INTRODUCTION

'Philosophy! Empty thinking by ignorant conceited Men who think they can digest without eating! [1] (Murdoch. 1988. p. 22)

Writing self-confessedly as one of Murdoch's ignorant conceited men unsympathetic to the creative culinary arts of Platonic fare, yet ever hungry for any tasty crumb of ambrosial wisdom, which falls from her tabletop, ‘The Idea of Perfection’ was a gourmet meal. As a piece of writing Murdoch's masterly anti-analytic and professedly anti-existentialist polemic is a philosophical piece de resistance – a dialectical dish consummately prepared and perfectly served as a chef-d'oeuvre which I found to be exquisitely agreeable and reassuringly digestible.

I have been a life-long devoted reader of all of Murdoch's more popular novels and have long admired her literary plot lines in which she sequestrates sundry abstracta from the multitude of reifications that pepper her Platonic universe and skilfully insinuates them into the lives of the extended cast of loving, then unloving, (then sometimes loving again) literary agonists that populate her pages.

There is a comforting predictability in a typical Murdochean storyline, where goodness (usually) satisfyingly triumphs over moral insensibility. The element of illuminating didacticism in her fictional writing is always richly informed by her philosophical wisdom. I find it interesting and instructive that she saw fit to introduce the fictional mother - daughter-in-law relationship by way of exemplifying and making clear a philosophical point. It would be a lot to expect of her that she had taken care to avoid a certain multilateral commingling of her fictional and philosophical oeuvre.

                                                             FACING UP TO THE FORMS

Having made my sincere obeisances, a strict ontological commitment now forces me to state my philosophical position rather than my literary appetites, and to put my more relaxed writer-reader relationship with Murdoch on hold. In interpreting her novels I have suspended my disbelief for years. But now, having thanked my benefactress for past delights, I turn to her philosophical rather than fictional genre. Thus (almost reluctantly) I must first salute her as a noble opponent, and then, suppressing my feelings of affection - reach for my pen.

It is vital to state exactly what Murdoch meant by 'perfection?' She defined it as:

'Absolute good and necessary existence.' [2] (Murdoch 1970. p. 61)

Any account of Murdoch which lacked an account of her psychological Grundbegriffe, the platonic forms which underlie the basic habituated concepts of her impossible worlds would be worthless.

If (in some possible world) I was to believe in the abstraction she calls ‘perfection,’ (which I do not) the notion would only make sense to me as being relative or applicable to material objects, including neurologically equipped human beings. For me the abstract noun ‘perfection’ or the adjective ‘perfect’ are only meaningful when construed as referring to the state of some object that is fully realized as a current entiatic actuality as opposed to a reified potentiality.

If I were ever to use such a term (which I would not) then it would have to be in conjunction with conatus, the striving or ‘natural tendency inherent in a body to develop itself,’ leading to an eventual, if only temporary: ‘perfected material presence.’ Further defining my attitude, as compared to Murdoch’s, requires a more pragmatic interpretation of the human existential process we call 'our life.' For me ALL objects
(including all humans) are physically ‘perfect.’ Every entity concretely and momentarily represents the current, most suitable catenulate outcome appropriate to their individual conative telos possible.

Onto-deterministically, if they could have evolved otherwise – they would have done. The physical determinates of the material existential imperative (the 'physical imperia' or ‘laws of nature’) countenance and authenticate the entiatic viability of all that can be found in the universe. Man anthropocentrically proposes (and categorially attributes) but the material imperium disposes (and cosmically allocates.) Therefore the very notion of 'perfection' is a redundancy - for all objects are 'perfect' and cannot be otherwise in ‘the “eyes” of nature.’. As T. S. Eliot put it in ‘Burnt Norton,’

What might have been is an abstraction Remaining a perpetual possibility Only in a world of speculation. What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present. [3] (Eliot. 1975. p. 171)

Murdoch’s mother character is therefore always in a state of natural ‘onticity,’ the correct rendering of the meaning and reality of ‘perfection.’ In spite of Murdoch’s efforts to pursue her relativised reification ‘perfection’ and apply it, or appraise it against the objects or circumstances of her world, it remains forever unattainable – for it is already attained. The purposeful intention tag with which Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and others before her characterised the alchemistical 'will' with which she, as Plato’s sorcerer’s apprentice, seeks to transmute the ‘mother character’s’ spiritual dross towards her daughter-in-law into a glowing bonhomie of perfected, aureate goodness is simply the covert machinations of her thaumaturgical ego – a metaphysical maven from which there is no escape, in spite of what Simone Weil and the Buddhists claim to the contrary. Entities cannot be judged to exist in an anthropocentrically deficient condition of reliqua desideratur - where (homocentrically) certain properties are considered imperfect, inadequate or ‘missing’. ‘Nature’ never slips up. The existential process is one of: ‘Vollendung zu Vollendung, ' nicht ' Unvollkommenheit zu Vollendung.’

