Our philosophers

"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."

Danielle Petherbridge

"Iris Murdoch had been my teacher. I never met her, but I have been learning from her ever since I first started reading Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, some twenty years ago. This is a book written by a great mind, someone with whom I share a love for Plato, Kant and great literature, as well as concern about the disappearance of religious experience. Above all, Murdoch has taught me to persist with a problem, however unfashionable."

Hannah Marije Altorf

"My working time with Iris Murdoch has been spent mainly with 'Vision and Choice in Morality' - that substantive content gets sneaked into or shut out of philosophy by the demands of mere 'form' is still a fertile idea - or with The Sovereignty of Good. How the capacity to love a particular other well relates (or fails to) to goodness more broadly is a constant theme of mine. I also love the novels, not least for the hijacking (if it is really that) of philosophical language to describe everyday affairs."

Edward Harcourt

"Iris Murdoch has, over and over again, and in many different ways, opened up what moral philosophy can be. I think, for example, of the way she has emphasized the importance of not working with a a narrow delineation of what constitutes moral philosophy, a delineation which can exclude much that matters in moral life. I think also of the importance in her work of what is true to our experience as moral beings, and what in philosophy can distort that experience."

Cora Diamond

"I first discovered Murdoch at age 13 when I went on a reading spree of all her novels whilst on summer holidays at Lake Superior in northern Ontario – some distance from the intrigues of the British middle classes captured by Murdoch. Years later as a political philosopher at Queen’s University I read her 1958 essay, ‘A House of Theory’. I am still amazed at how this piece, written during the Cold War, offers an eloquent vision of fulfilling work in a community of equals that speaks to us still."

Christine Sypnowich

"I have come across Iris Murdoch as part of the Wartime Quartet. What I like about her is the way in which she unites philosophy and literature in her person, and how her thinking allows to oppose mainstream moral philosophy. I am inspired by her idea of and emphasis on moral vision, and by her attention to detail and context. As something like an ex-Platonist, I am not so sure that I can bring myself to be convinced by all of her mature moral philosophy, but I remain certainly fascinated."

Mara-Daria Cojocaru

"Murdoch showed that you have to be fearless, rigorous, and creative to illuminate the moral possibilities of everyday life and to address (what she called) "the real problems." She showed that you don't have to look to a faraway place to experience or to examine transcendence; it is a part of ordinary human life. She showed, and continues to show, how to reflect on moral questions in a way that is both good-humored and uncompromising."

Bridget Clarke

"Iris Murdoch taught me that philosophy can be serious and severe but still emotionally sustaining. Her writing showed me that philosophical prose can still be beautiful. She enlarged my sense of what philosophy can be. 'To do philosophy is to explore one's own temperament,' Murdoch wrote, 'and yet at the same time to attempt to discover the truth.'

Kieran Setiya

"I find Iris Murdoch's philosophy enormously rich and imaginative, and driven by a pressing wish to understand human life in all its fullness, complexity, and variegation. Engaging with Murdoch's philosophy opens up exhilarating vistas of what it is to do philosophy, and what it is to be human."

Ana Barandalla

"She wrote: 'Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real. Love, and so art and morals, is the discovery of reality.'

Could this be right? And if so how, more exactly, should we understand it? And how should we live in the light of that understanding? Murdoch is someone who, in her novels, her philosophy and her life, makes the interest and importance of these issues vividly apparent!"

Jane Heal

"One idea from Murdoch that really interests me is her concept of 'attention', as involving a kind of focus beyond the self and on the detail of the world, including other people. I think Murdoch displays this attention herself in the way she does philosophy, which saves her from an overly theoretical and reductive approach, and brings her close to some thinkers in the phenomenological tradition, in a way that I find attractive - and it makes her more enjoyable to read than most philosophers!"

Robert Stern

"Iris's is philosophy with a human side, complex, mixed, multifaceted, not altogether good, not altogether bad, without too-sharp boundaries -- life as I experience and must manage it."

