No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Murdochian humility
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 April 2007
Abstract
The following paper sets out a view of humility that is derived from Iris Murdoch but which differs from a strict Murdochian approach in two important respects. Firstly, any association with self-abnegation is removed; and secondly, the value of a limited form of pride (recognition pride) is affirmed. The paper is nevertheless strongly continuous with her work, in the sense that it builds upon her rejection of universalizability on the specific grounds that we have varying moral competences. A liberal commitment to equality should not be allowed to spill out of the political domain. We are not all equal when it comes to the demands of morality. Humility is treated as a just discernment of our own limited moral competences. As such, it is a recognition of our particularity and not a form of radical self-effacement.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007
References
Notes
1. Iris Murdoch The Sovereignty of Good (London: Routledge, 2001), 51–52, and idem Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993), 429.
2. Iris Murdoch The Bell (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962), 204.
3. All quotations from Murdoch Sovereignty of Good, 100–101.
4. Ibid., 101. This humbling of self can be see at work in Murdoch's problematic death-theme; see Tony Milligan ‘Iris Murdoch's mortal asymmetry’, forthcoming in Philosophical Investigations.
5. Quoted in Rush Rhees Discussions of Simone Weil (New York: SUNY Press, 2000), 164.
6. Simone Weil Gravity and Grace (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), 27.
7. Murdoch Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, 501.
8. Ibid.
9. ‘Holiness should then be hidden too, even from consciousness in a certain measure’; Simone Weil Gravity and Grace, 33.
10. Julia Driver Uneasy Virtue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
11. Murdoch Sovereignty of Good, 95.
12. Ibid.
13. David Hume An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, section IX.
14. Gabriele Taylor Pride, Shame and Guilt (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002).
15. See Michael Slote Goods and Virtues (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 61ff, on humility as a dependent virtue.
16. Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiae, vol. 44, Thomas Gilby (ed.) (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode/Blackfriars, 1972), 2a2 ae. 161.2, 161.6.
17. Murdoch Sovereignty of Good, 28.
18. This variation on the theme of response-dependence is particularly emphasized in Rosalind Hursthouse's Kantian-leaning On Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). She is not suggesting that the associated action-guiding V-rules cover all contingencies.
19. Murdoch Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, 11.
20. Murdoch's rejection of universalisability goes back to her critique of R. M. Hare in two articles immediately preceding publication of The Bell: Iris Murdoch ‘Metaphysics and ethics’ in P. Conradi (ed.) Existentialists and Mystics (London: Chatto and Windus, 1997), 59–75, and idem ‘Vision and choice in morality’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 30, 32–58.
21. Tayper-Pace's sermon: Murdoch The Bell, ch. 9.
22. Michael Meade's sermon, Ibid., ch. 16.
23. Idem Sovereignty of Good, 17.
24. For an example of the metaphor see Murdoch Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, 87. The metaphor is limited in this respect: a techne or skill may be used or not used, but specifically moral competences must be brought to bear, when appropriate, otherwise we do not have them.
25. This point is made by J. O. Urmson in ‘Saints and heroes’, in A. I. Melden (ed.) Essays in Moral Philosophy (Seattle WA: University of Washington Press, 1958), and Lawrence Blum in Moral Perception and Particularity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), ch. 5.
26. Maria Antonaccio's Picturing the Human: The Moral Thought of Iris Murdoch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), although bracketing off her mysticism, draws out Murdoch's strong liberal commitment.
27. Norvin, Richards ‘Is humility a virtue?’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 25 (1988), 253–259Google Scholar, emphasizes the role of comparison in humility; Taylor Pride, Shame and Guilt, emphasizes what she calls ‘norms of expectation’.
28. For several formulations used in this section, and for the identification of a number of problematic claims (now happily removed), thanks go to an anonymous reviewer for this journal.