Avaris murdock's novels are more important for the 20 first century, in some ways than they were to the twentieth century am because they're shape shifters. She understood things that we didn't understand then, for example, and gender fluidity. The characters she's often made fun of a calling characters by gender neutral names, what she's doing us is giving us a hint to an aspect of their personalityth may not even be aware of themselves. An wator ien. Anne roe, perhaps he's too well o say, but what do you think we'll endure? Avaris murdock’s novels?"
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