The Individual in Pursuit of the Individual; A Murdochian Account of Moral Perception

Perception, Self, and Zen: On Iris Murdoch and the Taming of Simone Weil

“…Therefore, to be able to perceive the world as it is, the 'enemy' to be overcome is nothing short of the self. 9 Murdoch coins the term 'unselfing' to indicate this path. Many questions have been raised regarding the potential paradoxical nature of such an enterprise: How can we become morally better by overcoming ourselves?…”

“…While it is true, as we shall see presently, that Murdoch's moral perception does not quite fit contemporary models, first, her talk of moral vision is not just an elaborate way to refer to a direct form of moral understanding, and second, Murdoch's idea of metaphor is not of something 'added on' to what is real, but rather for her metaphor is itself part of the way we understand, and indeed, perceive reality (see e.g., SGC 363-4) [6]. Several commentators have offered accounts of Murdochian moral perception (see [7][8][9][10]). One of the earlier and most sustained discussions of moral perception in Murdoch is Lawrence Blum's [11], which argues that moral perception is required both for the perception of a situation as moral (and hence, also for the application of theories which themselves do not rely on, or support moral perception), and for the perception of what is salient in a situation, which in turns allows us to construe the situation as something that can be correctly described in thick moral terms e.g., as racist, unjust, kind, selfish, careless, etc.…”

“…Despite attempts to put Murdoch in conversation with contemporary discussions on moral perception, Murdoch's conception does not fully fit into any of them. One reason, defended by Evgenia Mylonaki [9], is that Murdoch's idea of moral perception finds its main application in attending to individuals, where is the central point is not the perception of specific moral properties of the individuals, regarded as independent of the sensibilities of the perceiver (what Mylonaki calls the 'object-view', being the dominant one in contemporary discussions). Although there is currently an alternative view of moral perception, following McDowell [12], which takes moral perception to be the perception of reason-giving properties (what Mylonaki calls the 'reasons-view'), 6 a view that can be more easily accommodated in Murdoch's philosophy, Mylonaki reminds us that Murdoch's perception of the individual goes further than what is reason-giving, to include cases of moral perception where no appeal to our practical concerns is required (such as the M&D case) [9] (pp.…”