If Murdoch’s mother figure despises her daughter-in law, there are very good reasons for doing so, for the mother is psycho-predispositionally as much an egoistical child of nature as the rest of us. Deterministically and ontologically speaking the old saying: ‘Nothing’s Perfect,’ might be suitable as a natural language term to describe and come to terms with the disappointing behaviour of others, but ontologically speaking and as far as nature is concerned –

‘Everything’s Perfect!’

                                                               TAKING ON ‘TO MAE ON.’

As is customary with ontological claims, I abide by the long-held convention that it is the responsibility of the claimant to prove the existence of any ontological objects or assertions they make. The querulous eliminativist sceptic has no obligation to prove their non-existence. The text that Murdoch parlays into public discourse is a denotative agenda that provides an assumptive paradigm of terminological discourse.

My initial reaction when confronted with such gerundial givens, is to read through the textual proof provided and distinguish any credible evidence for their onticity. Though, with the great Eleatic thinker, I hold that only ‘to on haei on’ - or material (beings as such) exist, unlike Parmenides, who believed that ‘to mae on’ '(that which is not') cannot be spoken of, the fact that the author may provide no evidence for the existence of her mental accessories does not mean that her mode of conceptually instantiating fictions cannot be discussed.

To discuss ‘to mae on’ with someone who believes that ‘that which does not exist’ exists, is actually to explore the neurological processes of such a person’s brain. If only from a perspective of the Philosophy of Mind, such an exploration is valuable and interesting, and surely no ‘mind’ is more interesting to enquire into than Iris Murdoch’s?

Having read through the book in question hermeneutically I find that she offers no new evidence for the existence of the abstract Platonic objects to which she lays claim. As applied directly to the essay question, in the sense of what she hoped to achieve and whether she was successful – my answer is: 'Not for me personally.'

Perhaps the most charitable thing that can be said of Murdoch in this connection is that she can find nothing to account for her reificational behaviour other than an intuitive need to concretise her conceptions? Accordingly we must accept that for her they simply exist in such a manner as could not be otherwise, as an article of faith for which she finds her evidence in her intellectual and emotional ability to viscerally recognise 'good' when she comes across it.

But surely we are entitled to ask if it is really the 'good' that we recognise when we encounter it - or is it simply the good person or persons doing good deeds that we come upon? Of course others have the right to deny the existence of her abstracta perfecta and good, for as David Hume famously remarked:

'Whatever we can conceive as existent, we can also conceive as non-existent. There is no being, therefore, whose non-existence implies a contradiction.' [4] (Hume. 1988. Part IX.

If the existence of abstract forms depends on God, then it depends upon first proving that God exists. Her renunciation of the traditional God renders such a theological proof unnecessary:

'There is in my view, no God in the traditional sense of that term; and the traditional sense is perhaps the only sense. Equally the various metaphysical substitutes for God – Reason, Science, History – are false deities.’ [5] (Murdoch. 1970. p. 79.)

So from whence comes her reliance upon the conceptual entification separated from embodiment that comprises the entablature of her ethical system? It is a question she asks us to address in what she terms her ‘genetic analysis of mental concepts.’ The answer seems to me obvious, both for her and all of us – our antecedal experiential biography.

Whilst speaking of ‘perfection,’ she attempts to justify the employment and reification of such fictions in terms of their usefulness, in that the comparative form of an adjective
(including the superlative: ‘perfection’) in some way guarantees their promotion from abstractive to ontic status: :

'Well, is it important to measure and compare things and know just how good they are? In any field which interests or concerns us I think we would say yes.’ [6] (Murdoch.
1970. p. 61.)

For me we have now arrived at the paradoxical pivot upon which Murdoch’s reificational door swings.

With all the strength of mankind’s primitive instincts her self-confessed psychological egoist anima thrusts one way, while her ethical egoist self struggles to push in the opposite ‘more moral’ direction. The result? Moral resolution is blocked by the stubborn equilibria of the appositive precepts. It is a tension that can only be resolved by self-deception and the deception of others.

I refer to the inwardly hostile but extrinsically congenial behavioural pretence of the disdaining mother towards her daughter-in-law, before its eventual acknowledgement by the discomfited ego which prompts her to ‘will a change.’ I will now move on to deal with what Murdoch hoped to achieve in her book in general and with the mother and daughter–in-law episode of the essay in particular.

                                                             EGOISM OUT OF THE CLOSET

Writing ‘The Idea of Perfection’ in 1964 as a recovering existentialist, Murdoch shrinks back from the excesses of the self and the narcissistic indulgence which is so characteristic of a philosophy of immoderate individualism. This apparently altruistically motivated decision to initiate a change of heart or moral reappraisal of the other is no more than an egoistical stress-removing therapy for her own psychic benefit ultimately based upon her desire to rid herself of an attitude considered by society to be morally hypocritical.