Nancy Cartwright

"Murdoch's philosophy, like her fiction, is populated with the varied reality of moral life: mothers who find their daughters-in-law juvenile, concentration camp guards who are kindly fathers. A loving gaze can discern this moral reality just as a good eye can appraise the length of a timber. And if we are to transcend our selfish egos, we need this capacity for loving attention. Murdoch’s work remains a provocation, where goodness is real, and love is seeing aright."

Anil Gomes

"What Murdoch means to me: The first time I read Murdoch's philosophy, I was completely baffled by it. But pretty soon afterwards, I found myself picking it up again, and then again. Her work can be obscure, but it's rich and often powerfully written, and it somehow resonates with me. Reading Murdoch, you really feel the pull of her vision. On each new read, I find myself noticing wonderful throw-away lines that give me plenty to ponder, and that will certainly lead me to return to her work once more."

Cathy Mason

Iris's reflections on art and story telling resonates with me. Humans are natural storytellers, according to Iris, helping us to make sense of our "alarmingly formless rubble of a life". Storytelling plays a big part in my philosophy classes I teach to young people. Students' moral questions about the world are stimulated by stories, reflecting Iris's suggestion that art can play a role in our ethical lives. Exploring their questions stimulated by Art and Literature offers a version of truth without prejudice, showing young people that in the midst of modern chaos their moral questions matter.

Read Susan's postcard here

In my work I seek to articulate a philosophically rigorous conception of how we are educated to reality by art, and Murdoch is one of the few modern philosophers that provides a grounding for such a claim, and more broadly for a non-religious (or at least non-doctrinal) way of conceiving the normative ground of human life ("the Good"). Murdoch's idea that (good) art shows us the world objectively, free from the 'rat-runs of fantasy,' has been foundational for my own thinking about art.

Read Lin's postcard here

One of my favorite Murdochian insights is the idea that the cognitive is always moral. For Murdoch, there are no neutral facts that - in the light of Kantian reason - give us moral direction. Rather, our choices are always already shaped by our particular vision of reality. To be a virtuous person, therefore, first and foremost means to be willing to learn to perceive others and the world around us in a just and loving way, because only then will we be able to act accordingly.

Read Julia's postcard here

Iris Murdoch is modern Platonism—alive to how moral thought is saturated with metaphysical thinking, her Sovereignty of Good is a gripping articulation of the vital orientation in moral thought Plato offers. The novels’ recognise an affinity here with a Buddhist outlook. Suffusing her novels as well as her philosophical work is a critical moral sensitivity that is never censorious. Sheer gratitude to Murdoch for giving us the moral life back in all its richness, and allowing it to breathe.

Read Amber's postcard here

I have come across Iris Murdoch as part of the Wartime Quartet. What I like about her is the way in which she unites philosophy and literature in her person, and how her thinking allows to oppose mainstream moral philosophy. I am inspired by her idea of and emphasis on moral vision, and by her attention to detail and context. As something like an ex-Platonist, I am not so sure that I can bring myself to be convinced by all of her mature moral philosophy, but I remain certainly fascinated.

Read Mara-Daria's postcard here

I discovered Iris by chance. After reading an article about her first novel I bought it&read it forthwith. I liked it a lot especially as I was also struggling with writing at the time. I work on history&philosophy of science, particularly on classifications. The philosophy&the science challenge me while the history fascinates me. I often find myself absorbed in the details of a case study. What draws me to Iris is her unfathomable ability to write both philosophy&fiction well at the same time.

Read Ana-Maria's postcard here

Murdoch’s philosophy could be neatly summarised as secular demythologized morality. It proposes a visualist laden conception of ethics that is not solely present in her philosophical works as it also infiltrates her fiction. The philosophical message of her novels concerns everyday moral reality. In other words, reading Murdoch's philosophy (& novels) is often akin to reading morals. Her philosophy offered an unorthodox/alternative place for secular theophanies & moral reflection.

Read Athanasios' postcard here

Iris Murdoch’s philosophy has had a profound effect on me. Reading The Sovereignty of Good gave me the tools to salubriously transform my experience of the world, which subsequently led to a complete re-orientation of my perspective on ethics, and on the scope and potential for philosophy more broadly. This fresh perspective played an important role in my decision to pursue a career in academic philosophy and I continue to remind myself (daily - and to great effect) to pay loving attention.

