freshness assumptions’; it is not always possible to ‘choose a fresh variable symbol’ for a nominal term; it is not always possible to ‘α-convert a bound variable symbol’ or to ‘quotient by α-equivalence’; the notion of unifier is not based just on substitution. Permissive nominal terms closely resemble nominal terms but they recover these properties, and (...) in particular the ‘always fresh’ and ‘always rename’ properties. In the permissive world, freshness contexts are elided, equality is fixed, and the notion of unifier is based on substitution alone rather than on nominal terms’ notion of unification based on substitution plus extra freshness conditions. We prove that expressivity is not lost moving to the permissive case and provide an injection of nominal terms unification problems and their solutions into permissive nominal terms problems and their solutions. We investigate the relation between permissive nominal unification and higher-order pattern unification. We show how to translate permissive nominal unification problems and solutions in a sound, complete, and optimal manner, in suitable senses which we make formal. (shrink)

This book explores Iris Murdoch as a philosopher who, through her distinctive methodology, exploits the advantages of having a mind on the borders of literature and politics in her early career writings (pre-The Sovereignty of Good). By focusing on a single decade of Murdoch’s early career, Jamieson tracks connections between her views on the state of literature and politics in postwar Britain and her approach to the philosophy of mind and moral philosophy. Furthermore, this close study reveals that, (...) far from a stylistic quirk, Murdoch’s use of metaphors, analogies, and other literary devices is internal to her methodology. Finally, rather than asking what Murdoch’s views are, this work will ask “what is Murdoch trying to achieve with her writings and public lectures, and how does she go about this?” By answering the latter question, we will have a new strategy for interpreting her writings more generally. The book contributes to the growing body of scholarship focusing on Iris Murdoch’s philosophical writings, and on women in the history of analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Murdoch makes some ambitious claims about love’s epistemic significance which can initially seem puzzling in the light of its heterogeneous and messy everyday manifestations. I provide an interpretation of Murdochian love such that Murdoch’s claims about its epistemic significance can be understood. I argue that Murdoch conceives of love as a virtue, and as belonging at the pinnacle of the hierarchy of the virtues, and that this makes sense of the epistemic role Murdochian love fulfills. Moreover, I (...) suggest that there is good reason to think that Murdochian love is not as far from everyday conceptions of love as it can initially appear. (shrink)

The article discusses Iris Murdoch’s philosophical relationship to Buddhism. First, we argue that Murdoch was not, and did not identify herself as, a Buddhist. Then we suggest caution regarding Murdoch’s interpretations of Buddhism. On the one hand, she applies the limited viewpoint of her era. On the other hand, her approach is motivated by insights tracing affinities between Buddhism and Husserl’s and Sartre’s analyses of consciousness, as well as Platonic ideas of unselfing and self-purification. Murdoch’s reflections (...) on Buddhism serve primarily a complex argument about the role of religion in our moral lives, as these reflect the rapidly changing Western cultural environment. She envisages the possibility for Christianity to learn from Buddhism and move closer towards demythologisation and a radical, loving commitment to the others here and now. While Murdoch’s observations may not be accurate as a ‘diagnosis of our times’, they serve as a valuable opening for reflecting on our lives in the suggested terms. They are also inspiring in their optimism that there is the possibility to learn from others (other cultures, other religions) for the better. The ‘muddled’ nature of our reality does not thwart this possibility of learning; it only makes its particular steps unpredictable. (shrink)

Can the experience of great art play a role in our coming to understand the ethical framework of another person? In this article I draw out three themes from Iris Murdoch’s ‘The Sovereignty of Good’ in order to show the role that communal attention to works of art can play in our ethical lives. I situate this role in the context of Murdoch’s wider philosophical views.

