PHIL30730

This module revolves around the philosophy of Iris Murdoch, presented as a pioneer in a different form of moral thinking that is opposed to more popular anti-realist and principle-based philosophies. While Murdoch started working on her proposal in the mid 20th Century, her ideas are still unorthodox today. What Murdoch proposed, instead, was a form of moral reflection that focused more on the inner life and less on action, or on action as a result of one’s inner moral quality, that took seriously the individual, that refused to draw sharp boundaries between emotions and reasons, facts and values.

The aim of this module is both to offer an in-depth understanding of a distinctive philosophical voice, and through that to open up the discussion to show the relevance of Murdoch’s ideas on the good, the individual, consciousness, perception, transcendence, truth, love, attention, and the self within current and timeless debates in moral philosophy. The two main domains of ethics to be addressed are moral psychology (attention, motivation, love…) and meta ethics (realism, intuitionism, particularism…).

This will involve examining the work of other philosophers, both contemporary to Murdoch and to us. In particular, we will devote some time to one of Murdoch’s greatest influences, the French mystic-philosopher Simone Weil.