WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.379 OK, let's unpack this. I want you to imagine 00:00:02.379 --> 00:00:06.820 a person who somehow manages to inhabit two completely 00:00:06.820 --> 00:00:09.380 contradictory worlds at the exact same time. 00:00:09.740 --> 00:00:12.599 And I don't mean they have a day job and a hobby. 00:00:12.699 --> 00:00:15.640 I mean, they are a titan in one world and a legend 00:00:15.640 --> 00:00:18.039 in the other. And the rules of those two worlds. 00:00:18.730 --> 00:00:21.070 Oh, they usually do not mix. We are talking about 00:00:21.070 --> 00:00:23.309 the oil and water of the intellectual life, aren't 00:00:23.309 --> 00:00:27.429 we? It's that gap between rigorous, logic -driven 00:00:27.429 --> 00:00:32.049 moral philosophy and the messy, chaotic, emotional 00:00:32.049 --> 00:00:35.880 world of fiction writing. Right. Exactly. Usually 00:00:35.880 --> 00:00:38.060 you get one or the other. You get the philosopher 00:00:38.060 --> 00:00:40.240 who sits in a quiet room and thinks about truth 00:00:40.240 --> 00:00:42.899 with a capital T. And their writing is, let's 00:00:42.899 --> 00:00:45.240 be honest, it's dry, it's precise, and frankly, 00:00:45.320 --> 00:00:47.820 often pretty boring. It can be, yeah. Or you 00:00:47.820 --> 00:00:50.020 get the novelist, the person who lives in the 00:00:50.020 --> 00:00:52.140 muck of human relationships, dealing with affairs, 00:00:52.539 --> 00:00:54.740 jealousy, the smell of the sea, the taste of 00:00:54.740 --> 00:00:57.420 bad wine. Yeah. All the sensory stuff. But today 00:00:57.420 --> 00:00:59.179 we are talking about the woman who did both. 00:00:59.600 --> 00:01:01.880 At the highest possible level, she was a double 00:01:01.880 --> 00:01:04.099 threat in a way that almost no one else in the 00:01:04.099 --> 00:01:06.420 20th century was. We're talking about Dame Jean 00:01:06.420 --> 00:01:09.530 Iris Murdoch. And... Honestly, the more I read 00:01:09.530 --> 00:01:12.250 about her for this deep dive, the more I felt 00:01:12.250 --> 00:01:13.930 like I was reading about a fictional character. 00:01:14.209 --> 00:01:16.810 I mean, try this on for size. Imagine a friend 00:01:16.810 --> 00:01:19.730 who writes these incredibly dense, serious, philosophical 00:01:19.730 --> 00:01:22.670 tracks about the importance of goodness, about 00:01:22.670 --> 00:01:25.469 suppressing your ego, about basically being a 00:01:25.469 --> 00:01:28.590 saint. Okay. But then the same friend lives a 00:01:28.590 --> 00:01:30.969 bohemian life that would make a rock star blush. 00:01:31.310 --> 00:01:35.129 It's a life full of wild affairs, turbulent relationships, 00:01:35.269 --> 00:01:39.349 and a marriage that just... It defies any modern 00:01:39.349 --> 00:01:42.010 categorization. And then she turns around and 00:01:42.010 --> 00:01:44.849 writes 26 novels. Yeah. Bestsellers, Booker Prize 00:01:44.849 --> 00:01:47.390 winners that are basically about the absolute 00:01:47.390 --> 00:01:50.370 chaos she sees around her and lives inside of. 00:01:50.670 --> 00:01:52.950 That is the hook. She's the saint and the artist. 00:01:53.170 --> 00:01:54.950 She's the moralist and the bohemian. And our 00:01:54.950 --> 00:01:57.049 mission today isn't just to list her achievements. 00:01:57.250 --> 00:01:59.489 We want to figure out how she saw the world. 00:01:59.530 --> 00:02:01.790 We want to get inside her head. And we have a 00:02:01.790 --> 00:02:04.030 great stack of sources to help us do that. We're 00:02:04.030 --> 00:02:05.849 looking at her biography, obviously, but we're 00:02:05.849 --> 00:02:07.989 also diving into her major philosophical work, 00:02:08.150 --> 00:02:11.430 The Sovereignty of Good, which is a tough read. 00:02:11.530 --> 00:02:13.669 It's dense, but we're going to break it down. 00:02:13.979 --> 00:02:15.759 Yeah, we'll make it make sense. We're looking 00:02:15.759 --> 00:02:18.379 at her fiction, specifically The Sea, The Sea, 00:02:18.580 --> 00:02:21.560 and her first novel, Under the Net. And perhaps 00:02:21.560 --> 00:02:24.259 most interestingly, we're looking at the memoirs 00:02:24.259 --> 00:02:27.259 written by the people who knew her, specifically 00:02:27.259 --> 00:02:29.719 her husband, John Bailey. We are going to try 00:02:29.719 --> 00:02:32.280 to answer the question, how do you live a life 00:02:32.280 --> 00:02:34.919 of attention, and that's a key word for her, 00:02:35.020 --> 00:02:37.580 in a world that is constantly trying to distract 00:02:37.580 --> 00:02:40.659 you? Because if there is one thing Murdoch hated... 00:02:40.879 --> 00:02:43.740 It was a distraction. She wanted to see the truth 00:02:43.740 --> 00:02:46.500 of things. And that really is the why for everyone 00:02:46.500 --> 00:02:48.680 listening. We live in the age of distraction. 00:02:48.879 --> 00:02:51.780 We live in the age of the fat, relentless ego, 00:02:51.860 --> 00:02:54.000 as she so brilliantly called it. What a phrase. 00:02:54.259 --> 00:02:57.939 Isn't it? Murdoch's philosophy is almost an antidote 00:02:57.939 --> 00:03:00.620 to the 21st century, even though she died just 00:03:00.620 --> 00:03:02.800 before it really kicked off. We're going to decode 00:03:02.800 --> 00:03:05.699 her concept of unselfing, which sounds painful, 00:03:05.780 --> 00:03:07.819 but is actually incredibly liberating. We are 00:03:07.819 --> 00:03:09.379 definitely going to talk about that marriage. 00:03:09.870 --> 00:03:13.810 43 years. 43 years of complexity, yeah. So let's 00:03:13.810 --> 00:03:16.069 start at the very beginning. To understand the 00:03:16.069 --> 00:03:17.810 dual mind, we have to look at the dual origin. 