Iris Murdoch was a notable philosopher before she was a notable novelist and her work was brave, brilliant, and independent. She made her name first for her challenges to Gilbert Ryle and behaviourism, and later for her book on Sartre, but she had the greatest impact with her work in moral philosophy—and especially her book The Sovereignty of Good. She turned expectantly from British linguistic philosophy to continental existentialism, but was dissatisfied there too; she devised a philosophy and a (...) style of philosophy that were distinctively her own. Murdoch aimed to draw out the implications, for metaphysics and the conception of the world, of rejecting the standard dichotomy of language into the 'descriptive' and the 'emotive'. She aimed, in Wittgensteinian spirit, to describe the phenomena of moral thinking more accurately than the 'linguistic behaviourists' like R. M. Hare. This 'empiricist' task could be acheived, Murdoch thought, only with help from the idealist tradition of Kant, Hegel, and Bradley. And she combined with this a moral psychology, or theory of motivation, that went back to Plato, but was influenced by Freud and Simone Weil. Murdoch's impact can be seen in the moral philosophy of John McDowell and, in different ways, in Richard Rorty and Charles Taylor, as well as in the recent movements under the headings of moral realism, particularism, moral perception, and virtue theory. This volume brings together essays by critics and admirers of Murdoch's work, and includes a longer Introduction on Murdoch's career, reception, and achievement. It also contains a previously unpublished chapter from the book on Heidegger that Murdoch had been working on shortly before her death, and a Memoir by her husband John Bayley. It gives not only an introduction to Murdoch's important philosophical life and work, but also a picture of British philosophy in one of its heydays and at an important moment of transition.Readership: Students and scholars of philosophy and literature. (shrink)

In the essays which make up The Sovereignty of Good, Iris Murdoch gives us a picture of moral life in which ‘the metaphor of vision [is] almost irresistibly suggested’. This chapter aims to clarify the role played by the metaphor of vision in Murdoch’s philosophical thinking. I’ll examine two different things which might be meant by the term ‘moral vision’: vision of moral things or vision which is itself moral. The suggestion will be that whilst both capture something (...) important about Murdoch’s work, each may mislead about what is distinctive in her views. For Murdoch, I shall suggest, there is no distinctively moral vision. There is only vision: a loving gaze directed upon the reality of others. (shrink)

Despite the fact that Iris Murdoch's influence on contemporary virtue ethics is often neglected, both her general criticism of the dominant currents of early 20th century ethical theory and some of its more particular threads, like scepticism towards principle-based accounts and the fact-value distinction or the emphasis on moral psychology, show her affinity with philosophers like Anscombe, Williams, and MacIntyre. On the other hand, some particular details of her perspective seem absent from, if not alien to, the standard neo-Aristotelian (...) virtue ethical stance. It especially applies to Murdoch's high esteem for Plato, which is reflected in the central place she gives to love and the apparently non-natural concept of Good and which, at some points, is developed in religious, or even mystical, directions. (shrink)

Anselm’s ontological argument is an argument for the existence of God. This paper presents Iris Murdoch’s ontological argument for the existence of the Good. It discusses her interpretation of Anselm’s argument, her distinctive appropriation of it, as well as some of the merits of her version of the argument. In doing so, it also shows how the argument integrates some key Murdochian ideas: morality’s wide scope, the basicness of vision to morality, moral realism, and Platonism.

Iris Murdoch's concept of Good is a central feature of her moral theory; in Murdoch's thought, attention to the Good is the primary means of improving our moral conduct. Her view has been criticised on the grounds that the Good is irrelevant to life in this world (Don Cupitt), that the notion of a transcendent, single object of attention is incoherent (Stewart Sutherland), and that we can only understand what goodness is if we see it as an attribute (...) of a theistic, trinitarian God (Christoph Schwöbel). The paper argues that, with some clarification and development of Murdoch's view, these objections are by no means fatal to her position. (shrink)

Recent discussions of moral testimony have focused on the acceptability of forming beliefs on the basis of moral testimony, but there has been little acknowledgement of the limits to testimony's capacity to convey moral knowledge. In this paper I outline one such limit, drawing on Iris Murdoch's conception of private moral concepts. Such concepts, I suggest, plausibly play an important role in moral thought, and yet moral knowledge expressed in them cannot be testimonially acquired.

Anil Gomes considers Murdoch's view that morality is real and that, with the right conceptual resources, we can perceive it.

