Reflexive Realism: an Examination of Moral Realism in The

Home , The Black Prince (novel), The Sovereignty of Good

REFLEXIVE REALISM: AN EXAMINATION OF MORAL REALISM IN THE

PHILOSOPHY AND FICTION OF IRIS MURDOCH

Nickolas Takamiyagi Wilson

A Project Presented to

The Faculty of Humboldt State University

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree

Master of Arts in English: Literature

Committee Membership

Dr. Mary Ann Creadon, Committee Chair

Dr. Kathleen Doty, Committee Member

Dr. Nikola Hobbel, Graduate Coordinator

May 2013

ABSTRACT

REFLEXIVE REALISM: AN EXAMINATION OF MORAL REALISM IN THE PHILOSOPHY AND FICTION OF IRIS MURDOCH

Nickolas Takamiyagi Wilson

Iris Murdoch’s philosophy departs from the norm in analytic philosophy. Rather

than set out to demonstrate the deductive certainty of her views, Murdoch takes it as self-

evident that the human consciousness is inherently value-laden, but clouded by self-

consoling fantasies. Her antidote is art. By viewing good art, in any medium, the

individual becomes aware of a reality outside of oneself, and thereby expands the

capacity for empathy. My project looks at the relationship between Murdoch’s philosophy and her fiction, arguing that the two are mutually supportive. I advance this claim by showing how Murdoch’s ethics are most clearly seen in her novels for reasons surrounding their form. With this in mind, I examine The Bell and The Black Prince. I

also look at contemporary scholarship which challenges various interpretations of

Murdoch’s views. My own criticism is primarily concerned with the work of David

Robjant, who argues against theological interpretations of Murdoch’s work which view

her moral exemplar as a Buddhist Christian. With that in mind, my argument shows the

relevance of Maria Antonaccio’s interpretation of Murdoch’s work and the extent to

which it can withstand Robjant’s critique.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS ...... iii

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

CHAPTER 1: ANTONACCIO AND REFLEXIVE REALISM ...... 19

CHAPTER 2: MORAL REALISM IN THE BLACK PRINCE ...... 35

CHAPTER 3: MORAL REALISM IN THE BELL ...... 52

CHAPTER 4: CONCLUSION ...... 70

WORKS CITED ...... 78

iii

INTRODUCTION

Iris Murdoch’s thought is a departure from the norm in traditional analytic

philosophy. Rather than set out to demonstrate the deductive certainty of her founding

principles, Murdoch takes it as self-evident that the human consciousness is inherently value-laden, but clouded by self-consoling fantasies which prevent us from seeing reality and achieving virtue. Her antidote is art. By engaging with good art, in any medium, the individual becomes aware of a reality outside oneself, thereby expanding the capacity for empathy. My own criticism is primarily concerned with this phenomenon as interpreted by Maria Antonaccio – a leading figure in Murdochian scholarship. I contrast

Antonaccio’s thought with that of David Robjant, who argues against theological readings of Murdoch which consider her philosophy “Buddhist Christian.” Antonaccio offers this very view, and is therefore one of Robjant’s main opponents. My analysis shows the relevance of Antonaccio’s scholarship and the extent to which it can withstand

Robjant’s critique. One of the best ways to accomplish this and to evaluate the relative merits of Antonaccio’s position is to look at Murdoch’s novels in which art leads to a more ethical awareness. From this we arrive at a more holistic understanding of

Murdoch’s ethics, which consequently, allows us to assess the contemporary interpretations of her philosophical system. With this in mind, I examine Murdoch’s The

Bell and The Black Prince, two works of fiction wherein aesthetic experiences facilitate

2 moral growth for the characters involved. Ultimately, this reveals which theorist holds the most accurate and tenable position – Antonaccio or Robjant.

The debate between Robjant and Antonaccio stems from Murdoch’s rendering of the Ontological Argument, originally formulated by Anselm of Canterbury to prove the necessary existence of God, which Murdoch instead uses to establish the necessary existence of the Good. About this much there is no question. The current schism in scholarship hinges on how best to understand Murdoch’s overarching purpose for such a move. Whereas Antonaccio attempts to bridge the gap between Murdoch’s Platonism and

Christian theology, Robjant objects that such readings are “scandalously insensitive” and ultimately “do violence to Murdoch’s position” (Robjant 993). There are strong cases to support both views. But before examining how Antonaccio and Robjant arrive at their respective positions, it imperative to briefly outline the origin of the dispute, namely, the

Ontological Argument itself.

Anselm begins the Ontological Argument by claiming that God is “that which nothing greater can be thought.” He then goes on to say that existence, which is greater than non-existence, is one of God’s inherent traits, secured by virtue of being “the most high.” According to Anselm, God cannot be thought of apart from existence since doing so would strip the concept of “God” of one of its defining features (Metaphysics 393). In this way, the mere idea of God secures his existence, since if he did not exist, he would lack a quality particular to perfection. A contemporary of Anselm’s, Guanilo, objected to

Anselm’s argument on the basis that you cannot simply imagine a perfect instance, then assert that it exists (Metaphysics 397). The counterexample Guanilo uses is the perfect

island. That one can posit a perfect island does not prove its existence. But in response,

Anselm insists that God differs from all other parts of creation on the basis that God’s existence is necessary, while everything else is contingent. Consequently, Anselm believes that God must exist by definition. Murdoch, however, says otherwise.

For Murdoch, the Ontological Argument does not provide convincing evidence in support of God’s existence, but it does effectively establish the existence of something central to her philosophical program. She observes that we conceive of God first by recognizing varying degrees of good in the world, and subsequently posit a being that goes beyond the particular, representing the Good itself. For Christianity, this being is

God. “[W]e conceive of him by noticing degrees of goodness, which we see in ourselves and in all the world which is a shadow of God,” writes Murdoch in Metaphysics as a

Guide to Morals (Metaphysics 396). “These are aspects of the Proof wherein the definition of God as non-contingent is given body by our most general perceptions and experience of the fundamental and omnipresent (uniquely necessary) nature of moral value, thought of in a Christian context as God” (Metaphysics 396). According to

Murdoch, the Ontological Argument’s force resides in the fact that it points out the inescapability of moral value. While many ethical theories – Utilitarianism and

Kantianism, for instance – focus on the formula by which to make ethical decisions,

Murdoch insists that we are perpetually engaged with the moral life and that the moral sphere intersects with all areas of human activity. This is true because regardless of various cultural considerations, the human consciousness invariably interprets experience in terms of value. At any given time we are faced with countless decisions, most of which

4 are made without our even being directly aware of them. We decide what to do and where to go – this seems obvious enough. What is less obvious is that all of these minor choices will be made on the basis of how well the predicted outcomes cohere with our sense of goodness, or conversely, our self-interest. Whether mundane or momentous, our decisions are always informed by value, and thus, value is inextricably connected to human life. Stated differently – value is necessary to human experience, though this necessity is not of the deductive sort. For Murdoch, the fact that the human consciousness cannot suspend value judgments demonstrates the fundamental nature of value, and by extension, the Good. “Others who feel that perhaps the Proof proves something, but not any sort of God, might return to Plato and claim some uniquely necessary status for moral value as something (uniquely) impossible to be thought away from human experience, and as in a special sense, if conceived of, known as real” (Metaphysics 396). Later she elaborates on this same point, stating, “The idea of Good cannot be compromised or tainted by its inclusion in actual human proceedings, where its magnetism is nevertheless, and even at the lowest levels, omnipresent” (Metaphysics 399). So while Murdoch does not believe that the Ontological Argument proves God exists out of logical necessity, the syllogism does prove the existence of something just as essential to her ethics: the Good.

At this stage it may seem that the scales tip in favor of Robjant’s position, that

Murdoch is clearly advancing the view that the Good is necessary, although God is not.

Furthermore, Murdoch is careful to differentiate God from the Good, and if the terms were operating synonymously, this semantic hair-splitting would be entirely unnecessary.

But asserting that Antonaccio’s argument is totally unfounded is not completely fair,

5 however. Consider the following: Murdoch pushes for what she calls the

“demythologization” of religion in general and Christianity in particular. By demythologization Murdoch means that religions should divest themselves of commitments to what might be perceived as magical elements of their belief systems, which in turn, render them unbelievable to the modern mind. To ignore these aspects of religion – that is, to leave them unaltered – is to condemn them to obsolescence. This much seems to be confirmed by the general decline of religious belief and practice in the

Western world. Yet Murdoch insists religion cannot be abandoned. With that in mind she quotes Jewish thinker Martin Buber, who says, “Yes, it [God] is the most heavy-laden of all human words. None has become so soiled, so mutilated. Just for that reason I may not abandon it… We cannot cleanse the word ‘God’ and we cannot make it whole; but, defiled as it is, we can raise it from the ground and set it over an hour a great care” (qtd. in Metaphysics 420-21). Setting the word “God over an hour a great care” is exactly what

Murdoch has in mind with her rendition of the Ontological Argument. Later it becomes clear that the argument, coupled with the Good which it guarantees, may save religion from ruin. Murdoch adamantly pursues this point as she writes:

Perhaps (I believe) Christianity can continue without a personal God or a risen

Christ, without beliefs in supernatural places and happenings, such as a heaven

and life after death, but retaining the mystical figure of Christ occupying a place

analogous to that of Buddha: a Christ who can console and save, but who is to be

found as a living force within each human soul and not in some supernatural

elsewhere. Such continuity would preserve and renew the Christian tradition as it

has always hitherto, somehow or other, been preserved and renewed. Perhaps this

cannot be brought about soon enough, that is before Christian belief and practice

virtually disappear. (Metaphysics 419)

In light of this, Antonaccio, in her attempt to connect Murdoch’s Platonism with

Christian theology, has more stable ground to build on. So long as we interpret

Murdoch’s philosophy as a “renewal” of Christian thought without the supernatural

elements that resist our own scientific sensibilities, the gap between Platonism and

Christianity becomes much less pronounced, perhaps even imperceptible. The question that remains is whether the remaining distance can be bridged. There seems to be further support for Antonaccio’s argument in other areas of Murdoch’s work, particularly when

Murdoch states, “This ‘Good’ is not the old God in disguise, but rather what the old God symbolized” (Metaphysics 428). Later, Murdoch clarifies this point as she explains the mystical versus the demythologized Christ, the latter being the one she endorses under her revised conception of Christianity. She writes, “… the Christ who saves is the mystical Christ whom we make our own, whose figure is a mixture of essence and accident, partly a creation of art as well as a being compact of everything we know about goodness. We look through this Christ into the mystery of good” (Metaphysics 429).

Here we find that Christ is essentially a distilled version of the Good; a figure that, by

attending to his character, can lead us to a greater understanding of the Good. It is also

worth pointing out that Murdoch, in her essay, “The Idea of Perfection,” suggests that the

Gospels can still play a significant role in our understanding of Christianity

7 demythologized. Quoting Matthew 5 she writes, “In suggesting that the central concept of morality is ‘the individual’ thought of as knowable by love, thought of in light of the command, ‘Be ye therefore perfect’, I am not, in spite of the philosophical backing which

I might here resort to, suggesting anything esoteric” (Existentialists 323). Again, one might wonder why Murdoch would draw from such sources unless she had something akin to a theist (demythologized though it may be) conception of the Good in mind. If that were the case, why not leave the concept intact, just as theologians have done in the past? At this stage, answers are not yet obvious.

The similarities and function of both the Good and God in religion are worth examining in order to better understand the ways that Antonaccio and Robjant approach them in their writing. For Murdoch, the task is to reform religion without a loss of crucial substance. To that end, the notion of prayer and attention is key. Murdoch asserts that the quality of our attention determines our ability to choose well, and the closer we can come to seeing reality without allowing the psyche to return to selfish considerations is the end goal. It cannot be accomplished, though, without some focal point to attend to, and this is where “the most high” is necessary. Murdoch writes, “I shall suggest that God was (or is) a single perfect transcendent non-representable and necessarily real object of attention; and I shall go on to suggest that moral philosophy should attempt to retain a central concept which has all these characteristics” (Existentialists 344). While Murdoch is careful to show that God and the Good are two separate entities, she acknowledges that

“to a large extent they interpenetrate and overlap” (Existentialists 344). But this invites the question of how much God and Good are alike. If the point of intersection is great,

8 then Antonaccio’s interpretation may, in fact, prove valid. Conversely, if the two central concepts are more loosely conjoined than Antonaccio supposes, then Robjant’s criticism would prove damning to her argument. Here again, background is needed in order to understand what comes to bear on the debate and how we have arrived at this stage.

One significant view that Murdoch challenges is twentieth century existentialism, which maintains that values are social constructs – that is, they are human inventions shaped by a confluence of social and historical factors. As such, value is contingent upon culture, and therefore relative. In many ways, this conception, which is heavily influenced by post-structuralism and Wittgensteinian philosophy, seems to solve a number of ethical and political dilemmas that recur throughout history. Whereas it was once assumed that a difference in political views could be understood as one side being

“less reasonable” than the other, the modern view of human value is that the two opposing groups are simply operating with different sets of values – equally valid, but sometimes mutually exclusive. Morality, then, is a matter of choice. The individual, through his or her own free will, determines which set of values seems most desirable and acts in accord with them. Murdoch challenges this view. Murdoch refers to it as the

“post-Kantian moral philosophy,” which is characterized, first and foremost, by its rejection of moral realism and essentialism. As such, a good deal of post-Kantian ethics anchors value in the human consciousness rather than any aspect of external reality.

Consequently, it is the responsibility of the individual to accept whichever value system he or she sees fit. The important thing to note is that there is no objective standard by which to measure moral acts and gauge their ethical status. In other words, nothing is

absolute. Murdoch explains this view as she writes, “The centre of this type of post-

Kantian moral philosophy is the notion of the will as creator of value. Values which were

previously in some sense inscribed in the heavens and guaranteed by God collapse into

the human will” (Existentialists 366). This idea is apparent in existentialism, both in its

fiction and its philosophy. Because existentialism rejects human nature, and instead,

posits that “existence precedes essence,” it is in line with post-Kantian philosophy and therefore at odds with Murdoch’s Platonism. For the reason that existentialism is at odds with Murdoch’s Platonism, modern life and literature are marked by existentialist angst.

