Journal ArticleDOI
Philosophy's Dangerous Pupil: Murdoch and Derrida
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The anguish of the philosopher comes about because philosophy touches impossibility [...]. It's impossible for the human mind to dominate the things which haunt it. --Iris Murdoch.Abstract:
The anguish of the philosopher comes about because philosophy touches impossibility [. . .]. It's impossible for the human mind to dominate the things which haunt it. --Iris Murdoch, "Iris Murdoch." What is the relation between philosophy and literature in Murdoch's writing? The question has often been raised in discussions of her work, even though Murdoch herself always seemed quite clear about the answer. Time and again in interviews she patiently maintained that while her novels did contain philosophical discussions they were certainly not "philosophical novels," nor did she set out deliberately to dramatize in fiction the philosophical questions that interested her. Speaking in 1976 Murdoch explained that in her fiction "there's just a sort of atmosphere and, as it were, tension and direction which is sometimes given by a philosophical interest, but not anything very explicit" ("Iris Murdoch in Conversation" 5-6). In 1985 she claimed even more forcefully that she felt no "tension" as a result of the demands placed on her by philosophy and art other than that produced by the fact that "both pursuits take up time" ("Iris Murdoch" 198). Most conclusive of all, perhaps, her opinion seems to be justified by the work itself, which manages to preserve a...read more
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Journal ArticleDOI
Reduce Ourselves to Zero?: Sabina Lovibond, Iris Murdoch, and Feminism
TL;DR: In her book Iris Murdoch, Gender and Philosophy, Sabina Lovibond argues that Iris Murdoch's philosophical and literary work is covertly dedicated to an ideology of female subordination.
Book ChapterDOI
Murdoch, Derrida and The Black Prince
TL;DR: The Black Prince as mentioned in this paper was published in 1973, some 19 years after the first publication of Derrida's early book Writing and Difference, and it is not an anachronism to suggest that there is some echo of this early work in the novel.
Book ChapterDOI
Murdoch and Derrida: Holding Hands under the Table
TL;DR: In Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992), Iris Murdoch criticizes "a sort of plausible amoralistic determinism" that she associates with Jacques Derrida (MGM, p. 198).
Book ChapterDOI
Disciplines of Attention: Iris Murdoch on Consciousness, Criticism, and Thought (MGM Chapters 6–8)
TL;DR: The authors explored the relevance of Iris Murdoch's concept of consciousness for literary studies and summarised Murdoch's assessment of structuralism and show how it informs her endorsement of a critical practice grounded in attention.
Book ChapterDOI
Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals: The Debate Between Literature and Philosophy
TL;DR: Iris Murdoch at her best is a brilliant prose stylist, but in her late philosophy her writing often appears dutiful and hard-won as discussed by the authors, and her attitude to the "quarrel" between philosophy and literature, before undertaking a reading of MGM as a literary work, paying particular attention to Murdoch's rhetoric and characterisation, and the moments when her trademark literary style emerges.
References
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Book
Writing and Difference
Jacques Derrida,Alan Bass +1 more
TL;DR: The essays collected here provide English-speaking readers with a lucid and accessible introduction to the world of France's leading contemporary philosopher as discussed by the authors, who was a classic student textbook for philosophy.
Book
The Sovereignty of Good
TL;DR: The Sovereignty of Good as mentioned in this paper is one of the great philosophers and novelists of the twentieth century and is the most important and enduring philosophical work of the twenty-first century, which argues that philosophy has focused, mistakenly, on what it is right to do rather than good to be.
The Sovereignty of Good
TL;DR: Iris Murdoch once observed: "philosophy is often a matter of finding occasions on which to say the obvious". What was obvious to Murdoch, and to all those who read her work, is that Good transcends everything - even God as discussed by the authors .
Book
Metaphysics As a Guide to Morals.
TL;DR: In this paper, Schopenhauer, Derrida and Wittgenstein discuss the inner life notes on will and duty imagination, and the ontological proof Descartes and Kant, Martin Buber and God.