Read Amber's postcard here

I see Murdoch as a philosophical fellow traveler. For one, as a writer I also feel pulled in two directions—fiction and academic philosophy. But more substantively, her work helped me finish my Ph.D. I had been struggling to articulate the idea that it can be morally wrong to think about people using certain concepts or categories. I was delighted to find her expressing a similar idea through a vivid example: a woman who unfairly thinks badly of her son’s wife. This got my own thinking un-stuck.

Read Trystan's postcard here

Murdoch's philosophy, like her fiction, is populated with the varied reality of moral life: mothers who find their daughters-in-law juvenile, concentration camp guards who are kindly fathers. A loving gaze can discern this moral reality just as a good eye can appraise the length of a timber. And if we are to transcend our selfish egos, we need this capacity for loving attention. Murdoch’s work remains a provocation, where goodness is real, and love is seeing aright.

Read Anil's postcard here

My working time with IM has been spent mainly with 'Vision and Choice in Morality' - that substantive content gets sneaked into or shut out of philosophy by the demands of mere 'form' is still a fertile idea - or with The Sovereignty of Good. How the capacity to love a particular other well relates (or fails to) to goodness more broadly is a constant theme of mine. I also love the novels, not least for the hijacking (if it is really that) of philosophical language to describe everyday affairs.

Read Edward's postcard here

"The insistence that morality is essentially rules may be seen as an attempt to secure us against the ambiguity of the world", writes Murdoch in "Vision and Choice in Morality". This is a fundamental insight: rules can rarely tell us what the right thing to do is in a concrete situation, let alone what the right thing for me is. They are prone to fail in the face of the "inexhaustible detail of the world" and our own unique circumstances. Love, Murdoch teaches us, is a better moral guide.

Read Michael's postcard here

Iris Murdoch makes philosophy answerable to what our lives are like. She invites us to step back from theories of mind, language or morals; to look closely at what it's like to try to formulate a thought, the ways that a child's understanding of 'love' evolves over time, and what we would want to say about a woman who overcomes prejudice; and she shows us how philosophy sometimes ignores or mischaracterizes human experience. Murdoch helped me to understand why some philosophy feels so removed!

Read Lesley's postcard here

Iris Murdoch made a significant contribution to our understanding of what it means to be ethical. She rejected the modern notion of the moral agent as a heroic figure who projects value onto the world by her will. Instead, she held that ethics is primarily about seeing others for what they are, and responding accordingly. Vision precedes choice, and loving attention is the only cure for our natural bias towards the self. For me, Murdoch is a deep and stimulating thinker who continues to inspire.

Read Antti's postcard here

In my own work, I aim to think about attitudes and their role in alienating us from our own self-responsibility and freedom. Murdoch’s notion of attention is a key touchstone for thinking about the extent to which we can change our attitudes, and how we might have a responsibility to do so. I notice how a literary sensibility opens up new ways of doing philosophy and exploring philosophical issues. There’s always more to find in the work: the possibility of seeing the same thing with new eyes.

Read Charlotte's postcard here

I first encountered Iris Murdoch’s work well into my career. It was a profound encounter. Here was, in many ways, “my” philosophy, but with more clarity and style. Her appreciation of the messiness of moral reality, of moral life as responsibility and responsivity to others, her emphasis on consciousness and attention not as transcendental structures but as the very real and flawed activity of very real and specific human beings — from all of this I drew and draw new and renewed inspiration.

Read Gary's postcard here

I discovered Iris Murdoch about a year after I decided I believed in God. Though philosophy played an important part in figuring out my faith, the shift was mostly driven by personal experiences. Reading Iris Murdoch has been hugely significant for me getting to grips with how my faith and my philosophical views come together. I’m especially interested in the emphasis she puts on moral vision, and the implications this has for how we think about revelations and transformative experiences.

