Iris Murdoch (July 15, 1919 – February 08, 1999) Art is truth as well as form, it is representational as well as autonomous. Of course the communication may be indirect, but the ambiguity of the great writer creates spaces which we can explore and enjoy because they are openings on to the real world and …
Iris Murdoch On Happiness
Iris Murdoch (July 15, 1919 – February 08, 1999) Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self. To be damned is for one's ordinary everyday mode of consciousness to be unremitting agonizing preoccupation with self.
Iris Murdoch On The Good
Iris Murdoch (July 15, 1919 – February 08, 1999) The concept of Good… is a concept which is not easy to understand partly because it has so many false doubles, jumped-up intermediaries invented by human selfishness to make the difficult task of virtue look easier and more attractive: History, God, Lucifer, Ideas of power, freedom, …
Iris Murdoch On Causality And Chance
Iris Murdoch (July 15, 1919–February 8, 1999) Causality and chance … are the same things looked at two ways. Of course we are rather mechanical, and psychoanalysis can offer us some useful generalities about ourselves. But everything that is important and valuable and good belongs with the little piece of us which is not mechanical …
Iris Murdoch On Beauty
Iris Murdoch (July 15, 1919 – February 08, 1999) Beauty is the convenient and traditional name of something which art and nature share, and which gives a fairly clear sense to the idea of quality of experience and change of consciousness. I am looking out of my window in an anxious and resentful state of …
Iris Murdoch On The Good
Iris Murdoch (July 15, 1919 – February 08, 1999) The concept of Good… is a concept which is not easy to understand partly because it has so many false doubles, jumped-up intermediaries invented by human selfishness to make the difficult task of virtue look easier and more attractive: History, God, Lucifer, Ideas of power, freedom, …
Iris Murdoch On Tyrants And Art
Iris Murdoch (July 15, 1919 – February 08, 1999) Tyrants always fear art because tyrants want to mystify while art tends to clarify. The good artist is a vehicle of truth, he formulates ideas which would otherwise remain vague and focuses attention upon facts which can then no longer be ignored. The tyrant persecutes the …
Iris Murdoch On Art And Philosophy
Iris Murdoch (July 15, 1919 – February 8, 1999) Both art and philosophy constantly re-create themselves by returning to the deep and obvious and ordinary things of human existence and making there a place for cool speech and wit and serious unforced reflection. Long may this central area remain to us, the homeland of freedom …