00:03:18.610 --> 00:03:21.870 Where does a brain like Iris Murdoch's even come 00:03:21.870 --> 00:03:24.349 from? Well, she was born in Finsborough, Dublin 00:03:24.349 --> 00:03:29.270 on July 15th, 1919. And we can't just gloss over 00:03:29.270 --> 00:03:31.889 that date or that place. It's hugely important. 00:03:32.150 --> 00:03:35.659 No, 1919 in Dublin is not a quiet time. Not at 00:03:35.659 --> 00:03:37.680 all. It's the middle of the Irish War of Independence. 00:03:38.020 --> 00:03:40.979 The city is a powder keg. There's violence in 00:03:40.979 --> 00:03:43.599 the streets. There's a massive cultural upheaval 00:03:43.599 --> 00:03:46.219 happening. She is born right into the thick. 00:03:46.699 --> 00:03:49.159 of this identity crisis for the entire nation. 00:03:49.319 --> 00:03:51.560 And her own family seems to embody a bit of a 00:03:51.560 --> 00:03:54.259 contradiction too, right? Her father, Wills John 00:03:54.259 --> 00:03:57.180 Hughes Murdoch, comes from this very grounded 00:03:57.180 --> 00:03:59.500 background. Right. He was a civil servant, but 00:03:59.500 --> 00:04:01.580 his roots were in County Down from a line of 00:04:01.580 --> 00:04:03.340 Presbyterian sheep farmers. So you have this 00:04:03.340 --> 00:04:06.900 very practical, earthbound, stoic lineage on 00:04:06.900 --> 00:04:09.620 one side. Salt of the earth. Very much. And he 00:04:09.620 --> 00:04:11.379 had served as an officer in the Royal Dublin 00:04:11.379 --> 00:04:13.379 Fusiliers during the First World War, so he'd 00:04:13.379 --> 00:04:15.780 seen the reality of conflict up close. He's not 00:04:15.780 --> 00:04:18.279 an abstract thinker. And then the mother. Completely 00:04:18.279 --> 00:04:21.060 different. Irene Ellis. She was a trained singer. 00:04:21.180 --> 00:04:23.259 She came from a middle -class Church of Ireland 00:04:23.259 --> 00:04:25.879 family in Dublin. So you have the sheep farmer's 00:04:25.879 --> 00:04:29.389 son and the singer. The pragmatic and the artistic 00:04:29.389 --> 00:04:31.149 right there in the household. It feels like her 00:04:31.149 --> 00:04:33.230 entire personality was set up right there in 00:04:33.230 --> 00:04:36.170 the DNA. The grounding of the father and the 00:04:36.170 --> 00:04:39.910 soaring artistic temperament of the mother. But 00:04:39.910 --> 00:04:41.709 she didn't grow up in Dublin, did she? They moved. 00:04:42.209 --> 00:04:45.350 No, and this is crucial for her identity. When 00:04:45.350 --> 00:04:47.269 she was just a few weeks old, the family moved 00:04:47.269 --> 00:04:49.370 to London because her father joined the Ministry 00:04:49.370 --> 00:04:52.029 of Health. So she grows up in Chiswick. She's 00:04:52.029 --> 00:04:55.709 an only child educated at these very proper progressive 00:04:55.709 --> 00:04:58.449 private schools like the Frobel Demonstration 00:04:58.449 --> 00:05:00.389 School and then Badminton School in Bristol. 00:05:00.529 --> 00:05:03.009 So she's Anglo -Irish. She's living in England. 00:05:03.069 --> 00:05:05.350 She sounds English. She's educated in the English 00:05:05.350 --> 00:05:08.769 system. But she has this shadow identity, this 00:05:08.769 --> 00:05:11.790 Irish birthright that she carries with her. And 00:05:11.790 --> 00:05:14.589 she felt that duality intensely. Later in life, 00:05:14.610 --> 00:05:16.529 she talked about feeling like an exile in both 00:05:16.529 --> 00:05:19.110 places. You know, too English for the Irish and 00:05:19.110 --> 00:05:21.569 too Irish. for the English. That sense of being 00:05:21.569 --> 00:05:24.470 an outsider looking in is really, really important 00:05:24.470 --> 00:05:27.069 for a novelist. You need that distance to observe 00:05:27.069 --> 00:05:29.610 people properly. She eventually heads to Oxford 00:05:29.610 --> 00:05:34.230 in 1938, Somerville College, and she decides 00:05:34.230 --> 00:05:37.069 to study greats. Now, I know we throw that term 00:05:37.069 --> 00:05:39.189 around when we talk about British intellectuals, 00:05:39.189 --> 00:05:41.089 but I think we need to explain what that actually 00:05:41.089 --> 00:05:43.529 means. It's not just introduction to philosophy 00:05:43.529 --> 00:05:47.180 101. Oh, absolutely not. Greats, or... Literae 00:05:47.180 --> 00:05:49.759 Humanioris is the intellectual equivalent of 00:05:49.759 --> 00:05:52.939 Navy SEAL training for the mind. It is a grueling 00:05:52.939 --> 00:05:55.959 four -year course that combines Latin and Greek 00:05:55.959 --> 00:05:58.800 language and literature, ancient history, and 00:05:58.800 --> 00:06:00.899 both ancient and modern philosophy. So you're 00:06:00.899 --> 00:06:03.139 not just reading translations. No, no. You are 00:06:03.139 --> 00:06:05.519 translating Thucydides and Plato from the original 00:06:05.519 --> 00:06:08.519 Greek and Tacitus from the Latin while simultaneously 00:06:08.519 --> 00:06:10.720 critiquing their logic and historical accuracy. 00:06:11.060 --> 00:06:13.540 It is designed to be punishing. It sounds exhausting. 00:06:13.720 --> 00:06:15.600 It is. It trains you to think with incredible 00:06:15.600 --> 00:06:18.209 precision. And Iris didn't just survive it, she 00:06:18.209 --> 00:06:20.910 crushed it. She took first class honors in 1942. 00:06:21.509 --> 00:06:25.170 But again, look at the year, 1942. She is sitting 00:06:25.170 --> 00:06:28.089 her final exams, translating Greek philosophy, 00:06:28.350 --> 00:06:32.389 while the Luftwaffe is bombing London. The world 00:06:32.389 --> 00:06:35.389 is burning down around her. That contrast is 00:06:35.389 --> 00:06:38.050 the key to her entire life. It's always there. 