Iris Murdoch and the Ethical Imagination: Legacies and Innovations - Université de Picardie Jules Verne Accéder directement au contenu
N°Spécial De Revue/Special Issue Études britanniques contemporaines - Revue de la Société dʼétudes anglaises contemporaines Année : 2020

Iris Murdoch and the Ethical Imagination: Legacies and Innovations

Résumé

While the recent months have seen us retreat to this or that ‘tiny corner in the house’, they have showcased in retrospect the warmth and benefit of exchanging in presentia about a beloved author. ‘Iris Murdoch and the Ethical Imagination’, a two-day symposium organized in Amiens by the SEAC and research group CORPUS (EA 4295) on October 10 and 11, has proved such an occasion. It purported to celebrate Dame Iris Murdoch’s continued influence in literary and philosophical studies, and, moreover, to do so in a country which she knew and loved when alive. For it was in Caen, in January 1978, that she gave a speech entitled ‘Art Is Imitation of Nature’ that broached the delicate issue of reconnecting art to such notions as truth and goodness against a Platonic tradition of defiance. This speech—which heralds her reflective pastiche of the Platonic dialogue, Art and Eros, staged two years later—foregrounded her own notion that art is both magic and mimesis. Art imitates nature in that it does not shy away from the messy, the accidental or the contingent in our immanent experience. Yet in so doing, art helps us face ourselves both as disunified selves, accidental beings, and as the powerful creators of signs, images, stories which assign value to every transient, accidental slice of life. In that respect, Murdoch’s speech precedes that of another Wittgenstein pupil, French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard, who made a similar claim in 1979: that postmodern tales, while renouncing the « grand » clarifying narratives of old, should not renounce storytelling. Like Murdoch, Lyotard advised to focus the narrative effort on what he called the localised experience, and she the ‘whole mystery of human individuality’ (Existentialists and Mystics, 254). Les grands esprits se rencontrent.

Dates et versions

hal-04156083 , version 1 (07-07-2023)

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Camille Fort, Marie Laniel. Iris Murdoch and the Ethical Imagination: Legacies and Innovations. Études britanniques contemporaines - Revue de la Société dʼétudes anglaises contemporaines, 59, 2020, ⟨10.4000/ebc.9596⟩. ⟨hal-04156083⟩
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