Abstract
Abstract Engaging with the philosophical writings of Iris Murdoch, we submit that there are difficulties associated with providing a good description of morality that are intimately connected with difficulties in understanding other human beings. We suggest three senses in which moral philosophical reflection needs to account for our understanding of others: (1) the failure to understand someone is not merely an intellectual failure, but also engages us morally; (2) the moral question of understanding is not limited to the extent to which we understand a particular person, but also presents itself in how we picture difficulties in understanding people; and (3) “philosophical pictures of morality” fundamentally shape the conceptual framework we use to investigate morality, as well as the analysis of morality we find illuminative and satisfactory. Exploring the implications of these claims, we ask what it means to think of others as the same, or as different, from ourselves. We then consider the ethical significance of finding, or not finding, our feet in our encounters with others, dwelling on how the metaphor of movement reveals one way in which we are never at peace in the exploration of morality.
Highlights
Are people in general easy or difficult to understand? The question at first glance, in its admittedly odd generality, does not appear to be very philosophical or of any philosophical interest
Engaging with the philosophical writings of Iris Murdoch, we submit that there are difficulties associated with providing a good description of morality that are intimately connected with difficulties in understanding other human beings
We suggest three senses in which moral philosophical reflection needs to account for our understanding of others: (1) the failure to understand someone is not merely an intellectual failure, and engages us morally; (2) the moral question of understanding is not limited to the extent to which we understand a particular person, and presents itself in how we picture difficulties in understanding people; and (3) “philosophical pictures of morality” fundamentally shape the conceptual framework we use to investigate morality, as well as the analysis of morality we find illuminative and satisfactory
Summary
Are people in general easy or difficult to understand? The question at first glance, in its admittedly odd generality, does not appear to be very philosophical or of any philosophical interest. All one can do is try to lay one’s cards on the table.[1] Her reflection raises questions about what it means to continue doing moral philosophy after one has realized just “how deeply moral attitudes influence philosophical pictures of morality.”. One such idea is found in her remark that “man is a creature who makes pictures of himself and comes to resemble the picture” and her consequent suggestion that “moral philosophy must attempt to describe and analyse” this process.[2] A version of this idea resurfaces in her book Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals[3] in which Murdoch herself can be said to unfold the fundamentally moral attitudes to life, oneself, and others, conveyed in philosophers’ pictures of the human subject’s relation to reality These passages point to the realization that the ways in which we philosophically come to depict the human being are ways of picturing ourselves. In the fourth and final section, we link her remarks on understanding to a Platonist imagery of the philosopher in search of the good to indicate how we may take reflections on finding, or not finding, our feet in encounters with others further, and to reveal one way in which we are never at peace in the exploration of morality
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