Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals
  • Published: 30 September 2012
  • ISBN: 9781409044055
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 544
Categories:

Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals

Formats & editions
EBook
30 Sep 2012
Paperback
1 May 2003
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'Iris Murdoch has written a book which concerns all of us as human beings. There are pages here that one wants to embrace her for, pages that say things of fundamental human importance in a way that they have never quite been said before' Sunday Telegraph

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? Indeed, are we in danger of losing most of the qualities which make us truly human? Here, drawing on a novelists insight into art, literature and psychology, Iris Murdoch conducts an ongoing debate with major writers, thinkers and theologians - from Augustine to Wittgenstein, Shakespeare to Sartre, Plato to Derrida - to provide fresh and compelling answers to these crucial questions.
  • Published: 30 September 2012
  • ISBN: 9781409044055
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 544
Categories:

About the author

Iris Murdoch

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).

portrait photo of Iris Murdoch

Also by Iris Murdoch

Iris Murdoch: The Sea, The Sea, A Severed Head & Something Special
The Sea, The Sea & A Severed Head
Living on Paper
The Black Prince (Vintage Classics Murdoch Series)
The Bell (Vintage Classics Murdoch Series)
An Accidental Man
A Word Child
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Praise for Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals

A thrilling read… Metaphysics is an invaluable demonstration of how relevant philosophical issues are to our everyday lives, particularly in our relationship to art

Lucy Bolton, Times Higher Education

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

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

This is philosophy dragged from the cloister, dusted down and made freshly relevant

Terry Eagleton, Guardian
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