Existentialists and Mystics : Writings on Philosophy and Literature

by Murdoch, Iris

• ISBN13: 9780140264920
• ISBN10: 0140264922
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781440621161
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-07-01
• Publisher: Penguin Books

Summary

Best 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.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Editor's Preface
Prologue	p. 1
Literature and Philosophy: A Conversation with Bryan Magee	p. 3
Nostalgia for the Particular, 1951-57	p. 31
Thinking and Language	p. 33
Nostalgia for the Particular	p. 43
Metaphysics and Ethics	p. 59
Vision and Choice in Morality	p. 76
Encountering Existentialism, 1950-59	p. 99
The Novelist as Metaphysician	p. 101
The Existentialist Hero	p. 108
Sartre's The Emotions: Outline of a Theory	p. 116
De Beauvoir's The Ethics of Ambiguity	p. 122
The Image of Mind	p. 125
The Existentialist Political Myth	p. 130
Hegel in Modern Dress	p. 146
Existentialist Bite	p. 151
The Need for Theory, 1956-66	p. 155
Knowing the Void	p. 157
T. S. Eliot as a Moralist	p. 161
A House of Theory	p. 171
Mass, Might and Myth	p. 187
The Darkness of Practical Reason	p. 193
Towards a Practical Mysticism, 1959-78	p. 203
The Sublime and the Good	p. 205
Existentialists and Mystics	p. 221
Salvation by Words	p. 235
Art is the Imitation of Nature	p. 243
Can Literature Help Cure the Ills of Philosophy? 1959-61	p. 259
The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited	p. 261
Against Dryness	p. 287
Re-Reading Plato, 1964-86	p. 297
The Idea of Perfection	p. 299
On 'God' and 'Good'	p. 337
The Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts	p. 363
The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists	p. 386
Art and Eros: A Dialogue about Art	p. 464
Above the Gods: A Dialogue about Religion	p. 496
Acknowledgements and Sources	p. 532
Index	p. 534
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