00:06:38.129 --> 00:06:40.769 She's in this ivory tower, engaging with the 00:06:40.769 --> 00:06:42.970 highest forms of human thought, while the basest 00:06:42.970 --> 00:06:44.850 forms of human destruction are happening just 00:06:44.850 --> 00:06:47.759 a few hundred miles away. And she doesn't stay 00:06:47.759 --> 00:06:49.740 in the tower. That's the important part. This 00:06:49.740 --> 00:06:51.759 is the part of her resume that I think surprises 00:06:51.759 --> 00:06:54.939 people who only know her as a novelist. She didn't 00:06:54.939 --> 00:06:57.319 go straight into a Ph .D. or a teaching gig. 00:06:57.480 --> 00:06:59.759 She went into the wreckage of the war. She did. 00:07:00.100 --> 00:07:01.660 Initially, she worked for the U .K. Treasury 00:07:01.660 --> 00:07:04.560 as an assistant principal, which was essential 00:07:04.560 --> 00:07:07.879 war work, but fairly bureaucratic. But then in 00:07:07.879 --> 00:07:11.019 June 1944, she joined the U .N .R .A. The United 00:07:11.019 --> 00:07:13.160 Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. 00:07:13.639 --> 00:07:16.319 Exactly. This is the organization tasked with 00:07:16.319 --> 00:07:18.420 putting Europe back together. And putting back 00:07:18.420 --> 00:07:20.680 together is a very polite way of saying trying 00:07:20.680 --> 00:07:23.480 to keep millions of displaced, starving, traumatized 00:07:23.480 --> 00:07:25.759 people alive. And where did they send her? She 00:07:25.759 --> 00:07:28.319 was stationed in London, then Brussels, then 00:07:28.319 --> 00:07:31.439 Innsbruck, and finally Graz, Austria, working 00:07:31.439 --> 00:07:34.740 with refugees. I want to pause on Graz because 00:07:34.740 --> 00:07:38.800 we're talking about 1945, 1946. The war has just 00:07:38.800 --> 00:07:41.439 ended. Austria was a part of the Third Reich. 00:07:41.639 --> 00:07:44.360 The infrastructure is gone. There are refugees 00:07:44.360 --> 00:07:47.240 flooding in from the east. What is a young woman 00:07:47.240 --> 00:07:49.839 from Oxford seeing when she steps off the train 00:07:49.839 --> 00:07:52.439 in Graz? She's seeing total moral and physical 00:07:52.439 --> 00:07:55.459 collapse. She's seen displaced persons, camps, 00:07:55.660 --> 00:07:57.899 VP camps. These are people who have lost their 00:07:57.899 --> 00:08:00.259 homes, their families, their citizenship. They're 00:08:00.259 --> 00:08:02.360 stateless. And the conditions must have been? 00:08:02.500 --> 00:08:06.000 Appalling. It's hunger. It's cold. It's mud. 00:08:06.160 --> 00:08:08.939 It's disease. It's the sheer logistical nightmare 00:08:08.939 --> 00:08:11.420 of human suffering on a mass scale. In the outline, 00:08:11.540 --> 00:08:13.180 it mentions she called this the thinginess of 00:08:13.180 --> 00:08:16.009 life. I love that. Yes. That's a very Murdochian 00:08:16.009 --> 00:08:17.949 phrase. Yeah. When you were in a classroom in 00:08:17.949 --> 00:08:20.230 Oxford, you can talk about the good or justice 00:08:20.230 --> 00:08:22.810 as these beautiful abstract concepts. Yeah. But 00:08:22.810 --> 00:08:24.689 when you were in a refugee camp in Graz looking 00:08:24.689 --> 00:08:26.910 at a family that has walked a thousand miles 00:08:26.910 --> 00:08:28.490 with nothing but the clothes on their backs, 00:08:28.649 --> 00:08:31.110 life becomes very thingy. Right. It's about bread. 00:08:31.389 --> 00:08:33.990 It's about blankets. It's about a visa stamp 00:08:33.990 --> 00:08:35.870 that can mean the difference between life and 00:08:35.870 --> 00:08:38.669 death. Goodness is not an idea. It's a bowl of 00:08:38.669 --> 00:08:41.309 soup. It strikes me that this experience must 00:08:41.309 --> 00:08:44.330 be where her philosophy actually starts to form. 00:08:44.759 --> 00:08:47.200 You can't be a moral relativist when you're standing 00:08:47.200 --> 00:08:49.580 in a refugee camp. You can't look at that suffering 00:08:49.580 --> 00:08:52.340 and say well morality is just a matter of opinion. 00:08:52.809 --> 00:08:54.929 I think you've hit the nail on the head. That 00:08:54.929 --> 00:08:58.110 experience lightly inoculated her against the 00:08:58.110 --> 00:09:01.090 kind of dry academic philosophy that was becoming 00:09:01.090 --> 00:09:03.570 popular at the time. She saw that human beings 00:09:03.570 --> 00:09:06.169 aren't just rational agents making choices in 00:09:06.169 --> 00:09:08.769 a vacuum. No, they're vulnerable. They are vulnerable, 00:09:09.009 --> 00:09:11.809 fleshy creatures who can be destroyed. And she 00:09:11.809 --> 00:09:15.070 saw that the act of helping someone, of seeing 00:09:15.070 --> 00:09:18.450 them as human amidst the rubble, was a real tangible 00:09:18.450 --> 00:09:21.350 force in the world. It wasn't just a word. It 00:09:21.350 --> 00:09:23.720 was an action. It's interesting. She also briefly 00:09:23.720 --> 00:09:26.360 met Ludwig Wittgenstein during this post -war 00:09:26.360 --> 00:09:28.879 period, right? Sure. At Cambridge. Yes. After 00:09:28.879 --> 00:09:31.220 UNRA, she won a scholarship to Vassar in the 00:09:31.220 --> 00:09:33.460 U .S., but was denied a visa, which we'll get 00:09:33.460 --> 00:09:35.759 to. So instead, she went to Newnham College, 00:09:35.960 --> 00:09:39.220 Cambridge, as a postgraduate from 1947 to 1948. 