It was truly remarkable

to come across an author who, far in advance of the arrival of 'the attention economy', had the ability to deeply contemplate what it truly means to pay attention to the world. Iris Murdoch's views on ethics are not only thought-provoking but also highly inspiring.

However, at times, I did find myself longing for a more political perspective. Additionally, a more refined and detailed understanding of what constitutes 'Good Art' would have been most welcome.

Nonetheless, it was a pleasure to observe the sources of inspiration that great writers on technology and attention, such as Matthew Crawford and Michael Sacasas, have drawn from. Their works build upon the foundation laid by Murdoch and offer valuable insights into the complex relationship between humans, technology, and the art of paying attention in the modern world.

This exploration of different perspectives and ideas enriches our understanding and encourages us to further reflect on the importance of attention in our lives.

This little essay serves as a valuable “How to See” manual. It details what is required to truly learn and bring our entire selves into our acts of seeing. This enables us to engage fully with the situations we find ourselves in. Such acts of seeing are the closest we can get to completion and reconciliation.

Murdoch's central thesis is that the moral life commences with the act of seeing. Here, seeing is understood as a loving attention to reality that liberates the self from the prison of illusion. Learning to see is a lifelong pursuit that transforms the self and gradually reconciles it to the world. Vision, thus conceived as a total act of our being, spans the aesthetic, moral, and religious aspects of our experience. It is an inherently moral struggle to perceive things in the light of their highest possible perfection, rather than as they appear in the dimmer light of our instrumental goals. The vision that enhances the reality and value of the thing seen through an act of loving engagement is the truest in the moral sense. It is this vision that empowers us to act in order to unleash the growth potential in all things we encounter. This is what it means to speak of moral truth or a proper way of estimating the value of things.

Overall, Murdoch convincingly argues that the moral sphere reveals a concept of reason, truth, and reality that the scientific sphere will never fully absorb. She contends that moral philosophy is a more accurate guide to this culture as it considers the whole agent, not as an abstraction for theoretical study. The idea of value is a regulative principle of all reasoning, not a side show as naturalistic ontology portrays it. She believes that coming to terms with the unique nature of value concepts can revolutionize our understanding of mind, reason, meaning, knowledge, and human nature.

Murdoch argues that modern moral philosophy, regardless of its Kantian, existentialist, or consequentialist leanings, lacks the explanatory power to make sense of moral experience beyond its most superficial and extrinsic features. It focuses solely on the extrinsic dimensions of acts, detaching them from the continuous flow of interactions in which they serve as links between beings. Instead, we should explore the intrinsic dimensions of acts, namely, the quality of the relation they establish between beings. The subject matter of ethics, in her view, is not proper action but vision, as it is the quality of our vision that determines the direction of our actions.

Her surprising conclusion is that learning to see is learning to shed the self. It is about dying as the self to uncover a reality greater than the self. This contrasts sharply with post-Romantic understandings that glorify the individual. Murdoch sees the individual as a stumbling block in ethics, aesthetics, and the spiritual life. She believes that learning to see is learning to love by finding something more real and valuable than oneself. Aesthetic experience, in her view, is the easiest available spiritual exercise and an adequate entry into the good life as it checks selfishness in the interest of seeing the real.

Murdoch's concept of “moral vision” affirms a unity between aesthetics, ethics, and rationality, where others see only division. The idea of the transcendent is a standard that reason brings into the world, and she believes we can give content to this idea without relying on metaphysics, religion, or mysticism. If naturalism is true, she must be right, as there seems to be no other way to ground the content of ethics outside the self on a naturalist view. Ethics, it seems, must be grounded in a metaphysics that explains how beings can act as bearers of the values we discern in them. Murdoch's essay reminds us of the unique way value experience relates us to being in an act of vision, which may annoy modern naturalists or be ignored as irrelevant. However, she is right to say that art, morality, and religion represent a core aspect of our human world that is resistant to naturalist explanations and holds the seeds for a rethinking of our relation to nature. One can profitably read this essay as a preface to Charles Taylor's “Sources of the Self,” seeing Taylor's debt to Murdoch in the first portion of that book. Taylor struggles to understand why it is so difficult for our modern naturalistic paradigm to account for the moral dimension that Murdoch emphasizes.

