Iris Murdoch’s Practical Mysticism

Iris Murdoch was one of the most celebrated novelists and philosophers of the 20th century whose writing is marked by a grim assessment of the “conceptual impoverishment of modern ethical thought. As Murdoch saw it, humans had gradually lost the ability to grasp the transcendent values that are the source of all meaning: true love, evil, grace and perfection. One solution lay in art, which Murcdoch saw as a kind of “practical mysticism”: art that helps us grasp perfection, but in a way that acknowledges how far we have fallen away from it. This series will be led by Matthew Rose (Barry Center) and Amogha Sahu (Columbia).

• Against Dryness: March 20, 2023 at 1 PM

  We will begin by reading her essay in Encounter magazine in 1961, “Against Dryness”:  a powerful criticism of the individualistic picture of human beings at the heart of our society and a criticism of the ‘dry’ literature that is ineffective in correcting this picture.

• Existentialists and Mystics: March 27, 2023 at 1 PM

  This week, we will discuss “Existentialists and Mystics,” which explores how literature works in an age in which moral foundations—a belief in the Soul, in Individuals, Reason, and Character—seem to have disappeared for many people. Murdoch intriguingly ends the essay by endorsing a literature “nourished and supported by thought about politics.” 

• Salvation by Words: April 3, 2023 at 1 PM

  We will read one of Murdoch’s most beautiful pieces, “Salvation by Words,” which offers a spirited defense of art as a continuing source of “plain truth” about human certainties.