The Disorientation of Love and the Decline of Literature

Jamieson, Lesley

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-36080-0_4

Lesley Jamieson⁴

Part of the book series: Iris Murdoch Today ((IMT))

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Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of Murdoch’s engagement with Kantian aesthetics and existentialist philosophy. Murdoch believed that contemporary novelists, literary critics, and analytic philosophers of art had taken inspiration from the wrong aspect of Kant’s Critique of Judgment, focusing on the beautiful rather than the sublime. She diagnoses their systematic neglect of great literature (a category into which she places Shakespeare and Tolstoy) in terms of a limited, behaviourist and existentialist conception of human individuality and freedom as well as an inadequate moral psychology. This chapter uses Murdoch’s writings on literature and philosophy from her St. Anne’s period to illustrate her uniquely literary approach to philosophical clarification and the practical dimension of her work.

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Notes

1.
Iris Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited”, in Existentialists and Mystics ed. Peter Conradi (New York: Penguin, 1998), 267–9.
2.
Iris Murdoch, “The Novelist as Metaphysician”, in Existentialists and Mystics ed. Peter Conradi (New York: Penguin, 1998), 105.
3.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited”, 262.
4.
Iris Murdoch, “Against Dryness”, in Existentialists and Mystics ed. Peter Conradi (New York: Penguin), 289.
5.
Murdoch, “Against Dryness”, 287.
6.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited”, 261.
7.
Ibid., 267.
8.
Ibid., 269.
9.
Ibid., 281.
10.
Andrew Bowie, Aesthetics and Subjectivity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 25–6.
11.
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952), 18.
12.
Kant, Critique of Judgment, 175–9.
13.
Ibid., 58.
14.
Ibid., 46.
15.
Kant quoted by Iris Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Good”, in Existentialists and Mystics ed. Peter Conradi (New York: Penguin, 1998), 207.
16.
Kant, Critique of Judgment, 173.
17.
Ibid., 72.
18.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited”, 262–3.
19.
Kant, Critique of Judgment, 75.
20.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Good”, 207.
21.
Kant, Critique of Judgment, 51.
22.
Ibid., 63.
23.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Good”, 207.
24.
Ibid., 209.
25.
Ibid., 209.
26.
Ibid., 219.
27.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited”, 277.
28.
Iris Murdoch, Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (London: Chatto & Windus, 1987), 66.
29.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Good,” 210.
30.
For example, in Margaret MacDonald’s contribution to the same volume, she echoes Kant’s view that aesthetic judgements are apodictic yet rationally indefensible. On her view, the function of art criticism is to invite one’s readers to share in a mode of attention that discloses the value of the work, rather than to offer them generalizable reasons for valuing it. See Margaret MacDonald, “Some Distinctive Features of Arguments Used in Criticism of the Arts”, in Aesthetics and Language ed. William Elton (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1954), 114–130.
31.
Stuart Hampshire, “Logic and Appreciation”, in Aesthetics and Language ed. William Elton (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1954), 166.
32.
Hampshire, “Logic and Appreciation”, 168.
33.
Ibid., 166.
34.
Ibid., 169.
35.
Ibid., 162.
36.
See especially Iris Murdoch, “The Sovereignty of Good over other Concepts”, in Existentialists and Mystics ed. Peter Conradi (New York: Penguin, 1998), 363–385.
37.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Good”, 211.
38.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited”, 261.
39.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 91.
40.
Ibid., 102.
41.
Ibid., 111.
42.
Ibid., 111.
43.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited”, 264.
44.
Ibid., 263.
45.
Ibid., 264.
46.
Murdoch, “Against Dryness”, 293.
47.
While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss, Murdoch’s reading of Sartre has been criticized as inaccurate. See for example Richard Moran, “Iris Murdoch and Existentialism”, in Iris Murdoch, Philosopher ed. Justin Broackes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 181–196. My remarks on Sartre in this chapter are only meant to capture how Murdoch understood his philosophy.
48.
Iris Murdoch, “The Existentialist Political Myth”, in Existentialists and Mystics ed. Peter Conradi (New York: Penguin, 1998), 132.
49.
Murdoch, Sartre: Romantic Rationalist, 76.
50.
Murdoch, “The Existentialist Political Myth”, 130–131.
51.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited”, 271.
52.
Murdoch, “Against Dryness”, 290.
53.
Iris Murdoch, “T. S. Eliot as a Moralist”, in Existentialists and Mystics ed. Peter Conradi (New York: Penguin, 1998), 162.
54.
Murdoch, Sartre: Romantic Rationalist, 39.
55.
Ibid., 42.
56.
Ibid., 116.
57.
Ibid., 128.
58.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited”, 269.
59.
Murdoch, Sartre: Romantic Rationalist, 40.
60.
Ibid., 118.
61.
Ibid., 120.
62.
Iris Murdoch, “Hegel in Modern Dress”, in Existentialists and Mystics ed. Peter Conradi (New York: Penguin, 1998), 147.
63.
Murdoch, Sartre: Romantic Rationalist, 47.
64.
Ibid., 91.
65.
Ibid., 103.
66.
Ibid., 102.
67.
Ibid., 94.
68.
Ibid., 49.
69.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Good”, 215.
70.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited”, 283.
71.
Murdoch, “The Novelist as Metaphysician”, 101.
72.
Iris Murdoch, “Literature and Philosophy”, in Existentialists and Mystics ed. Peter Conradi (New York: Penguin, 1998), 20.
73.
Murdoch, “The Novelist as Metaphysician”, 108.
74.
Murdoch, Sartre: Romantic Rationalist, 63–80.
75.
