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In Our Time: Iris Murdoch

21/10/2021

Iris Murdoch

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Iris Murdoch

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophy of the celebrated author of The Bell.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the author and philosopher Iris Murdoch (1919 - 1999).  In her lifetime she was most celebrated for her novels such as The Bell and The Black Prince, but these are now sharing the spotlight with her philosophy.  Responding to the horrors of the Second World War, she argued that morality was not subjective or a matter of taste, as many of her contemporaries held, but was objective, and good was a fact we could recognize.  To tell good from bad, though, we would need to see the world as it really is, not as we want to see it, and her novels are full of characters who are not yet enlightened enough to do that.

With

Anil Gomes
Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Trinity College, University of Oxford

Anne Rowe
Visiting Professor at the University of Chichester and Emeritus Research Fellow with the Iris Murdoch Archive Project at Kingston University

And

Miles Leeson
Director of the Iris Murdoch Research Centre and Reader in English Literature at the University of Chichester

Producer: Simon Tillotson

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