Never Mind about the Bourgeoisie Dooley, Gillian; Nerlich, Graham; Nerlich, Professor of Philosophy Graham
2014, 2014-03-17
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Brian Medlin met the novelist Iris Murdoch at Oxford in 1961 when he joined New College as a Research Fellow, and they remained friends for the remainder of her life, though after he left Oxford they ...only met once again. This correspondence published here covers a period of more than twenty years. In his letters, Medlin regaled Murdoch with Australian jokes, travel stories and anecdotes, and answered her many questions about Australian flora and fauna, and the Australian vernacular. She in t.
According to Murdoch, the primary aim of philosophy is an impersonal search for the truth. If literature rises to great art, Murdoch writes, it 'helps us see the place of necessity in human life, ...what must be endured, what makes and breaks, and to purify our imagination so as to contemplate the real world (usually veiled by anxiety and fantasy) including what is terrible and absurd.' Lovibond herself recognizes that Murdoch was 'irrepressibly articulate and discursive on either side of the symbolically gendered divide', (6) and that 'in proposing to subject the writings of Iris Murdoch to "symptomatic reading", or to search them for traces of an "imaginary" operating outside the scope of authorial intention, I am treading a path that be unlikely to find favor with the author herself' (9). Armed with a strident ideological self-righteousness, Lovibond regards it as obvious that if we have to choose between Murdoch's self-understanding, avowed aims, and explicit statements, on the one hand, and Lovibond's interpretation of Murdoch's frame of mind, on the other, then anyone who does not lack ideological self-awareness will choose Lovibond's and convict Murdoch of blindness.
Gutleben Christian,Murdoch Iris. An Interview with Iris Murdoch. In: Recherches anglaises et nord-américaines, N°25, 1992. RANAM N°25: Nationalisme et populisme. Angleterre, Écosse, Irlande, XIXe et ...XXe siècles. pp. 169-176.
Murcdock reviews the article "Thinking" by Frederic Bartlett, that was published on March 14, 1958 in TLS. Among other things, Sir Frederic's proposal to discuss thinking by building up picture of it ...which starts from cases, most easily dealt with in experiment, where it resembles a skilled bodily performance is also discussed.