Read Sasha's postcard here

What Murdoch means to me: The first time I read Murdoch's philosophy, I was completely baffled by it. But pretty soon afterwards, I found myself picking it up again, and then again. Her work can be obscure, but it's rich and often powerfully written, and it somehow resonates with me. Reading Murdoch, you really feel the pull of her vision. On each new read, I find myself noticing wonderful throw-away lines that give me plenty to ponder, and that will certainly lead me to return to her work once more.

Read Cathy's postcard here

I particularly admire Iris Murdoch’s refusal to allow her thinking to become detached from the reality of our predicament. Ironically, this leads her to commit to concepts that she knows others will find fanciful, but which she believes cannot be abandoned without blinding ourselves to something real, the most obvious example being the Good, ‘the least corruptible and most realistic picture for us to use in our reflections upon the moral life’ ('The Sovereignty of the Good', p. 13).

Read Denis' postcard here

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.

Read Danielle's postcard here

Murdoch’s views on ethics inspired my own thinking, especially her ethical views’ challenges to existentialism, relativism, and behaviourism. My own work - on the philosophy of time - developed out of metaphysics, rather than ethics. However, her general form of argument opened the possibility of such non-reductive philosophical work. Also, her fiction - especially The Sea - forcefully illustrates the value of vivid images and storytelling in philosophical thought.

Read Sean's postcard here

Iris Murdoch’s "The Sovereignty of Good" demonstrates the importance of one’s inner life for matters of ethics. Her notion of the good life contrasts many dominant views of morality in important and powerful ways that have influenced how we view not only what we owe to each other, but perhaps more importantly, what we owe to ourselves. Her expanded notion of virtue permeates, in my mind, any accurate world-view concerning what matters in the world, and what constitutes a flourishing life.

Read Christopher's postcard here

I admire the accessibility of Iris Murdoch's philosophy. Sound practical and helpful common sense merges effortlessly with sophisticated philosophical positions in her novels, making them relevant to the lives of all her readers, regardless of their level of knowledge or background. All you need is to be human to enjoy and learn something of value, and that knowledge will sit like a small jewel in a box of treasured wisdom that can be taken with you throughout your life.

Read Anne's postcard here

I am intrigued by Murdoch’s conception of loving attention with its emphasis on effecting a change of vision which is simultaneously an act of loving attention directed towards the other but also a moral achievement which opens up the possibility of moral transformation and progress. Moral progress is achieved by a project of sustained imaginative attention, a loving and just regard towards others, which involves the overcoming of self-centred and selfish fantasies. Moral transformation is a struggle: “Love is the imaginative recognition of, that is respect for, this otherness” and “repentance may mean something different to an individual at different times in his life, and what it fully means is a part of this life and cannot be understood except in context”.

Read Paula's postcard here

A good novelist can produce a vivid depiction of a character from little detail, if the details selected are just right. I'm struck by Murdoch's idea that people have distinctive "visions" that can show up in "their mode of speech or silence, their choice of words, their assessments of others,... what they think attractive or praise-worthy, what they think funny". Here Murdoch shows us how a seemingly small detail can capture a person's distinctive texture of being.

Read Susanna's postcard here

Iris Murdoch, for me, is an inspirational philosopher. "We need more concepts", she says, through which to understand ourselves, each other and the world. She also writes that “We no longer see man against a background of values, of realities, which transcend him. We picture man as a brave naked will surrounded by an easily comprehended empirical world”. This image is encouraged by some attitudes that are influential in today’s thinking. I think Murdoch helps to show us a different way…

Read Benedict's postcard here

One idea from Murdoch that really interests me is her concept of 'attention', as involving a kind of focus beyond the self and on the detail of the world, including other people. I think Murdoch displays this attention herself in the way she does philosophy, which saves her from an overly theoretical and reductive approach, and brings her close to some thinkers in the phenomenological tradition, in a way that I find attractive - and it makes her more enjoyable to read than most philosophers!

Read Robert's postcard here

Iris Murdoch's philosophy (as well as her philoso-fiction) in general and her critical interpretations of Plato especially has been of the utmost inspiration for and a fresh renewal of my thoughts on different subjects - metaphysics, ethics and aesthetics - for almost forty (slow!) years. The way she collected her ideas and integrated them into her own very special tricotage, has given us a longed-for method for a much needed, new way of thinking that is manycoloured, intricate and synoptic.

