This thesis examines works of a British writer and philosopher Iris Murdoch. It primarily delves into her philosophy and the critique of it. The central figures to her philosophy comprise J.-P. Sartre, I. Kant, Platon and, for her feminist views, Simone Weil, who Murdoch greately looked up to. This thesis investigates the literary analaysis of her novels, the exisistentialist philosophy, morality, the comparisons of different philosophical texts by aforementioned philosophers that induced the birth of Murdoch’s philosophy in the first place, the subject of gender and the role of women and men as both main and background characters alike. Another element I discuss are tensions that arise between her philosophy and her literature, additionally exploring her contempt for theoretically-oriented approach to word analasys. Her philosophical standpoints differ from the viewpoints of other theoretics and are moreover partially responsible for the lesser interest in her literary works. I’m going to re-examine her
stance on philosophical theory and the influence it had on her works. Murdoch was a firm believer of the notion that there is no immense difference between philosophy and literature, as both of them are in search of truth. In her novels she used various methods of bringing forth her imaginary worlds full of lively characters and surprising events. Her fiction cannot be defined by a mere definition of one single literary movement for it is an unfathomable endless mixture of possible interpretations. While her novels manifest strong philosophical interests, she has been harshly criticized for being an influental 20th century female writer but despite that fact choosing males rather than females for her first-person narrators, prompting debates and critiques about having converted into a puppet of patriarchy. Therefore, I’m also going to touch upon the theories of S. Weil, a feminist philosopher that dealt primarily with the social conflict between a man and a woman, the influence of religion on people’s lives and the general state of human being.
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