Quotation
Last reviewed:
“The central concept of morality is the individual thought of as knowable by love.”
Iris Murdoch · Moral philosophy · Modern · 1970
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is a proposal about what moral philosophy should put at the centre. Not the will, and not the rule, but the individual thought of as knowable by love. A competing reading hears a sentimental replacement of argument by fondness. She means love as the difficult attention that discovers a reality other than the self, the love she defined in 1959 as the realisation that something other than oneself is real. The sentence is in the first essay of The Sovereignty of Good. Knowable is the word that stops it being a mood. The other person is a possible object of knowledge, and fantasy blocks that knowledge. The kestrel shows attention to a thing. This sentence says the moral case of that attention is another person. The novels are not the source of the sentence.
Did Iris Murdoch really say this?
The library’s label is Well attested. Murdoch's sentence in 'The Idea of Perfection', in The Sovereignty of Good. Love here is the attention she describes, not a feeling that replaces thinking. It is not a second copy of the 1959 sentence, which defines love rather than naming the central concept.
Where it comes from
The Sovereignty of Good (1970), 'The Idea of Perfection'
Approximate date: 1970.
How to use it
A care plan that records tasks and never asks whether anyone knows the person as a particular individual has missed the concept she wants at the centre. The sentence does not say procedures are heartless by nature. It says a morality that cannot imagine the individual as knowable has changed the subject. A claim to love that cannot say one true, inconvenient thing about the person is the fantasy she is against.
A mindset reading
Put the individual, not your principle about them, back in the centre of the question, and then ask what you would have to notice in order to know them. The habit is stricter than warmth. Warmth without knowledge is one of the forms the ego takes.
Understand the philosophy
The sentence is from 'The Idea of Perfection'. The key terms are the individual and knowable by love. The 1959 definition of love is the earlier formulation of what that knowledge is like. The ego and the kestrel are the psychology and the picture. None of them is a saying lifted from the novels, which this library does not mine for mottoes.
- love
- ethics
- knowledge
FAQ
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is a proposal about what moral philosophy should put at the centre. Not the will, and not the rule, but the individual thought of as knowable by love. A competing reading hears a sentimental replacement of argument by fondness. She means love as the difficult attention that discovers a reality other than the self, the love she defined in 1959 as the realisation that something other than oneself is real. The sentence is in the first essay of The Sovereignty of Good. Knowable is the word that stops it being a mood. The other person is a possible object of knowledge, and fantasy blocks that knowledge. The kestrel shows attention to a thing. This sentence says the moral case of that attention is another person. The novels are not the source of the sentence.
Did Iris Murdoch really say this?
Well attested. Murdoch's sentence in 'The Idea of Perfection', in The Sovereignty of Good. Love here is the attention she describes, not a feeling that replaces thinking. It is not a second copy of the 1959 sentence, which defines love rather than naming the central concept.
Which work is it in?
The Sovereignty of Good (1970), 'The Idea of Perfection' Approximate date: 1970.