Given the fact that there is no human nature to adhere to or violate, the central virtue under this paradigm is freedom. The individual has an uninhibited autonomy with which to create a nature through his or her choices and must bear the burden of those decisions alone. There is no external authority to turn to in ethical matters, and as such, the individual must decide whether to adopt social conventions of morality or concoct new ones. There is not, however, any deity or corresponding theology to consult. Murdoch describes this picture by stating:

The idea of life as self-enclosed and purposeless is of course not simply a product

of the despair of our own age. It is the natural product of the advance of science

and has developed over a long period. It has already in fact occasioned a whole

era in the history of philosophy, beginning with Kant and leading on to the

existentialism and the analytic philosophy of the present day. The chief

characteristic of this phase of philosophy can be briefly stated: Kant abolished

God and made man God in His stead. (Existentialists 365)

Murdoch sees post-Kantian theory as inherently flawed, but does not recommend a return

to antiquated dogmas which don’t hold up to modern skepticism. Instead, she wants a

return to the Platonic notion of the Good. For Murdoch, the reasons for this move are

commonsensical. “The ordinary person,” Murdoch writes, “does not, unless corrupted by

philosophy, believe that he creates values by his choices. He thinks that some things

really are better than others and that he is capable of getting it wrong” (Existentialists

380). Just as obvious to Murdoch is the presence of human injustice, which she believes is as apparent as The Good. In the same matter-of-fact tone she writes, “Equally we recognize the real existence of evil: cynicism, cruelty, indifference to suffering”

(Existentialists 380). According to Murdoch, we cannot justifiably acknowledge the presence of evil without also acknowledging the presence of good. And neither evil nor good are mere fictions of the mind. However, we cannot understand concepts such as The

Good in descriptive language alone, and instead need to employ some other means if we are to fully understand it. For Murdoch, the means is metaphor. So while others have tried other avenues such as reason and utility, Murdoch sees those efforts as inadequate.

She argues that the reason for this is that whether discussing utility or reason, the Good invariably applies. But even if we agree that the Good is necessary to moral discourse, we still need to find a way to speak meaningfully about it in order to know it. Murdoch solves this problem by turning again to Plato.

One of the enduring stories that we inherit from Plato is the Allegory of the Cave.

The allegory appears in Book VII of The Republic, and stands as a metaphor by which to understand the education of the soul. In the story, prisoners are chained facing a wall,

11 their backs to the opening of the cave. Behind the inhabitants, out of view, is a fire. When passers-by walk in front of the fire they cast shadows, which the prisoners take to be reality, and go so far as to assign honors to those who successfully predict which shadows will appear on the wall (Plato 187). However, one prisoner is released from his fetters and comes to realize that there is a reality beyond the shadows, and that the shadows are a diluted form of reality in comparison. The freed prisoner later comes to recognize that the sun is the source of all knowledge and enlightenment, and though he cannot gaze at it directly, sees that it is the ultimate reality (Plato 189). Murdoch uses this as a starting point for her own ethics and aesthetics. But before examining the way Murdoch employs the allegory, it is important to see the reasons why she makes it the cornerstone of her philosophical system.

In her essay, “Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts,” Murdoch claims that

The Good is indefinable since it cannot be described in non-moral or purely factual terms, although various philosophers have attempted to do so. Kant and the rationalists, for instance, tried to demonstrate that morality can be rooted in reason, but those philosophies have not yielded satisfactory results, according to Murdoch. In support of this view Murdoch employs G.E Moore’s “Open Question Argument,” wherein a definition must correspond to the term it denotes without loss of substance in order to hold. A bachelor, by definition, is an unmarried male. If however, one were to know that a person was an unmarried male, but still question whether he is a bachelor, then the person in question would show a lack of understanding of the term. As the Open

Question Argument applies to Murdoch, she holds that reason, utility, pleasure, or any

permutation thereof, does not result in a true tautology with the Good. Furthermore, the

Good is not whatever we wish for it to be. So whereas Kant and the rationalists have tried

to show the logical connection between reason and morality, Murdoch finds that there is

a general loss of substance when you consider the Good under their non-moral definitions. She finds that love stands as a more accurate substitute, though even it has its limits. She writes, “But is there nevertheless something about the conception of a refined love which is practically identical with goodness? Will not ‘Act lovingly’ translate ‘Act perfectly’, whereas ‘Act rationally will not?” (Existentialists 384). Even so, Murdoch acknowledges that love can still “name something bad,” and therefore Good must remain sovereign over it. In light of that point, Murdoch goes on to claim that the Good can only be known by way of metaphor, ultimately drawing from The Allegory of the Cave.

Further elaborating on The Open Question Argument, Murdoch states:

Asking what Good is is not like asking what Truth is or what Courage is, since, in

explaining the latter, the idea of Good must enter in, it is that in light of which the

explanation must proceed. ‘True courage is…’ And if we try to define Good as X

we have to add that we mean of course a good X. If we say that Good is Reason

we have to talk about good judgment. If we say that Good is Love we have to

explain that there are different kinds of love. Even the concept of Truth has its

ambiguities and it is really only of Good that we can say ‘it is the trial of itself and

needs no other touch’. (Existentialists 380)

If it is true that The Good “is the trial of itself and needs no other touch,” then the problem still remains of how to describe and understand it. Metaphor, Murdoch suggests,

guides us in this endeavor. In support of this maneuver she writes, “Metaphors are not

merely peripheral decorations or even useful models, they are fundamental forms of our

awareness of our condition: metaphors of space, metaphors of movement, metaphors of

vision” (Existentialists 363). Later Murdoch states, “[I]t seems to me impossible to discuss certain kinds of concepts without resort to metaphor, since the concepts are themselves deeply metaphorical and cannot be analyzed into non-metaphorical

components without a loss of substance” (Existentialists 363). So it is here that we find

the importance of the Allegory of the Cave.

Murdoch begins by drawing our attention to the fire by which the prisoners sit in

the allegory. The inhabitants draw warmth from the fire and take it to be a great source of

comfort. Initially they do not consider any reality beyond the cave and the fire, and for

this reason, Murdoch identifies it with what she calls “the self,” – a term she uses to

describe the psychological mechanism that prevents us from seeing reality and instead

seeks various forms of consolation. Murdoch explains, “In some ways [the human

psyche] resembles a machine; in order to operate it needs sources of energy, and it is

predisposed to certain patterns of activity. The area of its vaunted freedom of choice is

not usually very great. One of its main pastimes is day-dreaming. It is reluctant to face

unpleasant realities” (Existentialists 364). For Murdoch, our collective desire for

consolation is the primary means by which poor judgment, and ultimately injustice,

arises. We may be inclined to imagine that we are better off at the individual or societal

level than we actually are, and consequently, avoid taking the necessary action to

improve our lot. In this way, the state of our consciousness – the extent to which we

allow ourselves to believe flattering falsehoods or not – is directly connected to our

ability to see accurately and act accordingly. Put differently, accurate vision leads to right

action. Given our general aversion to painful realities, this is a difficult task:

“[C]onsciousness is not normally a transparent glass through which [to view] the world,”

Murdoch adds, “but a cloud of more or less fantastic reverie designed to protect the psyche. It constantly seeks consolation, either through imagined inflation of self or through fictions of a theological nature” (Existentialists 364). In fact, the subconscious

selfishness seeps surreptitiously into practically every area of human interaction.

Murdoch observes that for the self-directed consciousness, “even its loving is more often than not an assertion of self” (Existentialists 364). It is for this reason that while

Murdoch’s picture of human psychology is bleak, she does not think that our patterns of thought preclude virtue. In order to achieve it, though, the individual must participate in some form of akesis – ascetic practice – to cultivate a consciousness capable of right action. For Murdoch, art is one of the primary means through which we can “unself,” and thereby clarify our thought, thus opening the way for virtue.

Unlike Kantian ethics or utilitarianism, Murdoch offers no formula by which to determine which course of action to take when presented with a moral dilemma. Whereas

Kant proposes the Categorical Imperative and Bentham the felicific calculus, Murdoch proposes a set of practices which are meant to clarify our vision and prepare us for right action when the moral decision presents itself. In other words, the decision begins long before the action takes place, and it is the efforts we have made to clarify our moral vision that determine whether we respond well or not. Unlike the Categorical Imperative

15 and Principle of Utility, the moral sphere saturates every moment of our lives. On this distinction Murdoch states, “…if we consider what the work of attention is like, how continuously it goes on, and how imperceptibly it builds up structures of value round about us, we shall not be surprised that at crucial moments of choice most of the business of choosing is already over” (Existentialists 329). But this still leaves open the issue of how to clarify our moral vision. Murdoch feels that there are various activities which silence the self and help develop an awareness of reality beyond it. One of the main ways to accomplish this is through art. Art – in any medium – has the power to direct us to the reality outside of ourselves, reminding us of human suffering beyond our own. When done effectively, this prompts action. On this Murdoch writes, “Our states of consciousness differ in quality, our fantasies and reveries are not trivial and unimportant, they are profoundly connected with our ability to choose and act” (Existentialists 369).

To illustrate this idea, Murdoch asks us to consider a possible scenario wherein her pride and vanity has been injured in some petty way. As one might imagine, she would become progressively absorbed in resentment, perhaps considering ways she could exact revenge against her supposed transgressor and resuscitate her self-image. In that moment, as she stands gazing into the distance, a kestrel comes into view. For a moment, she is totally consumed by this being. It is at that point that she recognizes a reality outside herself, and when the kestrel finally flies away bringing the moment to an end, she returns to her wounded ego only to find that her initial problem is not as pressing as she once thought.

A new hierarchy of values has emerged, with her own petty concerns taking its proper place in the background. “In a moment everything is altered,” states Murdoch. “The

16 brooding self with its hurt vanity has disappeared. There is nothing now but the kestrel…And of course this is something which we may also do deliberately: give attention to nature in order to clear our minds of selfish care” (Existentialists 369). For

Murdoch, art operates much like the kestrel. It brings certain aspects of the world out of the periphery and to the fore, and in doing so, clarifies our moral vision and opens the way for virtue. But the change is only temporary unless the consumer of the art object continues to cultivate a mindset oriented to the outside world, the reality beyond itself.

Once we are aware of that reality, our capacity for empathy begins to develop and moral progress gets underway. Art is therefore essential to ethics under Murdoch’s view.

Art, and by ‘art’ from now on I mean good art, not fantasy art, affords us a pure

delight in the independent existence of what is excellent. Both in its genesis and

its enjoyment it is a thing totally opposed to selfish obsession. It invigorates our

best faculties and, to use Platonic language, inspires love in the highest part of the

soul. It is able to do this partly by virtue of something which it shares with nature:

a perfection of form which invites unpossessive contemplation and resists

absorption into the selfish dream life of the consciousness. (Existentialists 370)

Later Murdoch elaborates on the importance of art, stating, “it is the most educational of all human activities and a place in which the nature of morality can be seen. Art gives a clear sense to many ideas which seem more puzzling when we meet with them elsewhere, and it is a clue to what happens elsewhere” (Existentialists 372).

At this point the primary components of Murdoch’s view are clear and we can begin to understand how current scholars have tried to understand her work. Antonaccio

17 attempts to bring Murdochian ethics and theism together by borrowing from the Christian theologian William Schweiker, who coins the term “reflexive” or “hermeneutical” realism to describe Murdoch’s brand of moral realism. Antonaccio expresses her indebtedness to Schweiker in Picturing the Human, where she states in a footnote:

The term is William Schweiker’s. See his Responsibility and Christian Ethics,

106-114 for an articulation and defense of this position in relation to current

debates over realism and anti-realism in ethics. Schweiker’s work on this subject

has deeply informed my own thinking as the argument of this book will make

clear. The reflexive nature of Murdoch’s realism is presupposed by her view of

metaphysics as a form of “imaginative construction.” (197)

By reflexive realism Antonaccio means that Murdoch’s moral realism depends upon the human mind in order to be understood. Antonaccio goes on to explain, “With respect to

Moore’s question about the meaning of ‘good’, Murdoch’s transcendental argument shows that its meaning can only be understood in relation to a thinking, valuing consciousness” (Human 128). Elsewhere Antonaccio elaborates on this same point, stating, “[Murdoch] will be seeking a criterion of valid moral knowledge in and through the reflexive medium of consciousness itself” (Human 116). But in order for Antonaccio to keep Murdoch’s realism intact, she must show that the Good is not dependent upon the human consciousness, otherwise value collapses back into the individual will, resulting in subjectivity. To circumvent this, Antonaccio does something akin to Kant’s Copernican

Revolution. In the same way that Kant considers the Categories of Understanding part of

the mind and fundamental to human experience, Antonaccio interprets the Good as a

universal structure of the consciousness. She writes:

[The] reflexive realists argue that the search for an objective standard of truth and

value can only proceed by means of the first-person standpoint. The good is

discovered through the medium of consciousness as it reflects on itself; yet at the

same time, the act of reflexivity reveals the good to be a perfection or ‘higher

condition’ that transcends or surpasses consciousness. (Human 119)

But this is precisely where Robjant takes issue with Antonaccio’s interpretation. By rooting the Good in the human consciousness, Antonaccio effectively undercuts

Murdoch’s realism.

Robjant reminds us that Murdoch uses metaphor – the Allegory of the Cave – to understand the reality of the Good which goes beyond it. However, because Antonaccio claims that the Good is “discovered through the medium of consciousness,” she conflates the concept with its supposed reality. “[W]hat Antonaccio takes from it,” writes Robjant,

“is that if value concepts are ‘stretched as it were between the truth seeking mind and the world’, then value itself must be ‘stretched as it were between the truth seeking mind and the world” (Robjant 997). Later he succinctly summarizes the issue: “Antonaccio treats

Murdoch as locating the Good only where the concept is” (Robjant 997). Thus, the remainder of this paper examines whether Robjant is right – that Antonaccio’s interpretation makes “the metaphor the reality,” or if it points to a reality beyond it.

