Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature

by Iris Murdoch

Iris Murdoch is a poet, philosopher, novelist, and playwright, and in this collection of her most careful thinking and writing on the relationship between art and philosophy, we are treated to the fruits of decades of good work.

Murdoch's changing ideas about the search for meaning in literature and life lead us down a richly rewarding path. Along the way she discusses T. S. Eliot, Dante Alighieri, Matthew Arnold, and many other major literary figures.

For cognitive power, a sweeping overview of Western thought and art, and a respectful engagement with the reader, put it on the shelf beside the collected works of Kenneth Burke.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Essays, Literary Criticism, Literature, 20th Century, Contemporary

576 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Dame Jean Iris Murdoch

Irish-born British writer, university lecturer and prolific and highly professional novelist, Iris Murdoch dealt with everyday ethical or moral issues, sometimes in the light of myths. As a writer, she was a perfectionist who did not allow editors to change her text. Murdoch produced 26 novels in 40 years, the last written while she was suffering from Alzheimer disease.

"She wanted, through her novels, to reach all possible readers, in different ways and by different means: by the excitement of her story, its pace and its comedy, through its ideas and its philosophical implications, through the numinous atmosphere of her own original and created world--the world she must have glimpsed as she considered and planned her first steps in the art of fiction." (John Bayley in Elegy for Iris, 1998)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_Mur...

Reviews

[Anima]

‘There is no doubt which art is the most practically important for our survival and our salvation, and that is literature. Words constitute the ultimate texture and stuff of our moral being, since they are the most refined and delicate and detailed, as well as the most universally used and understood, of the symbolisms whereby we express ourselves into existence. We became spiritual animals when we became verbal animals. The fundamental distinctions can only be made in words. Words are spirit.’

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Murdoch is one of the kindest and most humble writers of philosophy I've ever read. She writes about existential themes without angst, with keen insight and admirable restraint. With both her style and her substantive claims, she rightly balances the urge toward philosophy and the urge toward literature. She directs her attention to some of the most lasting problems in philosophy without much simplification and she avoids over-radical claims. It's not standard academic fare, yet it comes from a mind that clearly understands the importance and lasting relevance of the philosophical canon. Whereas much of philosophy serves to problematize life, hers is a philosophy that makes life appear less problematic.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best essay in this book for me is by far Iris Murdoch's "The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited" - in fact I think this has influenced more than just my views on novels but rather on general ethics and how people should treat one another entirely. I recently read this again and was no less moved than by the first time I read it over ten years ago.

[Read A Day Club · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of essays penned by Iris Murdoch. Some of her lectures have also been included in this collection, and there are also a few that were first published as interviews. Murdoch critiques every strand of literature related to philosophy. How the genealogy of literature and philosophy is similar and also not.

But what’s intriguing is that even though it is quite a lengthy book, Murdoch writes about language, not only as a scholarly pursuit but as a mode of expression. She has weaved together an intimate familiarity of language with experience, with imagination; the role of literature and philosophy; how self-expression dawns in literature and how philosophy is the bridge between literature, poetry, and the characteristic human experience.

She explains how philosophy, though impersonal, comes very close to offering clarity and emotional orientation. Something literature often fails to do because the treatment of mental experiences, in literature, is not as severe and objective.

It’s like you need a different set of eyes (your mind’s eyes) for reading philosophy. It’s not the same mental experience as reading literature.

Discussing truth and fiction, the fiction in the portrayal of truth, and vice versa. There’s the discourse on morality, art, virtue, goodness, the true meaning of the Sublime in language, the need for stories and imagination to give meaning, purpose, and direction to life and living.

Murdoch probes the atmosphere in which literature and philosophy, fact and myth, imitation and reality draw breath. Some of my favorite essays are (in no particular order):

- Nostalgia for the Particular
- The Novelist as Metaphysician
- The Existential Bite
- Mass, Might, and Myth
- Sublime and the Good
- The essay that the book is named after, Existentialists and Mystics

[Simon Robs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Murdoch is masterful in laying out philosophy, argument v argument, philosopher v philosopher while traversing the ages of thought; she's remarkably brilliant.

[Yanni Ratajczyk · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a pleasure to slowly savour the words of this very rich collection of Iris Murdoch’s writings. I feel very lucky being able to research the work of one of the most fascinating (but often neglected) philosophical voices of the twentieth century during the coming three years.

