The Significance of Love and Selflessness in Iris Murdoch’s Moral Philosophy

Abstract

As a distinguished philosopher and novelist in the second half of the twentieth century, Iris Murdoch addressed the significance of ethics in her framework of thought. Murdoch’s moral philosophy was widely acknowledged as a challenge to the prevailing ethical traditions which, she asserted, had failed to present an accurate picture of morality. As a philosopher and literary figure, Murdoch maintained that not only moral philosophy but also literature should depict perceptible pictures of man’s morality. The purpose of this paper is to closely explore Murdoch’s perspective towards the weight of love in moral philosophy. Since she was concerned with ethical issues and man’s confrontation with ethical questions in a world in which religious values and beliefs had been shattered, Murdoch deployed literature to convey the concepts she advocated in her moral philosophy. She contended that literature was capable of sustaining and improving man’s morality. Murdoch was a prolific novelist and playwright authoring 26 novels and 6 plays in which she developed and reflected her philosophical arguments through the portrayal of her intended ethical behavior. This tendency is mostly highlighted in The Flight from the Enchanter (1956), and The Severed Head (1961) in which Murdoch resorts to Plato’s theory of Forms and his idea of the Good to combat the conventional moral philosophy of the twentieth century. Based on the findings of this article, Murdoch intends to depict the significance of freedom and love as the prerequisites of morality in any philosophical system.