Getting the measure of Murdoch's Good

Cumhaill, Clare Mac

doi:10.1111/ejop.12540

Cited by 6 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…This is because concepts that historical individuals have-and express in though and action-only acquire structure in the context of the progressing life of a person. (Mac Cumhaill, 2020, p. 235, citing Murdoch, 1970 Thus, she continues, 'the full extent of what courage is for me and means to me will depend on the historical individual I am and the life I have led' (Mac Cumhaill, 2020, p. 235). The latter formulation is wide open to the challenge that conceptual change is not merely a matter of the particular life I lead, but a matter of the social and, in a broader sense, historical life I am immersed in.…”

Section: The State Of Current Scholarshipmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Murdoch on ethical formation in a changing world

Hämäläinen

2022

Journal of Philosophy of Education

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In the past few years, we have seen emerging new work that brings into focus the role of historical change and its moral implications in Iris Murdoch's philosophy. This paper strengthens this reading of her work and investigates the implications of this aspect of Murdoch's thinking for education in general and for moral education in particular. It resituates the Platonic imagery of the individual's ascent towards the true and the good in a framework where our conceptions of the true and the good are in a process of historical reconfiguration.

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Section: The State Of Current Scholarshipmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is because concepts that historical individuals have—and express in though and action—only acquire structure in the context of the progressing life of a person. (Mac Cumhaill, 2020, p. 235, citing Murdoch, 1970)…”

Section: The State Of Current Scholarshipmentioning

confidence: 99%

Murdoch on ethical formation in a changing world

Hämäläinen

2022

Journal of Philosophy of Education

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“…The discussion of Wittgenstein on language, below, elucidates this point. See also Mac Cumhaill , in this volume.…”

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confidence: 98%

“…For a helpful and detailed overview, see Broackes's () introduction. See also Mac Cumhaill () in this volume.…”

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confidence: 98%

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What if the private linguist were a poet? Iris Murdoch on privacy and ethics

Wiseman

2020

European J of Philosophy

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The historical individual, or rather the absence of the historical individual, in modern philosophy is at the centre of the three lectures collected in The Sovereignty of Good and at the centre of Murdoch's moral philosophy taken as a whole. Murdoch is driven by the insight, and the anxiety, that the conceptual resources available to moral philosophy are catastrophically diminished by a picture of the human individual as 'an isolated principle of will, or burrowing pinpoint of consciousness, inside, or beside, a lump of being which has been handed over to other disciplines' (GG 338).Though her contemporaries might not recognise this rather grotesque character as the hero of their philosophy, Murdoch believes that the presence of this 'soul-picture' in their work is betrayed by the anaemic character of the moral scene they describe. Such a soul-picture, Murdoch argues, has left ethicists with the resources to speak only of reasonableness, rationality, authenticity, sincerity and correctness and has transformed moral progress from a demanding personal struggle towards unachievable perfection into a 'mediocre achievement' (GG 340) consisting in 'the making of sensible choices and the giving of sensible and simple reasons' (HT 177; GG 340; SG 364).Murdoch argues that moral philosophy must be able speak in terms of good and evil, piety and salvation, humility and love-concepts that are connected to perfection, not mediocracy-and she thinks that these concepts get application only against a background picture of humans as substantive individuals or selves, each with a personal history, and a rich, unique, and ultimately private, inner life (e.g., GG 343). She proposes such a soul-picture, one that foregrounds the privacy of individual consciousness and links both practical rationality and the moral significance of action to the irreducible particularity of 'an individual living in time' (MGM 273). This soul-picture, Murdoch thinks, will allow us to recognise that 'the area of morals, and ergo of moral philosophy [is not a] hole-and-corner matter of debts and promises, but [covers] the whole of our mode of living and the quality of our relations with the world' (SG 380) Abbreviations: GG, 'On "God" and "Good"'.

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Interrupting the conversation: Donald MacKinnon, wartime tutor of Anscombe, Midgley, Murdoch and Foot

Cumhaill

Wiseman

2022

Journal of Philosophy of Education

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Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgley, Iris Murdoch and Philippa Foot all studied at Oxford University during the Second World War. One of their wartime tutors was Donald MacKinnon. This paper gives a broad overview of MacKinnon's philosophical outlook as it was developing at this time. Four talks from between 1938 and 1941—‘And the Son of Man That Thou Visiteth Him’ (1938), ‘What Is a Metaphysical Statement?’ (1940), ‘The Function of Philosophy in Education’ (1941) and ‘Revelation and Social Justice’ (1941)—give a foretaste of the conception of moral philosophy that he later articulated in A Study of Ethical Theory (1957). We identify aspects of his philosophical outlook and unusual treatment of method that likely shaped his teaching. We trace his influence in the work of Midgley, Murdoch and Foot, all of whom studied with him from Trinity Term 1940 until their finals in 1942. In the case of Anscombe, though she was briefly his student—he taught her Plato—she and MacKinnon moved in shared intellectual circles, and there is reason to think that some of the forces that shaped MacKinnon's outlook also shaped hers. The sketch we offer is incomplete—in particular, we are not able to do justice to MacKinnon's explicitly theological writings—but we hope to achieve three things. First, to go some way towards indicating the importance of the teacher MacKinnon to understanding the work of his better‐known pupils. Second, to introduce a philosopher for whom the teaching of philosophy, practical ethics and metaphysical theory were deeply entwined. Third, to reflect on the relationship between, on the one hand, a conception of the practice and significance of metaphysics and, on the other, a view on the role and nature of philosophical teaching and learning.

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Getting the measure of Murdoch's Good

Cited by 6 publications

References 13 publications

Murdoch on ethical formation in a changing world

Murdoch on ethical formation in a changing world

What if the private linguist were a poet? Iris Murdoch on privacy and ethics

Interrupting the conversation: Donald MacKinnon, wartime tutor of Anscombe, Midgley, Murdoch and Foot

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