The Later Politics | Iris Murdoch and the Political (2024)

Iris Murdoch and the Political

Gary Browning

Published:

2024

Online ISBN:

9780191937347

Print ISBN:

9780192844989

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Iris Murdoch and the Political

Gary Browning

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Gary Browning

Gary Browning

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Pages

55–82

  • Published:

    June 2024

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Browning, Gary, 'The Later Politics', Iris Murdoch and the Political (Oxford, 2024; online edn, Oxford Academic, 24 June 2024), https://doi.org/10.1093/9780191937347.003.0003, accessed 18 July 2024.

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Abstract

Murdoch moved on from radicalism at the end of the 1960s. She was critical of Soviet Communism in Eastern Europe, disagreed with Labour policy on education, Ireland, and the trade unions, and reacted against student revolt. Her letters and journals reveal visceral reactions to everyday politics. Her continued philosophical reading of politics is evident in Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992), where she emphasizes the need to maintain basic axioms, such as rights and the provision of welfare, which differ from moral duties and the demands of personal moral lives. Murdoch highlights the importance of the political in that political rights can provide security and protection from tyrants, and a good polity enables individuals to develop personal moral commitments. Although the personal and the political are different for Murdoch, the one pursuing perfection and the other dealing with imperfection, she recognizes that, at times, individuals will seek to change political norms, and she does not see political axioms as fixed. Indeed, at the end of her life she recognizes the environmental dangers to the planet in her correspondence with the Australian philosopher Brian Medlin.

Keywords: axioms, duties, personal morals, metaphysics, ecology, imperfection

Subject

Political Theory Literary Studies (Fiction, Novelists, and Prose Writers)

Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

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