00:09:39.639 --> 00:09:42.019 And Wittgenstein is there. Wittgenstein is the, 00:09:42.039 --> 00:09:44.559 I mean, the heavyweight champion of 20th century 00:09:44.559 --> 00:09:47.320 philosophy. She didn't hear him lecture formally 00:09:47.320 --> 00:09:49.639 because he had resigned his professorship, but 00:09:49.639 --> 00:09:52.360 she was in his orbit. She met him. Talk about 00:09:52.360 --> 00:09:55.320 intimidating. Incredibly. Wittgenstein was known 00:09:55.320 --> 00:09:57.700 for his intensity, his almost religious devotion 00:09:57.700 --> 00:10:00.240 to the precision of language. He would trowel 00:10:00.240 --> 00:10:02.580 around the room demanding absolute clarity, even 00:10:02.580 --> 00:10:04.580 though Murdoch would eventually rebel against 00:10:04.580 --> 00:10:07.399 a lot of the analytic tradition he spawned. That 00:10:07.399 --> 00:10:10.159 exposure to his rigor, that demand for absolute 00:10:10.159 --> 00:10:12.639 honesty and thought definitely shaped her. So 00:10:12.639 --> 00:10:14.690 we have the foundation. She has the classical 00:10:14.690 --> 00:10:17.090 education from Oxford, the real -world trauma 00:10:17.090 --> 00:10:19.669 of the war relief work, and the exposure to the 00:10:19.669 --> 00:10:22.230 greatest philosophical minds of the era. She 00:10:22.230 --> 00:10:24.169 becomes a fellow at St. Anne's College, Oxford, 00:10:24.350 --> 00:10:27.429 in 1948. She is set up to be a brilliant academic. 00:10:27.809 --> 00:10:30.230 She is. Her path seems set. But then we have 00:10:30.230 --> 00:10:31.909 to talk about the other side of the coin, the 00:10:31.909 --> 00:10:34.769 personal life, the part that wasn't so neat and 00:10:34.769 --> 00:10:37.409 tidy. The life that fueled the novels. Exactly. 00:10:37.789 --> 00:10:40.929 Enter John Bailey. They met in Oxford in 1954. 00:10:41.659 --> 00:10:43.860 He was a literary critic, a professor at St. 00:10:43.899 --> 00:10:46.659 Anthony's College, and a novelist himself, though 00:10:46.659 --> 00:10:49.480 not as famous as she would become. They married 00:10:49.480 --> 00:10:52.379 in 1956. Now, if you look at the photos of them 00:10:52.379 --> 00:10:55.120 or read the basic bio, it looks like the perfect 00:10:55.120 --> 00:10:58.919 match. Two Dons, two intellectuals, a life of 00:10:58.919 --> 00:11:02.179 books and tea and quiet conversation in a dusty 00:11:02.179 --> 00:11:04.519 house full of papers. And in many ways, that 00:11:04.519 --> 00:11:06.419 was their life. It was a partnership of the mind. 00:11:06.460 --> 00:11:08.320 They had this incredible intellectual connection, 00:11:08.580 --> 00:11:12.460 but the romantic and sexual dynamic. That is 00:11:12.460 --> 00:11:14.460 where it gets incredibly complicated. This is 00:11:14.460 --> 00:11:16.440 the part that feels like a Rorschach test for 00:11:16.440 --> 00:11:18.580 relationships. Some people look at it and see 00:11:18.580 --> 00:11:20.899 a disaster. Others see something evolved and 00:11:20.899 --> 00:11:23.960 complex. John Bailey has this famous quote, and 00:11:23.960 --> 00:11:25.759 I still can't believe he said this. He thought 00:11:25.759 --> 00:11:29.139 that sex was quote, inescapably ridiculous. Chuckles 00:11:29.139 --> 00:11:33.210 lightly. It's a very distinct perspective. And 00:11:33.210 --> 00:11:36.529 if that is your baseline for intimacy, that it's 00:11:36.529 --> 00:11:39.570 inherently silly and ridiculous, you're going 00:11:39.570 --> 00:11:41.950 to have a very specific kind of marriage. Especially 00:11:41.950 --> 00:11:44.929 when your wife is Iris Murdoch. Because everything 00:11:44.929 --> 00:11:47.230 I've read suggests she did not find it ridiculous. 00:11:47.330 --> 00:11:50.649 She found it essential, powerful, maybe even 00:11:50.649 --> 00:11:53.070 dangerous. She was a person of immense passion. 00:11:53.610 --> 00:11:56.190 The sources are clear on this. She had multiple 00:11:56.190 --> 00:11:58.730 serious affairs throughout her marriage, and 00:11:58.730 --> 00:12:00.669 these weren't just flings. These were intense, 00:12:00.909 --> 00:12:03.250 emotional, sometimes turbulent relationships 00:12:03.250 --> 00:12:05.860 with both men and women. We have to name names 00:12:05.860 --> 00:12:08.200 here to understand the scope. She had a long, 00:12:08.240 --> 00:12:10.700 very complex relationship with the writer Brigid 00:12:10.700 --> 00:12:13.120 Brophy. Which was a very intellectual, very intense 00:12:13.120 --> 00:12:15.259 connection. Lots of letters, lots of arguments, 00:12:15.399 --> 00:12:17.419 a real meeting of minds as well as everything 00:12:17.419 --> 00:12:19.240 else. And then there's Elias Kennedy. He was 00:12:19.240 --> 00:12:22.259 a Nobel Prize winner, a writer, and by all accounts, 00:12:22.399 --> 00:12:25.299 a massive, overpowering personality. Kennedy 00:12:25.299 --> 00:12:27.940 is crucial. He was a dominant, almost demonic 00:12:27.940 --> 00:12:30.799 figure. He was charismatic, controlling, and 00:12:30.799 --> 00:12:33.539 sexually demanding. He is the archetype for what 00:12:33.539 --> 00:12:35.919 Murdoch called the enchanter. The enchanter. 00:12:36.139 --> 00:12:38.259 Let's define that. This is a figure that shows 00:12:38.259 --> 00:12:40.940 up in her books over and over again. It's the 00:12:40.940 --> 00:12:44.620 charismatic, powerful male who walks into a room 00:12:44.620 --> 00:12:47.740 and just bends reality to his will. He sucks 00:12:47.740 --> 00:12:50.179 the oxygen out of the room and makes everyone, 00:12:50.259 --> 00:12:52.940 men and women, fall in love with him or fear 00:12:52.940 --> 00:12:55.429 him. even if he's destroying them in the process. 00:12:55.529 --> 00:12:58.289 A kind of psychological vampire. In a way, yes. 00:12:59.549 --> 00:13:02.370 And she experienced that dynamic firsthand with 00:13:02.370 --> 00:13:04.950 Kennedy. She knew what it felt like to be under 00:13:04.950 --> 00:13:07.909 the spell of a powerful, ego -driven personality. 