Murdock is a realist about morality. She thinks there is such a thing as going to get right in morality. And when she thnks that people can be good and people can be evil, these are as much facts about the world as the fact that london busses are red. So you just can't separate out morality from the world. We have to figure out what the right way to see the world is. When you look properly, you can see how things really are. I come back to the pelonme meanwhile, aneld could you tell us in this novetys, to me, sheis giving us a very clear idea of her
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