anniel: In the painting, dora realizes in that minute that she does not love either of these men in her life. She is going to become more independent. So this idea of love and what true love means, comes into it... i think murdock is hoping, when readers are watching or thinking about dora, looking at this painting, that the ego is cracked. Dora's ego is cracked at that minute, and she sees the realization of an otherness completely outside herself. This painting has got nothing to do with her own problems ... And this is what calls her, causes her to fall on her knees.
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