The Iris Murdoch Society podcast

In this podcast, Miles is joined by Eva-Maria Düringer (Tübingen, Germany) and Mariëtte Willemsen (Amsterdam University College) to discuss their work translating 'The Sovereignty of Good' into German and Dutch respectively. Eva-Maria Düringer is a researcher at the University of Tübingen, Germany, where she currently leads a funded project on suffering and its role in virtue ethics - you can find her website here emduringer.de. Her work is very much influenced by the writings of Simone Weil, Iris Murdoch and Philippa Foot. She is the author of Evaluating Emotions (Palgrave 2014) and various articles on emotions and ethics. As well as the German translation of The Sovereignty of Good which came out this past July with Suhrkamp, here: https://www.suhrkamp.de/person/eva-maria-dueringer-p-17193 Mariëtte Willemsen is senior lecturer in Philosophy at Amsterdam University College. She teaches courses in Ethics and The History of Philosophy, with a focus on Arthur Schopenhauer, Simone Weil, and Iris Murdoch. Together with Hannah Altorf she translated Murdoch’s The Sovereignty of Good into Dutch (Boom 2003). Her most recent publications look into connections between Schopenhauer and Murdoch, and Weil and Murdoch. Together with Hannah Altorf she is currently working on a translation of Iris Murdoch's 1977 book, The Fire and The Sun. Why Plato Banished the Artists. You can find the details of their translation here: https://www.deslegte.com/over-god-en-het-goede-1195981/ There's a great interview with Mariëtte here: https://blog.apaonline.org/2021/05/14/genealogies-willemsen/

Miles is joined by Lesley Jamieson (Centre for Ethics as Study in Human Value at the University of Pardubice, Czech Republic) to discuss her new book, 'Iris Murdoch's Practical Metaphysics: A Guide to her Early Writings' (Palgrave, 2023). You can find out more about the book here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-36080-0

Join Gillian Dooley, Jan Skinner, and Frances White as they explore the influence of Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf on Iris Murdoch's thought and writing. Topics covered include the connections between Austen and Murdoch, Murdoch's changing views on Woolf, consciousness and morality in their works, the theme of death and grief, Murdoch's engagement with fiction as a philosopher, and recommendations of Murdoch's novels.

In this episode Miles is joined by Greg McElwain (College of Idaho, USA) and Ellie Robson (Birkbeck, University of London)to discuss the life and work of Mary Midgley. Greg is Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Religious Studies at The College of Idaho, USA. His research focuses on the thought of Mary Midgley and the intersection of animal and environmental ethics. He is the author of Mary Midgley: An Introduction (Bloomsbury, 2020) and is currently working on a book based on his interviews with Midgley from 2011-18 titled Mary Midgley on What Matters: Conversations on Science, Ethics, and Nature (Bloomsbury, forthcoming). You can buy 'Mary Midgley: An Introduction' here: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/9781350047563 Ellie recently completed her PhD at Birkbeck, University of London. In her thesis, Ellie argues that Midgley’s meta-ethics is best-read as a form of Neo-Aristotelian naturalism. Her research addresses the neglect of 20th century women philosophers from analytic philosophy and provides an explanation of Midgley’s relative oversight within this tradition.

A celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Iris Murdoch's 'The Black Prince'. Topics include the novel's emotional pull, exploration of moral and philosophical perspectives, humor, potential for adaptation, unique structure, author's fast writing process, philosophical ideas, character dynamics, use of comedy and landmarks as symbols, and the importance of the author and the reader.

In this episode Miles is joined by Nikhil Krishnan(University of Cambridge)to discuss his new book 'A Terribly Serious Adventure: Philosophy at Oxford 1900-1960'. https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/A-Terribly-Serious-Adventure-by-Nikhil-Krishnan/9781800812369 We cover the change in generational thinking, the rise of linguistic analysis and 'ordinary language philosophy', and the key figures of the time, including Ryle, Ayer, J.L. Austin and, of course, the Quartet: Anscombe, Foot, Midgley and Murdoch. Nikhil Krishnan is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Robinson College. He wrote his doctorate in Philosophy at Balliol College, Oxford and his work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New Statesman and he regularly reviews a wide range of books for the Daily Telegraph.

