Iris Murdoch
Archetype: Ascetic of Spirit
1919 to 1999 · Dublin (Ireland)
“Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.”
Do you think like Iris Murdoch? Answer 44 to 132 statements and find out who, among 130 thinkers, has the way of thinking closest to yours.
Who was Iris Murdoch
Born in Dublin and raised in London, Iris Murdoch taught philosophy at Oxford and wrote twenty six novels, winning the Booker Prize for The Sea, the Sea. Against the fashion of her time, she defended an almost Platonic idea of the Good. For her, moral life happens less in big choices than in the quiet effort to see other people justly and lovingly.
Core ideas
- Morality is mostly about attention: learning to see others as they really are
- The Good is real and draws us out of our selfish fantasies
- Art and love both teach us to look beyond ourselves
The tradition: Moral Platonist
Moral Platonism treats the Good as something real that we discover, not something we invent. Murdoch revived this view in the twentieth century against existentialism and analytic skepticism.
Learn more: Wikipedia
Books by Iris Murdoch
Three ways in. Start with the first.
Where Iris Murdoch stands on the 11 axes
Each axis runs from the first pole (−1) to the second (+1). These are the positions the test compares with your answers.