00:13:08.450 --> 00:13:10.549 And instead of letting it destroy her marriage, 00:13:10.769 --> 00:13:13.509 she seemingly compartmentalized it, or maybe 00:13:13.509 --> 00:13:16.110 integrated it. It's hard to say. But Bailey knew, 00:13:16.230 --> 00:13:18.090 right? He wasn't the clueless husband sitting 00:13:18.090 --> 00:13:20.110 at home while she was out having these intense 00:13:20.110 --> 00:13:22.509 relationships. He knew, absolutely. You referred 00:13:22.509 --> 00:13:25.309 to them as discomposing occasions. Discomposing 00:13:25.309 --> 00:13:27.669 occasions? That is the most British understatement 00:13:27.669 --> 00:13:30.029 I have ever heard in my entire life. My wife 00:13:30.029 --> 00:13:33.330 is with her Nobel Prize winning lover. How discomposing. 00:13:33.370 --> 00:13:35.870 It is remarkably understated. But I think this 00:13:35.870 --> 00:13:38.570 speaks to why the marriage lasted 43 years until 00:13:38.570 --> 00:13:41.429 her death. Bailey offered her something the Enchantress 00:13:41.429 --> 00:13:44.169 couldn't. Which was what? He offered her a safe 00:13:44.169 --> 00:13:46.990 harbor. He offered her a childlike, undemanding 00:13:46.990 --> 00:13:50.789 acceptance. With Kennedy, she had to be on. She 00:13:50.789 --> 00:13:53.029 had to be the intellectual equal, the lover, 00:13:53.129 --> 00:13:56.370 the combatant. It was exhausting. With Bailey, 00:13:56.509 --> 00:13:59.090 she could just be Iris. She could be messy and 00:13:59.090 --> 00:14:01.409 difficult, and he would still be there. It's 00:14:01.409 --> 00:14:04.370 that contrast again. The storm and the harbor. 00:14:04.919 --> 00:14:07.019 And she needed both. If she only had Bailey, 00:14:07.220 --> 00:14:09.240 maybe she would have been bored to death. If 00:14:09.240 --> 00:14:10.759 she only had Kennedy, she might have burned out 00:14:10.759 --> 00:14:13.279 completely. And this tension is exactly what 00:14:13.279 --> 00:14:16.419 fuels her fiction. It's the raw material. When 00:14:16.419 --> 00:14:19.179 you read her novels, they are populated by these 00:14:19.179 --> 00:14:22.259 exact types of people. You have the quiet, observant 00:14:22.259 --> 00:14:24.820 characters, often like Bailey, and you have the 00:14:24.820 --> 00:14:27.879 dangerous, charismatic wrecking balls like Kennedy. 00:14:28.519 --> 00:14:30.559 She wasn't inventing these dynamics. She was 00:14:30.559 --> 00:14:32.419 reporting from the front lines of her own life. 00:14:32.620 --> 00:14:34.759 Which brings us to the engine room. We've talked 00:14:34.759 --> 00:14:36.820 about the life, but we need to talk about the 00:14:36.820 --> 00:14:39.340 thinking. Because Murdoch wasn't just writing 00:14:39.340 --> 00:14:41.700 novels about affairs. She was trying to build 00:14:41.700 --> 00:14:43.860 a philosophical system that explained why we 00:14:43.860 --> 00:14:46.100 behave the way we do, why we fall under these 00:14:46.100 --> 00:14:49.600 spells. This is the aha moment. This is where 00:14:49.600 --> 00:14:52.220 we dive into her philosophy, specifically her 00:14:52.220 --> 00:14:54.460 collection of essays, The Sovereignty of Good. 00:14:55.039 --> 00:14:57.720 To understand why her philosophy was so radical, 00:14:57.740 --> 00:15:00.059 so rebellious, we have to understand what she 00:15:00.059 --> 00:15:02.440 was fighting against. You mentioned earlier that 00:15:02.440 --> 00:15:04.440 she hated the dominant philosophy of her time. 00:15:04.559 --> 00:15:07.299 What was going on in Oxford in the 50s and 60s 00:15:07.299 --> 00:15:10.360 that made her so angry? It was the heyday of 00:15:10.360 --> 00:15:13.019 analytic philosophy, specifically a branch of 00:15:13.019 --> 00:15:15.940 moral philosophy that included emotivism and 00:15:15.940 --> 00:15:19.000 later prescriptivism. The big names were people 00:15:19.000 --> 00:15:21.659 like A .J. Ayer and R .M. Hare. Okay, lay it 00:15:21.659 --> 00:15:23.580 out for us. What did they believe? What was the 00:15:23.580 --> 00:15:26.440 core idea? In simple terms, they believed that 00:15:26.440 --> 00:15:29.639 facts and values were completely separate things. 00:15:29.899 --> 00:15:32.159 A fact is something you can prove scientifically, 00:15:32.379 --> 00:15:35.480 like water boils at 100 degrees Celsius. That's 00:15:35.480 --> 00:15:37.460 a real verifiable statement about the world. 00:15:37.559 --> 00:15:39.940 Right. But a value, a statement like stealing 00:15:39.940 --> 00:15:42.980 is wrong or kindness is good, isn't a fact in 00:15:42.980 --> 00:15:45.100 the same way. It's just an expression of a feeling 00:15:45.100 --> 00:15:47.789 or a command. So if I say murder is wrong, I'm 00:15:47.789 --> 00:15:49.950 not stating a truth about the universe. According 00:15:49.950 --> 00:15:52.710 to the emotivist, no. You are basically just 00:15:52.710 --> 00:15:55.809 saying boo to murder. You are expressing a personal 00:15:55.809 --> 00:15:58.909 distaste. Or for the prescriptivist, you're saying 00:15:58.909 --> 00:16:01.990 don't murder, like a command. But you are describing 00:16:01.990 --> 00:16:05.370 a reality. There's no property of wrongness floating 00:16:05.370 --> 00:16:06.870 in the universe that you're pointing to. That 00:16:06.870 --> 00:16:10.529 feels empty. It makes morality feel like it's 00:16:10.529 --> 00:16:12.789 just about my personal preference, like choosing 00:16:12.789 --> 00:16:15.350 vanilla ice cream over chocolate. I prefer not 00:16:15.350 --> 00:16:18.809 being murdered. That is exactly why Murdoch hated 00:16:18.809 --> 00:16:21.289 it. She called it an uncriticized conception 00:16:21.289 --> 00:16:24.669 of science, dominating all of thought. She felt 00:16:24.669 --> 00:16:27.450 it reduced human beings to these isolated, lonely 00:16:27.450 --> 00:16:30.090 wills. In that worldview, we are just standing 00:16:30.090 --> 00:16:32.409 in a featureless void, pointing at things and 00:16:32.409 --> 00:16:34.490 saying, I like this or I command that. There's 00:16:34.490 --> 00:16:37.409 no connection to a deeper reality, no sense of 00:16:37.409 --> 00:16:39.590 discovery. So what was her alternative? She called 00:16:39.590 --> 00:16:41.509 herself a moral realist. What does that mean? 00:16:41.669 --> 00:16:44.279 It means she went back to Plato. She argued that 00:16:44.279 --> 00:16:46.620 good is a real thing. It's not just a word we 00:16:46.620 --> 00:16:48.679 use to express our feelings. It is a reality, 00:16:48.779 --> 00:16:51.299 almost like the sun. It exists outside of us, 00:16:51.320 --> 00:16:53.360 independent of our will. So it's something to 00:16:53.360 --> 00:16:56.600 be discovered, not invented. Precisely. And our 00:16:56.600 --> 00:16:59.379 job as human beings isn't to create our own values 00:16:59.379 --> 00:17:02.519 based on what we happen to want. Our job is to 00:17:02.519 --> 00:17:05.430 try to see the good. to perceive it accurately. 00:17:05.730 --> 00:17:07.769 This is where we get to her most famous concept, 00:17:08.009 --> 00:17:11.309 attention. Yes. She borrowed this from the French 00:17:11.309 --> 00:17:13.809 philosopher and mystic Simone Weil, who she had 00:17:13.809 --> 00:17:17.269 admired greatly. The idea is that morality isn't 00:17:17.269 --> 00:17:19.509 primarily about the moment you make a choice. 00:17:19.970 --> 00:17:22.650 It's not about standing at a crossroads and saying, 00:17:23.109 --> 00:17:25.450 I choose the virtuous path on the left. Okay. 00:17:25.950 --> 00:17:27.690 Morality is about what you were doing for the 00:17:27.690 --> 00:17:30.009 10 years leading up to that crossroads. It's 00:17:30.009 --> 00:17:31.650 about the quality of your consciousness. It's 00:17:31.650 --> 00:17:33.869 about how you habitually see the world. It's 00:17:33.869 --> 00:17:35.710 about the seeing, not the choosing. Exactly. 00:17:36.269 --> 00:17:38.950 The moral work happens before the choice. If 00:17:38.950 --> 00:17:41.509 you see the world clearly, if you pay just and 00:17:41.509 --> 00:17:43.410 loving attention to reality, you will naturally 00:17:43.410 --> 00:17:45.750 do the right thing when the time comes. If you 00:17:45.750 --> 00:17:47.769 are blinded by your own ego, by your own selfish 00:17:47.769 --> 00:17:50.309 fantasies, you will naturally do the wrong thing. 00:17:50.759 --> 00:17:52.940 The real work of morality happens in the scene. 00:17:53.119 --> 00:17:55.319 Okay, this is beautiful, but it's still a bit 00:17:55.319 --> 00:17:58.059 abstract. And Murdoch knew that, which is why 00:17:58.059 --> 00:18:00.680 she gave us the parable of M and D in her essays. 00:18:01.000 --> 00:18:03.339 I love this story because it is so mundane, so 00:18:03.339 --> 00:18:05.839 domestic, yet it explains everything. It is the 00:18:05.839 --> 00:18:07.819 perfect example. It brings it right down to earth. 00:18:07.980 --> 00:18:10.380 So let's set the scene. You have a mother -in 00:18:10.380 --> 00:18:13.859 -law, M, and you have a daughter -in -law, D. 00:18:14.099 --> 00:18:17.539 A tale as old as time. The classic setup for 00:18:17.539 --> 00:18:21.720 drama. Chuckles, indeed. Now, M is a bit of a 00:18:21.720 --> 00:18:24.980 snob. She's educated. She's refined. She looks 00:18:24.980 --> 00:18:27.799 at D, her son's wife, and she is not impressed. 00:18:28.119 --> 00:18:30.400 What does she see when she looks at D? She sees 00:18:30.400 --> 00:18:32.859 a girl who is common. She thinks D is cheap, 00:18:33.000 --> 00:18:36.200 undignified, maybe a bit noisy and vulgar. Her 00:18:36.200 --> 00:18:38.339 internal monologue is just full of judgment. 00:18:38.380 --> 00:18:41.019 She thinks, my son has married beneath him. But 00:18:41.019 --> 00:18:43.890 here's the catch, and this is so important. M 00:18:43.890 --> 00:18:46.130 is very well behaved on the outside. She's a 00:18:46.130 --> 00:18:48.309 proper English lady. Right. If you were watching 00:18:48.309 --> 00:18:50.250 M on a hidden camera, you wouldn't know she felt 00:18:50.250 --> 00:18:52.650 this way. She treats D perfectly well. She is 00:18:52.650 --> 00:18:54.869 polite. She smiles. She helps out with the dishes. 00:18:55.049 --> 00:18:58.049 She never says a single mean word. So, according 00:18:58.049 --> 00:19:00.829 to the analytic philosophers, the Buhare guys 00:19:00.829 --> 00:19:03.730 is a perfectly moral person in this situation. 00:19:04.519 --> 00:19:07.039 She is performing all the right actions. Her 00:19:07.039 --> 00:19:10.559 outward behavior is flawless. Exactly. If morality 00:19:10.559 --> 00:19:13.079 is just about public choices and observable actions, 00:19:13.339 --> 00:19:16.559 M is a saint. But Murdoch says no, absolutely 00:19:16.559 --> 00:19:19.140 not. Murdoch says that M's internal state matters. 00:19:19.339 --> 00:19:22.079 The fact that she is secretly despising D matters 00:19:22.079 --> 00:19:24.539 morally. Her consciousness is full of ugliness 00:19:24.539 --> 00:19:27.099 and illusion. So what happens in the parable? 00:19:27.119 --> 00:19:29.339 Does M just stay a secret hater forever? No. 00:19:29.980 --> 00:19:32.690 M decides to do the work. Maybe she realizes 00:19:32.690 --> 00:19:35.009 she's being unfair, or maybe she just wants to 00:19:35.009 --> 00:19:37.259 be a better person. She decides to look again. 00:19:37.279 --> 00:19:39.640 She applies attention. She tries to suspend her 00:19:39.640 --> 00:19:41.880 own prejudices, her own jealousy, her own snobbery. 