[John Cairns · Rating 4 out of 5]

Murdoch says, in a revised conversation with Magee, ‘any artist must be at least half in love with his unconscious mind which after all provides his motive force and does a great deal of his work.’ Mine was behind Sketch of a Just Man, An instance from which telepathy can be proved..., the poems, The Man Who Stopped Time, where it took over my writing hand to achieve exactly the effect it wanted, CORRESPONDENCE of John Cairns with Betty Clark (Joan Ure), Phoenixflower, Dark Side of the Moon, the lot. Murdoch didn’t want to be obviously present in her artistic work. ‘Literature could be called a disciplined technique for arousing certain emotions. If nothing sensuous is present no art is present. Art is close ...play with unconscious forces. Art is mimesis and good art is... anamnesis, memory of what we did not know we knew.’ That about sums up ‘the book’, lived by unconscious direction and realised at unconscious instigation from its intact memory. ‘The unconscious mind is not a philosopher,’ she says. It’s not a mind either but a spirit informing the mind, both the unconscious and conscious mind. Art, she thinks, is a battle with obsessive unconscious forces... although the unconscious... is also the source of art. Mine liked I didn’t let consciousness get in his way whereas Betty Clark inhibited his and her unconscious’s expression. Art goes deeper than philosophy, she writes. Formalists want to cure us of the realistic fallacy of imagining we look through language into a separate world beyond, like taking what the writer is imagining in words as depicting what’s there, I suppose. When Johnson kicked the stone to refute Berkeley he was protesting against the latter’s metaphysical attempt to remove a necessary distinction between self and the world. She thinks words should be seen as a medium through which one relates to the world, whatever that world is, including that of works of art. The world of people, and things, is more malleable than she thinks. Art is truth as well as form, she says, representational as well as autonomous, suggesting a relative truth, true to something other. Art has got to have form, she avers, life need not. It may. Mine did.

I was interested in what she had to say about truth in art. She says literature is often criticised for being in some sense untruthful, using words like sentimental, pretentious, self-indulgent, trivial, vulgar, banal but primarily fantasy, to impute some kind of falsehood. The Greeks exonerated fiction from being a lie but she’s defining truth in art from what falsifies it. I’m no clearer knowing how it can be true except to a writer’s unalloyed imagination recognised as true by an appreciative reader, a not very convincing criterion. She later writes the good artist is a vehicle of truth in that he formulates ideas which otherwise would remain vague and focuses attention on facts which can then no longer be ignored without exemplifying this contention. The artist must tell the truth about something he has understood. The paradox of art is that the work itself may have to invent the methods by which we verify it, to erect its own interior standards of truthfulness. Hmm.

Modern writing is more ironical and less confident than that of the nineteenth century, the story more narrowly connected with the consciousness of the author who narrates through the consciousness of a character, without direct judging or description by the author as an external authoritative intelligence. To write like a nineteenth century novelist now would seem like a literary device. In a novel the conflict between the representational and formal may appear as that between characters and plot. A bad writer gives way to personal obsession, exalting some characters, demeaning others, without concern for truth or justice ie without a suitable aesthetic explanation.

In paraphrasing Ayer on the mind she refers to overt public conventions she defines as what govern the inward utterance of words which is all that ‘thinking’ can properly consist of, as if all thinking is conscious and uses language. The Turk didn’t speak English nor I Turkish yet... I stopped and turned to look back to see how far we’d come down the slipway all the while fluently communicating without vocalising. The slipway, of course, would be physical symbol of what we’d been doing and I wouldn’t have been thinking ‘fluently communicating’ or ‘vocalising’, more likely ‘talking’ and ‘without speaking’ ie communicating without verbalising. In that mode of communicating he asked if I wanted to go back to my friends, so interpreting my stopping and looking back. No. What I was unconsciously doing was raising a buoy to the surface so that on looking back I’d see something there, look at it more closely and pull on the line, bringing memory after attached memory up into consciousness until I’d realised the incident from unconscious memory. I’ve put it metaphorically. At the time I realised we hadn’t been actually talking, stopped and looked back, measuring how far we’d come while communicating without using language. I’d avoided using the word ‘realised’ before because it’d convey consciousness and I’d still be unconscious but perhaps nearing the interface of the unconscious with consciousness. The young Turk probably got the gist at the time or later forgot it entirely because unconscious then. The means to an end wouldn’t interest him anyway. I can’t myself be that interested in a conscious thinking which excludes that of the unconscious and presumes therefore that all thinking is done linguistically, in English, French, Turkish or whatever.

