Does our sense of the future and ability to worry about it, damage our natural ability to cope with the present.
Dear C. Darby
It is possible to suggest that the opposite might be the case. Without a future vision of freedom or equality, for example, the civil rights movement may not have had an ethical or moral vision for change towards which to strive. In that case, coping with the present requires a vision of a better future. At both an individual and social level, the expansion of moral & political categories, such as freedom, is future oriented. This does not need to be understood as freedom in individualistic terms but rather as reciprocal freedom in which we recognise one another and are ethically attentive to the other and the world.
D Petherbridge
Danielle Petherbridge
University College Dublin, Ireland
Website
Murdoch raises important questions about the way in which art might help us to experience things beyond ourselves including those things that others might have experienced that we have not. She also suggests that art might assist us to understand another person’s ethical view. I am particularly drawn to Murdoch's exploration of the interconnection between art and ethical life or the nature of goodness and her account of attention in regard to the perception of others.
