Iris Murdoch and the Ethics of Attention

The Deeper Thinking Podcast

A quiet meditation on fiction as a moral act, and the rare discipline of letting others remain.

What does it mean to look at someone without needing to understand them? In this episode, we turn toward Iris Murdoch, whose ethical vision of literature repositions the novel not as self-expression but as moral attention. Drawing from her ideas on moral realism, the sublime, and the discipline of unselfing, this episode explores how fiction can become a space where others are neither used nor resolved, but simply allowed to be.

This is not a biography or critique. It is a slow encounter with Murdoch’s belief that to write—or read—well is to resist possession. That the most radical act may be to remain beside someone without asking them to explain themselves. With passing nods to Simone Weil, Rachel Cusk, and aesthetic moral philosophy, this essay reflects Murdoch’s central place within The Deeper Thinking Podcast—not as subject, but as method.

Reflections

Here are some reflections that surfaced along the way:

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Bibliography

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We do not write to express ourselves. We write to become capable of meeting someone else.

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This episode was shaped in quiet conversation with the moral vision of Iris Murdoch—particularly as expressed in her 1959 Bergen Lecture at Yale.