Morality is pictured without any transcendent background because there are no metaphysical entities, though will is. In our society we believe in judging a man by his conduct, she says. He’s not fully conscious of what he is. The current view is his moral life is a series of overt choices and acts. She holds it’s not only his choices but his vision that constitutes his morality. Marxists, Xians, Moslems believe we are immersed in a reality which transcends us and moral progress consists in awareness of this reality and submission to its purpose.

She defines Sartre’s idea of consciousness, that it’s for itself ie nothing although the source of all meaning. Its nothingness is freedom that it has to realise in contention with things that exist in themselves and with other selves making an object, a thing, of it. Sartre refuses to accept that emotion consciousness is aware of has a meaning of which it is unconscious. It is that we are not reflectively aware of the configuration we have consciously framed to achieve the purpose of the emotion. No wonder she thinks Sartre stupid. If freedom founds all values why, she asks, ought she to will it for herself and others? If it’s to be defined in terms of what she chooses, does not that imply making a distinction between true and false values which can’t be derived from free choice? Sartre’s man inhabits a universe which contains no transcendent objective truth. Man is an emptiness between two inaccessible totalities, of an impenetrable world of objects and an unattainable world of intelligible being. He wants to be a living transparent consciousness and simultaneously a stable opaque being, impossibly contradictory. It’s an aspiration to be god but no project satisfies him, all tending to fall dead into the region of the reified, thus all projects are equally vain: ‘ça revient au meme de s’enivrer solitairement ou de conduire les peuples.’ Nothing from the outside confers sense on one’s actions. Bad faith, the illusion one can be something in a thinglike manner, comes from consciousness’s wish to be in-itself, rendering sincerity impossible.

Murdoch says Hampshire argues will is dependent on desires, some of which are dependent on beliefs, in turn dependent on thinking. It’s true mother and I could think ourselves into emotion but not I don’t think into beliefs – belief a form of thinking – and on to will. In any case, if from thinking, all this is to do with consciousness as if because one is aware of emotion it is attributable to consciousness, engendered by it. It’s only if an unconscious, trapped inside and only able to act through consciousness, is reinforcing conscious will that the latter has any emotional heft eg I had the intimation of a Greek looking over his shoulder at his unconscious, protesting he was heterosexual when she wanted him to take an interest in me. He went along with it because any direction from within was also of his self and therefore acceptable. I received this intimation from my man, my unconscious will, who put it pictorially to my inner eye. I was imagining it. Unconscious thinking uses the same ways as imagination. It’s an exercise of will. The unconscious will comes first and puts on desire, love or emotion to make one focus and do what it wants, and it is transcendent.

Jim took me to Lawrence’s trial at Richmond magistrates’. I cowered beside Jim until I realised Lawrence didn’t know me. I wanted nothing to do with him! My man told me, ‘It’s your job.’ Whereupon I wouldn’t mind the odd buffet or two since I didn’t see how I could treat him with policemen on either side restraining his arms. My man assured me I wouldn’t be hurt. Jim brought a reluctant Lawrence to me after stealing booze from Marks. Within twenty minutes Lawrence wanted me. That desire would alter his will but it was my transcendent will preceded and brought that situation about.

Love, she says, is the imaginative recognition of ie respect for the otherness of an irreducibly dissimilar individual. I’d go further: it’s the acceptance of an alternative criterion for oneself always provided the other decides for one.