CHAPTER 1: ANTONACCIO AND REFLEXIVE REALISM

Classically, moral realists anchor the truth of ethical claims to the realm beyond

the human consciousness, and in doing so establish objective principles of morality that

are independent of the individual will, thus avoiding subjectivity. Attempts to achieve

this kind of objectivity have oftentimes relied upon the powers of reason, as is the case

for rationalist philosophers, who believe that ethics can be deduced from a set of

indisputable axioms. The result: a logically air-tight morality. Still other realists, skeptical

of this approach, have adopted pragmatic means through which to establish their ethical

systems. Rather than look beyond the moral agent, these realists justify their moral claims

by seeking agreement among the linguistic community. Murdoch’s realism differs from

both of these forms in that she begins her examination of the Good from within the

consciousness, but does not limit herself to it. Instead, the consciousness, while in the act

of reflecting upon itself, comes to recognize the reality of the Good which lies beyond.

Antonaccio calls this “reflexive realism.” In explanation of it she writes, “The good is

discovered through the medium of consciousness as it reflects on itself; yet at the same

time, the act of reflexivity reveals the good to be a perfection or ‘higher condition’ that

transcends or surpasses consciousness” (Human 119). Thus, Antonaccio interprets

Murdoch’s moral realism as reflexive, given that evidence of the Good begins in the human mind, but points to a reality that extends to the world outside of it, and in doing so achieves objectivity. A unique feature of this model is that objectivity stems from the subject. Although the account begins in the consciousness, Antonaccio claims that

Murdoch circumvents the charge of subjectivism by showing that we have the ability to

grasp objective moral truths by virtue of a transcendental model of value, which blends

elements of Kantian and Platonic ethics. This point is supplemented by parallels between

Murdoch’s realism and G.E. Moore’s, as well as Murdoch’s reformulation of the

Ontological Argument.

Antonaccio sets out to interpret Murdoch’s realism by drawing comparisons to

G.E. Moore who, like Murdoch, is a cognitivist who argues that the Good is not

determined by the individual’s choice (Human 117). Murdoch herself sees Moore’s thought as a philosophical milestone, marking a shift from the fundamental question of

“Which things are good?” to “What is the meaning of ‘good’?” Both Moore and Murdoch are also in agreement that knowledge of the Good depends upon the moral agent’s perception, and that the Good is undefinable (Human 117). On the latter point, the two thinkers arrive at an identical conclusion through vastly different means, which ultimately yields far disparate outcomes for their respective moral theories. While Murdoch and

Moore are both cognitivists – that is, the two agree that moral statements can hold a truth value – the epistemological mechanism through which they claim to gain ethical knowledge differs, with Moore suggesting that the Good can be known through the intuition, and Murdoch, like Plato, maintaining that the Good is in reality itself (Moore

9). Antonaccio draws the distinction between the two philosophers by pointing out that

“Murdoch’s realism contrasts with Moore’s to the extent that she conceives the relation between consciousness and the good to be ‘reflexive’ as well as ‘linguistically’ mediated”

(Human 118). Later Antonaccio clarifies this point, noting that “Murdoch seeks to answer

21 the metaphysical question about goodness in and through an account of how the reality of the good is mediated through consciousness and moral language” (Human 118-19). So we find that for Murdoch, the Good is understood through the prism of human understanding and the linguistic systems that accompany it, while at the same time remains an unchanging object of thought. Or in Kantian terms, the Good, when thought of as the noumena, remains constant, while at the phenomenal level, achieves varying degrees of verisimilitude depending upon the quality of the individual’s attention. Either way, the Good is an inescapable and constant object of knowledge.

In addition to asking “What is the meaning of ‘good’?” another major contribution Moore makes to philosophy is the “Open Question Argument,” which asks, given any ethical theory which seeks to define the term “good,” “Is X really good?” From this simple concept Moore eventually proceeds to argue that goodness cannot be reduced to any natural property or set of properties, such as happiness, utility or rationality. In his own words he states, “Good is one of those innumerable objects of thought which are themselves incapable of definition, because they are the ultimate terms by reference to which whatever is capable of definition must be defined” (Moore 9-10). Moore goes on to liken goodness to the color yellow, arguing that one either understands the concept or does not. No further explanation of the idea can clarify the meaning of the term in the event that someone is confused as to its proper use. Continuing this line of reasoning

Moore writes:

My point is that ‘good’ is a simple notion, just as ‘yellow’ is a simple notion: that

just as you cannot, by any manner of means, explain to anyone who does not

already know it, what yellow is, so you cannot explain what good is…We may try

to define [yellow], by describing its physical equivalent; we may state what kind

of light-vibrations must stimulate the normal eye, in order that we may perceive

it. But a moment’s reflection is sufficient to show that those light-vibrations are

not themselves what we mean by yellow. They are not what we perceive… The

most we can be entitled to say of those vibrations is that they are what

corresponds in space to the yellow which we actually perceive. (Moore 7-10)

In light of this comparison Moore claims that the Good is a sui generis concept that cannot be reduced to natural and or non-moral properties, and is therefore undefinable.

The attempt to do otherwise is referred to as the “naturalistic fallacy,” and thus, when we return to Moore’s original question of “What is the meaning of ‘good’?” we find that we cannot provide a definition that does not make use of the very terms that Moore considers inadequate. Good, for him, is simply irreducible. No smaller components can be identified or articulated given the inherent incompatibility of non-moral terms and the

Good.

Murdoch agrees with Moore that the Good is indefinable, but differentiates her position from his by adopting a naturalistic theory of morality and moral language – the exact opposite of Moore’s method. Murdoch’s naturalism is unique in that she rejects the fact-value distinction – the idea that facts and values inhabit distinct realms without overlap, and that we cannot derive normative statements from factual ones – yet she rejects the notion that the Good can be reduced to a set of factual conditions. Put differently, the Good is neither a sui generis concept nor a simple state of human affairs.

“In contrast both to strict naturalism and nonnaturalism,” writes Antonaccio, “Murdoch

understands moral language as mediating the relation between fact and value through the

complex interpretive and evaluative activity of moral perception” (Human 121). In short,

ethics depends on the interplay between the subject and the object, the phenomena and

noumena which makes moral knowledge possible. Antonaccio adds that this point is

particularly important to understanding Murdoch as a reflexive realist. Consequently, this

aspect of Antonaccio’s argument is fundamental to understanding the crux of Robjant’s

criticism since, as we see later, Robjant sees reflexivity as a misinterpretation of

Murdoch’s original position, and therefore damning to Antonaccio’s position. But

regardless of whether reflexive realism accurately depicts Murdoch’s position, it is clear

that Murdoch insists that the Good inheres in reality, rather than being a matter of

individual choice. And though Moore is a moral realist by all accounts, Murdoch holds

that his representation of goodness essentially leads to the very kind of subjectivity that it

was intended to oppose. Meanwhile, Antonaccio turns to the reflexive nature of the Good

in order to explain Murdoch’s reason for taking it to be undefinable. “The good,” says

Antonaccio, “is indefinable because reality—reflexivity mediated through moral concepts—is mysterious and transcends our complete understanding of it” (Human 122).

Yet curiously, the Good does not elude our understanding altogether.

Antonaccio arrives at the controversial concept of reflexive realism in light of

considering Murdoch’s rendition of the Ontological Argument and Anselm’s belief that

the idea of God must exist both in the understanding and in reality. Charles Taylor

explains the proof as he writes, “we can only understand ourselves if we see ourselves as

24 in contact with a perfection which is beyond us. But if the idea must be, then the reality must exist, because the notion of a most perfect being lacking existence is a contradiction” (Taylor 140). Here again, Antonaccio uses Taylor’s point to highlight the relevance of reflexive realism, stating:

Taylor makes two important points here that are relevant here to Murdoch’s

reflexive understanding of the proof. First, he notes that the proof takes its starting

point in consciousness; it seeks to prove the reality of God from an idea of God in

the mind. Second, according to the proof the idea of God must occur to us,

because it is the very condition for our consciousness of ourselves as ‘selves’.

Thus the form of the proof is distinctive from the later cosmological proofs (such

as that of Aquinas) because it moves not through the realm of objects, but

‘through the subject and through the undeniable foundations of his presence to

himself’. Murdoch makes essentially these same two points as she interprets

Anselm’s argument as a proof for the necessity of the idea of the good, which

exists in necessary correlation with a thinking consciousness. (Human 124)

Because the consciousness cannot help but consider things in terms of value, the Good is unavoidable and also intimates a higher reality beyond the human mind. This is the core of reflexivity. Once we see how that notion applies to Murdoch’s philosophy, we see the extent to which Antonaccio’s position depends on its legitimacy. Conversely, this is also why Robjant’s criticism could completely undercut Antonaccio’s interpretation of

Murdoch.

When the Good is substituted for God in Anselm’s proof it becomes Murdoch’s

Ontological Argument, which Antonaccio breaks down into two complementary forms –

the transcendental and the metaphysical argument. Antonaccio describes the theoretical

underpinnings of these critical arguments:

I show that despite its starting point in consciousness, this account of the good

avoids subjectivism because it defines the good as a reflexive principle that both

presupposes consciousness (as transcendental condition) and surpasses it (as an

ideal of perfected moral knowledge which transcends egoism). To this end, I

characterize Murdoch as a ‘reflexive’ or ‘hermeneutical realist’ and show that her

account of the good is validated by a version of the ontological proof. (Human 15)

In her analysis of the transcendental argument, Antonaccio draws attention to the fact that

the consciousness cannot separate itself from value, and “all reality appears to

consciousness as ‘value-laden’ in light of the transcendental good” (Human 126). In this

way, the Good is foundational to moral knowledge and experience. Without it, moral

experience would be impossible, though as we have already seen, it is inextricably

connected to human life. So in response to Moore’s question of “What is the meaning of

‘good’, Murdoch’s “transcendental argument shows that its meaning can only be understood in relation to a thinking, valuing consciousness” (Human 128). On this topic

Antonaccio adds, “The good provides the condition for the possibility of moral

knowledge because it is the ‘light’ or the aspect under which moral consciousness regards

anything as good,” and for this reason, the Good remains the elusive yet essential

standard for all judgment (Human 128). The argument also demonstrates the

26 incompatibility of Murdoch’s thought with verificationist epistemology, which seeks to find concrete empirical principles, which once satisfied, prove the existence of the Good.

This, Murdoch claims, is not only impossible, but a method that is misguided and bound to fail. Or as Antonaccio puts it, the “argument bears out the reflexive character of

Murdoch’s realism because it shows that the reality of the good is validated in transcendental rather than perceptual terms” (Human 128). According to Antonaccio, this move leads to an epistemological advantage which is not available to Moore’s nonnaturalism. Antonaccio substantiates this claim by recognizing that the upshot of the transcendental argument is that it “defines the good not in terms of an empirical reality dependent on intuition but in terms of ‘the unconditional element in the structure of reason and reality’” (Human 128). What this means is that the transcendental argument is not, according to Antonaccio, vulnerable to the traditional verificationist objections to the

Good.

This does not put Murdoch in the clear, however. Although verificationist criticism may be properly handled, the explanation of how to avoid the charge of subjectivity needs a more thorough investigation. Robjant believes that under

Antonaccio’s conception of Murdoch’s realism, we cannot avoid subjectivity. Although she maintains that this is not true, Antonaccio also acknowledges the possibility of subjectivity:

The most significant problem we face in this task is how to define the objectivity

of a norm that is to be internal to consciousness. The reflexivity of Murdoch’s

realist position means that the idea of the good cannot depend for its objectivity

on being conceptually located ‘outside’ consciousness. Rather, the only kind of

objectivity that is possible in the realm of ethics is one that is also ‘indexed to a

personal vision’. Access to the good is never direct or unmediated but must pass

through the ambiguous and conflicting energies of human subjectivity. (Human

130)

Robjant disagrees with the idea that the Good “cannot depend for its objectivity on being located ‘outside’ consciousness," and he therefore takes aim at Antonaccio’s use of that claim and reflexive realism in his essay, “As a Buddhist Christian: The Misappropriation of Iris Murdoch,” to which we now turn our attention.

Robjant takes issue with philosophers and literary theorists who interpret

Murdoch as a reformist Christian or “Buddhist Christian,” with Antonaccio being the chief proponent of that approach. Antonaccio and those who follow her reading draw from Murdoch’s remarks in Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals where she presents her views on the Ontological Argument. There Murdoch states, “I have been talking as a neo-

Christian or Buddhist Christian or Christian fellow traveler,” thereby giving Antonaccio and others reason to believe that Murdoch has a theological morality in mind when she discusses the Good (Metaphysics 419). Robjant, however, objects that to draw this conclusion is to ignore a wide body of evidence that runs counter to it. He claims, “. . .the tendency in Murdoch exegesis has been to claim Murdoch as either a reformist Christian theist, or a sort of Buddhist. Both of these approaches do violence to Murdoch’s position”

(Robjant 993). Robjant goes on to state that theological interpretations of Murdoch’s work are “scandalously insensitive,” pointing out that Murdoch warns against such

interpretations in no uncertain terms. For instance, elsewhere in Metaphysics as a Guide

to Morals, Murdoch explains the Ontological Argument’s significance to ethics, but is

careful to draw a distinction between God and the Good, cautioning readers not to

conflate the two concepts. Murdoch writes, “I think that useless confusion arises from

attempts to extend the meaning of our word ‘God’ to cover any conception of a spiritual

reality. This move, which ‘saves’ the concept through a sort of liberal vagueness, clouds

over the problem without solving it” (Metaphysics 419). In support of his argument

Robjant also points to Murdoch’s essay, “The Sovereignty of Good Over All Concepts,” where Murdoch reiterates what appear to be obvious atheist leanings. “[T]here is, in my view, no God in the traditional sense of that term; and the traditional sense is perhaps the only sense. When Bonhoeffer says that God wants us to live as if there were no God I suspect he is misusing words” (Existentialists 365). In light of these comments, Robjant believes that there is little doubt as to how to understand Murdoch’s version of the Good and her overall aim for reformulating the Ontological Argument.

