The Iris Murdoch Society podcast

Miles is joined by Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman to discuss their new book, Metaphysical Animals. https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Metaphysical-Animals-by-Clare-Mac-Cumhaill-Rachael-Wiseman/9781784743284 Clare Mac Cumhaill (pronounced Mc Cool!) is a philosopher of mind, working mostly on perception, but with interests in emotion and action, as well as aspects of the metaphysics of mind, and in topics relating to aesthetics. Most of her work is on perception of space, and spatial properties. Her doctoral thesis looked at the perception of empty space and she is still somewhat hung up on this topic, though the ambit of her interests has expanded into working out what explanatory work reflection on space can do, in particular in trying to characterize the nature of our experience in ways that make it immune to skeptical re-description. With Rachael Wiseman (Liverpool), she is co-director of the In Parenthesis project, which focuses on the life, work and friendships of Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot, Elizabeth Anscombe and Mary Midgley (sometimes called the Quartet). The project is investigating whether the collective corpus of these philosophers has the hallmarks of a distinct philosophical school. Read about it here: http://www.womeninparenthesis.co.uk/ Rachael Wiseman work at the intersection of philosophy of mind, action and ethics and has published mainly on the work of G. E. M. Anscombe and Ludwig Wittgenstein. She is currently working on an AHRC-funded project, Perception, Action and the Genesis of Everyday Ethics (PAGE). The project, with Dr Clare MacCumhaill (Durham) is a study of the lives and philosophy of 'The Quartet' of women philosophers who met at Oxford during WWII: Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley and Iris Murdoch (www.womeninparenthesis.co.uk). As well as studying the philosophy of four wonderfully creative thinkers they want to understand why there are so few women in philosophy and to work out what they might do about it! The Integrity Project (www.integrityproject.org) looks at the meaning and importance of integrity. Rachael was awarded a British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award (2016-2017) for work with a local arts organisation, Wunderbar (www.wunderbar.org.uk), exploring artistic integrity and arts fundraising.

Miles is joined by Silvia Caprioglio Panizza to discuss her new book 'The Ethics of Attention: Engaging the Real with Iris Murdoch and Simone Weil'. You can find out more about the book, here: https://www.routledge.com/The-Ethics-of-Attention-Engaging-the-Real-with-Iris-Murdoch-and-Simone/Panizza/p/book/9780367756932 Silvia Caprioglio Panizza is Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Centre for Ethics, University of Pardubice, and a fellow of the PEriTiA project (Policy, Expertise, and Trust in Action) at the Centre for Ethics in Public Life, University College Dublin. She has edited and translated Simone Weil’s Venice Saved with Philip Wilson (2019) and co-edited (with Mark Hopwood) The Murdochian Mind (Routledge, 2022).

Gillian Dooley (Flinders University, Australia) is in conversation with Lucy Bolton (QMUL, UK) about her new book, 'Listening to Iris Murdoch: Music, Sounds and Silences' (Palgrave, 2022) - the first book in the 'Iris Murdoch Today' Series. As Lucy says about the Gillian's book: 'When we think of Iris Murdoch’s relationship with art forms, the visual arts come most readily to mind. However, music and other sounds are equally important. Soundscapes – music and other types of sound – contribute to the richly textured atmosphere and moral tenor of Murdoch’s novels. This book will help readers to appreciate anew the sensuous nature of Iris Murdoch’s prose, and to listen for all kinds of music, sounds and silences in her novels, opening up a new sub-field in Murdoch studies in line with the emerging field of Word and Music Studies. This study is supported by close readings of selected novels exemplifying the subtle variety of ways she deploys music, sounds and silence in her fiction. It also covers Murdoch’s knowledge of music and her allusions to music throughout her work, and includes a survey of musical settings of her words by various composers.' Find out more here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-00860-3

Join Anne Rowe and Miles Leeson as they guide you around London's Wallace Collection, stopping off to discuss three key paintings that feature in Murdoch's novels: Hal's Laughing Cavalier, Titian's 'Perseus and Andromeda', and Rembrandt's 'Titus, the Artist's Son'. These feature in her first novel 'Under the Net' and her Booker Prize-winning 'The Sea, The Sea', respectively. You can view them here: https://www.wallacecollection.org/art/exhibitions-displays/past-exhibitions/frans-hals-the-male-portrait/ https://wallacelive.wallacecollection.org/eMP/eMuseumPlus?service=ExternalInterface&module=collection&objectId=65351&viewType=detailView https://www.wallacecollection.org/art/collection/collection-highlights/titus-artists-son/ Anne Rowe is Visiting Professor at the Iris Murdoch Research Centre at the University of Chichester. Her many books include the first work on Murdoch and Art 'The Visual Arts and the Novels of Iris Murdoch', as well as 'Iris Murdoch' in the Writers and their Work Series.