I have a deep love for her critique of the typical male existentialist thinker.

The first essay was perhaps my absolute favorite. It presented a unique perspective that truly captivated my attention.

In the second essay, I was really drawn to the idea of non-secular prayer and its application to goodness. Her exploration of this concept was both thought-provoking and enlightening.

Moreover, I greatly enjoyed her explanation of the significance of considering art and literature in philosophy. It opened my eyes to a new way of looking at the relationship between these different disciplines.

Overall, I am definitely intrigued to read her fiction and observe how she incorporates and applies these ideas within it. I anticipate that her fictional works will offer further insights and a deeper understanding of her philosophical perspectives.

I can't wait to embark on this literary journey and discover the new worlds and ideas that she has to offer.

This book is truly a complex one to summarize.

On one hand, it is because of the nature of its content which delves deep into various profound and thought-provoking ideas.

On the other hand, the way it is written also poses a challenge.

It is extraordinarily insightful, offering unique perspectives and deep understandings.

However, it is equally difficult to read, requiring the reader to invest a significant amount of time and effort.

This book consists of a collection of three essays.

Personally, I would suggest reading them in the order of 2, 1, 3.

This order, in my opinion, can help the reader better understand the flow of ideas and build a more comprehensive understanding of the overall theme.

I strongly recommend this book for those whose interest can overcome the challenge that lies ahead.

If you are willing to take on the challenge and explore the depths of this book, you will surely be rewarded with a wealth of knowledge and new perspectives.

This book proved to be more challenging than anticipated. At times, I felt completely lost, struggling to truly understand what Murdoch was attempting to convey. However, I managed to glean enough to make some sense of her worldview, and as time passed after reading, I began to appreciate it more and more.

What I find particularly useful about this book, and the reason I chose to read it, is its focus on the Good in the typical Platonic form. The formless yet hyper-real foundation of reality that humans strive for but can only catch glimpses of. It has a very theological and religious nature, yet she approaches it from a purely secular perspective, which is essential to make such important philosophical topics understandable.

A significant portion of the book is actually dedicated to refutation. In order for her worldview to hold up in the culture and context she was in, she spends a great deal of time arguing against the overvaluation of the will in existentialism or the obsession with the will and neglect of the "inner" in behaviorism. While the latter may seem obvious now, her arguments against existentialism remain as valid as ever. Our culture seems to have deeply absorbed its philosophy, perhaps because we believe there are no other valid alternatives. It seems somewhat egotistical with its infatuation with freedom, something I didn't fully appreciate until I read this book.

In order to seek the Good, one must move away from an obsession with the self. Even positive attributes that we take for granted, such as self-discovery, are, in her view, misdirected. Attention should be directed towards the Good, as the self is just as prone to illusion as everything else, and trying to decipher it won't yield fruitful results.

Much of it is incredibly abstract, yet it seems almost impossible to deny its reality. She provides reasonable examples from everyday life where these views are easily accepted, but we don't see the implicit philosophy behind them. We may live in a mechanistic worldview that struggles to find objective morality, but in fact, our lives are primarily moral rather than scientific.

To me, it always seemed almost self-evident how the Good is directly linked to Truth and Beauty, yet I've always struggled to explain why. In the last part of the book, she explores the idea that the Good can be most easily found in great art. Her description of Beauty was deeply poetic and, at the same time, the most helpful philosophy I've encountered on the topic. It allows us to see the world and humanity beyond the self that we are typically so fixated on, giving us both a more accurate view of the world and a stronger connection to the Good, and thus enabling us to embody morality.

I also found her description of attention very interesting and something I hadn't considered before. For example, her portrayal of prayer as an exercise in exposing the soul to "God" through selflessness helped me better appreciate the practice. This type of attention in praying (to God, the Good) is also present in art, as seen in what makes art meaningful by redirecting our attention to what truly matters. It is deeply rooted in a metaphor of seeing, which, of course, alludes to the connection with Truth. The journey of becoming a good person is the journey of learning to see, of paying proper attention. She often uses Plato's allegory of the cave and its themes of knowledge and light to better explain these ideas, which were both fascinating and helpful.