Although he ultimately disagrees with Antonaccio, Robjant acknowledges the merit of her position and cites several places where Murdoch offers enticing remarks to theological thinkers. In a concession to Antonaccio, Robjant notes, “On the other hand, the fact that Murdoch gives over an entire chapter to the defense of Anselm may seem to speak powerfully against her remarks on Bonhoeffer and the ‘useless confusion’”

(Robjant 994). Furthermore, pinning Murdoch down on how to differentiate God and the

Good proves problematic when considering her own comments on how closely related to two concepts are. She states:

The argument from experience emerges as it were under the pressure of the

logical argument. If we are able to distinguish necessary and contingent we see

that God cannot be contingent. Experience shows us the uniquely unavoidable

nature of God (Good, or Categorical Imperative), its omnipresence, its purity, its

separateness from our fallen world, in which its magnetic force is nevertheless

everywhere perceptible. God either exists necessarily or is impossible. All our

experience shows he exists. (Metaphysics 405)

Here Murdoch appears to support the idea that God necessarily exists and that the Good

may even be synonymous with it. If this is the case, then Antonaccio’s interpretation

would be valid. What’s more, Murdoch elaborates on what might be understood as

reformist Christian theology as she states, “These are aspects of the Proof wherein the

definition of God as non-contingent is given body to our most general perceptions of the

fundamental and omnipresent (uniquely necessary) nature of moral value, thought of in a

Christian context as God” (Metaphysics 396). Again, Murdoch seems to connect the necessity of moral value – also conceived of as the Good – with the necessity of God, thereby illustrating the interchangeability of the terms. In turn, this fortifies Antonaccio’s

position. But even if this is the case, Robjant argues that there are further issues with

Antonaccio’s notion of reflexive realism, and that those problems render her

interpretation untenable.

Robjant starts his counterargument by observing that Antonaccio’s views have

been extremely influential in current scholarship on Murdoch. “All of the twenty first

century monographs so far published cite Antonaccio, in detail, generally without

30 quibble, and often several times on the one page” (Robjant 1007). Given the supposed problems Robjant finds in Antonaccio’s position, one might naturally wonder how she could have ascended to prominence and continue to stand as the authoritative voice in the ongoing dialogue on Murdoch. To this Robjant replies, “With the prestige of its publisher and the timeliness of its appearance, Maria Antonaccio’s Picturing the Human: The

Moral Vision of Iris Murdoch has occupied a uniquely influential position in Murdoch

Studies” (Robjant 996). In effect, Robjant asserts that Antonaccio’s sway over contemporary writing on Murdoch is due in large part to Oxford University Press and its unparalleled pull in academia. To Robjant, this point is clear once we compare

Murdoch’s realism to Antonaccio’s understanding of it, thereby highlighting the disconnect between the two. Robjant asserts that Murdoch’s notion of moral progress consists of confronting a reality outside oneself. “For Murdoch,” Robjant states,

“following Plato rather closely in this, her philosophical artwork is about human individuals and the Good. She attempts, by her art, to recognize and give expression to ‘a reality which is beyond us’, and beyond the metaphor of the Cave and the Sun” (Robjant

997). Put another way, good art points us to the reality that stands independently of our individual consciousness, thus improving the moral agent that participates in the endeavor.

But according to Robjant, reflexive realism does not depict this activity accurately. To advance this claim Robjant first cites Murdoch’s own account of realism which she describes in her Existentialists and Mystics:

We use our imagination not to escape the world but to join in it, and this

exhilarates us because of the distance between our ordinary dulled consciousness

and an apprehension of the real. The value concepts are here patently tied on to

the world, they are stretched as it were between the truth-seeking mind and the

world, they are not moving about on their own as adjuncts of the personal will.

The authority of morals is the authority of truth, that is of reality. We can see the

length, the extension, of these concepts as patient attention transforms accuracy

without interval into discernment. Here too we can see it as natural to the

particular kind of creatures that we are that love should be inseparable from

justice, and clear vision from respect for the real. (Existentialists 374)

Murdoch introduces here the idea that value concepts are “stretched” between consciousness and the world rather than being dependent on the individual. Or as Robjant puts it, “Murdoch appears to intend that the Good is a reality that our concept of the Good is stretching towards” (Robjant 997). As Robjant sees the situation, Antonaccio misses the point by conflating the concepts with reality. “Yet what Antonaccio takes from it is that if value concepts are ‘stretched as it were between the truth seeking mind and the world’, then value itself must be stretched as it were between the truth seeking mind and the world” (Robjant 997). He then asserts, “Antonaccio treats Murdoch as locating the

Good only where the concept is,” and later states, “For Murdoch, moral language deploys a concept, and that concept instances a conception of the world. For Antonaccio in contrast, ‘good’ refers to a concept, but the concept doesn’t refer onwards to some reality that it is a concept of” (Robjant 997-98). As Robjant sees it, Murdoch’s value concepts

32 refer to reality. Antonaccio, meanwhile, takes the two entities as equivalent, thus “doing violence” to Murdoch’s philosophy. This is because in order to keep Murdoch’s realism intact, value concepts and reality must be distinct from one another. So if Robjant is right in arguing that Antonaccio’s position places the Good only where the concept exists, then

Antonaccio has effectively robbed Murdoch’s philosophy of its defining trait – realism.

With regard to Antonaccio’s tendency to use the Good and God synonymously,

Robjant states the she and others are sorely mistaken. Although it is true that Murdoch says that she speaks as a neo-Christian or Buddhist Christian, Robjant argues that she only makes this disclaimer given the context – the exposition of Anselm’s argument.

Generally speaking, she does not mean to be understood as a neo-Christian, but given her discussion of Anselm’s contribution to metaphysical inquiry, it makes sense to use the term while writing on the Ontological Argument, though not elsewhere. So when

Antonaccio tries to apply a theological reading to Murdoch in general, Robjant maintains that this is a “context mistake” and that “Murdoch is not mixing up God and the Good and the Categorical Imperative into one gigantic scotch broth of transcendence, but referring to an extended contrast she has been drawing” (Robjant 994). In explanation of why Murdoch goes to such lengths to defend Anselm from Guanilo’s objections, Robjant suggests that the Ontological Argument is only important insofar as it establishes the existence of the Good. “For the reason why Murdoch cares about Anselm,” Robjant reports, “is that, given his response to Guanilo, Murdoch holds that what Anselm is naming ‘God’ is nothing other than Good” (Robjant 994). So rather than use the

Ontological Argument for the Good to offer a mutually supportive syllogism for God’s

33 existence, Murdoch only means for the proof to guarantee the Platonic Good alone. On this Robjant writes, “The point Murdoch is pressing on the response to Guanilo is that while using the word ‘God’, the only ingredient of that complex idea that Anselm is in fact managing to talk with any sure success about is the Good” (Robjant 995). What this means is that while Anselm uses “God” throughout his proof, God’s goodness is the lone aspect of the concept secured by the argument. God Himself, however, is not. Robjant goes on to say, “Whatever Anselm’s terminology, for Murdoch, the Good is in effect the subject of Anselm’s proof, and God’s other qualities (omnipotence and omniscience and personhood etc.) are never successfully integrated with that subject of the proof (Robjant

995). Consequently, this undermines Antonaccio’s effort to reconcile Murdoch and

Christian theology.

On a related point, and perhaps more damaging to the theist camp, is Robjant’s critique of Antonaccio’s term “reflexive space,” which designates the area where the

Good is said to exist between the consciousness and reality. Antonaccio explains, “This is preeminently the case with the concept of the good, which Murdoch locates in the reflexive ‘space’ that exists between the truth-seeking mind and the world” (Human 51).

But this maneuver precludes the very possibility of moral realism since the Good, given this reading, is not a constituent of the world itself, but instead, stands apart from it.

Robjant asserts, “This is patently not realism about the Good since it denies that the Good is part of an objective world which the ‘truth seeking mind’ is attempting to descry… The choice of ‘reflexive realism’ misleadingly suggests some kinship with realism proper

34 when there is no such kinship” (Robjant 998). In spite of this, Antonaccio’s program seems to depend upon the kinship that Robjant rejects and effectively refutes.

It is hard to deny the legitimacy of Robjant’s objections, particularly in light of

Antonaccio’s claim that the Good exists in the liminal space between the mind and the world. However, to disregard Antonaccio’s position altogether is equally unfair.

Furthermore, in order to fully understand Murdoch’s philosophy it is imperative to take a holistic approach to examining her philosophy and a broader look at the sum of her thought rather than the individual parts that compose it. In fact, failing to do so can yield an incomplete understanding or total misrepresentation of her views. By the same token,

Antonaccio’s interpretation can be viewed narrowly, which in turn, exaggerates the flaws of her analysis. With that in mind it I now turn to Murdoch’s novels The Black Prince and The Bell to examine the way that Murdoch presents her philosophical views through the dialogues particular to each work. The overarching aim of this examination is to highlight various aspects of Murdoch’s ethical system that is better seen through her fiction than her philosophy, and in doing so, weigh the relative strengths and weaknesses of Antonaccio’s interpretation. In the end this shows whether Robjant’s criticism successfully disproves Antonaccio’s argument.

CHAPTER 2: MORAL REALISM IN THE BLACK PRINCE

Fiction and philosophy intersect in Murdoch’s novel, The Black Prince, which

centers around a 58-year old writer named Bradley Pearson, who leaves his job as a tax inspector in order to compose what he intends to be his magnum opus. In order to better understand the ways in which Murdoch interweaves her philosophy into The Black

Prince, a brief overview of the plot will be helpful. The novel begins with Bradley

preparing to leave London for a coastal cottage where he intends to write, but before he

can begin, the process is delayed through a series of unforeseen events that drastically

alter his plans, and ultimately, his life. The first link in this chain of events is the untimely

arrival of Bradley’s former brother-in-law, Francis Marloe, a failed physician turned drunkard, who is perpetually strapped for cash. Francis has come to Bradley’s house because his sister has recently inherited a fortune after the death of her second husband, and he believes that if he can curry favor with Bradley, his sister and her funds will follow. Upon Francis’ arrival, Bradley receives a call from Arnold Baffin, Bradley’s pupil – a more successful but less talented writer than the underachieving mentor, having gained a good deal of fame after writing several works of popular fiction. Believing he has killed his wife, Rachel, by striking her with a fire poker in a fit of anger, Arnold calls

Bradley, desperate for help. Bradley brings Francis to help, yet counter to Arnold’s initial suspicions, Rachel is alive though severely distraught. Once the situation has settled,

Bradley leaves for the subway station. There he coincidentally crosses paths with the

Baffins’ 20-year old daughter Julian, who asks Bradley to teach her to write.

The following day, Bradley’s sister, Priscilla, arrives unannounced after leaving her husband, whom she believes is having an affair. Priscilla attempts suicide by ingesting sleeping pills, and as Bradley, Francis, and the Baffins try to sort out the matter,

Bradley’s ex-wife Christian arrives, much to Bradley’s chagrin. Pricilla is taken to the hospital for treatment, and meanwhile, Bradley tells Christian to stay out of his affairs.

However, Christian has already taken it upon herself to befriend Arnold, who wishes to have an affair with his mentor’s former spouse. Coincidentally, Rachel wants to begin an affair of her own with Bradley. Neither one goes well. Against Bradley’s wishes,

Christian takes Priscilla in, allowing Francis to provide her with medical care. During that time, Bradley starts an affair with Rachel but fails to consummate it when he finds he cannot perform sexually. Consequently, the two decide to end the affair and remain friends and confidants.

In the meantime, Bradley’s relationship with Julian takes a different turn. As

Bradley begins tutoring Julian – nearly 40 years his junior – Bradley becomes increasingly interested in Julian on a romantic level. Despite their difference in age, her interest is also piqued. In order to make the relationship seem slightly less objectionable to Julian, Bradley lies and tells her that he is 48 rather than 58. Once the two proclaim their feelings for one another, they run off to Bradley’s rented cottage. The rendezvous is nearly cut short when Bradley receives a phone call from Francis and learns that Priscilla has committed suicide. Bradley tells Francis to begin making funeral arrangements, but decides to keep the news from Julian, believing it will spoil the amorous atmosphere.

When Bradley returns to Julian, he finds her dressed as Shakespeare’s Hamlet and

37 subsequently makes love to her. The night ends disastrously when Arnold, who has discovered his daughter’s deplorable situation, comes to the cottage to take Julian away.

When he arrives, Arnold reveals Bradley’s lies to Julian, thereby shattering the image she had constructed. Although she chooses to stay through the rest of the night, Julian agrees to return to her parents’ home in the morning. Once there, she becomes emotionally distant from Bradley, unable to reconcile her former image of him with his far less flattering reality. By daybreak, Bradley finds that Julian has abandoned him.

Bradley attends Priscilla’s funeral, and soon after, Christian approaches him expressing her desire to reconcile and begin their marriage anew. Bradley declines, still under the impression that he can rekindle his relationship with Julian, whom he believes was taken from him against her will by her father. It is Rachel who attempts to disabuse

Bradley of this belief by telling him that Julian left on her own accord. Rachel goes on to say that Julian was prompted to leave once she, Rachel, confessed her own romantic encounter with Bradley. Infuriated, Bradley tells Rachel of Arnold’s feelings for

Christian. As a result, Rachel and Bradley part ways angrily. Several days later, a distraught Rachel phones Bradley, asking him to come to her home immediately. Bradley arrives at the Baffin household to find Arnold lying lifeless on the floor, apparently struck in the head by the same fire poker that Rachel had once been struck by. When the authorities arrive, Bradley is accused of killing Arnold and is later convicted of the murder. The jury finds evidence in support of the verdict by citing Bradley’s envy for

Arnold, which was well-known and documented. From prison, Bradley completes his novel – an autobiography that recounts the events of his own life story up to his

incarceration – with postscript entries from himself, Christian, Francis, Rachel, Julian and

the Editor, P. A. Loxias.

There are two mains ways that Murdoch connects her philosophy to The Black

Prince: Bradley’s thoughts on the creative process and the narrative style of the novel itself. The Black Prince is narrated from first person through the voice of Bradley, and as such, the reader is left to grapple with issues of objectivity, or the general lack thereof.

