Metaphysics As A Guide To Morals (Vintage classics)

New
Paperback
2003
$15.66

The decline of religion and ever increasing influence of science pose acute ethical issues for us all. Can we reject the literal truth of the Gospels yet still retain a Christian morality? Can we defend any 'moral values' against the constant encroachments of technology? Indeed, are we in danger of losing most of the qualities which make us truly human? Here, drawing on a novelists insight into art, literature and psychology, Iris Murdoch conducts an ongoing debate with major writers, thinkers and theologians - from Augustine to Wittgenstein, Shakespeare to Sartre, Plato to Derrida - to provide fresh and compelling answers to these crucial questions.

Synopsis

The decline of religion and ever increasing influence of science pose acute ethical issues for us all. Can we reject the literal truth of the Gospels yet still retain a Christian morality? Can we defend any 'moral values' against the constant encroachments of technology? Indeed, are we in danger of losing most of the qualities which make us truly human? Here, drawing on a novelists insight into art, literature and psychology, Iris Murdoch conducts an ongoing debate with major writers, thinkers and theologians - from Augustine to Wittgenstein, Shakespeare to Sartre, Plato to Derrida - to provide fresh and compelling answers to these crucial questions.

$15.66

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3 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 528
Edition: New edition
Publisher: Vintage Classics
Published: 03 Apr 2003
ISBN 10: 0099433559
ISBN 13: 9780099433552
Book Overview: 'Iris Murdoch has written a book which concerns all of us as human beings-There are pages here that one wants to embrace her for, pages that say things of fundamental human importance in a way that they have never quite been said before' Sunday Telegraph

Media Reviews

This is philosophy dragged from the cloister, dusted down and made freshly relevant -- Terry Eagleton * Guardian *
Gripping...it enchants with a clause that sets you day-dreaming, captivates with a stream of thought, empowers with reminiscences * London Review of Books *
It is a great congested work, a foaming sourcebook, about life, imagination, tragedy, philosophy, morality, religion and art * Independent *
Remarkable... Iris Murdoch has once again put us all in her debt * New York Times Book Review *
Anyone who has even the slightest interest in philosophical matters will find Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals an utterly absorbing book * Wall Street Journal *

Author Bio

Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin in 1919. She read Classics at Somerville College, Oxford, and after working in the Treasury and abroad, was awarded a research studentship in Philosophy at Newnham College, Cambridge. In 1948 she returned to Oxford as fellow and tutor at St Anne's College and later taught at the Royal College of Art. Until her death in 1999, she lived in Oxford with her husband, the academic and critic, John Bayley. She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1987 and in the 1997 PEN Awards received the Gold Pen for Distinguished Service to Literature. Iris Murdoch made her writing debut in 1954 with Under the Net. Her twenty-six novels include the Booker prize-winning The Sea, The Sea (1978), the James Tait Black Memorial prize-winning The Black Prince (1973) and the Whitbread prize-winning The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974). Her philosophy includes Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (1953) and Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992); other philosophical writings, including 'The Sovereignty of Good' (1970), are collected in Existentialists and Mystics (1997).