Murdoch, “The Novelist as Metaphysician”, 103–104.
76.
Iris Murdoch, “The Existentialist Hero”, in Existentialists and Mystics ed. Peter Conradi (New York: Penguin, 1998), 114–115.
77.
Murdoch, Sartre: Romantic Rationalist, 57.
78.
Ibid., 59.
79.
Ibid., 41.
80.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited”, 279.
81.
Ibid., 274.
82.
Ibid., 272.
83.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Good”, 211–212.
84.
Ibid., 212.
85.
Ibid., 205.
86.
Ibid., 205.
87.
Iris Murdoch, “Thinking and Language”, in Existentialists and Mystics ed. Peter Conradi (New York: Penguin, 1998), 42.
88.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Good”, 206.
89.
Ibid., 205.
90.
Ibid., 210.
91.
In this, there are echoes with Murdoch’s discussions of aesthetic experience in “Nostalgia for the Particular”—particularly her insistence that in responding to a Persian Rug, we are responding to its “language” and discerning its “sense”. Iris Murdoch, “Nostalgia for the Particular”, in Existentialists and Mystics ed. Peter Conradi (New York: Penguin, 1998) 54–55.
92.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Good,” 216.
93.
Murdoch, “Against Dryness”, 294.
94.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Good”, 213.
95.
Ibid., 217.
96.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited”, 282.
97.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Good”, 213.
98.
Ibid., 216.
99.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited”, 268.
100.
Ibid., 268.
101.
Ibid., 269.
102.
For a discussion of this character type, see Ilham Dilman, Love and Human Separateness (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), 84–86.
103.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited”, 270.
104.
Murdoch, “Against Dryness”, 293.
105.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited”, 270.
106.
Murdoch, “Against Dryness”, 294.
107.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited”, 262.
108.
Ibid., 268–270.
109.
Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (New York: Harper & Row, 1956), 1–2.
110.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Good”, 216.
111.
Murdoch, “Against Dryness”, 295.
112.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited”, 271.
113.
Ibid., 283.
114.
Murdoch’s fiction and non-fiction were both concerned with the problem of the intolerance faced by homosexuals during this period. For example, her novel The Bell (1958) sympathetically depicts a morally complex homosexual character. In 1965, she wrote an essay entitled “The Moral Decision about Homosexuality” (1965), in which she challenges the view that homosexuality is a social problem, a deviation from the natural, or a psychological disease. See Iris Murdoch, “The Moral Decision about Homosexuality”, in The Humanist 80 (1965), 70–73.
115.
R. G. Collingwood, Essay on Philosophical Method (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 205–206.
116.
Collingwood, Essay on Philosophical Method, 214.
117.
Niklas Forsberg, “Iris Murdoch on Love”, in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Love eds. Christopher Grau and Aaron Smuts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 4.
118.
Martin Turkis II, “Post-Critical Platonism: Preliminary Meditations on Ethics and Aesthetics”, in Tradition and Discovery: The Journal of the Polanyi Society 45 (2019), 31.
119.
Forsberg, “Iris Murdoch on Love”, 9.
120.
Ibid., 5.
121.
Fromm, The Art of Loving, 75.
122.
Ibid., 99.
123.
Ibid., 75–85.
124.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited”, 272.
125.
Ibid., 284.
126.
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (New York: Premier Classics, 2008), 53.
127.
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 51.
128.
Ibid., 66.
129.
Ibid., 67.
130.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited”, 282.
131.
Ibid., 283.
132.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Good”, 213.
133.
Ibid., 216.
134.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited”, 268–269.
135.
Iris Murdoch, “Knowing the Void”, in Existentialists and Mystics ed. Peter Conradi (New York: Penguin, 1998), 158.
136.
Murdoch, “Nostalgia for the Particular”, 52.
137.
Fromm, The Art of Loving, 96.
138.
Murdoch, “The Moral Decision about Homosexuality”, 73.
139.
Ibid., 70–73.
140.
Margaret Holland, “Social Convention and Neurosis as Obstacles to Moral Freedom”, in Iris Murdoch, Philosopher ed. Justin Broackes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 260.
141.
Murdoch, “Against Dryness”, 291.
142.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Good”, 216.
143.
Holland, “Social Convention and Neurosis as Obstacles to Moral Freedom”, 261.
144.
Ibid., 262–263.
145.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited”, 271.
146.
Murdoch, “Against Dryness”, 293.
147.
Ibid., 293.
148.
Ibid., 294.
149.
Fromm, The Art of Loving, 95.
150.
Ibid., 101.
151.
Ibid., 112.
152.
Fromm saw an important role for literature in fostering the art of loving; he does not specify what he means by “great works of literature and art of all ages” beyond that they present their readers with role models of spiritual quality—badly needed alternatives to the “movie stars, radio entertainers, columnists, important business or government figures” whose main qualification as role models is the sheer ability to make headlines (ibid., 98–99).
153.
Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited”, 281.

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Centre for Ethics as Study in Human Value, University of Pardubice, Pardubice, Czechia
Lesley Jamieson

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Jamieson, L. (2023). The Disorientation of Love and the Decline of Literature. In: Iris Murdoch’s Practical Metaphysics. Iris Murdoch Today. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36080-0_4

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36080-0_4
Published: 30 July 2023
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