Goodness, she says Moore says, is a function of the will. Mine is. The psychopath’s badness was a function of his in taking being good at menace as good though it hurt his soul and made for an unhappiness he didn’t know how to mitigate. She thinks goodness is connected to knowledge,... a refined and honest perception of what is really the case. That would be quite beyond the psychopath who was dim and drunk all the time so his unconscious might be out causing havoc. It wasn’t necessarily beyond me in dealing with his case. He liked me because I wasn’t afraid of him. “I am,” I said, giving hostage to fortune. The fear had to be suppressed for me to function, as I may also very well have told him. Angst she would describe as a kind of fright which the conscious will feels when it apprehends the strength and direction of the personality not under its immediate control. She actually believes the will is conscious and that’s it. Even if her unconscious will were acting on and through consciousness she wouldn’t know it was but take it as conscious because conscious of it though not enough to know a difference in her willing when her unconscious will was engaged. It may be when she attends properly and has no choices, the ultimate condition she aimed for. Freedom’s not having multiple possibilities of action; the ideal situation is represented as a kind of necessity, that would be when there’s only the one. Good she thinks is indefinable because of the infinite difficulty of apprehending a magnetic and inexhaustible reality. No magnetic good for the psychopath unless mine. Good, not will, is transcendent, she emphasises, but then she only knows of conscious will which can’t be. As far as she can see there is no metaphysical unity in life which is subject to chance. I have a metaphysical unity, that of my unconscious will, and if I do, so must you, from yours, like the psychopath had unhappily from his and, less unhappily, after I and mine had effected a correction to it. Patently that metaphysical unity need not be good. When true good is loved, the quality of love is refined, she says. It wasn’t my active unconscious will the psychopath loved but my receptive will, let’s say my soul or that half of my soul, and his love was refined by love; he wouldn’t hit me in my room because I felt safe there and only lightly because he didn’t think I could take too much. What was most for his good was his irretrievable loss of me.

Steiner gives biographical details. She exemplifies her philosophy not from life but art, a procedure she defends as valid. She analyses Plato and her philosophy is summed up in her two Platonic dialogues.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Man is a creature who makes a picture of himself and then comes to resemble that picture"

Really glad I don't have to be seen reading this on the bus for another month.

[Eva Gahn · Rating 3 out of 5]

DNFing this one at abt 60% for now bc ive been reading it for a year but there are other things I want to focus on for the time being

[Samantha Basalari · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this involves patience and attention, which might be the whole point. It’s worth it, and don’t expect to be super entertained- for me, it was a brain workout.

Telling a story and approaching a logical proof involve the same intention, ‘I’m going to make it impossible for you not to believe me. And I’m going to do it in a way that can transcend the usual barriers (language, geography, time).’ You get the sense that Murdoch was aware that her reader would be checking for logical flaws and unnecessary ambiguity (as a scientist would). She takes it a step further and urges us to bring it into our personal interactions.
In art, writing, or philosophy, we consent to be deceived- we humor stories in hopes that short-term relative deception will accomplish long term transcendent truth. In this book, Murdoch declines to use this approach. She is observational and follows logical patterns.

Takeaways:
It’s impractical to ignore life’s mystery, and Murdoch urges us to curb our egos, “But did I really decide? To examine that question I examine the context of my announcement rather than its private core (13).” Habitually remembering that our opinions are likely the result of our own personal histories (humility, basically, check yourself before you wreck yourself) is synonymous with living righteously.


Murdoch’s approach to relationships is far less romantic than it is a scientific byproduct of our condition on earth. Ex: day to day, we all hope that nothing horrible will happen, but everywhere you look there’s scattered evidence that it’s happening all the time. It’s a precarious position. We are constructed so as to think that we are central to the universe and permanent (‘they’ll die, but not me’). It’s obviously not true and we know it, Murdoch seems to want us to constantly remember that it’s so-which makes sense, because we should all attempt to quickly and habitually ‘go to higher ground.’ Any sane person would want to, and the necessity is deeply fundamental.

So-in a tough spot, should we should resist or be compassionate? When you work through it, I think it’s the same. If you are understanding somebody in a way that’s enabling them to do evil things, you’re not actually understanding them. When we really consider that anything could happen to any loved one at any time, that we are so limited in our ability to love and therefore incredibly vulnerable, along with the notion that our egos and sense of being separate is actually delusional-attentive patience will be the conclusion to any rigorous examination of our condition here.

[Ronny · Rating 1 out of 5]

Yet another book that I did not finish because it did not deliver what the title promised.

The main focus on this book appears to be literature. Philosophy seems to be the secondary purpose, and indeed it's almost more about what literature can teach us of philosophy.

The problem is the title puts Philosophy first and I expected a more philosophy-centric approach, which I did not get. Indeed, the section titles were also misleading. "Towards a Practical Mysticism" did no such thing.