Read Elin's postcard here

I first discovered Murdoch at age 13 when I went on a reading spree of all her novels whilst on summer holidays at Lake Superior in northern Ontario – some distance from the intrigues of the British middle classes captured by Murdoch. Years later as a political philosopher at Queen’s University I read her 1958 essay, ‘A House of Theory’. I am still amazed at how this piece, written during the Cold War, offers an eloquent vision of fulfilling work in a community of equals that speaks to us still.

Read Christine's postcard here

An afternoon outside in the sun spent reading a copy of “The Sovereignty of Good” that I had picked up in a charity shop on a whim restored my faith in philosophy. Iris Murdoch’s philosophy reminds us of something that it’s easy to forget: philosophy is about trying to make sense of our lives and how to live them. Whenever I struggle to see why anyone should care about some abstruse bit of the history of philosophy, I look to see what Murdoch wrote about it, and she shows me.

Read Dave's postcard here

I failed my first undergraduate essay by unwittingly submitting a literature answer to a philosophy question. Rather than learning how to isolate the disciplines, I persistently looked for ways to relate literature and philosophy and felt relief when I eventually discovered The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists. Murdoch showed me the significance of the struggle between poetry and philosophy and strengthened my desire for both. Thanks to her I recognised myself as a wayward Platonist at heart. Before Murdoch I had never read a book of philosophy by a female author, let alone imagined myself in a philosophical career. Much later, tutoring in Philosophy at St Anne's College, I had the daily inspiration of working at her writing desk, which had deep drawers that once held her manuscripts. Her perfectly imperfect mix of seriousness and irreverence has been a profound gift to my philosophical development.

Read Dawn's postcard here

Iris Murdoch challenges us to think boldly about moral philosophy: what life would be like if centered around love, and what love and morality would be like if centered around vision and attention. She was that rare philosopher who unearths such deeply-held dogmas one is left shaken and unsure to what extent one’s own vision is clouded by those dogmas. She expands my imagination of what moral philosophy can be, demonstrating the possibility and importance of rich and ambitious work.

Read Vida's postcard here

100 philosophers from around the world are waiting to answer your postcards. You can find out about them and their love for Iris Murdoch's philosophy here.

Keith Allen

Hannah Marije Altorf

Susan Andrews

Lin Atnip

Maria Baghramian

Carla Bagnoli

David Bakhurst

Ana Barandalla

William Behun

Lawrence Blum

Lucy Bolton

Nic Bommarito

Julia Borcherding

Justin Broackes

Gary Browning

Stephen Burwood

Amber Carpenter

Nancy Cartwright

Bridget Clarke

Alix Cohen

Mara-Daria Cojocaru

Maeve Cooke

Andrew Cooper

Samuel Cooper

Christopher Cowley

Ana-Maria Cretu

Cora Diamond

Athanasios Dimakis

Amber Sahara Donovan

Eva-Maria Düringer

Alison Fernandes

Katherine Furman

Trystan Goetze

Anil Gomes

Ruth Groff

Andrew Hamilton

Edward Harcourt

Michael Hauskeller

Jane Heal

Mark Hopwood

Dhananjay Jagannathan

Mark Jago

Lesley Jamieson

Jonathan Jong

Antti Kauppinen

Ian James Kidd

Charlotte Knowles

Gary Krenz

John Kulvicki

Sasha Lawson-Frost

Miles Leeson

Errol Lord

Andrea Lozano-Vasquez

Kathryn MacKay

Cathy Mason

Mohan Matthen

Anne-Marie McCallion

Denis McManus

Melissa Merritt

Chris Sylvan Meyns

Evgenia Mylonaki

Bence Nanay

Lucy O'Brien

Katherine O'Donnell

Anthony O'Hear

Maude Ouellette-Dubé

Silvia Panizza

Danielle Petherbridge

Sean Enda Power

Sarah Richmond

Christopher A. Riddle

Catherine Robb

Anne Rowe

Shane Ryan

Constantine Sandis

Paula Satne

Joe Saunders

Kieran Setiya