00:19:41.980 --> 00:19:44.759 She tries to, in Murdoch's term, unself. She 00:19:44.759 --> 00:19:46.920 takes off the ego glasses. She tries to see what's 00:19:46.920 --> 00:19:49.019 actually there. She cleans the lens. And gradually 00:19:49.019 --> 00:19:51.220 over time, her vision shifts. She looks at D 00:19:51.220 --> 00:19:53.779 doing the exact same things as before. D is still 00:19:53.779 --> 00:19:56.880 the same person. But where M used to see vulgarity 00:19:56.880 --> 00:20:00.180 and noise, she now sees spontaneity and joy. 00:20:00.539 --> 00:20:03.119 Where she used to see commonness, she now sees 00:20:03.119 --> 00:20:07.859 freshness. a naive simplicity. She has re -described 00:20:07.859 --> 00:20:11.140 Dee in a more just, more loving way. And the 00:20:11.140 --> 00:20:13.700 crucial point is that Dee hasn't changed. Dee 00:20:13.700 --> 00:20:15.740 is exactly the same person she was at the beginning. 00:20:16.000 --> 00:20:18.380 The only thing that has changed is what is happening 00:20:18.380 --> 00:20:21.680 inside Em's head. And for Murdoch, that internal 00:20:21.680 --> 00:20:24.980 shift is a moral act. It might be the most important 00:20:24.980 --> 00:20:27.880 moral act Em has ever performed. She has moved 00:20:27.880 --> 00:20:30.859 from illusion seeing Dee through the fog of her 00:20:30.859 --> 00:20:34.480 own selfish ego to reality seeing Dee justly. 00:20:34.839 --> 00:20:37.599 as she truly is. That is such a heavy idea if 00:20:37.599 --> 00:20:39.680 you really apply it to your own life. It means 00:20:39.680 --> 00:20:41.460 that what I think about the guy who cuts me off 00:20:41.460 --> 00:20:43.640 in traffic matters, even if I don't honk at him 00:20:43.640 --> 00:20:46.039 or flip him off. It means my internal monologue 00:20:46.039 --> 00:20:48.279 is a moral battleground. That's it. That's the 00:20:48.279 --> 00:20:50.259 whole game for her. Murdoch believed that the 00:20:50.259 --> 00:20:53.359 fat, relentless ego, that's her phrase, and it's 00:20:53.359 --> 00:20:55.599 just brilliant, is constantly creating illusions 00:20:55.599 --> 00:20:58.359 to protect itself. The fat, relentless ego. It's 00:20:58.359 --> 00:21:00.480 such a visceral image. It sounds like a monster 00:21:00.480 --> 00:21:03.549 living in your chest. In a way, it is. And it's 00:21:03.549 --> 00:21:05.670 constantly weaving stories. We tell ourselves 00:21:05.670 --> 00:21:08.529 stories where we are the hero and everyone else 00:21:08.529 --> 00:21:12.230 is an idiot or a villain or an obstacle. Morality 00:21:12.230 --> 00:21:15.529 is the painful, difficult work of popping that 00:21:15.529 --> 00:21:19.130 bubble and seeing other people as real, separate 00:21:19.130 --> 00:21:23.779 entities with their own centers of being. Great 00:21:23.779 --> 00:21:25.319 art was one of the few things that could help 00:21:25.319 --> 00:21:27.859 us kill that ego, or at least quiet it down. 00:21:28.119 --> 00:21:30.779 Yes. When you look at a truly great painting, 00:21:30.819 --> 00:21:33.519 or read a great novel, or even just look at a 00:21:33.519 --> 00:21:36.099 kestrel hovering in the sky, you forget yourself 00:21:36.099 --> 00:21:37.859 for a moment. You are pulled out of your own 00:21:37.859 --> 00:21:39.680 head and forced to pay attention to something 00:21:39.680 --> 00:21:42.140 else, something real and detailed, and not you. 00:21:42.710 --> 00:21:45.809 That moment of selfless awe is a moral training 00:21:45.809 --> 00:21:47.990 ground. Which is the perfect transition to her 00:21:47.990 --> 00:21:50.650 other career. Because if art is the tool we use 00:21:50.650 --> 00:21:53.150 to learn how to see, then writing novels is basically 00:21:53.150 --> 00:21:55.710 building a gymnasium for the soul. Exactly. She 00:21:55.710 --> 00:21:58.190 published 26 of them. And she didn't view them 00:21:58.190 --> 00:22:00.250 as separate from her philosophy at all. They 00:22:00.250 --> 00:22:02.349 were the laboratory where she tested these ideas 00:22:02.349 --> 00:22:05.190 with fictional human beings. She started with 00:22:05.190 --> 00:22:07.710 Under the Net in 1954, which is actually really 00:22:07.710 --> 00:22:10.349 funny. It's a picaresque, it's a comedy about 00:22:10.349 --> 00:22:12.920 a... Charming but feckless writer in London. 00:22:13.079 --> 00:22:15.660 It is. It's light. It's fast -paced. It was selected 00:22:15.660 --> 00:22:18.720 by Modern Library as one of the 100 best English 00:22:18.720 --> 00:22:21.299 language novels of the 20th century. But as she 00:22:21.299 --> 00:22:23.680 got older, her books got denser, darker, and 00:22:23.680 --> 00:22:25.940 philosophically more complex. And we have to 00:22:25.940 --> 00:22:27.480 talk about the big one, the one that won the 00:22:27.480 --> 00:22:31.119 Booker Prize, The Sea. The Sea, published in 00:22:31.119 --> 00:22:34.420 1978. This book is a masterpiece of psychological 00:22:34.420 --> 00:22:37.400 horror in a way, but it is also a terrifying 00:22:37.400 --> 00:22:39.839 look at what happens when you fail the M &D test 00:22:39.839 --> 00:22:42.680 on a grand dramatic scale. Let's break it down. 00:22:42.799 --> 00:22:45.970 Who is the main character? Charles Araby. He 00:22:45.970 --> 00:22:48.829 is a famous, successful, celebrated London theater 00:22:48.829 --> 00:22:51.410 director who has just retired. He is wealthy, 00:22:51.549 --> 00:22:54.170 he is cultured, and he is an absolute monster 00:22:54.170 --> 00:22:56.750 of ego. The fat, relentless ego with a name and 00:22:56.750 --> 00:22:59.910 a bank account? 100%. He moves to this isolated, 00:23:00.049 --> 00:23:03.289 ugly house by the sea he calls Shruff End. He 00:23:03.289 --> 00:23:05.450 wants to write his memoirs. He wants to be alone 00:23:05.450 --> 00:23:07.369 with the waves and his own brilliant thoughts. 