Iris Murdoch writes about philosophy: ‘There is an ideal philosophical style which has a special unambiguous plainness and hardness about it, an austere unselfish candid style. A philosopher must explain exactly what he means and avoid rhetoric and idle decoration. Of course this need not exclude wit and occasional interludes; but when the philosopher is as it were in the front line in relation to his problem … he speaks with a certain cold clear recognisable voice. … Philosophical writing is not self-expression, it involves a disciplined removal of the personal voice.’ (Existentialists and Mystics, (New York: Allen Lane, 1998), 4–5). In an interview Magee asks Murdoch: ‘When you are writing a novel on the one hand and philosophy on the other, are you conscious that these are radically different kinds of writing?’ Murdoch answers: ‘Yes, I am. … Literature entertains, it does many things, and philosophy does one thing.’ (Men of Ideas, (London: BBC, 1978), 264). And in another interview she was asked about her novels, ‘What effect would you like your books to have?’ and she answered, ‘I'd like people to enjoy reading them.’ (G.Dooley, From a Tiny Corner of the House of Fiction, (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 2003), 122). According to Murdoch, the primary aim of philosophy is an impersonal search for the truth. It may occasionally entertain, but that is incidental. Novels are ‘full of tricks and magic and deliberate mystification. Literature entertains’, (Magee, 262) and it may incidentally tell the truth. If literature rises to great art, Murdoch writes, it ‘helps us see the place of necessity in human life, what must be endured, what makes and breaks, and to purify our imagination so as to contemplate the real world (usually veiled by anxiety and fantasy) including what is terrible and absurd.’ (The Fire and the Sun, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977), 79–80). The reason for citing these passages is to show that Murdoch's philosophical and novelistic aims were not political and quite different from one another.
The title of Lovibond's book and her frequent references to Murdoch's philosophical and novelistic works might lead readers to suppose that the book is about Murdoch, but they would be mistaken. The book is ‘motivated in part by a wish to serve the cause of sexual equality in education’ (vii). Murdoch serves this cause because her books reveal a ‘deep-seated resistance to the prospect of full moral and intellectual autonomy for women’ (7). Lovibond is concerned with showing that Murdoch is ‘complicit in the kind of injustice … that consists in the systematically prejudiced (and specifically sexist) distribution of intellectual ‘homage’ (21). Her collusion in supporting the cause of sexist injustice is the result of ‘obstacles to ideological self-awareness’ (20). Lovibond uses Murdoch's work ‘to illuminate some of the darker corners of our cultural “imaginary”.' (84). I mention in passing that readers may find it as distracting as I did that the book is peppered with scare quotes.
Ignoring the crucial difference between Murdoch's philosophical and novelistic works, Lovibond proceeds by examining the novels for episodes and characters that might be interpreted as signs of Murdoch's collusion in the perpetuation of sexist injustice. This way of proceeding involves the elementary mistake of supposing that the episodes and characters represent their author's views, rather than what the author aims to show through them. It ignores that Murdoch's novels are full of irony, gentle satire, and the amused, often very funny spectacle of human foibles. It ignores that many of the novels have strong and highly intelligent women characters who are in control of their lives, such as Morgan Browne in Fairly Honourable Defeat, Anne Cavidge and Gertrude McCluskie in Nuns and Soldiers, Honor Klein in Severed Head, Stella McCaffrey in Philosopher's Pupil, and Jean and Rose in Book and Brotherhood. And it inexcusably accuses Murdoch of collusion in the perpetuation of sexist injustice, because her novels concentrate on the recurring themes of compassion, the effort to see others realistically, enjoyment, evil, the goodness of simple unreflective people, humility, love, and self-deception, rather than on the ideology for which Lovibond is a propagandist. This accusation is as absurd as it would be to claim that Lovibond colludes in cannibalism, pedophilia, or terrorism, because she does not discuss them in her philosophical works.
One supposed symptom of Murdoch's alleged lack of ideological self-awareness is that a recurrent theme in several novels is ‘the fantasy entertained by Iris Murdoch of surrendering oneself to “some great scholar or saintly person”,’ this is a fantasy that ‘is already indicative of a condition of political malaise’, (15) and of one ‘of the darker corners of our cultural “imaginary”.’ (84). It is simple nonsense to suppose that it is indicative of political malaise that some people are willing to learn by surrendering themselves to a great scholar who is willing to teach them. Or if they want to become better by surrendering themselves to a saintly person, like Socrates, whose example shows them what they ought to aim at, as Socrates did, for instance, to Alcibiades in the Symposium.