Murdoch writes interestingly of the decision-making process in which a our choices sometime seem to be made independent of the chooser, little realising that the decision-making process only appears mysterious because it is really the sovereign ego exercising its authority often in the guise of a putative altruism. The mother’s selfish deliberations are a pseudo-moral act in spite of the lack of outward behaviour, thus it follows that her later attitude towards her son’s wife is in no way ethically preferable for either party. There is nothing new in it for the younger woman at all. In keeping with the psychological egoist she is Murdoch remarks:

'The psyche is a historically determined individual restlessly looking after itself... reluctant to face unpleasant realities... designed to protect the psyche from pain. Even its loving is more often as not an assertion of self.’ [7] (Murdoch. 1970. p. 78.)

Plainly we can see that only the agential mother psychologically and emotionally benefits.

Psychologically Murdoch certainly seems to have had difficulty in detecting or coming to terms with her ego and realising that in her case, and perhaps in all our cases, there is no sovereignty of the good at all, but a self-governing, despotic, sovereignty of the ego?

Murdoch’s approach depicts philosophical analyticity as an post-enlightenment faith gone wrong that has robbed humankind of its inherent complex of attributes that make up its compositional character of individuate, independent points of departure. Each person is seen as a new egoistical beginning, able to will its way in the world.

The nature of Murdoch's introspectabilia is refreshingly meta-platonic in the sense that she raises the level of the discussion from the stage of an interrogation of individual virtues to a consideration of whether there is a single, ultimate, overarching principle in the united world of the virtues towards a possible unification of the moral domain.

                                                                     CONCLUSION

The well-intentioned Murdoch’s agenda was to promote and recommend ‘unselfing,’ which probably had its provenance in the Greek term metanoia, as a way of moral improvement, a way of changing our vision of the world and of ourselves. She promises a new way of loving others. For me Murdoch fails to accomplish her purposes in her discussion of the mother and mother-in-law allegory. That does not mean that what she writes may not make perfect sense for other thinkers. For herself, and for philosophers partial to such ontological interpretations and those who she successfully influenced it was a triumph.

That she gloriously succeeded is evidenced by the rich benison of predominantly female philosophers who have appeared in academia recently to pick up the torch which fell from her tragically stricken hand when the dark curtain of Altzeimer's robbed us of her genius.

For the last fifty years, with her as my guide, I have strolled hand in hand down leafy country lanes, nibbled cucumber sandwiches and sipped tea in many an English drawing room of the imagination whilst listening to her shimmering prose. I shall certainly not cease to do so, or let a few stray reifications come between us.

Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind Cannot bear very much reality. Time past and time future What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present. [8] (Eliot. 1975. p. 171)

END

REFERENCES [1] Murdoch. Iris. 'The Book and the Brotherhood' p. 22. Penguin Books, London, 1988. [2] Murdoch. Iris. 'On God and Good.' p. 61. Penguin Books, London, 1970. [3] Eliot. Thomas Stearns. ‘Burnt Norton.’ p. 171. from ‘The Four Quartets.’ The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot.’ 1975. Faber and Faber Limited, 3 Queens Square, London. WC1. [4] Hume. David. Part IX ‘Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion,’ Penguin Books, London, 1988. [5] Murdoch. Iris. 'The Sovereignty of the Good Over Other Concepts.' p. 79. Penguin Books, London, 1970 [6] Murdoch. Iris. 'On God and Good.' p. 61. Penguin Books, London, 1970. [7] Murdoch. Iris. 'The Sovereignty of the Good Over Other Concepts.' p. 78. Penguin Books, London, 1970 [8] Eliot. Thomas Stearns. ‘Burnt Norton.’ p. 171. from ‘The Four Quartets.’ The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot.’ 1975. Faber and Faber Limited, 3 Queens Square, London. WC1.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Obumselu. Ben. In 'Iris Murdoch and Sartre,'1975. The Johns Hopkins University Press. ELH, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Summer, 1975), pp. 296-317. Accessed via JSTOR. 29.10.2007.

Murdoch. Iris. ‘Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals.’ (London, Penguin) Mackenzie. Rod. Education and the Journey of the Soul: From Paranoia to Metanoia' http://www.philosophy-of-education.org/pdfs/Saturday/Mackenzie.pdf.

Nussbaum. Martha C. reviewing Peter Conradi’s: ‘Iris Murdoch: A Life’ in ‘The New Republic Online.’ Jan 17th, 2002.

Addendum The results of an interesting, but of course not necessarily authoritative internet ontological poll conducted on my philosophy site: ‘The Athenaeum Library.’ The percentages show that the reifications and abstractions which Iris Murdoch relies upon so much are overwhelmingly rejected by the great majority of those philosophically-minded visitors who voted. It will be seen that a massive 86% considered that there is no such thing as ‘Being,’ and that objects simply exist. Only 14% believed in the existence of such transcendentalist notions. A similar pattern emerges with the analogous question regarding the reification ‘Movement.

The poll results can be viewed by clicking here: