Iris Murdoch moral thinking, in a book by Margarita Mauri
Margarita Mauri, tenured lecturer of Ethics at the Faculty of Philosohpy of the UB, analyses the moral thinking of Iris Murdoch in her last book, starting with the key concepts of the philosophical work by the Irish author: attention, internal life, view, imagination, fantasy. This is the proposal in Iris Murdoch: una ética de la atención (2018). Its publication coincides with the birth of the philosopher and novelist. The volume studies Murdochʼs critical positioning on the moral philosophy of her time, and goes over the moral idea she presented: an ideal based on overcoming selfishness, and on the relation between ethics and art, two aspects of a same reality. The last part of the book touches on what should be the end of moral philosophy. Also, since Murdoch worked on literature and philosophy, and philosophical ideas are often filtered in her literary texts, an appendix studies two philosophical themes the writer presents in the novel The Bell.
Margarita Mauri, tenured lecturer of Ethics at the Faculty of Philosohpy of the UB, analyses the moral thinking of Iris Murdoch in her last book, starting with the key concepts of the philosophical work by the Irish author: attention, internal life, view, imagination, fantasy. This is the proposal in Iris Murdoch: una ética de la atención (2018). Its publication coincides with the birth of the philosopher and novelist. The volume studies Murdochʼs critical positioning on the moral philosophy of her time, and goes over the moral idea she presented: an ideal based on overcoming selfishness, and on the relation between ethics and art, two aspects of a same reality. The last part of the book touches on what should be the end of moral philosophy. Also, since Murdoch worked on literature and philosophy, and philosophical ideas are often filtered in her literary texts, an appendix studies two philosophical themes the writer presents in the novel The Bell.
Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin on July 15, 1919. She studied Classics, Ancient History and philosophy in the Somerville College of the University of Oxford. During the Second World War she joined the Communist Party, and left it due ideological disagreements. From 1938 to 1942, she worked at the Treasury and between 1944 and 1946 at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in Austria and Belgium. After one year without working and back in London, Murdoch studied a postgraduate degree on Philosophy led by Ludwig Wittgenstein, and in 1948 she was accepted as member of Saint Anneʼs College in Oxford, where she worked until 1963. Murdochʼs first work to be published was her doctoral thesis Sartre, Romantic Rationalist (1953). Her debut as novelist would occur a year later with the novel Under the Net, which would be the beginning of a narrative career in which religion and philosophy would be the main themes in many occasions. Murdoch often used fantasy and gothic elements, but her characters showed a great realism when finding sense to life in extraordinary situations. The Sea, the Sea, winner of the Brooker Prize in 1978, has been considered her most relevant novel. Murdoch was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1987 and died in Oxford in February 1999.
Margarita Mauri Álvarez holds a doctorate in Philosophy since 1986, and is the principal researcher of the international group Stágeira. Aristotelian Studies of Practical Philosophy. She leads two permanent seminars: Aristotle Seminar and Iris Murdoch Seminar, the latter since 2006. Her main research lines are Aristotelian practical philosophy, the ethics of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Scottish Illustration, and the figure of Irish Murdoch. Last January, she gave a lecture in the CCCB as part of a course on the work of the British writer: “Iris Murdoch, la mujer más brillante de Inglaterra”. Among her numerous publications are Bien humano y moralidad (Barcelona, PPU, 1990), “Moral knowledge in Aristotleʼs ethics” (Studia moralia, 1992); El conocimiento moral: Shaftesbury, Hutceson, Hume, Smith, Brentano, Scheler, Santo Tomás (Madrid, Rialp, 2005); “El placer de la virtud en el universe moral de Francis Hutcheson” (Empresa y Humanismo, 2009), and “La ética de la retórica” (Estudios Filosóficos, 2012). Also, he has been principal researcher in twelve R&D projects funded by administrations or public and private entities.