Bradley is far from reliable, and over the course of the novel he is shown to have serious character flaws which cast doubt on his account of events. Murdoch takes this obfuscation further by having various characters within the novel contradict each other – and at times, themselves – making the task of finding the truth all the more difficult. In this way, both the reader and the narrator must struggle to make sense of the plot as it unfolds, constantly questioning whether he or she is being deliberately misled by the narrator. While some events can be corroborated by other characters, the details that surround them are constantly in question. This is relevant to Murdoch’s philosophy in that under her aesthetics, the human mind never has absolute access to truth and the

Good, and instead views his or her reality through a prism of self-preservation. This does

not mean that all accounts are equally relative and therefore equally reliable. One person

may be more or less susceptible to selfish inclinations, which in turn, dictates the extent

to which the truth can be seen.

All of these things are important when considering the conclusion of The Black

Prince, particularly with regard to the series of postscripts written by the principal

characters. Each one gives an account of Bradley’s life after having read his own

rendition represented by the novel itself. Even at the end it is unclear whether Bradley is

in fact innocent since it is perfectly possible that he has constructed his story in such a

way so as to protect his integrity in the reader’s eyes; that is to say, the reader must

consider whether Bradley is constructing yet another fiction to create the illusion of

authenticity. We are aware that Bradley may be unreliable at times given that other

characters, such as his ex-wife, challenge his interpretation of events. Furthermore, we

are never sure whether Bradley’s love affair with Julian ever actually occurred given that

Julian never confirms the facts outright, although she does make vague allusions to the

relationship in her postscript entry. This further complicates the task of deciphering the

truth. Murdoch mentions this dilemma in Existentialists and Mystics where she says,

“The novelist is potentially the greatest truth-teller of them all, but he is also an expert

fantasy monger. This is too cosy an art form not to be often degraded in the interests of

the self-indulgent fantasy of both the writer and the reader” (233). The answer, however,

lies in determining what the novelist, or in this particular case, Bradley is attentive to –

reality or himself.

Murdoch does leave some clues as we examine the points of intersection between

her moral philosophy and her fiction. For her, a person’s ability to apprehend the Good and truth is contingent upon quality of consciousness. A person who is attentive to the reality beyond oneself is less likely to fall victim to self-consoling fantasies. For this reason, by analyzing all six of the postscripts, we can determine which ones are the most reliable, and consequently, allow us to understand who has the greatest grasp on the

Good. This is because Murdoch equates the Good and reality, which in turn, means that

40 the individual who has the greatest understanding of reality also has the greatest knowledge of the Good. Furthermore, since knowledge of the Good leads to virtue, the individual who exhibits the most accurate portrayal of events will also be the most moral character. This underlies Murdoch’s own account of moral vision and action:

Plato assumes the internal relation of value, truth, cognition. Virtue (as

compassion, humility, courage) involves a desire for and achievement of truth

instead of falsehood, reality instead of appearance. Goodness involves truth-

seeking knowledge ipso facto a discipline of desire. ‘Getting things right’, as in

meticulous grammar or mathematics, is truth-seeking as virtue. Learning anything

properly demands (virtuous) attention. Here the idea of truth plays a crucial role

(as it does also in Kant) and reality emerges as the object of truthful vision.

(Metaphysics 39).

Elsewhere, Murdoch emphasizes the connection between value and reality, claiming that the two are not only intimately connected, but one and the same. For this reason, our views on art and its relative value to our lives also demonstrates our understanding of reality. She writes, “Whether we think art is an amusement, or an education, or a revelation of reality, or is for art’s sake (whatever that may mean) will reveal what we hold to be valuable and (the same thing) what we take the world to be fundamentally like” (Existentialists 206). Given the relationship between reality, value, and virtue, we can piece together each character’s grasp on the truth by piecing together his or her views on art. In addition, we can understand a character’s aesthetic theory, even when it is not explicitly stated, so long as the character’s beliefs on reality are evident. This is what I

41 show through my analysis of The Black Prince and The Bell. In the process, my examination also demonstrates the extent to which Antonaccio’s reflexive realism squares with Murdoch’s representation of Bradley Pearson’s moral progress.

In various places in The Black Prince, Murdoch employs Bradley as her mouthpiece in order to integrate Platonic principles in the storyline. This can be seen once we compare Murdoch’s ideas on art, stated explicitly in her philosophical writings, to Bradley’s approach to writing, expressed in The Black Prince. In “The Sovereignty of

Good Over Other Concepts,” Murdoch argues that the Good is indefinable and can only be known through metaphor. In her case, the most prominently used metaphor is Plato’s

Allegory of the Cave. Bradley shares this view and expresses it as he explains the creative process by which he constructs his own novels. At the beginning of The Black

Prince, Bradley muses on the difficulty of articulating certain human truths. His thoughts come strikingly close to Murdoch’s own views as he describes the complexities of the subconscious, which he places at the center of his own creative fiction. When Marloe asks him to articulate the power of the subconscious and its connection to art, Bradley says, “You might as well try to ‘explain’ a Michelangelo on a piece of graph paper. Only art explains, and that cannot itself be explained. We and art are made for each other, and where that bond fails human life fails. Only this analogy holds, only this mirror shows a just image” (Prince 7). Bradley goes on to say, “Of course we have an ‘unconscious mind’ and this is partly what my book is about. But there is no general chart of that lost continent. Certainly not a ‘scientific’ one” (Prince 7). The fact that Bradley specifies that there cannot be a “scientific” chart of the unconscious (or subconscious) mind is

significant to Murdoch’s aesthetics. For Murdoch, the Good and the human psyche

cannot be reduced to a mere formula or fully explained through scientific methods, and therefore any attempt to evaluate it by verificationist principles will inevitably fall short.

The only way to begin to understand the nature of the Good and the human mind is through one thing: art. This is where Bradley’s character becomes relevant to understanding Murdoch’s aesthetics and ethics. Bradley, though admittedly imperfect as an artist and person in general, never deviates from this sentiment, and later on in the novel states, “Art (as I observed to young Julian) is the telling of truth, and is the only available method for the telling of certain truths” (Prince 72). For both Murdoch and

Bradley, those elusive truths are invariably ethical in nature. They demand something other than direct, factual, sterile language in order to be conveyed accurately. Of course, art can only create a “just image” if the one who creates it has knowledge of the Good him or herself.

This leads to a great difficulty for the artist, namely, the problem of how to convey human truths without projecting one’s own preconceptions on the subject matter.

Without finding a way of circumventing this problem, however, Murdoch’s realism becomes an epistemological impossibility. The temptation is to contort reality to suit our own desires. For instance, we might omit various aspects of a story in order to maintain a sense of coherence. We might also force a plot in a particular direction to advance a preconceived moral or purpose. All of these things distort the truth. “Any story which we tell about ourselves,” Murdoch writes, “consoles us since it imposes pattern upon something which might otherwise seem intolerably chancy and incomplete. However,

human life is chancy and incomplete” (Existentialists 371). Even outside the context of

literature, Murdoch insists that we constantly struggle to convey the events of our lives

without taking creative liberties that cast ourselves in the most flattering light possible. In

her essay “The Idea of Perfection,” Murdoch describes this phenomenon in the

hypothetical case of a mother, referred to only as “M,” and a daughter-in-law, referred to as “D.” Initially, M feels animosity for D, given that D is “inclined to be pert and familiar, insufficiently ceremonious, brusque, sometimes positively rude, always tiresomely juvenile” (Existentialists 312). Consequently, M believes that her son has

“married beneath” him. For a period of time, M has D pegged in her mind according to this harsh opinion, all the while carrying an attitude of animosity toward her daughter-in-

law. At some point, however, M reflects upon her own character flaws and begins to see

D differently. M, acknowledging her own tendency for narrow-minded judgment and

jealousy, starts to believe that D is far more charming than she once gave her credit for.

M finds that D is “discovered to be not vulgar but refreshingly simple, not undignified

but spontaneous, not noisy but gay, no tiresomely juvenile but delightfully youthful”

(Existentialists 310). Whereas M may have enjoyed imagining caricatures of D before, M has progressed to the stage where she can attend to D’s reality, without obscuring it with jealousy or resentment. “What M is ex hypothesi attempting to do,” says Murdoch, “is not just to see D accurately but to see her justly or lovingly” (Existentialists 317). If this is

true, then the issue of “seeing accurately” is not limited to the artist, but to every person

at every moment. In fact, Murdoch asserts that it is at the center of moral progress.

This topic is explicit in The Black Prince when Bradley is faced with the task of how to portray people justly and realistically. There are two characters that are especially difficult for Bradley to do this with: Arnold and Priscilla. Bradley feels a mixture of resentment and respect for Arnold, since he has experienced much more success as a novelist than Bradley. On this matter Bradley admits that he felt “distress that a promising young writer should have laid aside true ambition and settled so quickly into a popular mould” (Prince 22). However, to an extent, Bradley cannot help but feel responsible for Arnold’s success given the fact that he mentored the writer early on in his career. In this way, Bradley’s relationship with Arnold facilitates the pupil’s commercial success. With regard to Priscilla, Bradley has been dominated by a feeling of irritation, seeing his sister as an annoyance when she comes to live with him after leaving her husband. When Priscilla commits suicide, however, Bradley sees her much differently.

Bradley discusses the issue of accurate depiction:

How can one describe a human being ‘justly’? How can one describe oneself?

With what an air of false coy humility, with what an assumed confiding simplicity

one sets about it! ‘I am a puritan’ and so on. Faugh! How can these statements not

be false? Even ‘I am tall’ has context. How the angels must laugh and sigh. Yet

what can one do but try to lodge one’s vision somehow inside this layered stuff of

ironic sensibility, which, if I were a fictitious character, would be that much

deeper and denser? How prejudiced is the image of Arnold, how superficial this

picture of Priscilla! Emotions cloud the view, and so far from isolating the

particular, draw generality and even theory in their train. When I write of Arnold

my pen shakes with resentment, love, remorse, and fear. It is as if I were building

a barrier against him composed of words, hiding myself behind a mound of

words. We defend ourselves by descriptions and tame the world by generalizing.

What does he fear? is usually the key to the artist’s mind. Art is so often a barrier.

(Is this true even of the greatest art, I wonder?) So art becomes not

communication but mystification. When I think of my sister I feel pity,

annoyance, guilt, disgust and it is in the ‘light’ of these that I present her, crippled

and diminished by my perception itself. How can I correct these faults, my dear

friend and comrade? Priscilla was a brave woman. She endured unhappiness

grimly, with dignity. She sat alone in the morning manicuring her nails while

tears came into her eyes for her wasted life. (Prince 74)

Here we find a variation on the same ethical template Murdoch expresses in “The Idea of

Perfection” in the case of M and D. M must find a way to see D “justly and lovingly,” and similarly, Bradley must do the same with Arnold and Pricilla. While Bradley admits that he found his sister irritating, an impediment to his work as a writer, he realizes the struggles Priscilla endured before her death – the pains of a failed marriage to a man who left her for a younger woman, leaving her with no sense of permanence and stability.

Realizing the complications of his sister’s life, Bradley becomes more aware of his sister’s reality, whereas before, he projected a simplistic caricature on her. This newfound awareness constitutes moral progress for Murdoch. Bradley comes to realize that further compounding the matter for Priscilla was that she was raised by a materialistic mother, who inculcated her own superficial values. In fact, Priscilla’s mother carried a sense of

discontent her entire life for having “married beneath” her, and did not want that same

fate for her only daughter. To avoid that outcome, Priscilla was “egged on by her mother,

had ambitions, and was in no hurry to settle with one of these unprepossessing

candidates” (Prince 60). Once her ambitions are actualized in the marriage to Roger,

Priscilla discovers the pitfalls of pursuing material goods instead of a spiritual authenticity. Even so, Priscilla is never able to part ways with her bourgeois lifestyle, and even after her marriage ends, she still clings desperately to the trappings of her former existence. This is apparent as Priscilla pleads to Bradley, “Oh God, if only I’d taken my jewels with me, they mean so much to me, I saved up to buy them, and the mink stole.

And there’s two silver goblets on my dressing table and a little box made of malachite ….

Roger will have sold them out of spite. The only consolation I had was buying things”

(Prince 79). Bradley’s former selfish inclinations are clear in his response. Rather than try to help his sister, Bradley simply shoos her away, allowing Priscilla to go into the care of his ex-wife rather than care for her himself. Therefore, when writing of Priscilla,

Bradley must make the authorial decision of whether to allow his predisposition toward his sister to infect his description, or adopt a more charitable stance. For Murdoch, the latter is the right option, not just in relation to Pricilla, but to everyone. It is also the one that Bradley ultimately chooses, thus demonstrating that in spite of his character flaws, he is the character that is most closely aligned with Murdoch’s philosophy as he takes full responsibility for his actions, yet does not continue to operate with the same mentality that initially prompted them. While Bradley was admittedly selfish before, his current situation has led him to develop humility. This is important because, as Murdoch states,

“The humble man perceives the distance between suffering and death. And although he is

not by definition the good man, perhaps he is the kind of man who is most likely of all to

become good” (Existentialists 385). By the same token, Bradley may not be the

“definition of the good man,” but among the characters in The Black Prince, he is “most

likely of all to become good.”

But perhaps the place where Murdoch’s realism – and consequently, Antonaccio’s

reflexive realism – is most apparent in The Black Prince is in Bradley’s postscript. There,

Bradley entertains the various judgments of others and their likely guesses at why

Bradley supposedly murdered Arnold. For some, it was a matter of jealousy. Others,

under the influence of Francis’ testimony, believed it to be brought on by Bradley’s latent

homosexuality. Yet Bradley, after being convicted, reflects on his present surroundings

and his life prior to incarceration, writing:

I had been forcibly presented with a new mode of being and I was anxious to

explore it. I had been confronted (at last) with a sizable ordeal labeled with my

name. This was not something to be wasted. I had never felt more alert and alive

in my life and from the vantage point of my new consciousness I looked back

upon what I had been: a timid incomplete resentful man. (Prince 375)

Here again, we find that Bradley breaks from his former way of thinking and assesses

himself with accuracy. He does not wallow in self-pity nor protect himself with falsehood. He goes on to state, “Every man is tiny and comic to his neighbor. And when he seeks an idea of himself he seeks a false idea. No doubt we need these ideas, we may have to live by them, and the last ones that we will abandon are these of dignity, tragedy

48 and redemptive suffering” (Prince 382). This comes strikingly close to Antonaccio’s account which specifies “the only kind of objectivity that is possible in the realm of ethics is one that is also ‘indexed to a personal vision’. Access to the Good is never direct or unmediated but must pass through the ambiguous and conflicting energies of human subjectivity” (Human 130). In Bradley’s postscript we find that he has progressed to the point that he is able to assess himself without casting his past in a self-consoling light.

