Book description
The decline of religion and ever increasing influence of science pose
acute ethical issues for us all. Can we reject the literal truth of the
Gospels yet still retain a Christian morality? Can we defend any 'moral
values' against the constant encroachments of technology? Indeed, are we
in danger of losing most of the qualities which make us truly human?
Here, drawing on a novelist's insight into art, literature and abnormal
psychology, Iris Murdoch conducts an ongoing debate with major writers,
thinkers and theologians - from Augustine to Wittgenstein, Shakespeare
to Sartre, Plato to Derrida - to provide fresh and compelling answers to
these crucial questions.
Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin in 1919 of Anglo-Irish parents. She
went to Badminton School, Bristol, and read classics at Somerville
College, Oxford. During the war she was an Assistant Principal at the
Treasury, and then worked with UNRRA in London, Belgium and Austria.
She held a studentship in philosophy at Newnham College, Cambridge,
and then in 1948 she returned to Oxford, where she became a Fellow of
St Anne's College. Until her death in February 1999, she lived with
her husband, the teacher and critic John Bayley, in Oxford. Awarded
the CBE in 1976, Iris Murdoch was made a DBE in the 1987 New Year's
Honours List. In the 1997 PEN Awards she received the Gold Pen for
Distinguished Service to Literature.
Iris Murdoch made her writing debut in 1954 with Under the
Net, and went on to write twenty-six novels, including the Booker
prize-winning The Sea, The Sea (1978). Other literary awards
include the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Black
Prince (1973) and the Whitbread Prize (now the Costa Book Award)
for The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974). Her works of
philosophy include Sartre: Romantic Rationalist, Metaphysics
as a Guide to Morals (1992) and Existentialists and
Mystics (1997) She wrote several plays including The Italian
Girl (with James Saunders) and The Black Prince, adapted
from her novels of the same name.