In this podcast is joined by Jan Skinner (Oxford) and Anne Rowe (Chichester and Kingston) to discuss the range of children and adolescents in Murdoch's work. What purpose do they serve? And why are so many damaged and dangerous? Novels discussed in depth include The Sandcastle, An Unofficial Rose, The Nice and the Good, The Sacred and Profane Love Machine, The Bell, The Green Knight, Jackson's Dilemma and The Italian Girl.

Miles is joined by Carole Sweeney (Goldsmiths University, London) and Joe Darlington (Futureworks Media, Manchester) to discuss a range of authors who emerged post-World War 2, inspired by the works of the high modernists and the French Nouveau Roman. They were writing at the same time as Murdoch, but in very different modes and genres. Do they even form a real grouping? Authors discussed, or mentioned, include: Brigid Brophy, Anthony Burgess, Christine Brooke-Rose, Angela Carter, Eva Figes, B.S. Johnson, Anna Kavan, Ann Quin, Muriel Spark, as well as those in their circles, and those who published them. Joseph Darlington is the author of The Experimentalists (Bloomsbury, 2021), as well as Christine Brooke-Rose and Post-War Literature (Palgrave, 2021), and British Terrorist Novels of the 1970s (Palgrave, 2018). He was editor of BSJ: The B.S. Johnson Journal and now co-edits the Manchester Review of Books. https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/experimentalists-9781350244405/ https://www.waterstones.com/book/christine-brooke-rose-and-post-war-literature/joseph-darlington/9783030759056 Carole Sweeney is Reader in English Literature and Goldsmith University, London and focuses on the intersections of race, class, sexualities and gender in modern and contemporary literature and culture. Her first book, From Fetish to Subject: Race, Modernism and Primitivism, examined how the colonial iconography of the black body was deployed in cultural modernism and how anti-colonial and decolonising cultural movements emerged in opposition to this aesthetic racialisation. She followed up this work by publishing widely on Francophone-African writing, in particular by women writers and then by examining racism, anti-feminism and misogyny in contemporary fiction. Her most recent book Vagabond Fictions: Gender and Experiment in British Women's Literature 1945-1970 examines the evolution of feminism and sexual identity in post-war Britain. Carole's current research project is on the continuing battleground for women's bodies and sexualities in contemporary literature and culture and will include work on feminist creative criticism. https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-vagabond-fictions.html Carole and Joe both appear in this excellent collection: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-72766-6

Miles is joined by Larry Blum (U-Mass) to discuss the life and work of Dorothy Emmet, a philosopher of the prior generation to Murdoch who work in numerous different areas of the subject. Later in her life she and Murdoch became friends ; Larry sees her work as in some ways very much in the spirit of the Quartet’s, though in other ways quite different.. Emmet and Murdoch had some significant areas of professional and personal contact. You can find out more about Larry here: www.lawrenceblum.net/ You can hear more about Larry's journey on the wonderful Five Questions Podcast: anchor.fm/kieran-setiya

Miles is joined by Megan Laverty (Columbia, USA) and Evgenia Mylonaki (Patraas, Greece) to discuss their joint reading of Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. You can find out substantive handout for the podcast where they highlight their reading here: Megan is an Associate Professor and Director of the Philosophy and Education Program at Teachers College, Columbia University. She teaches graduate courses on ethics, aesthetics, and philosophy of education. Megan is the author of Iris Murdoch’s Ethics: A Consideration of her Romantic Vision (Bloomsbury, 2007) and contributed a chapter on civility to The Murdochian Mind (Routledge, 2022) https://www.tc.columbia.edu/faculty/ml2524/ Evgenia is assistant professor of Practical Philosophy at the Philosophy Department of the University of Patras, Greece. Her written work is primarily in ethics (moral experience and virtuous reasoning) and the philosophy of action (metaphysics of action, practical knowledge, and rationality). She is the co-editor of the book Reason in Nature (out in 2022 by HUP, co-edited with Matthew Boyle, University of Chicago). https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674241046 She works on the philosophies of Iris Murdoch, Elizabeth Anscombe and Philippa Foot and I have a special philosophical interest in animal lives, in the collapse of ways of living and in art (film, photography and the novel). I am currently working on a book project with the title "Moral Growth; A Study of Ethics in Experience". You can find her published work, and her website, via these links. https://www.springerprofessional.de/en/the-individual-in-pursuit-of-the-individual-a-murdochian-account/16322292 https://periodicos.sbu.unicamp.br/ojs/index.php/manuscrito/article/view/8654130/18852 https://www.evgeniamylonaki.net/