The Exploration of Moral Life*

Abstract

The most distinctive feature of Murdoch's philosophical project is her attempt to reclaim the exploration of moral life as a legitimate topic of philosophical investigation.In contrast to the predominant focus on action and decision, she argues that 'what we require is a renewed sense of the difficulty and complexity of the moral life and the opacity of persons.We need more concepts in terms of which to picture the substance of our being' (AD 293). 1 I shall argue that to fully appreciate the novelty of this proposal we need to recognize some elements of continuity with analytic methods of philosophical inquiry and themes that belong to continental traditions.On Murdoch's view, the most important question facing moral philosophy is that of whether and how we can become better persons.In order to describe moral progress and failure, struggle and ascent, we need ethical concepts capable of capturing mental events such as change in mind, self-examination, and redescription.These concepts are presently unavailable, and this lack seriously undermines our attempts to understand the phenomena of morality.Because of this conceptual loss, we succumb to the mistaken idea that moral life coincides with its scattered outer manifestations, i.e. public acts.Instead, Murdoch tells us that 'the moral life . . . is something that goes on continually, not * This paper is a distant ancestor of my comment to Richard Moran's 'Vision, Choice, and Existentialism', presented at a Conference on Iris Murdoch Philosopher, at Brown University, 2001.I am especially grateful to Richard Moran for his stimulating paper, and for the opportunity to start a conversation with him which lasts to these days.I owe thanks to Justin Broackes for his detailed and perceptive comments, and to Luca Ferrero, Elijah Millgram, Terry Pinkard, Julius Sensat, and to an anonymous referee of Oxford University Press for their precious suggestions.1 Abbreviations for Murdoch's essays are as follows.

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