In this episode I'm joined by Silvia Caprioglio Panizza (University College Dublin, and the Centre for Ethics as Study in Human Value, University of Pardubice) and Mark Hopwood (Sewanne, University of the South, USA) to discuss their recently published edited collection 'The Murdochian Mind'. Silvia Caprioglio Panizza is Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Centre for Ethics, University of Pardubice, and a fellow of the PEriTiA project (Policy, Expertise, and Trust in Action) at the Centre for Ethics in Public Life, University College Dublin. She has edited and translated Simone Weil’s Venice Saved with Philip Wilson (2019) and is the author of The Ethics of Attention: Engaging the Real with Iris Murdoch and Simone Weil (2022). Mark Hopwood is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at The University of the South, Sewanee, USA. He has published articles on a range of topics in moral philosophy, including love, narcissism, hypocrisy, and the nature of moral judgment, and is currently writing a book on Iris Murdoch’s ethics. You can find out more about the book, and purchase a copy, here: https://www.routledge.com/The-Murdochian-Mind/Panizza-Hopwood/p/book/9780367468019

To celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of Murdoch's 'Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals' I'm joined by Gillian Dooley (Flinders University, Australia), Nora Hämäläinen (University of Pardubice, Czech Republic), and Frances White (IMRC, Chichester) to give an introductory overview of the work. As this is Murdoch's magnum opus this is the first in a series of four podcasts being released in 2022 focusing on it. You can find Gillian and Nora's edited collection 'Reading Iris Murdoch's Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals' here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-18967-9?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=google_books&utm_campaign=3_pier05_buy_print&utm_content=en_08082017 Gillian Dooley is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in English at Flinders University, Australia. She was the founding general editor of the Flinders Humanities Research Centre's electronic journal Transnational Literature from 2008-2018, and was founding co-editor of Writers in Conversation 2014-2020. She has published three monographs, several scholarly editions and more than 100 journal articles and book chapters including the co-edited Reading Iris Murdoch's Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. Her latest work Listening to Iris Murdoch: Music, Sounds and Silences will be published in the ‘Iris Murdoch Today’ series with Palgrave Macmillan in July this year. Nora Hämäläinen is a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Ethics as study in Human value at the University of Pardubice in the Czech Republic. As well as being the author of Literature and Moral Theory and Descriptive Ethics: What Does Moral Philosophy Know About Morality she is also the co-editor of Reading Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals with Gillian. She is currently working on two interrelated projects: completing a monograph called The Making of the Good Person: Moral Philosophy, Self-Help and Technologies of the Self, where I look at some discussions on self-transformation and self-development in philosophy and popular culture. She is also working on a long term project on moral change (the change and renegotiation of moral frameworks and axioms). Frances white is the deputy director of the iris Murdoch research centre at the university of Chichester. As well as publishing widely on Murdoch, including the biography Becoming Iris Murdoch in 2014 she is the co-editor of the Iris Murdoch Today series with Palgrave Macmillan and the Editor of the Iris Murdoch Review. She is currently editing Iris Murdoch and the Literary Imagination, also with Palgrave.

This lecture was given by Peter Webster, a scholar of contemporary religious history, with a particular interest in the religious arts. His most recent book was the first biography of Walter Hussey; Dean of Chichester and patron of the arts. The audio recording of a public lecture given at the University of Chichester on 19th February 2022, as part of a study day at the Iris Murdoch Research Centre. My thanks are due to Miles Leeson for the invitation, and to the audience for a very engaged and stimulating discussion afterwards. I examine Christian reactions to Murdoch’s work in three areas: her strictly philosophical work on metaphysics and ethics, and her novels. I explore the remarkable closeness of Murdoch’s distinctive preoccupations to those of British theologians in the period. However, her position outside the usual circles of Christian discourse made it difficult for her to be heard and, when she was, her fundamentally atheistic position made her philosophical work hard to digest. The final third of the paper then looks at Christian readings of her novels, in which readers found much more congenial material with which to engage. Authors discussed include: (among the theologians) Don Cupitt, Colin Gunton, Eric Mascall, Alasdair Macintyre, John A.T. Robinson, Keith Ward; among the critics: Bernard Bergonzi, Ruth Etchells, David Holbrook, Valerie Pitt. In relation to aesthetics, there is some discussion of Walter Hussey, Anglican patron of the arts. https://peterwebster.me/2022/02/21/iris-and-the-christians-what-did-the-british-churches-make-of-murdoch-1954-c1983/

In this episode Miles is joined by Lucy Bolton (Queen Mary, University of London), Lisa Smithstead (University of Exeter), and Melanie Williams (University of East Anglia)- three noted film scholars - to discuss the impact and legacy of the Oscar-winning film 'Iris', based on the first of John Bayley's memoirs about his wife, Iris Murdoch. You can find Lucy's book on Murdoch here: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-contemporary-cinema-and-the-philosophy-of-iris-murdoch.html and her essay on the film itself, here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt16d6996.10?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

In this podcast Miles is joined by Paul Fiddes, Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Oxford, to discuss his latest book, Iris Murdoch and the Others: A Writer in Dialogue with Theology. Paul is the author or editor of over twenty five books, including recent publications on Lewis and Williams, and a forthcoming monograph on Shakespeare later in 2022. Find the book here: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Iris-Murdoch-and-the-Others-by-Paul-S-Fiddes/9780567703347 You can find out more about Paul, and his research centre, The Centre for Theology and Modern European Thought, here: https://ctmet.theology.ox.ac.uk/home

In this episode I'm joined by Justin Broackes (Brown, USA), Gary Browning (Oxford Brookes), and Alison Scott-Baumann (SOAS)to discuss Murdoch's lifelong engagement with the fiction and philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. From her first meeting with him in Brussels in 1945, right the way through to 'Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals'. Have your copy of Sartre: Romantic Rationalist to hand! Justin is the Editor of 'Iris Murdoch, Philosopher': https://www.bookdepository.com/Iris-Murdoch-Philosopher-Justin-Broackes/9780198701200?ref=grid-view&qid=1639760683318&sr=1-1 Gary is the author of 'Why Iris Murdoch Matters': https://irismurdochsociety.org.uk/product/why-iris-murdoch-matters/ Alison is the co-editor of 'Iris Murdoch and the Moral Imagination': https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0786440260?tag=bookfinder-test-b-21&linkCode=osi&th=1&psc=1&language=en_GB&selectObb=new