Veiled Philosophy

Iris Murdoch (1919-1999) was something of a phenomenon in the history of British literature. As a modern female writer, her abundant productivity alone, in both philosophy and literature, made her noteworthy. It is rare to find such a productive writer after Charles Dickens in England. But it is because of her dual roles as influential novelist and, more importantly, outstanding moral philosopher that she appears as unique. As her literary works are always in close relation to such basic moral philosophical subjects as what human beings are, the contingency of life, the significance of freedom, the essence of love and Good etc., the term philosophical novelist has been applied for her, and her novels "philosophical novels" or "novels of ideas".Iris Murdoch spent her whole life in applying artistic imagination and fictional illustration to demonstrate and explore the experience of our ordinary life and the essential characteristics of reality, using English comic novel as a vehicle for the representation of her philosophical concepts. Therefore, the kind of sound appreciation of Iris Murdoch's literary works must first examine concepts from their source in philosophy proper and determine how they cohere dramatically as social comedy. Otherwise, one may often finish one of her novels with puzzled feelings, not knowing what she intended to express.Iris Murdoch's fictional world is also multi-dimensional. Philosophical thoughts and literary schools as realism, existentialism, feminism, mysticism, theory of psychology and Neo-Platonism may more or less find their position in her novels. No single subject matter can cover her novels thoroughly and completely. But the universal topic of her artistic representation of philosophical ideas can be employed to appreciate all of her novels. This thesis intends to make an exploration, from different aspects, with/I Severed Head as the literary example, on how Iris Murdoch veiled her moral philosophical ideas in the fiction and how she vindicated the novel as an especially apt instrument of moral understanding. It mainly consists of two parts.Part I is the fundamental section of this thesis. In Chapter One, the reasons whyIris Murdoch took great interest in both philosophy and literature are researched objectively and subjectively, mainly to provide the theoretical background against which a clear understanding of the motivation for her to soak her novels with philosophical ideas can be achieved. Chapter Two provides the information why the author chooses A Severed Head as the literary example in this paper. There is also a brief summary of the novel and an illustration of the complicated relations among the main characters in the novel, setting a foundation stone for the detailed analysis in Part II.As the main body of the thesis. Part II contains four chapters concerning the theoretical ideas of Man, Freedom, Love and Good. In each chapter. Iris Murdoch's philosophical views on each of the concepts are first demonstrated and epurated. They then have been employed to see whether or not Iris Murdoch have them applied in A Severed Head with detailed citations from the novel.Accidental Man (Chapter One) first deals with Iris Murdoch's philosophical views on Man: Human beings are social beings living in a contingent world. Natural selfishness of Man prevents him from recognizing the contingency but makes him be prone to stay satisfied with fantasies in need of self-consolation. But Man is an unresolved entity who is responsible for making decisions that acknowledge the same degree of consciousness and reality in others, framing new relations and new ideas in accordance with new developments of the outside world. "Contingency" in A Severed Head, as well as Martin and Antonia's conversion from enjoying fantasy to facing reality is the reasonable representations of Iris Murdoch's philosophical views on Man.In Limited and Driving Freedom (Chapter Two), with the elaboration of Iris Murdoch's different philosophical works from 1950s to 1960s, the reader can find "O...