Instead, by taking stock of his life and the various recurring motives that have guided his choices, he sees the truth of the matter. This process coincides with reflexive realism in that Bradley’s moral progress is indexed to his own personal vision, and though there are ambiguous energies that come to bear on it, it is apparent that he is not susceptible to the same egotistical thought of his youth. In short, he has changed, and that change is for the better. The connections between Bradley’s aesthetics and Murdoch’s become progressively pronounced when considering Murdoch’s comment that “Art, and by ‘art’ from now on I mean good art, not fantasy art, affords us a pure delight in the independent existence of what is excellent. Both in its genesis and its enjoyment it is a thing totally opposed to selfish obsession” (Existentialists 370). Bradley’s view on the topic expresses that same sentiment as he writes, “Art is a vain and hollow show, a toy of gross illusion, unless it points beyond itself and moves ever whither it points” (Prince 384). Fully aware of his own inability to capture the essence of another person through his writing, Bradley makes sure to qualify his remarks with an acknowledgement of his own limitations.

Regarding his deceased sister he states, “May I never in my thought knit up the precise and random detail of her wretchedness so as to forget that her death was not a necessity,”

while in regards to Julian he states, “I do not, my darling girl, no matter however

passionately and intensely my thought has worked upon your being, really imagine that I

invented you … Art cannot assimilate you nor thought digest you” (Prince 384).

While Bradley is careful not to overstep his bounds and present a skewed version

of the people in his life, those same people are far less charitable. Christian is every bit as

self-absorbed as she was at the beginning of the novel and seems intent on circumventing

charges to the contrary. This comes as no surprise considering Christian’s personal views

on aesthetics, made apparent in her postscript where she writes:

And why all this fuss about art anyway, we can live without art I should think.

What about social workers and people who work on famine relief and so on, or

are they all supposed to be failures or not all there? Art isn’t everything, but of

course Bradley would think what he’s taken up with is the only important thing.

At any rate he is getting another publication out at last. (Prince 388)

Christian’s inability to take on an empathetic view of her ex-husband and her failure to develop personally cast doubt on her account. Furthermore, Christian’s remarks on art express a position that is fundamentally opposed to Murdoch’s. If it is true that what we believe about art will reveal what we believe about life, then neither art nor life are of value to Christian. But while Christian’s account can be disregarded, one character who could be a stronger candidate for the most reliable is Francis, the fool.

Francis, while a sponge, stands to benefit the least from Bradley’s innocence or guilt, and therefore is the least prone to self-serving actions. It does not appear that

Bradley possesses information that would cast Francis in an unflattering light if Bradley

50 were to be found innocent. This is not because Francis’ character is without blemish. His blemishes are many, yet they are known to all and therefore secrecy would prove superfluous. Murdoch also hints that she is operating loosely within a Shakespearean framework, which traditionally makes use of the trope of the fool, who oftentimes reveals deeper truths to tragic heroes. However, Francis insists on placing science above art when analyzing Bradley’s life, and therefore breaks from Murdoch’s aesthetics. This is apparent in Francis’ postscript as he states, “But let [Bradley] be never so cunning, he cannot evade the eye of science. (This is one reason why artists always fear and denigrate scientists.)” (Prince 391). This runs contrary to Murdoch, who does not think that science can produce an adequate system of morality. She makes this clear in “The Sovereignty of

Good Over Other Concepts” where she claims, “Equally various metaphysical substitutes for God – Reason, Science, History – are false deities. Our destiny can be examined but it cannot be justified or totally explained” (Existentialists 365). Francis, however, attempts to do just this through this psychoanalysis.

At this stage it seems clear that Murdoch’s conception of moral progress is present both in her philosophy and her novels, and that by investigating Bradley’s pilgrimage to self-knowledge, we can see Murdoch’s ethics played out in practical terms.

Bradley, it seems, represents Murdoch’s moral realism, though he has obvious character flaws. Nonetheless, Bradley’s failure to embody perfection does not preclude him from consideration as a moral exemplar. The simple fact that he doggedly pursues moral perfection and makes strides toward that end is enough. He does not avoid painful truths about himself or the world he inhabits, but rather looks at them with the humility

51 necessary to knowledge of the Good. Moreover, Bradley does not try to construct his own version of goodness. Instead, he attempts to clarify his own vision in an attempt to see the people in his life, and reality in general, with accuracy and a general absence of egoistic desire. This also seems to square with Antonaccio’s reflexive realism in that it is only through the subject (Bradley) that we see moral progress, but this is not relativism as the subject moves out of himself to consider a reality that lies beyond.

CHAPTER 3: MORAL REALISM IN THE BELL

Although the narrative style in The Bell differs from The Black Prince, Murdoch’s

moral realism is just as apparent. Through third-person omniscient narration, The Bell tells the story of Dora Greenfield, a woman trapped in a dysfunctional marriage with the emotionally abusive academic, Paul, who is perpetually absorbed in research on obscure fourteenth-century religious manuscripts at Imber Abbey – a rural Anglican convent.

While conducting his research, Paul also participates in the lay community affiliated with

Imber, which inhabits the building located just outside the enclosed abbey, Imber Court.

Reluctantly, Dora joins Paul there. Throughout the novel, Dora oscillates between trying to appease her overbearing husband and attempting to flee his suffocating presence, but never finding relief in either. As the plot unfolds, Dora eventually breaks free from the relationship once she develops the emotional fortitude to live on her own. By following

Dora’s moral development and the events that facilitate it, we can track the ways that

Murdoch interweaves her moral system with the principal storyline, thus demonstrating the connection between Murdochian philosophy and fiction. Supplementing this study is the character of James Tayper Pace, a devoted member of Imber Court’s lay community, who operates as the author’s mouthpiece at several points in the novel. By examining the respective roles that Dora and Pace play in the novel, we see how Murdoch’s novels help to resolve discrepancies in her ethical tracts, such as the one that Antonaccio and Robjant are in dispute over. Ultimately, Dora and Pace illustrate the reflexive realism which

Antonaccio endorses.

The Bell begins by outlining the factors that initially brought Dora and Paul together and created a destructive state of mutual discontent. The description squares

perfectly with Murdoch’s conception of the human psyche – wrought with innumerable

insecurities, contradictions and an overwhelming desire to seek comfort over reality. Paul

is framed as a man who exercises absolute power in his marriage due to his superior

intellect and financial success. He is essentially self-involved, with Dora serving as nothing more than a fashionable accessory – a complement to his impressive resume.

Dora, meanwhile, grapples with her own insecurities, many of which stem from her relationship and are compounded by her dependence on Paul. In explanation of Dora’s initial feelings toward Paul, the narration states:

Dora had accepted his proposal of marriage without hesitation and for a great

many reasons. She married him for his good taste and his flat in Knightsbridge.

She married him for a certain integrity and nobility of character which she saw in

him. She married him because he was so wonderfully more grown-up than her

thin neurotic art-student friends. She married him a little for his money. She

admired him and was extremely flattered by his attentions. She hoped, by making

what her mother (who was bursting with envy) called a ‘good marriage’, to be

able to get inside society and learn how to behave; although this was something

she did not put clearly to herself at the time. She married, finally, because of the

demonic intensity of Paul’s desire for her. (The Bell 2)

Dora exhibits the self-serving traits that Murdoch identifies as typical of the human mind.

In her essay, “The Sovereignty of the Good Over Other Concepts,” Murdoch claims,

“[the human psyche] is reluctant to face unpleasant realities … It constantly seeks consolation, either through imagined inflation of self or through fictions of a theological nature. Even its loving is more often than not an assertion of self” (Existentialists 364).

Dora imagines herself to be bettering her life through her marriage to a well-respected art historian and the financial comfort that comes along with it. Because Dora finds Paul’s

“demoniac desire” for her among his most attractive qualities, their love for each other is the “assertion of self” of which Murdoch speaks. While Dora tries to become the sort of

“cultivated woman” that one would commonly find in Paul’s social circles, she eventually sees that the ideal she pursues is practically impossible to achieve. Eventually,

Paul and Dora’s love for one another withers, though the two maintain their marital bonds through the faint hope that they can salvage the relationship. However, despite the obviously woeful state of the relationship, Dora is unable to recognize the situation for what it is: “Although to the pain of Paul and his friends the expression ‘let’s face it’, acquired in her student days, was still frequently on her lips, she was not in fact capable, at the moment, of confronting her situation at all” (The Bell 4). Here again, Dora is the picture of Murdoch’s solipsistic psyche – avoiding painful realities no matter how much they demand attention and care. Dora would like to have the strength to leave Paul permanently, but simply does not. Knowledge of herself, the Good, and how to remedy her relationship are all too distant for Dora to act on them. Nonetheless, it is how Dora cultivates the requisite knowledge that sheds light on the nature of Murdoch’s view of morality and its relationship to reflexive realism.

Dora’s first step toward knowledge of the Good comes one morning as she lays in bed and considers the cyclical patterns of thought which constantly lead her back to Paul and a deepening sense of despair. Momentarily, the problem comes into sharp focus. “It was just that Dora had then estimated,” the narrator explains, “with a devastating exactness which was usually alien to her, how much of sheer contempt there was in

Paul’s love; and always would be, she reflected, since she had few illusions about her ability to change herself” (The Bell 166). While Dora has few illusions about her ability to change herself, she is at least aware at this point that change is necessary; the only question is how. Her initial attempt to cope with the situation is to flee from it – seeking the company of her former lover, the playboy journalist, Noel Spens, in London. At first,

Dora finds his company amusing, particularly as the two enjoy an afternoon of drinking and dancing. However, when Paul calls Noel’s apartment unexpectedly, Dora realizes that Noel can only provide a temporary escape from reality, not a lasting resolution. The meaningful change she is in search of occurs when Dora goes to the National Gallery where she views a variety of paintings, none more captivating than Gainsborough’s depiction of his two daughters. Dora’s encounter with the image breaks her self- consoling psyche from its usual musings and draws her temporarily toward the Good, albeit subconsciously.

Dora was always moved by the pictures. Today she was moved but in a new way.

She marveled, with a kind of gratitude, that they were all still here, and her heart

was filled with love for the pictures, their authority, their marvelous generosity,

their splendor. It occurred to her that there at last was something real and

something perfect. Who had said that, about perfection and reality being in the

same place? Here was something which her consciousness could not wretchedly

devour, and by making it part of her fantasy make it worthless. . . . the pictures

were something real outside herself, which spoke to her kindly and yet in

sovereign tones, something superior and good whose presence destroyed the

dreary trance-like solipsism of her earlier mood. When the world had seemed to

be subjective it had seemed to be without interest or value. But now there was

something else in it after all. (The Bell 175)

That “something else” which Dora is intuitively aware of is the Good and its magnetic existence made visible through art. Although Dora is far from changing her lifestyle at this stage, her encounter with Gainsborough’s painting marks a significant moment which facilitates her personal growth. It is clear that Murdoch means for the passage not merely to depict an aesthetic experience, but an ethical one. In her philosophical writing

Murdoch claims, “Art transcends selfish and obsessive limitations of personality and can enlarge the sensibility of its consumer” (Existentialists 371). So Dora, in her

contemplation of Gainsborough’s painting, simultaneously expands the capacity to

suspend her usual habits of thought and take on a more objective perspective. In short,

she has improved morally, though she must continue to engage in such activities if the

change is to have any lasting effect. Murdoch emphasizes the importance of this practice

as she writes, “Art then is not a diversion or a side issue, it is the most educational of all

human activities and a place in which the nature of morality can be seen . . . An

understanding of any art involves a recognition of hierarchy and authority . . . We

surrender ourselves to its authority with a love which is unpossessive and unselfish”

(Existentialists 372). Murdoch addresses this same topic in Metaphysics as a Guide to

Morals, where she writes, “The good life becomes increasingly selfless through an increased awareness of, sensibility to, the world beyond the self” (Metaphysics 53). This

is precisely what occurs during Dora’s aesthetic experience. As she returns to confront

Paul and the reality of her marriage, she comes closer to responding without the fear that

held her captive beforehand. In addition, Dora’s time at the National Gallery offers, in

practical terms, the ways in which Antonaccio’s reflexive realism operates at the

individual level. “The reflexivity of Murdoch’s realist position means that the idea of the

good cannot depend for its objectivity on being conceptually located ‘outside’

consciousness,” explains Antonaccio, “Rather, the only kind of objectivity that is possible

in the realm of ethics is also ‘indexed to a personal vision’” (Human 130). In relation to

Dora, she cannot compare her individual understanding of the Good with the Good itself,

because as Antonaccio goes on to say, “Access to the good is never direct or unmediated

but must pass through the ambiguous and conflicting energies of human subjectivity”

(Human 130). The fact that the Good is personally indexed and must be viewed through the “conflicting energies of human subjectivity” is what leads Antonaccio to refer to

Murdoch’s realism as “reflexive,” but this does not mean that it is relative. Instead, it

“means that moral change requires a transformation of both vision and will through a normative use of imagination as attention or realistic vision” (Human 154). Hence, the

importance of actively confronting reality without omitting detail for the sake of self-

preservation:

Ignorance, muddle, fear, wishful thinking, lack of tests often make us feel that

moral choice is something arbitrary, a matter for personal will rather than for

attentive study. …Yet is the situation really so different? …Should an elderly

relation who is a trouble-maker be cared for or asked to go away? Should an

unhappy marriage be continued for the sake of children? Should I leave my

family in order to do political work? Should I neglect them in order to practice my

art? The love which brings the right answer is an exercise of justice and realism

and really looking. …It is a task to come to see the world as it is. (Existentialists

375)

Here, Murdoch bridges the gap between moral theory and practice. She presents a number of questions that force the moral agent to choose between a number of competing interests, some of which must be abandoned in favor of others. Out of necessity, the circumstances might require an either-or rather than a both-and response. Later, we see how relevant these matters are to Dora, who must decide whether to remain in her marriage or abandon it in order to pursue art. In keeping with Murdoch’s philosophy, the answer depends entirely on how attentive Dora is to reality.