Covers Murdoch’s moral philosophy; trajectory and reception; critique of implicit view of self in Hare and Sartre; her Platonic moral realism; moral reality as other persons; essentiality of metaphysics; morality and the self/other framework; inescapability of metaphor; moral agency as inner activity; the fabric of the agent’s moral being; seeing replacing doing; influence of Simone Weil; attention (connected to care ethics, feminism, particularism); obstacles to loving attention; Freudian moral psychology; failure to recognize social sources of negative moral formation;virtue; “duties” (...) and “axioms” in Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. (shrink)

If Annette Baier is right that ‘some degree of trust is … the very basis of morality” (Baier 2004, 180) , it is surprising that a philosopher so interested in moral psychology and interpersonal relationships such as Iris Murdoch does not explicitly discuss trust in her work. However, on closer inspection, Murdoch’s proposal of an ethics focused on realism, unselfing and attention crucially depends upon the possibility of trust – trust in reality, and in one’s own capacity for (...) moral vision. Connecting Murdoch's project with feminist philosophy and especially feminist epistemology, and drawing on the philosophy of trust developed by C. Thi Nguyen and Karen Jones, this chapter argues for a vision of 'trust in the world' implicit in Murdoch's work, where trust emerges not in the domain of personal relationships, but in our attitude towards reality, including moral reality, that is not perceived by us as merely something inert. (shrink)

Politics never became a central intellectual interest of Murdoch’s, but she produced one important and visionary political essay in the ‘50’s, several popular writings on political matters, and a significant chapter in Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals that echoes throughout that book. In the 1958 “House of Theory,” she sees the welfare state as having almost entirely failed to address the deeper problems of capitalist society, including a failure to create the conditions for values she saw as central (...) to the socialist tradition—equality, absence of exploitation, meaningful work, and a sense of community. In Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, Murdoch abandons the idea that moral ideals provide a guide to constructing a good society. She retains from her earlier work that the individual-moral domain is governed by perfectionism, but society cannot be. ‘Society must be thought of as a bad job to be made the best of’, for example, through the liberal idea of rights. Murdoch had a lifelong engagement with Marxism as a philosophy, introduced to her as a member of the Communist Party in the late ‘30’s and ‘40’s, and continuing through her subsequent long Labour period, and even when she moved to the Right in the Thatcher era. Marx and Marxism were always part of her mental universe, and she continued to work out what she agreed and disagreed with in it. (shrink)

Argues for an interpretation of Iris Murdoch on which her account of moral reasons has Platonic roots, and on which she gives an ontological proof of the reality of the Good. This reading explains the structure of Sovereignty, how Murdoch's claims differ from a focus on "thick moral concepts," and how to find coherent arguments in her book.

This volume also includes "Metaphysics and Ethics," a classic essay by Iris Murdoch.

In the past few years, we have seen emerging new work that brings into focus the role of historical change and its moral implications in Iris Murdoch's philosophy. This paper strengthens this reading of her work and investigates the implications of this aspect of Murdoch's thinking for education in general and for moral education in particular. It resituates the Platonic imagery of the individual's ascent towards the true and the good in a framework where our conceptions of the (...) true and the good are in a process of historical reconfiguration. (shrink)

Murdoch’s moral philosophy stresses the didactic theme of active self-improvement. To this end, she argues, we can work to amend the quality of our states of consciousness, and hence of our conduct. But while such work undoubtedly involves cognitive effort, Murdoch has much to say about the hazards of a specious or misguided intellectualism. By way of commentary on these views, the present paper suggests that Murdoch’s early apprenticeship in Marxist politics—and her subsequent rejection of Marxism—may have (...) left a trace both in the idea that ‘our states of consciousness differ in quality’ ; and in the specific, distinctively ‘idealist’ course proposed by her mature philosophy for the project of moral self-criticism. (shrink)

