Is Iris Murdoch an Unconscious Misogynist? Some Trouble With Sabine Lovibond, the Mother in Law, and Gender

Abstract

If in our use of imagery we are all of us the unacknowledged legislators of the world, it would follow that one can ‘serve the cause of sexual equality in education’ by challenging the way our images of the academic are gendered.1 This is the excellent stated purpose of Sabina Lovibond's short new book, Iris Murdoch, Gender and Philosophy.2

Good, Evil and the Virtuous Iris Murdoch CommentaryIris Murdoch, Philosopher, edited by JustinBroackes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, 400 pp. ISBN 978‐0‐19‐928990‐5 hb £35.00

“…Crisp's temptation to associate Murdoch's attitude to the Good with her attitude to God is a persistent refrain in a literature shaped by theologians and neo‐Nietzscheans. Yet it is impossible to reconcile this temptation with Murdoch's actual remarks, as I have shown (Robjant , b). Moreover, Crisp's deflationary use of ‘useful metaphors’ is in tension with Murdoch's opening statement from The Sovereignty of Good : ‘Metaphors are not merely peripheral decorations or even useful models, they are fundamental forms of our awareness of our condition’ (Murdoch : 363; see Robjant ).…”

“…In support of the Broackes picture, and against both Driver and Antonaccio, I have argued that Murdoch objects to Wittgenstein's discussion of privacy on the basis that Wittgenstein is insufficiently anti-Cartesian (Robjant 2012a). 4 A sensation and an emotion are not as Descartes assumes categorically distinct kinds of thing, and I can certainly make mistakes and gain knowledge about my own emotions, just as I can about other people's.…”

“…Lawrence Blum fails to spot that a non-Kantian picture of autonomy underlies Murdoch's account of moral perception, and so mistakes Murdoch's success word 'seeing' as denoting something we quite generally achieve. Carla Bagnoli overlooks Murdoch's critique of Hegel (Robjant 2011a(Robjant : esp. pp.…”

“…What Murdoch in fact wrote was that human life had no ‘external’ point or telos (Murdoch : 364), which is rather a different point, and an extension of her claim that ‘there is no Platonic “elsewhere”, similar to the Christian “elsewhere” ’ (Murdoch : 399). Peter Byrne () is similarly mistaken on the point—for which, see Robjant (: 1000; b).…”

Reduce Ourselves to Zero?: Sabina Lovibond, Iris Murdoch, and Feminism

“… For a thorough, critical review of Lovibond's book, see Robjant . It may be noted that Robjant suggests a greater distance between Murdoch's work and structuralism/poststructuralism than I think would be helpful.…”