This accidental world : the philosophy and fiction of Iris Murdoch

Iris Murdoch's fiction and philosophy treat basic human concerns. In her philosophicalaesthetic treatises, notably the three collected essays in The Sovereignty of Good (l970), she isolates, among others, four elements that affect all human beings: language, love, art, and death. Not only does everyone experience these ideas unconsciously as part of everyday reality, but everyone must also confront each and accept or reject them. Her philosophical system of attentive, loving observation of one's surroundings and acquaintances suggests a way of incorporating each element into the major goal of progress toward the Good. Her nineteen novels display, with increasing complexity to date, how difficult it is to effect the system of loving attention in daily life.

This study devotes one chapter to each of the four concerns specified above. Each chapter is divided into three parts: Part I places the topic in her philosophical system; Part II surveys its function as a theme in Murdoch's novels since her first, Under the Net (1954); and Part III identifies a novel of the present decade as a particularly appropriate inquiry into topic under consideration. Accordingly, the chapter on language treats A Word Child (1975); the chapter on love discusses A Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974); the chapter on art examines The Black Prince (1973); and the chapter on death considers Henry and Cato (1976).

In Chapter 1 (Language: "Word pie") Murdoch illustrates her conviction that attentive love can be shown most literally in the words and conversations we create in order to communicate with others. The more tailored the vocabulary, the more closely we can interpret another's inner life. In A Word Child, protagonist Hilary Burde has created a language-game for each day of the week, to fit the regular schedule of visits and meals that he has concocted for himself. Instead of bringing him closer to the people whom he visits, however, the banter isolates him from everyone. In Hilary, Murdoch has created the failure of her philosophical assertion. Such satirical reversal at her own expense is typical of Murdoch's fiction. Chapter II (Love: "Through the lookingglass") investigates the center of her philosophy of approach to the Good in its consideration of "good love" and "bad love," the first being selfless and other-directed and the second being selfish and possessive. Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974) considers both juxtaposed as Blaise Gavender's seven-year-long illegitimate household is brought to the attention of his wife and son. Murdoch shows clearly how a "good love" can become "bad" simply by introducing the typical selfish possessiveness that is human nature. ( Chapter III (Art: "We blink our eyes") examines Murdoch's analogy of attention to great art and attention to human beings. Her contention that close consideration of an acknowledgedly great work of art brings the "exercise in really looking" that should characterize our human relations is effectively questioned in its complexity in The Black Prince (1973). The novel is itself a work of art, and its numerous Forewords, Afterwords, and Postscripts attest to the varied perceptions of fact that each character endures. The final chapter (Death: "Without consolation") isolates the decisive element around which all other concerns arrange themselves. Its irrevocable advent brings into perspective seemingly monumental

egoistic neuroses and societal preoccupations, so that selfless kindness are all that obtain. Henry and Cato (1976), however, traces the decisive summer of two old friends, Henry Marshalson and Cato Forbes, during which each confronts death through accident and through deliberate murder. Henry's lifelong rebellion against his origins subsides into relieved acquiescence, and Cato's gentle affair with God and humanity transforms him into a bitter recluse.

Iris Murdoch is her own severest critic. Her philosophical system, which she characterizes as "a footnote to logical positivism," is developed articulately and completely in her philosophical essays only to be questioned to the point of absolute contradiction in her novels. Her method, then, is to maintain the constant balance between the abstract Platonic ideal and Kantian daily realities.