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Constructing a Hall of Reflection

Perfectionist Edification in Iris Murdoch's Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Stephen Mulhall
Affiliation:
University of Essex

Extract

Tom Phillips' painting for the dustjacket of the hardback edition of Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals depicts a faintly translucent, darkly-coloured, multi-layered lattice of letters, in which each character abuts directly upon others above, below and beside it, each overwrites or is overwritten by others of varying dimensions, but none is immediately decipherable as part of a word; and at the centre of this array is a geometrically precise, illuminated circle—perhaps emanating from a light located behind or under the layers of letters, perhaps from one directed at them from above. This image is open to many interpretations. It could represent the sun from Plato's myth of the cave shining through the dialogue in which he presents it (a myth that irradiates Iris Murdoch's text); it could also represent the light of Miss Murdoch's attention playing over the palimpsest of texts that make up the Western tradition of metaphysical thought. But for anyone encountering it upon closing the book after a first reading, it may also seem very precisely to crystallize one's initial impression of that text.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1997

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References

1 Iris, Murdoch (Chatto and Windus: London 1992); all page-references to this work will be prefixed by ‘MGM’.Google Scholar

2 Iris, Murdoch (Routledge: London, 1970).Google Scholar