Despite Dora’s experience at the National Gallery, however, her moral progress is far from complete. When she returns to Imber Court, Dora feels that she has come back

“of her own free will, performing a real action” (The Bell 180), but once she reunites with

Paul, it is clear that she is still unprepared to break from the comfortable patterns of her old life, destructive though they may be. Murdoch hints that Dora has not fully transitioned into a more moral mode of existence in the scene depicting her return to

Imber Court. As it happens, Dora arrives at the abbey in the middle of a Bach recital.

Rather than a reproduction of her experience at the National Gallery, Dora is unmoved by

the music at Imber, thus signaling her lack of aesthetic taste, and as Murdoch would

argue, her moral immaturity. The narration explains, “Dora disliked any music in which

she could not participate herself by singing or dancing” (The Bell 178). Here, it is clear

that Dora’s criteria for quality runs counter to Murdoch’s. Whereas Murdoch believes

that good art should silence the self, Dora wants to elevate it by making it part of the

aesthetic experience. It is for this reason that Dora’s disposition makes it difficult to

appreciate Bach’s musical merit. In describing Dora’s response to the recital the narration

explains, “She listened now with distaste to the hard patterns of sound which plucked at

her emotions without satisfying them and which demanded in an arrogant way to be

contemplated. Dora refused to contemplate them” (The Bell 178). And if there were any

doubt as to what Dora feels during the recital, it is removed once we consider her

subconscious reaction to the other audience members, whom she regards as “the spiritual

ruling class” of Imber Court. As she scans the faces in attendance, Dora wishes “suddenly

that she might grow as large and fierce as a gorilla and shake the flimsy doors off their

hinges, drowning the repulsive music in a savage carnivorous yell” (The Bell 179). Given this description, it should come as no surprise that Dora relapses morally and chooses again to seek Paul’s affirmation. But ironically, the way that Dora tries to gain affirmation actually results in the opposite, setting a series of events in motion that makes a break with Paul possible, which in turn, gives Dora the opportunity to finalize her moral transformation.

In a last-ditch effort to impress Paul, Dora conjures a plan to present the abbey’s original bell, which had been missing for centuries, to the Imber community. Nick, another member of the lay community, discovered the bell in a nearby lake while swimming, and not knowing its significance, told Dora of his finding. Dora, excited at the prospect of retrieving the bell and returning it to the abbey, asks Nick to help her drag it up from the lake so that it can be delivered at Imber’s upcoming ceremony where a new bell is to be christened. To Dora, the act would constitute a “miracle.” The retrieval goes as planned, with Nick and Dora chaining the bell to a tractor and dragging it up in the secrecy of night, but the presentation is anything but miraculous. Unbeknownst to Dora,

Noel gets word of Dora’s plan and decides to attend the presentation ceremony and cover the event for the Daily Record, a London newspaper. Knowing that Paul would be infuriated by Noel’s presence and perhaps resort to violence, Dora tries frantically to convince Noel to leave. When he does not, Dora realizes that disaster is inevitable. To

Dora, “The enterprise now seemed as cheap to her as it would shortly seem to the readers of the sensational press: at best funny in a vulgar way, at worst thoroughly nasty” (The

Bell 247). The episode turns out more nasty than Dora could have anticipated, when on the day of the ceremony, the new bell is carried by a wooden trolley to the gates of the nunnery. The trolley, which is later shown to have been sabotaged, collapses in plain view of the audience, sending the bell tumbling into the lake. Noel, of course, reports the event in all its tragi-comic detail. Cruelly, Paul insists on having Dora read the article the following morning, and afterwards interrogates her in hopes of learning who was behind the debacle. Although Dora admits to her role, she does not know and therefore cannot

tell Paul who had caused the trolley to break. Unconvinced, Paul says disdainfully, “I

wonder why I ask you questions when I never believe what you say . . . Perhaps you’d better see a psychiatrist” (The Bell 265). Offended, Dora insists that she will not see a psychiatrist, to which Paul retorts, “You will if I decide you will” (The Bell 266). The two part ways acrimoniously, with Paul demanding that Dora join him at Knightsbridge, their time at Imber Court now at a close. It is at this stage that Dora must decide whether to return to her husband or pursue an alternate path. The latter would demonstrate moral growth, provided her motives for doing so do not depend on selfish inclinations, while the former would prove Dora’s moral development arrested.

Dora’s moral growth becomes manifest by the end of the novel, just as the lay community at Imber Court dissolves. Rather than return home with Paul, Dora decides to stay at Imber Court along with Michael Meade, another former member of Imber who happens to own the property. However, “Running away was worthless unless she could find herself a way of life which had dignity and independence, and in which she could win the strength needed to make her able to treat with Paul equally and stop being afraid of him” (The Bell 283). If fear and self-preservation prompt a reunion, then Dora’s time away from Paul would be all for naught, simply another instance of self-indulgence. But this does not seem to be the case. After Dora parts with Paul, she finds ways to make herself useful at Imber Court – running errands, filing paperwork, and cleaning the grounds – and appears “with a dignity and resolution which seemed new to her” (The

Bell 279). To her own surprise, Dora even teaches herself how to swim, an activity that once paralyzed her with fear, and shows a “sudden enthusiasm for classical music,”

62 which as the Bach recital showed, had not always been in line with her personality. But perhaps most important is that Dora returns to painting, because while her talent is admittedly meager, the practice of attending to reality becomes a kind of ritual wherein

Dora cultivates virtue and vision. In this way, her courage and refined tastes are a natural outcome of her burgeoning knowledge of the Good.

For Murdoch, Dora’s rekindled interest in art signals an ethical evolution, because as we have seen, “Both in its [art’s] genesis and its enjoyment it is a thing totally opposed to selfish obsession. It invigorates our best faculties and, to use Platonic language, inspires love in the highest part of the soul” (Existentialists 370). While Dora once had an aversion to reality, evidenced by her running off to London with Noel for example, and was prone to self-consoling fantasy, she proves to be far from her former self, adopting a more charitable and accurate view of herself. This allows her to perceive her marriage more clearly, and though she still finds Paul cruel, she acknowledges the role she played in the relationship’s collapse. Ultimately, she concludes she cannot continue playing the role of submissive, voiceless wife. Once Dora arrives at this stage, her transformation begins to solidify:

Dora, when questioned, showed herself but too eager to discuss the whole matter

with [Michael], and so they discussed it. She told him that she had decided that

there was no point in her returning to Paul at any rate at present. She would only

run away again. It was inevitable that Paul should bully her and that she should

vacillate between submitting through fear and resisting through resentment. She

was plain that things were mostly her fault and that she should never have married

Paul at all. As things were, she felt that she would never manage to live with Paul

until she could treat with him, in some sense, as an equal . . . She felt intensely the

need and somehow now the capacity to live and work on her own and become,

what she had never been, an independent grown-up person. (The Bell 282).

Although Paul had once thought of Dora as “the type of woman who was made to vacillate between teasing and submitting,” she is anything but at the conclusion of the novel. She no longer feels the need to seek validation through Paul, nor enjoy the comforts that his wealth provided. She is fully independent, and this is made possible only by virtue of her newfound understanding of the Good, which is tantamount to reality. Summarizing the essential process of moral development Murdoch writes, “The difficulty is to keep the attention fixed upon the real situation and to prevent it from returning surreptitiously to the self with consolations of self-pity, resentment, fantasy and despair” (Existentialists 375). Keeping her attention fixed upon the real situation, it seems, is exactly what Dora does. She entertains the possibility of returning to school and taking a job as a teacher, and though the likelihood seems slim at first, the idea becomes more realistic once she receives a letter from her longtime friend Sally, who has recently taken a job in Bath as an art teacher and is in search of a roommate. With this, Dora’s hopes coalesce with reality.

But even with the enticing prospect of joining Sally in Bath, Dora still has to confront the situation with Paul, who remains peripherally influential in her life. Dora tries to explain her decision to stay at Imber Court through letters to Paul, but Paul

invariably responds with calculated words crafted to capitalize on his wife’s insecurities.

Paul’s letters, meant to draw Dora back to him, assert that

[I]t was time for her to submit. This was in fact what she really wanted to do, and

she would find that this was where her true happiness lay. Independence was a

chimera. All that would happen would be that she would be drawn into a new love

affair. And was it right, because she knew that he would wait for her indefinitely,

that she should inflict upon him, indeed, upon both of them, these continual and

pointless sufferings? He was aware that when she had some new fantasy in her

head she was cold and ruthless, but he appealed to her common sense and to any

remembrance that she had of how much she had loved him. (The Bell 291)

In contrast to her prior disposition, Dora is “moved but not profoundly shaken by these

communications,” and proceeds with her plans to go to Bath, having earned a grant to

complete her studies and accepted a part-time teaching job. Murdoch intimates that Dora

has indeed made moral progress by subtly referencing Plato’s Allegory of the Cave as

Michael observes, “Dora turning towards life and happiness like a strong plant towards

the sun, assimilating all that lay in her way” (The Bell 289). Just as the prisoner in Plato’s allegory eventually gains knowledge of the Good, symbolized by the sun, Dora too is being drawn to knowledge of reality, thereby indicating her moral transformation.

Dora’s personal awakening also helps us negotiate the debate between Robjant and Antonaccio in that we can gauge the extent to which her development illustrates the contested notion of reflexive realism. Antonaccio explains, “The purification or transformation of consciousness requires finding objects of attention that will refocus and

redirect vision and psychic energy away from the self. This is what makes [Murdoch’s]

reflexive position realist in its fundamental orientation” (Human 135). Antonaccio later

adds, “[Murdoch imagines] the good as a ‘pure moral source’ that lies outside

consciousness, yet works through the energies of consciousness to effect moral change

from within” (Human 135). This seems to square with Murdoch’s depiction of moral

development as described through Dora. Dora, once she becomes more attentive to the

Good through art, begins to refocus and redirect her mind away from the self.

Consequently, Dora’s aesthetic sensibility develops in conjunction with her capacity for

empathy. This process is essentially identical to the reflexive realism Antonaccio

recommends. That said, Antonaccio gains an advantage when we consider Murdoch’s

ethics as depicted through Dora; but it is still unclear whether her position as a whole prevails over Robjant. Before that can be determined, further examination of Murdoch’s

position on morality as seen through her fiction is necessary.

The connection between the Good and reality – a parallel that Murdoch conceives

of as necessary – continues throughout The Bell and is reflected in the sermon James

Tayper Pace delivers to the community at Imber Court. Like Murdoch, who believes that

it is necessary to look to the reality outside of the psyche in order to apprehend the Good,

Pace claims that one must turn outward in order to make moral progress. Even an

examination of the mechanism that stands as an obstacle to accurate vision – i.e., the self

– can distract us from the actual task of seeing past it. With that in mind, Pace states,

“The study of personality, indeed the whole conception of personality, is, as I see it,

dangerous to goodness” (The Bell 119). What Pace has in mind is something akin to

Murdoch’s claim that the moral life requires an attachment to reality, and that “it is an attachment to what lies outside the fantasy mechanism, and not a scrutiny of the mechanism itself, that liberates. Close scrutiny of the mechanism often merely strengthens its power” (Existentialists 355). In effect, what happens when the individual focuses on the self is that he or she remains inattentive to the Good and reality, and consequently, the moral agent undercuts his or her own effort to achieve virtue. Since right action depends on the quality of attention, the attention cannot be clarified unless it is directed at the proper object – the Good. Murdoch writes, “’Self-knowledge’, in the sense of a minute understanding of one’s own machinery [is] usually a delusion . . . such self-knowledge may of course be induced in analysis for therapeutic reasons, but ‘the cure’ does not prove the alleged knowledge genuine” (Existentialists 355). And in

“Sovereignty of the Good Over Other Concepts,” Murdoch elaborates on the same idea in relation to the fire described in Plato’s Cave: “The fire may be mistaken for the sun, and self-scrutiny taken for goodness. (Of course not everyone who escapes from the cave need have spent much time by the fire)” (Existentialists 383). Pace’s sermon sounds strikingly similar:

We are told at school, at least I was told at school, to have ideals. This, it seems to

me, is rot. Ideals are dreams. They come between us and reality – when what we

need most is just precisely to see reality. And that is something outside us. Where

perfection is, reality is. And where do we look for perfection? Not in some

imaginary concoction out of our idea of our own character – but in something

external and so remote that we can get only now and then a distant hint of it. (The

Bell 119)

Here we see that by comparing our reading of Murdoch’s philosophy to her fiction, we find a more complete understanding of her ethical system. Whereas Murdoch is unclear at times about the relationship between the Good and Platonic reality – namely, whether the two are distinct or synonymous – her fiction offers supplemental evidence in support of the view that they are one and the same. As Pace asserts, “Where perfection is, reality is.”

Another area where Pace’s sermon dovetails with Murdoch’s ethics is in his discussion of perfection. For both, perfection is the cornerstone of the moral life, although their accompanying metaphysics are arguably different. Pace observes, “The fact is, God has not left us without guidance. How, otherwise, could our Lord have given us the high command ‘Be ye therefore perfect’? Matthew five forty-eight” (The Bell 119).

Likewise, in her essay, “The Idea of Perfection,” Murdoch quotes the same biblical passage in support of her realism, writing, “In suggesting that the central concept of morality is ‘the individual’ thought of as knowable by love, thought of in light of the command, ‘Be ye therefore perfect’, I am not, in spite of the philosophical backing which

I might here resort to, suggesting anything in the least esoteric” (Existentialists 323). She then adds, “It is all very well to say that ‘to copy a right action is to act rightly’

(Hampshire, Logic and Appreciation), but what is the form which I am supposed to copy?” (Existentialists 323). That form, for Pace and Murdoch, is perfection itself.

Murdoch expands on this notion at length in her essay titled, “On ‘God’ and ‘Good’.”