Iris Murdoch was one of the best-known philosophers and novelists of the post-war period. In this book, Sabina Lovibond explores the tangled issue of Murdoch's stance towards gender and feminism, drawing upon the evidence of her fiction, philosophy, and other public statements. As well as analysing Murdoch's own attitudes, Iris Murdoch, Gender and Philosophy is also a critical enquiry into the way we picture intellectual, and especially philosophical, activity. Appealing to the idea of a 'social imaginary' (...) within which Murdoch's work is located, Lovibond examines the sense of incongruity or dissonance that may still affect our image of a woman philosopher, even where egalitarian views officially hold sway. The first thorough exploration of Murdoch and gender, Iris Murdoch, Gender and Philosophy is a fresh contribution to debates in feminist philosophy and gender studies, and essential reading for anyone interested in Murdoch's literary and philosophical writing. (shrink)

The author juxtaposes two views of morality and the views of man they imply: one represented by behaviourist and existentialist approaches in theories of morality and the other proposed by Iris Murdoch, who stresses the ability to see and recognise morally significant characteristics. In Murdoch’s opinion, a person’s moral development consists in a change in the quality of consciousness as a result of the activity of attention in exploring moral reality. After contrasting these two views, the author confronts (...) Murdoch’s approach with the conception of moral development understood along these lines as exemplified in a character of her novel The Good Apprentice. She also puts the problem of attention into the context of Murdoch’s conception of the transcendence of persons. (shrink)

One of Iris Murdoch's most characteristic philosophical ideas is that any way of understanding what moral philosophy is and how it may be practised will be shaped by deep-going conceptual attitudes, of which moral philosophers themselves may be unaware. In her own philosophical writings, she tried to bring out the role played by these attitudes, and to unsettle accepted ideas about the subject. I examine some of the elements in her thought which open up different ways of understanding the (...) subject, and I discuss the relevance of these ideas to contemporary moral philosophy. (shrink)

In The Sovereignty of Good Iris Murdoch suggests that the central task of the moral agent involves a true and loving perception of an- other individual, who is seen as a particular reality external to the agent. Writing in the 1960s she claimed that this dimension of morality had been "theorized away" in contemporary ethics. I will argue today that 20 years later, this charge still holds true of much contemporary ethical theory.

It has been insufficiently remarked that Murdoch deems “Kant’s ethical theory” to be “one of the most beautiful and exciting things in the whole of philosophy” in her 1959 essay “The Sublime and the Good”. Murdoch specifically has in mind the connection between Kant’s ethics and his theory of the sublime, which runs via the moral feeling of respect (Achtung). The chapter examines Murdoch’s interest in Kant on this point as a way to tease out the range (...) of issues that complicate Kant’s significance for the development of Murdoch’s distinctive conception of ethics as it is articulated in _The Sovereignty of Good_ and earlier essays. It focuses on her particular concerns about the moral dangers of consolation, and why this led her to propose reworking the Kantian theory of the sublime as a theory of art, and specifically of tragedy. (shrink)

The writing of Iris Murdoch has long been of interest to both literature enthusiasts and students of philosophy. The years Murdoch spent studying philosophy at Oxford and Cambridge left an indelible imprint on her work. The essays in this book address both Murdoch’s philosophy and writing in the context of Continental philosophy and postmodern fiction. Many of the twelve essays resist the prevailing critical orthodoxies, introducing instead new theories with which to approach one of Britain’s most revered (...) authors. (shrink)

Iris Murdoch develops a version of the Ontological Argument as a moral argument for the existence of a transcendent and perfect Platonic Good. I argue that her version of the argument over-emphasises moral goodness as a distant and intangible ideal to which we are inevitably attracted, and towards which we may progress, but which, apart from occasional revelations in saintly lives and great art, is normally only available in glimpses and intimations, and which remains mysterious. The argument is better (...) construed as concerning the moral reality of human beings as sacred or inviolable, and the moral demands this makes upon us—a reality that is proximate, palpable, inescapable and highly familiar. (shrink)

The novel begins as follows:"Dora Greenfield left her husband because she was afraid of him. She decided six months later to return to him for the same reason. The absent Paul, haunting her with letters and telephone bells and imagined footsteps on the stairs had begun to be the greater torment. Dora suffered from guilt, and with guilt came fear. She decided at last that the persecution of his presence was to be preferred to the persecution of his absence."Murdoch's (...) novel The Bell is about Imber Court. It is a small Anglican religious community of lay people whose lives were transformed, not just by the arrival of a couple of dissimilar visitors, not just by the arrival of a new bell to be installed at Imber Abbey located beyond the lake, but more significantly by the discovery of a centuries-old bell the story of which is engulfed in a terrible legend. (shrink)

This paper provides a brief overview of Iris Murdoch's central notion of love as just attention, introduces the reader to a few contemporary debates around her account, and shows that for Murdoch, love is not opposed to morality, but at its heart.

