In the ancient philosophical tradition and the ancient greek tradition, there was this idea that if you had one virtue, you had them all. And so she talks about a concentration camp guard who's a kindly father at home as a way of saying, whel we're actually not like that. We can be virtuous in some situations, but not in others. This is a real quest her when it comes to great art as well. How much can we separate out the greatness of the art, the kind of virtues involved in making a great piece of art, from the virtues of a person?
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the author and philosopher Iris Murdoch (1919 - 1999). In her lifetime she was most celebrated for her novels such as The Bell and The Black Prince, but these are now sharing the spotlight with her philosophy. Responding to the horrors of the Second World War, she argued that morality was not subjective or a matter of taste, as many of her contemporaries held, but was objective, and good was a fact we could recognize. To tell good from bad, though, we would need to see the world as it really is, not as we want to see it, and her novels are full of characters who are not yet enlightened enough to do that.
With
Anil Gomes
Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Trinity College, University of Oxford
Anne Rowe
Visiting Professor at the University of Chichester and Emeritus Research Fellow with the Iris Murdoch Archive Project at Kingston University
And
Miles Leeson
Director of the Iris Murdoch Research Centre and Reader in English Literature at the University of Chichester
Producer: Simon Tillotson