There she explains the necessary connection between perfection and love, writing:

Let us consider the case of conduct. What of the command ‘Be ye therefore

perfect?’ Would it not be more sensible to say ‘Be ye therefore slightly

improved?’ Some psychologists warn us that if our standards are too high we

shall become neurotic. It seems to me that the idea of love arises necessarily in

this context. The idea of perfection moves, and possibly changes us (as artist,

worker, agent) because it inspires love in the part of us that is most worthy. One

cannot feel unmixed love for a mediocre moral standard any more than one can

for the work of a mediocre artist. The idea of perfection is also a natural producer

of order. (Existentialists 350)

If we take Pace’s sermon to be in line with Murdoch’s philosophy, we see the importance of perfection to the process of moral growth. This again brings us to the contemporary debate in Murdochian scholarship, since Antonaccio believes it (perfection) is integral to understanding reflexive realism. She states, “The good is discovered through the medium of consciousness as it reflects on itself; yet at the same time, the act of reflexivity reveals the good to be a perfection or ‘higher condition’ that transcends or surpasses consciousness” (Human 119). What this means is that perfection is known through the consciousness, but perfection is not ontologically dependent on the consciousness. Later,

Antonaccio again connects perfection with reflexive realism, stating, “Reflexive realism is able to account for both the self-determining and the mediated nature of moral identity by showing that the individual must engage in a critical assessment of moral claims through the work of moral cognition guided by an idea of perfection” (Human 174).

Here, Antonaccio claims that the process of examining moral claims can only be done in

69 conjunction with the concept of perfection, but because one’s understanding of perfection is always mediated by the consciousness, the realism is said to be reflexive in nature. It should also be noted that apprehension of perfection and the Good is not done in a sudden flash of understanding, but instead, is gradually gained through the practice of attending to it. “We find out what things are good,” Antonaccio explains, “not through an immediate apprehension that certain things contain the “property” of goodness, as Moore held, but rather as we discern gradations of value through sustained acts of attention”

(Human 128). This is precisely why Dora’s moral progress is drawn out – she must meditate on the Good over an extended period of time before the any changes begin to emerge. So for Murdoch and Antonaccio, the Good is known incrementally, never instantly or wholly. This is why Murdoch claims, “Will cannot run very far ahead of knowledge, and attention is our daily bread” (Existentialists 335).

CHAPTER 4: CONCLUSION

Iris Murdoch’s moral realism is as apparent in her novels as it is in her philosophy, and in many ways, Murdoch uses the two genres to complement one another.

While Murdoch is able to articulate her ethical system in her philosophical writing, her fiction presents a picture of how that system operates on the practical level. For this reason, one cannot fully understand Murdoch’s philosophy without examining the ways in which she expresses it through her novels. However, some of the leading contemporary commentary on Murdoch’s work underutilizes her fiction as an avenue through which to grasp the nuances of her moral realism. It is for this reason that Maria

Antonaccio and David Robjant are in dispute over how best to interpret Murdoch’s philosophy. Antonaccio’s interpretation hinges on her concept of reflexive realism, while

Robjant contends that reflexive realism is incongruous with Murdoch’s original position.

By comparing Antonaccio’s and Robjant’s respective claims to Murdoch’s novels The

Black Prince and The Bell, we reach a vantage point from which to determine whose position most accurately describes the author’s ethical system. I argue that Antonaccio’s views withstand Robjant’s criticism, although her construction of reflexive space is incompatible with Murdoch’s moral realism.

The strength of Antonaccio’s interpretation lies in how she constructs the process of moral development while simultaneously avoiding ethical relativism. This is difficult, given that Murdoch contends that the subjective consciousness has the capacity to know

the Good, but that knowledge is never fully objective. To some extent, the self is always

present, constantly muddling our moral vision. In light of this it might be argued that

epistemological and ethical relativism are unavoidable, but Antonaccio defends

Murdoch’s realism by claiming that “[t]he good is discovered through the medium of consciousness as it reflects on itself; yet at the same time, the act of reflexivity reveals the good to be a perfection or ‘higher condition’ that transcends or surpasses consciousness”

(Human 119). This is what Antonaccio means by “reflexive realism,” and in further explanation of it she writes, “. . . the only kind of objectivity that is possible in the realm of ethics is one that is also ‘indexed to a personal vision’. Access to the good is never direct or unmediated but must pass through the ambiguous and conflicting energies of human subjectivity” (Human 130). So we see that objectivity in this context depends on the quality of the individual’s consciousness and the degree to which he or she is attentive to the Good. This point is validated in The Bell, when Dora Greenfield visits the

National Gallery and when James Tayper Pace delivers his sermon. As Dora views the

Gainsborough painting and meditates on its form, she is able to stifle her usual pattern of

thought and catch of a glimpse of the Good. In that moment she thinks to herself, “Who

had said that, about perfection and reality being in the same place? . . . the pictures were

something real outside herself, which spoke to her kindly and yet in sovereign tones,

something superior and good whose presence destroyed the dreary trance-like solipsism

of her earlier mood” (The Bell 175). Here, we see that Dora’s experience points to a

reality and value which is independent of her own consciousness, though it is true that her

knowledge of that reality is “indexed to a personal vision,” as Antonaccio suggests. Pace

echoes that sentiment and emphasizes the independent nature of the Good when he states,

“. . . what we need most is just precisely to see reality. And that is something outside us.

Where perfection is, reality is” (The Bell 119). Pace goes on to acknowledge that the

Good, which is synonymous with perfection, is only partially known, but that our own epistemological limitations do not lead to relativism: “And where do we look for perfection? Not in some imaginary concoction out of our idea of our own character – but in something external and so remote that we can get only now and then a distant hint of it” (The Bell 119). With Antonaccio’s notion of reflexive realism apparent in both Dora’s aesthetic experience and Pace’s sermon, it is clear that her interpretation is in line with

Murdoch’s moral realism. But what is less clear is whether that is enough to overcome all of Robjant’s objections.

One of the most compelling criticisms Robjant lowers against Antonaccio is in relation to her construction of “reflexive space,” a term which Murdoch herself does not use, but Antonaccio employs to designate the liminal space between the psyche and reality. Antonaccio explains, “This is preeminently the case with the concept of the good, which Murdoch locates in the reflexive ‘space’ that exists between the truth-seeking mind and the world” (Human 51). The key term here is “between.” The description Antonaccio offers seems to suggest that the Good stands apart from reality itself, existing in a hypothetical area between the consciousness and reality. This idea appears to be antithetical to Murdoch’s realism, especially upon considering Dora’s and Pace’s claims that “perfection and reality” are synonymous. But Antonaccio believes she has drawn her interpretation from Murdoch’s remark, “[Values] are not moving about on their own as adjuncts of the personal will … they are patently tied on to the world, they are stretched

73 as it were between the truth-seeking mind and the world” (Existentialists 374). The problem with this interpretation, as Robjant sees it, is that Murdoch believes that the

Good refers to reality. Meanwhile, Antonaccio’s interpretation conflates the concept (of the Good) with reality. On this Robjant states, “Murdoch appears to intend that the Good is a reality that our concept of the Good is stretching towards. Yet what Antonaccio takes from it is that if value concepts are ‘stretched as it were between the truth seeking mind and the world’, then value itself must be stretched as it were between the truth seeking mind and the world” (Robjant 997). Herein lies the problem – Antonaccio, in her interpretation of Murdoch’s philosophy, strips it of the moral realism which is essential to the system as a whole. In light of this point, Robjant justifiably believes that Antonaccio

“does violence” to Murdoch’s position, arguing, “For Murdoch, moral language deploys a concept, and that concept instances a conception of the world. For Antonaccio in contrast, ‘good’ refers to a concept, but the concept doesn’t refer onwards to some reality that it is a concept of” (Robjant 997-98). Although there are points where Murdoch’s philosophy is open to interpretation, the relationship between the Good and reality is not one of them. Murdoch, as we have seen in her philosophy and fiction, has consistently maintained that the Good and reality are one and the same. Therefore, Robjant’s criticism stands. However, it does not necessarily follow that Antonaccio’s position is without merit, and that Robjant’s criticisms effectively undercut her entire position.

Whereas Antonaccio’s seminal work Picturing the Human: The Moral Thought of

Iris Murdoch is bereft of any reference to Murdoch’s novels, Robjant makes limited use of Murdoch’s fiction to advance his argument. Robjant cites Murdoch’s The Unicorn and

The Black Prince in order to highlight some of the missteps in Peter J. Conradi’s

commentary where he (Conradi) claims that Murdoch presents “something like a

Buddhist world picture” (qtd. in Robjant 1003). Conradi’s position has little to do with

the disagreement between Robjant and Antonaccio, but unwittingly, Robjant’s criticism

supports Antonaccio’s reflexive realism. Robjant begins by pointing out that Conradi’s

interpretation of Murdochian moral progress emphasizes “selflessness as a cardinal

virtue,” but that “it is however not selfishness to own one’s own experiences” (Robjant

1004). Robjant means to distinguish between “the self as an object of love . . . and the

subject as a feature of grammar” (Robjant 1004). In support of that distinction Robjant

quotes a passage from The Unicorn, where a minor character named Effingham has a near-death experience while sinking in muddy water. The episode results in moral growth.

Effingham had never confronted death. The confrontation brought with it a new

quietness and a new terror … He could not envisage what was to come. He did

not want to perish whimpering. As if obeying some imperative, a larger

imperative than he had ever acknowledged before, he collected himself and

concentrated his attention . . . Something had been withdrawn, had slipped away

from him in the moment of his attention, and that something was simply himself. .

. . Yet what was left, for something was surely left, something existed still? . . .

What was left was everything else, all that was not himself, that object which had

never before been seen and upon which he now gazed with the passion of a lover .

. . He looked, and knew with a clarity which was one with increasing light, that

with the death of the self the world becomes quite automatically the object of a

perfect love. (qtd. in Robjant 1004)

Commenting on the passage Robjant writes, “Effingham experiences a loss of the self and, ‘quite automatically’, a perfect love of a newly revealed world. But this transference of Love is not the death of the subject. Effingham’s experiences are his own, are events in his history” (Robjant 1004). What Robjant fails to recognize is that the passage essentially illustrates the reflexive realism that he himself rejects. This is apparent since

Effingham comes to discover objective ethical knowledge through his encounter with death, though that knowledge is indexed to his own subjective vision. As Robjant puts it,

Effingham’s newfound awareness stems from incidents which are “events in his history.”

So while Robjant may successfully negate Conradi’s remarks, he inadvertently validates

Antonaccio’s.

If Robjant’s criticism is at all effective, it is not in that it shows the weaknesses in

Antonaccio’s position, but in Murdoch’s. The matter begins with Antonaccio trying to salvage Murdoch’s philosophy from one of its most severe vulnerabilities by employing reflexive realism. The concept, if granted, allows for a more charitable and consistent reading of Murdoch’s philosophy, which never clearly articulates the factors that render an experience ethical. Is it some quality in the art object itself or is it the quality of the individual’s attention? Regardless of how one responds, this leads to even more problems. If the aesthetic experience depends on characteristics of the art object, then which ones? And how are they identified? Or if the experience rests on the quality of one’s attention then is every scenario or art object potentially ethical? The answer is not

altogether obvious. Because of this sprawling problem Antonaccio turns to reflexive

realism and reflexive space, thereby circumnavigating the issue of which entity grounds

ethics – the subject or the object. The maneuver attempts to take a supposed middle-

ground, making knowledge of the Good simultaneously contingent on the subject and the

object, thus allowing for ethical “objectivity,” though not in the traditional sense. But,

upon closer examination, the initial problem is not fully settled. By trying to tie the

aesthetic experience to both the subject and the object, Murdoch achieves neither, and it

is this inconsistency that Robjant accurately identifies. However, the fault does not lie

with Antonaccio’s interpretation; it is with Murdoch’s philosophy. As Antonaccio notes,

“The most significant problem we face in this task is how to define the objectivity of a norm that is to be internal to consciousness” (Human 130). If Robjant proves anything, it

is that this problem remains unresolved.

Ultimately, Antonaccio continues to be one of the leading voices on Murdoch’s

philosophy. Her concept of reflexive realism does much to explain the ways in which

Murdoch’s realism attempts to avoid ethical relativism. She successfully demonstrates, or

at least is consistent with, Murdoch’s view that objectivity is possible in ethics despite

knowledge being “indexed to a personal vision.” This idea runs throughout Murdoch’s

fiction, particularly in The Black Prince and The Bell. But it is hard to ignore the

inconsistency between Antonaccio’s notion of reflexive space and Murdoch’s own

position. Reflexive space is never expressed, in name or otherwise, anywhere in

Murdoch’s writings. Nor does it cohere with Murdoch’s realism on the whole. But even

so, we must ask whether this is enough to dismiss the entirety of Antonaccio’s argument,

77 along with the useful notion of reflexive realism. In the end, I believe it is not.

Antonaccio’s treatment of reflexive space takes up a small portion of her interpretation and her construction of reflexive realism does not depend on it. Robjant’s criticism of reflexive realism, however, does. Perhaps the best way to negotiate the present debate is to turn again to Murdoch’s own words. She writes, “[Although the humble man] is not by definition the good man, perhaps he is the kind of man who is most likely of all to become good” (Existentialists 385). Similarly, Antonaccio’s interpretation may not be the definitive voice in Murdochian philosophy, but it might well be the most likely of all to do so.

WORKS CITED

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Moore, GE. Principia Ethica. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press,

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Murdoch, Iris. The Bell, a Novel. New York: Viking, 1958. Print.

Murdoch, Iris. The Black Prince: Iris Murdoch. London: Chatto and Windus, 1973. Print.

Murdoch, Iris, and Peter J. Conradi. Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy

and Literature. New York: Allen Lane/The Penguin, 1998. Print.

Murdoch, Iris. Metaphysics As a Guide to Morals. New York: Penguin, 1993. Print.

Plato. The Republic. Trans. G.M. Grube, and C.D.C. Reeve. Indianapolis: Hackett

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Robjant, David. "As a Buddhist Christian; the Misappropriation of Iris Murdoch." The

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Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge,

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