This essay provides a broad overview of Dame Iris Murdoch's work in moral philosophy. Although Murdoch is best known as a novelist, the focus here will be on her philosophic work. Throughout her life, Murdoch (1919–99) characterized herself as a Platonic realist and attacked other approaches to moral philosophy for obscuring our understanding of what she calls “the moral life” – roughly, our attempts to understand, evaluate, and improve ourselves and our lives together. While most philosophers are (...) skeptical about her positive views, many also believe we can enrich our moral theories by engaging with her work and attending to the aspects of ordinary moral life it highlights. (shrink)

This book reviews Iris Murdoch’s thought as a whole. It surveys the breadth of her thinking, taking account of her philosophical works, her novels and her letters. It shows how she explored many aspects of experience and brought together apparently contradictory concepts such as truth and love. The volume deals with her notions of truth, love, language, morality, politics and her life. It shows how she offers a challenging provocative way of seeing things which is related to but distinct (...) from standard forms of analytical philosophy and Continental thought. Unlike so many philosophers she does offer a philosophy to live by and unlike many novelists she has reflected deeply on the kind of novels she aimed to write. The upshot is that her novels and her philosophy can be read together productively as contributions to how we can see others and the world. (shrink)

Iris Murdoch was one of the best-known philosophers and novelists of the post-war period. In this book, Sabina Lovibond explores the tangled issue of Murdoch's stance towards gender and feminism, drawing upon the evidence of her fiction, philosophy, and other public statements. As well as analysing Murdoch's own attitudes, _Iris Murdoch, Gender and Philosophy_ is also a critical enquiry into the way we picture intellectual, and especially philosophical, activity. Appealing to the idea of a 'social imaginary' (...) within which Murdoch's work is located, Lovibond examines the sense of incongruity or dissonance that may still affect our image of a woman philosopher, even where egalitarian views officially hold sway. The first thorough exploration of Murdoch and gender, _Iris Murdoch, Gender and Philosophy _is a fresh contribution to debates in feminist philosophy and gender studies, and essential reading for anyone interested in Murdoch's literary and philosophical writing. (shrink)

Mary Midgley, Iris Murdoch, Gertrude Anscombe and Philippa Foot studied together in Oxford during the war, at a time when most of the men had left the university, leaving it to them for themselves. These unique circumstances where decisive for the fact that they all went on to become successful philosophers and were able to develop their own original philosophical theories, opposing the philosophical dogmas of their time, Midgley later wrote. This claim is the point of departure for this (...) article. It has three purposes: First I try to say something about the circumstances that made it possible to develop such alternatives, and second, I try to say something about what they consist in. Finally, I ask what this story can teach us about inclusion of women in philosophy today. (shrink)

Defenders of two Rationality Views of love—the Qualities View and the Personhood View—have drawn on Iris Murdoch's philosophical writings to highlight a connection between love and a “realistic” perspective on the beloved. Murdoch does not inform the basic structure of these views—she is rather introduced as a supplement who shows that in love, we pay accurate, nuanced, unguarded, and unflinching attention to the other. In this paper, I contend that these authors have failed to see that Murdoch (...) offers a distinct view of love and is inappropriate to enlist as an ally. This is in large part because they have missed the full sense of what Murdoch means by connecting love and realism. I contend that for Murdoch, to love someone means seeing them in light of a realistic vision of what it means to be human; this includes an appreciation of the limits of freedom, the formative influence of personal history, and the nature and extent of our differences from one another. This helps us to see why Murdoch variously describes loving attention as realistic, compassionate, tolerant, and extremely difficult. It also sheds light on some important and familiar ways that we criticize one another's grounds for love. (shrink)