Another indication of Murdoch's supposed lack of ideological self-awareness is ‘that Murdoch's conception of the philosopher, and hence of philosophy itself, is governed (despite herself) by an emotional investment in the idea of male supremacy’. (91). Why does the impersonal search for truth betoken an emotional investment in male supremacy? Do all impersonal searchers for truth make an emotional investment in male supremacy, or is Murdoch alone guilty of it? What enables Lovibond to know better than Murdoch what emotional investment Murdoch has made? Lovibond does not say.
The evidence Lovibond offers in support of these absurd claims systematically ignores that Murdoch was a highly self-conscious writer who regarded self-examination as one of the most important moral tasks. Lovibond herself recognizes that Murdoch was ‘irrepressibly articulate and discursive on either side of the symbolically gendered divide’, (6) and that ‘in proposing to subject the writings of Iris Murdoch to “symptomatic reading”, or to search them for traces of an “imaginary” operating outside the scope of authorial intention, I am treading a path that be unlikely to find favor with the author herself' (9). Yet she ignores her own acknowledgment that Murdoch was an ‘irrepressibly articulate and discursive’ writer. Such a writer is far more likely to be right about her own aims than Lovibond who is interested in ferreting out deviation from her ideology, rather than in Murdoch's authorial intention.
With grim determination and deadly earnestness, Lovibond searches the novels for clues about Murdoch's failure to be a strong enough supporter of Lovibond's cause. It is not enough for Lovibond that Murdoch has been an outspoken defender of sexual equality in her private and public life. She claims that the lack of ideological self-awareness has prevented this exceptionally reflective writer from using her philosophical and novelistic works to further the cause of sexual equality. Armed with a strident ideological self-righteousness, Lovibond regards it as obvious that if we have to choose between Murdoch's self-understanding, avowed aims, and explicit statements, on the one hand, and Lovibond's interpretation of Murdoch's frame of mind, on the other, then anyone who does not lack ideological self-awareness will choose Lovibond's and convict Murdoch of blindness. The arrogance of this approach is breathtaking.
In support of this approach, Lovibond appeals to ‘a socially situated epistemology: an approach to the theory of knowledge that is sensitive to the power relationships supporting our judgment as to who does or does not “know”.' (15). Socially situated epistemology is a pretentious label for the tendency beloved by ideologues to concentrate on why people say what they say, rather than on whether what they say is true or false. Knowledge does not depend on power relationships but on getting the truth right. There are many explanations of why we are often ignorant and mistaken about what we think we know. But whether what we possess is knowledge depends on the truth, not on power relationships.
Lovibond is an ideologue who examines Murdoch's work through the importance she attributes to sexual equality in education. She condemns Murdoch for being more interested in truth, goodness, and beauty than in the politics of the day. Guided by this single-minded commitment, Lovibond divides people into friends and enemies, and concludes that Murdoch is on the side of the enemy, even as she pretends to be a friend. Lovibond reads Murdoch books through her ideology, and she does so in direct contradiction of Murdoch's self-conscious, clearly articulated, and deliberate authorial intention, intention that Lovibond is aware of, as she shows by quoting it. The justification of this poisonous approach is that she believes in the supreme importance of sexual equality in education. This leads her to read Murdoch's books not for what is in them, but for what she thinks ought to be in them. And she does it in conscious opposition to what Murdoch explicitly says is neither meant to be nor is in them.
I hope that this review will not be read as a denial of the importance of sexual equality in education and elsewhere. Sexual equality is important, sexual discrimination is wrong. But there are other things, such as truth, goodness, and beauty, that are just as, or perhaps, dare I say it, even more important, and there are other wrongs that threaten these great ideals. Guided by her single-minded ideological commitment, Lovibond stresses sexual equality at the expense of our fallible but much-needed pursuit of these ideals, and condemns Murdoch whose commitments differ from her own.
This book is an unlovely combination of psychoanalytic babble about the sado-masochism of women; radical leftist politics dished out in French flavors; numerous quotations from like-minded ideologues as if citing them would constitute reasons for believing what they claim; a grim determination to evaluate the significance of art, literature, philosophy, education, marriage, love affairs, promiscuity and celibacy from a political point of view; and a perfervid ideological commitment to unmask all disagreements with it as symptoms of immorality. It is a regrettable disservice to understanding and appreciating the life-work of Iris Murdoch who was a fine philosopher and whose novels gave much enjoyment to many people. The cause Lovibond is committed to defending by false accusations of Murdoch rests on far better reasons than Lovibond's willful misinterpretation of a writer whose clearly stated philosophical and novelistic aims are not political and whom she faults for failing to be a propagandist for sexual equality.