This is a book that I should reread at some point, as there is a lot that I missed. If you decide to read it, be prepared for it to be difficult. While some philosophical background is not strictly necessary, it would definitely be beneficial, as she often focuses on critiquing other philosophical views to validate her own.

Although I think anyone can read it, it requires a significant amount of effort. I often thought about giving up out of frustration. Initially, I planned to rate it 4 stars due to its difficulty, but as is often the case with challenging books, when writing the review, I couldn't help but think that the effort was worthwhile, and I gave it 5 stars.

If you've been intrigued by the Platonic concept of the Good in its quasi-religious form but find it difficult to ground in religious metaphysics, I think this book will be helpful in presenting a different way of conceptualizing it. Moreover, her explanation of how the Good relates to art, especially literature and painting, is a valuable resource in itself, regardless of whether you ultimately agree with her entire worldview.

I couldn't follow a single sentence.

It was like a jumbled mess of words that didn't make any sense to me at all.

No matter how hard I tried to understand, it just eluded my comprehension.

I felt so frustrated and defeated.

Finally, I had to admit defeat and drop it.

I'm really sorry, Iris.

I know you might have been disappointed, but I just couldn't get my head around it.

I hope you can understand my situation.

Maybe in the future, I'll have a better chance of understanding such things.

For now, though, I have to move on.

This volume gathers together The Idea of Perfection, On \\"God\\" and \\"Good\\", and The Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts.

In these papers, Murdoch engages in various tasks. Besides more minor aesthetic endeavors, she attempts to formulate and critique a specific conception of the human personality. She traces this view back through its philosophical and scientific predecessors and then forward to its contemporary manifestation. Subsequently, she takes Stuart Hampshire's portrayal, which she believes depicts the human as a naked will unconnected to the surrounding world, as the proponent of this view and the antagonist of her own perspective. Through further exegesis, she comes to envision this view as a combination of certain aspects of existentialism and behaviorism.

Out of step with the trends of the analytic philosophy of her era, Murdoch proceeds to offer moral criticism of these conceptions. She takes certain intuitive notions as pretheoretical and employs her now well-known parable of the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law as an instrument. The conclusion drawn from these efforts is that the "inner life" holds significance for moral action.

After these critical tasks, there is a delineation of some central concepts in Murdoch's own moral philosophy. The essence of this can be found especially in the latter two essays, where the author's indebtedness to Simone Weil becomes evident (appropriating the concept of attention for her own moral psychology) and the influence of Plato is crystallized.

Over the years, Iris Murdoch's philosophy has been examined, and some have been eager to assert that there is nothing of value here. However, upon reading her work, it seems, at least, that there is more to it than a superficial inspection can reveal. She has her admirers as well (most notably the contemporary philosopher, John McDowell), but only recently have we witnessed the emergence of a substantial body of literature围绕 her key concepts and her overall moral vision. May it continue to grow and thrive for a long time.

Iris Murdoch's most renowned philosophical work is composed of three lectures she delivered in 1964, 1967, and 1969.

Each essay is self-contained, yet they all develop a common theme, which is a defense of Plato's concept of the Good. Her approach is not to unreservedly endorse Plato's theory of forms. Instead, she argues, in line with Plato, that the good is something real in the world, not merely an emotion or a choice.

She begins by outlining what she views as the dominant contemporary perspective of a moral agent, which she terms the behaviorist-existentialist-utilitarian view. This view posits that a person's inner life can only be defined in terms of external behavior, is largely determined by our biological drives and personal histories, and within these determinants, we make instantaneous choices that can be anything, with our choices being evaluated by the public results. Murdoch critiques this view by attempting to restore an account of one's interior (mental, emotional) processing as central to moral decision-making.