[Chris H · Rating 4 out of 5]

very glad i read this, though the essays varied. the stuff i expected to like, on existententialism and literature, i actually didnt wholly like. her critiques on existentialism, especially the freedom stuff, are fine. but thats the stuff i dont care for anyways about that philosophy.
and her view of literature is just really different from mine. she likes the classics that i find more boring and dislikes the modern sort of neurotic journey to enlightenment novels that i often like. though im sure many of those are solipsistic garbage like she says.

what i ended up liking the most was what i thought i might skip. her moral ideas, especially the neo-platonic stuff is really convincing. i like the idea of striving towards a goodness that sees reality for what it is, and sees people as infinitely particular. and the idea that the striving itself could be a thing that replaces the function prayer. and much more

a lot of it went over my head but a lot of it changed my outlook and inspired me. thanks iris

[Adie Tuohey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I unfortunately do not really like the philosophy excursions of one of my beloved fiction authors. She is still, as always, a beautiful writer: her capacity to distill huge questions and answers into clear, striking summaries is commanding. However, this also is my biggest problems with E&M. She seems to struggle to never NOT bring something to some insightful sentences, even with concepts that struggle to fit. She requires the author to not only be from a particular academic background (and I mean that culturally rather than a matter of rigor), but even to carry certain sensibilities Murdoch has herself. While I found myself often appreciating her elegance in this, she does little to bring in anyone that does not accept premises that she sometimes does not even state, let alone argue.

When E&M hits, it really hits. I cannot say that she did not spark further insight for me in for art, meaning, and philosophy for the self. I also cannot say that I found a coherent, consistent argued philosophy in her book. At times she just struggles to be curious over beautiful.

[Philipp · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection contains all of Iris Murdoch´s philosophical writings (including The Sovereignty of God, and The Fire and the Sun).
Her moral vision is built on the use of metaphors (seeing, fantasy vs. reality) and original concepts (love).
An essential read for anyone who wants to get familiar with the philosophical background to her fictional works. (And this book is WAY more accessible than Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals)

[Glenmichael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Open to any page and try and resist not being awed by her style and grace both in the form and content of her arguments. This is a masterclass in how to write philosophy - whether you agree or disagree, this is pure pleasure to the eyes. I've struggled with her fiction, but this is an eye-opener and timeless.

[Mauro De Zordo]

Tra gli esistenzialisti, che eliminano la trascendenza e si affidano al nudo fatto, e i mistici, che credono in un'idea platonica del bene e del bello, La Murdoch scegli questi ultimi, indicando l'amore come fonte primigenia, ma con risultati identici a tutti quelli che hanno provato a definire linguisticamente un'etica e un'estetica (leggi alla voce "fallimento").

[Gail Kennon · Rating 4 out of 5]

i didn't always have the background to fully appreciate her points but i always felt enlivened by the arguments.

[Gabriel Clarke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential, both for anyone interested in living an examined life and for lovers of her novels curious about the evolving moral questions and musings they represent.

[Sandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was, sadly, a DNF for me. I like cerebral writing, but this one was too dense for me.

[Liesleest · Rating 3 out of 5]

Het titelessay is nog steeds de moeite waard.

[Nathaniel Glazer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good book. She was a good author and philosopher.

[Ene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cuando se trata de filosofía me lo leo en una sentada

[şeyda]

3.5/5

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

it took me about a year to get through these essays. i really enjoyed her writing (and philosphy). what was a little difficult for me was the grouping of the essays (i didn't get that). i especially enjoyed the interview transcriptions, and the essays where she discussed the connection between literature and philosphy.

[James Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of philosophical essays by one of the greatest British philosophers and novelists of the twentieth century. Delve into this book for the delights of Murdoch's prose and insights into Plato, existentialism, and more.

[Rowan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very accessible and lucid despite her erudition.
I actually enjoyed this more than her novels, which I sometimes feel i read more for the scenery.
Extremely useful even if you know as little as I do about philosophy.

[Bettie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved it but of course I would. Let you into a secret though, can't remember much about the content at all except the neo-platonic drive for the Good.

[m · Rating 2 out of 5]

some of these essay were great; others were much less so.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this up in new Mexico waiting to meet a friend in a bookstore. So far it has its moments, though I'm having to skip through.

[Eduardo · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great set of essays from a brilliant philosopher & novelist, one gets a glimpse of a versatile thinker and writer. Worth reading.