Iris Murdoch

*July 15, 1919 (Dublin, Ireland)
†February 8, 1999 (Oxfordshire, United Kingdom)

Iris Murdoch was a British and Irish philosopher and novelist of the second half of the twentieth century. She was best known for her moral philosophy and developed an entirely distinctive position in philosophy of art and religion. As a philosopher, her best-known work is Sovereignty of Good (1970). Unusual for her time, Iris Murdoch combined her background in Wittgensteinian and analytic philosophy with strong influences from 19th and 20th-century Continental philosophy, Christian thought, and Hindu and Buddhist philosophy. While often associated with virtue ethics, care ethics, and particularism, she developed her own distinctive form of Platonic moral realism. This approach does not easily align with or compare to any of the dominant ethical frameworks in 20th-century Anglo-American philosophy.

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