Murdoch uses the example of a woman with a rather judgmental attitude towards her daughter-in-law. Realizing her attitude may be biased and neither helpful nor fair, she endeavors to attain a more realistic attitude by understanding her daughter-in-law as she is, just as a scientist attempts to reach the truth by understanding reality as it is. This serves as an example of a moral act, a reaching towards the good, which may not necessarily have behavioral consequences (the daughter-in-law might be living abroad or might be deceased), but which represents a development for the good in the woman's life.

Murdoch's analysis presents moral action not as an erratic break in a causal chain but as a process in which one sets aside biases and other sources of error to reach a more honest or realistic conclusion. She likens this process to a scientist's faithfulness to the data or an artist's attempt to be true to what he is portraying. She contends that the guiding metaphor for moral action should be "movement" rather than "vision." The good is not a quality that one can "see" in the world but rather a way to "move" forward.

Murdoch's conception is not easily comprehensible. She herself states, "what I have been offering here is not and does not pretend to be a 'neutral logical analysis' of what moral agents or moral terms are like." Instead, "the image which I am offering should be thought of as a general metaphysical background to morals and not as a formula...." What is most evident is how she connects moral choice to freedom: "the exercise of our freedom is a small piecemeal business that goes on all the time and not a grandiose leaping about unimpeded at important moments." Attaining the good is a matter of working towards a clear understanding of reality and individual circumstances and then being obedient or faithful to that insight. Murdoch describes her view as an "inconclusive non-dogmatic naturalism," suggesting a kind of Taoism, doing what comes naturally while striving to be as clear-sighted as possible.

What I have written pertains only to the first essay but provides a good sample of Murdoch's thought. Appropriately for an accomplished novelist, Murdoch has crafted a rich description of moral life, with quotable asides in every paragraph. I read through her book three times to write this review, and I anticipate that I will return to her work again for the sake of my own personal growth.

Lots of stuff I loved in here on freedom, attention, the self, virtue. These aspects really intrigued me and made me think deeply.

However, there were other things that I found less compelling. For example, the attempts to do "religion without God" usually strike me as very silly, and I had the same impression here.

Nevertheless, Murdoch's discussion was helpful in a way that such discussions usually aren't. Her insights and perspectives provided a fresh angle and added value to the overall exploration of these complex topics.

Although not everything in the article was to my taste, the parts that I did like and the unique contribution of Murdoch's discussion made it a worthwhile read. It made me reflect on my own beliefs and understanding of freedom, attention, the self, and virtue, and perhaps even challenged some of my preconceived notions.

In conclusion, while the article had its flaws, it also had its strengths, and I'm glad I took the time to read and engage with it.

“We use our imagination not to escape the world but to join it” (88). This volume presents a collection of three philosophical papers by Iris Murdoch. In these papers, she constructs the basis for her concept of “moral vision,” which is a refined way of perceiving the world without distorting it through the prism of the self. As Murdoch perceives, a crucial aspect of the problem lies in our emphasis on “will” as a lens through which we view reality in accordance with our desires and as a world of potential defined by our motivated, utilitarian perspectives. If one has read The Sea, The Sea, they will immediately identify a dramatization of this affliction in the main character, Charles Arrowby. This intentional way of seeing the world is not genuine apprehension but rather an imposition of the self on the world, enabling us to make the world conveniently accessible for our use. There are numerous moral implications that stem from this, one of the most significant being the failure to recognize others as autonomous agents striving towards their own goals.

The remedy for a “will”-based view of the world is to develop “attention,” which Murdoch compares to a “loving gaze” on the world. In this gaze, we seek the perfect that is imperfectly mirrored to us in the world. For some, the focus of “attention” is God (as it was for Simone Weil, from whom Murdoch borrows the concept). For Murdoch, it is art. Through attention, we set aside all the biased, situated, self-centered, and motivated ways of seeing a person, idea, or thing and attempt to understand a reflection of the thing in itself, independent of being articulated within a web of motives and desires.

