Promotional Information

'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

About the Author

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).

Reviews

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

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 *

This book is about the interplay of metaphysical images in art, religon, and especially morals. Morality is fundamental to human nature and is to be understood, according to distinguished novelist and philosophy professor Murdoch, not merely in piecemeal analysis but in the broad synthesis of metaphysical categories that set the order and pattern of our moral experience and our concepts thereof. Moral discernment comes from concentrated attention and appears ex nihilo , as by a kind of grace that leads us from contingent detail toward a perfection that we (allegedly) know intuitively. The work draws significant influence from Plato and Kant and also discusses aspects of Schopenhauer, Wittgenstein, and Buber in detail. Far-ranging and rich with well-chosen examples, this insightful book challenges us to think more clearly about its subject.-- Robert Hoffman, York Coll., CUNY