Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and LiteratureBest known as the author of twenty-six novels, Iris Murdoch has also made significant contributions to the fields of ethics and aesthetics. Collected here for the first time in one volume are her most influential literary and philosophical essays. Tracing Murdoch's journey to a modern Platonism, this volume includes incisive evaluations of the thought and writings of T. S. Eliot, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvior, and Elias Canetti, as well as key texts on the continuing importance of the sublime, on the concept of love, and the role great literature can play in curing the ills of philosophy.Existentialists and Mystics not only illuminates the mysticism and intellectual underpinnings of Murdoch's novels, but confirms her major contributions to twentieth-century thought. |
Contents
Prologue | 1 |
A Conversation with Bryan Magee | 3 |
Nostalgia for the Particular 195157 | 31 |
Thinking and Language | 33 |
Nostalgia for the Particular | 43 |
Metaphysics and Ethics | 59 |
Vision and Choice in Morality | 76 |
Encountering Existentialism 195059 | 99 |
A House of Theory | 171 |
Mass Might and Myth | 187 |
The Darkness of Practical Reason | 193 |
Towards a Practical Mysticism 195978 | 203 |
The Sublime and the Good | 205 |
Existentialists and Mystics | 221 |
Salvation by Words | 235 |
Art is the Imitation of Nature | 243 |
The Novelist as Metaphysician | 101 |
The Existentialist Hero | 108 |
Outline of a Theory | 116 |
De Beauvoirs The Ethics of Ambiguity | 122 |
The Image of Mind | 125 |
The Existentialist Political Myth | 130 |
Hegel in Modern Dress | 146 |
Existentialist Bite | 151 |
The Need for Theory 195666 | 155 |
Knowing the Void | 157 |
T S Eliot as a Moralist | 161 |
Can Literature Help Cure the Ills of Philosophy? 195961 | 259 |
The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited | 261 |
Against Dryness | 287 |
Rereading Plato 196486 | 297 |
The Idea of Perfection | 299 |
On God and Good | 337 |
The Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts | 363 |
Why Plato Banished the Artists | 386 |
A Dialogue about Art | 464 |
A Dialogue about Religion | 496 |
Other editions - View all
Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature Iris Murdoch Limited preview - 1999 |
Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature Iris Murdoch Limited preview - 1999 |
Common terms and phrases
ACASTOS activity aesthetic ALCIBIADES analysis ANTAGORAS argument artist attempt attitude beauty belief CALLISTOS character choice concepts concerned connected consciousness context course criticism D. H. Lawrence Demiurge describe DEXIMENES Eliot emotion ethics existentialism existentialist experience explain fact fantasy feel freedom Freud gods Hampshire Hegel human idea imagination important individual instance Iris Murdoch judgement Kant Kant's kind language Liberal literary literature logical look MANTIAS Marxist mean mental metaphors metaphysical mind modern moral philosophy mystical myth nature novel novelist object ordinary ourselves Parmenides perhaps Phaedrus phenomenology Philebus picture Plato political problem psychological pure question rational reality reason relation religion religious Republic Romantic Sartre Sartre's seems sense Simone Weil simple social society SOCRATES sort soul spiritual sublime T. S. Eliot Theaetetus theory things thought Timaeus TIMONAX Tolstoy transcendent true truth understand virtue vision words writing