Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals

Description

The decline of religion and ever-increasing influence of science pose acute ethical issues for us all. Can we reject the literal truth of the Gospels yet still retain a Christian morality? Can we defend any 'moral values' against the constant encroachments of technology? Here, drawing on a novelist's insight into art, literature and abnormal psychology, Murdoch conducts an ongoing debate with major writers, thinker and theologians - from Augustine to Wittgenstein, Shakespeare to Sartre, Plato to Derrida - to provide fresh and compelling answers to these crucial questions.

Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin in 1919. She read Classics at Somerville College, Oxford, and after working in the Treasury and abroad, was awarded a research studentship in philosophy at Newnham College, Cambridge. In 1948 she returned to Oxford as fellow and tutor at St Anne's College and later taught at the Royal College of Art. Until her death in 1999, she lived in Oxford with her husband, the academic and critic, John Bayley. She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1987 and in the 1997 PEN Awards received the Gold Pen for Distinguished Service to Literature. Iris Murdoch made her writing debut in 1954 with Under the Net. Her twenty-six novels include the Booker prize-winning The Sea, The Sea (1978), the James Tait Black Memorial prize-winning The Black Prince (1973) and the Whitbread prize-winning The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974). Her philosophy includes Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (1953) and Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992); other philosophical writings, including The Sovereignty of Good (1970), are collected in Existentialists and Mystics (1997).

This is philosophy dragged from the cloister, dusted down and made freshly relevant -- Terry Eagleton * Guardian * Gripping...it enchants with a clause that sets you day-dreaming, captivates with a stream of thought, empowers with reminiscences * London Review of Books * It is a great congested work, a foaming sourcebook, about life, imagination, tragedy, philosophy, morality, religion and art * Independent * Remarkable... Iris Murdoch has once again put us all in her debt * New York Times Book Review * Anyone who has even the slightest interest in philosophical matters will find Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals an utterly absorbing book * Wall Street Journal *