Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T00:31:57.064Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Love and Unselfing in Iris Murdoch

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2020

Julia Driver
Julia Driver*
Affiliation:
The University of Texas at Austin
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Iris Murdoch believes that unselfing is required for virtue, as it takes us out of our egoistic preoccupations, and connects us to the Good in the world. Love is a form of unselfing, illustrating how close attention to another, and the way they really are, again, takes us out of a narrow focus on the self. Though this view of love runs counter to a view that those in love often overlook flaws in their loved ones, or at least down-play them, I argue that it is compatible with Murdoch's view that love can overlook some flaws, ones that do not speak to the loved one's true self. Unselfing requires that we don't engage in selfish delusion, but a softer view of our loved ones is permitted.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 87: A Centenary Celebration: Anscombe, Foot, Midgley, Murdoch , July 2020 , pp. 169 - 180
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Murdoch, From Iris, The Sovereignty of the Good, (Routledge Classics, 1970), 82Google Scholar.

2 Foot, Philippa, ‘Virtues and Vices’ in Virtues and Vices (Oxford: OUP, 1978) 1–18Google Scholar.

3 Murdoch, Iris, The Nice and the Good (Penguin Books, 1968)Google Scholar.

4 Hume, DavidA Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Norton, David Fate and Norton, Mary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

5 Op. cit. note 1, The Sovereignty of the Good, 50.

6 Murdoch, IrisThe Sovereignty of the Good (Routledge, 1970) 17Google Scholar.

7 Op. cit. note 5.

8 Murdoch, Iris, The Sea, the Sea (Penguin Books, 1980)Google Scholar.

9 Mole, Christopher ‘Attention, Self, and The Sovereignty of the Good,’ in Iris Murdoch: A Reassessment, ed. Rowe, Anne (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 75Google Scholar.

10 Op. cit. note 8, 83.

11 Midgley, Mary, Beast and Man (New American Library, 1978), 359Google Scholar.

12 Samantha Vice criticizes Murdoch for the erasure of self in her ‘The Ethics of Self-Concern,’ in Iris Murdoch: A Reassessment, ed. Anne Rowe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 60–71. Mole is trying for a reconciliation between two strands he sees in Murdoch's work.

13 Wolf, Susan ‘Loving Attention: Lessons in Love from The Philadelphia Story,’ in Understanding Love: Philosophy, Film, and Fiction, ed. Wolf, Susan and Grau, Christopher (Oxford University Press, 2014), 369–386CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Abramson, Kate and Leite, Adam, ‘Love as a Reactive Emotion,’ The Philosophical Quarterly, 6 (245), 677Google Scholar.