Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature

Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature

by Iris Murdoch (Author)

Synopsis

Best-known for her novels and longer philosophical works, Iris Murdoch was also a brilliant essayist, and produced classic pieces on a wide range of philosophical and literary subjects. Through essays such as `Existentialists and Mystics' she helped to create a new climate of thought in the post-war years, by bringing existentialism to British consciousness, and subjecting it to rigorous criticism. She has also contributed her own original philosophical thought, in the fields of metaphisics and moral philosophy. But until now her essays have been, at best, scattered in anthologies and periodicals. This collection, edited by Murdoch scholar Peter Conradi, brings them together in one volume. It includes classics such as `Against Dryness' her influential polemic on fiction and philosophy; and key evaluations of the thinking of T. S. Eliot, Simone Weil, Satre and de Beauvoir and Elias Canetti. EXISTENTIALISTS AND MYSTICS is a brilliant, enlightening and accessible volume from one of the greatest, most impassioned intellects of our time.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 576
Edition: UK ed.
Publisher: Chatto & Windus
Published: 03 Jul 1997

ISBN 10: 0701166290
ISBN 13: 9780701166298
Book Overview: Profound yet accessible essays on philosophy and art by one of our greatest novelists and thinkers.

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).