Morality as Attention: the Ethical Dictionary of Iris Murdoch

Abstract

The article approaches Iris Murdoch’s moral philosophy from the perspective of ethical cognitivism, according to which attention, rather than will, is the crucial moral category. At first the author presents a general outline of Murdoch’s ethics, focusing (1) on her interpretation of the relation between metaphysics and ethics and her concept of goodness and (2) her understanding of consciousness and imagination. This is followed (3) by Murdoch’s ethical dictionary in which the concepts of moral perception and (4) of attention (which Murdoch reconstructed from Simone Weil’s texts) play a most important role. Next, (5) the conception of morality as attention is set in the context of Murdoch’s neotheology and (6) her aesthetic views about art, which she conceives as a case of morals. Finally (7) the author presents three views on morality that can be derived from Murdoch’s novel The Bell.