One way we cultivate this gaze is through art. When art is executed well, it offers a glimpse of the ideal, visible around the edges and coming into greater (albeit still imperfect) focus through skillful iteration carried out with humility and honesty. I appreciate the idea of regarding this practice as a type of craft/art that one nurtures, a “techne” as Murdoch borrows from Plato. However, I am less certain about how one approaches the perfect without the focus provided by intent. Perhaps this, too, is part of the honesty of the craft, which involves the continuous recognition and bracketing of willful interpretations of the real.

The third essay in the book, “The Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts,” reads like the most comprehensive expression of Murdoch’s ideas. Anyone interested in Murdoch’s moral perspective, which she frequently explores through her characters, will find this essay enlightening.

I first read the third essay in this collection when I was a graduate student. Ever since then, I have long admired it as one of the best things ever written in moral philosophy. I have returned to it frequently, including it in sermons and teaching it in the Ethics class.

Finally, I got around to reading the entire, short collection.

Murdoch is an extremely insightful and witty writer. Her writing is truly beautiful. After reading her work, one feels a sense of elevation and improvement.

Her ideas and expressions in the essays are profound and thought-provoking. They make the readers reflect on their own moral beliefs and behaviors.

The collection as a whole provides a rich and diverse exploration of moral philosophy, covering various aspects and perspectives. It is a valuable resource for anyone interested in the subject.

Overall, I highly recommend this collection to anyone who wants to deepen their understanding of moral philosophy and enjoy the beauty of great writing.

This is a collection of three essays on the subject of good. Here is a review of each of them separately.

**1. The idea of perfection**

Writing against the backdrop of the then-popular trends in psychology - behaviorism and philosophy - existentialism, Murdoch's account of morality was timely. It aimed to restore dignity to the idea of the inward-looking self, which was vehemently criticized due to Wittgenstein's logic and theory of language. From her perspective, Wittgenstein's philosophy created voids that attracted many philosophers to fill. One view holds that all thought is directed towards a judgment or action in the outer, empirically observable world, and everything else in our brains is mere daydreaming or musing. This Wittgensteinian attitude is combined with the existentialist idea that at the moment of choosing, one encounters emptiness. Murdoch responds to this notion of choosing by presenting her analysis of attention. Attention is the loving survey of the world that constructs our value system. At the moment of choosing, the decision is made obediently and readily based on the knowledge gathered. Since this faculty of attention is located within and not explained away by language theories, the nature of the moral being is restored. Coupled with this is her idea of the indefinability of the good. Good is not a bounded variable; one can only grasp some of its limits at a time. Approximating to the ideals of good and the beautiful in one's attention is the idea of perfection that every moral being aspires to.

**2. On ‘God’ and ‘Good’**

Here, Iris Murdoch presents her interpretation of moral realism, stating that moral concepts like good and virtue are attributes of the real. She recommends focusing one's attention on the good rather than on freedom or right action, as reflection on the good will result in freedom and right action as by-products. She is putting forward a theory of the self in the wake of the destruction of the old substantial self (soul) by positive philosophy and the beginning of the struggle to find a real self in philosophy. In the concluding paragraph, Murdoch clarifies that she has not assumed the existence of God in the essay and was motivated to present a positive account of the good to counter the prevalent trends in thinking about humans based on utilitarianism, linguistic behaviorism, and existentialism. She attempts to rescue art and ethics from being swallowed up by science, arguing that art and ethics must guide and check the increasing power of science.

**3. The Sovereignty of Good**

In this essay, Iris Murdoch描绘了道德自我的属性，如善、艺术、美、真理、爱、自由和谦逊。她提出了善对其他美德的主权和原始性的论点。她激励读者超越狭隘的自我利益，关注更高的人类价值。她坚信，将注意力集中在善上，会以更真实的精神揭示世界的其他属性。爱变得更加精致，艺术变得更加崇高，勇气的决心也更加坚定。通过对善的真正了解和理解，人们在日常生活中遇到的道德选择困境变得容易解决。她将机会等同于死亡，因为生命是对机会暴政的反抗，从卑微的农民到哲学家，每个人都努力驯服机会并管理自己的事务，农民是无意识的，而哲学家是有意识和系统的。这就是善的主权所在。