00:23:07.950 --> 00:23:10.829 The book is his diary, and he describes his meals 00:23:10.829 --> 00:23:14.150 in excruciating detail. Anchovy paste, boiled 00:23:14.150 --> 00:23:17.480 eggs. Cheap wine. He is utterly obsessed with 00:23:17.480 --> 00:23:19.980 his own sensory experience. It's all about him. 00:23:20.140 --> 00:23:23.160 Everything. Yeah. But then, one day, he sees 00:23:23.160 --> 00:23:25.720 a ghost from his past in the village. Hartley? 00:23:25.960 --> 00:23:29.000 Mary Hartley Fitch. She was his childhood sweetheart, 00:23:29.160 --> 00:23:31.200 the one who got away. He hasn't seen her in decades. 00:23:31.759 --> 00:23:34.380 She is now an elderly woman, frumpy, with a difficult 00:23:34.380 --> 00:23:37.180 adopted son, married to someone else, living 00:23:37.180 --> 00:23:39.599 this quiet, unassuming life in the same village. 00:23:39.759 --> 00:23:41.440 And most people would say, oh wow, small world, 00:23:41.480 --> 00:23:43.599 and maybe have an awkward cup of tea. But not 00:23:43.599 --> 00:23:46.440 Charles. Charles decides that this is destiny. 00:23:46.579 --> 00:23:48.859 It's fate. He decides that Hartley is miserable, 00:23:49.000 --> 00:23:51.519 that her husband is abusive, and that he, Charles, 00:23:51.660 --> 00:23:54.000 is her savior. He convinces himself that she 00:23:54.000 --> 00:23:56.460 is secretly, tragically still in love with him. 00:23:56.579 --> 00:23:58.539 He starts writing this narrative in his head, 00:23:58.599 --> 00:24:01.019 the same way he would direct a play. I am the 00:24:01.019 --> 00:24:03.859 night, she is the damsel in distress. And he 00:24:03.859 --> 00:24:06.559 acts on it. He stalks her. He engineers encounters. 00:24:06.839 --> 00:24:09.880 He eventually, essentially kidnaps her. Or at 00:24:09.880 --> 00:24:12.470 least... holds her prisoner in his house under 00:24:12.470 --> 00:24:15.630 the guise of rescuing her from her life. It becomes 00:24:15.630 --> 00:24:18.089 a claustrophobic horror story of obsession. And 00:24:18.089 --> 00:24:20.730 the tragedy is the reader can see what Charles 00:24:20.730 --> 00:24:22.970 can't see. Because we're reading his diary, we 00:24:22.970 --> 00:24:24.910 see his delusions, but we also see through them. 00:24:24.950 --> 00:24:27.990 We can see that Hartley is just... Tired. She's 00:24:27.990 --> 00:24:30.369 confused. She's old. She doesn't want to be rescued. 00:24:30.630 --> 00:24:33.130 She just wants to go home. Exactly. Charles refuses 00:24:33.130 --> 00:24:36.069 to see her. He refuses to pay attention to the 00:24:36.069 --> 00:24:38.329 real woman in front of him. He looks at her and 00:24:38.329 --> 00:24:42.069 sees his own fantasy, his own lost youth, a character 00:24:42.069 --> 00:24:45.410 in his psychodrama. He imposes his will on her 00:24:45.410 --> 00:24:47.930 reality. It is the ultimate failure of love. 00:24:48.190 --> 00:24:50.349 He is the enchanter gone wrong. He is trying 00:24:50.349 --> 00:24:52.450 to force the world to follow his script because 00:24:52.450 --> 00:24:54.829 he's a director. But real people aren't actors 00:24:54.829 --> 00:24:57.400 you can just give lines to. And the novel absolutely 00:24:57.400 --> 00:25:01.420 destroys him for it. By the end, his illusions 00:25:01.420 --> 00:25:04.140 are shattered in the most violent and humiliating 00:25:04.140 --> 00:25:07.279 ways. It is a brutal demonstration of Murdoch's 00:25:07.279 --> 00:25:10.039 philosophy. If you do not see people justly, 00:25:10.059 --> 00:25:12.819 if you do not unself, you will destroy them and 00:25:12.819 --> 00:25:14.759 you will destroy yourself. It makes you wonder 00:25:14.759 --> 00:25:17.299 how much of herself she put into Charles. She 00:25:17.299 --> 00:25:19.140 knew she had a big ego. She's a famous writer. 00:25:19.299 --> 00:25:22.039 Was she afraid of becoming him? I think every 00:25:22.039 --> 00:25:24.000 creative person has a bit of Charles Aroby in 00:25:24.000 --> 00:25:27.039 them. the desire to control the narrative to 00:25:27.039 --> 00:25:29.799 make the world conform to your vision i think 00:25:29.799 --> 00:25:31.759 she wrote him as a warning to herself and to 00:25:31.759 --> 00:25:34.289 us There is a critique, though, isn't there? 00:25:34.369 --> 00:25:36.809 The literary critic James Wood pointed this out. 00:25:36.849 --> 00:25:38.410 He said that for all her talk about creating 00:25:38.410 --> 00:25:40.970 free characters like Tolstoy did, for all her 00:25:40.970 --> 00:25:43.529 praise of seeing others as real, Murdoch's own 00:25:43.529 --> 00:25:45.930 characters often feel trapped by her. It's the 00:25:45.930 --> 00:25:48.890 puppet master critique, yeah. Wood argued that 00:25:48.890 --> 00:25:51.509 because she had such a strong philosophical agenda, 00:25:51.750 --> 00:25:53.970 her characters sometimes feel like they're just 00:25:53.970 --> 00:25:56.650 acting out her theories. They don't always breathe 00:25:56.650 --> 00:25:59.349 and surprise you in the way that, say, Tolstoy's 00:25:59.349 --> 00:26:01.650 characters do. They feel like chess pieces in 00:26:01.650 --> 00:26:04.440 a moral... game she is playing. Sometimes. It's 00:26:04.440 --> 00:26:06.920 a fair critique. The plots can be a bit creaky 00:26:06.920 --> 00:26:09.960 and melodramatic. But even when her characters 00:26:09.960 --> 00:26:13.279 are puppets, they are fascinating, articulate, 00:26:13.599 --> 00:26:17.759 messy puppets. And the world she builds are so 00:26:17.759 --> 00:26:20.519 immersive and intelligent. Let's zoom out again. 00:26:20.680 --> 00:26:22.259 We've covered the philosophy and the fiction, 00:26:22.400 --> 00:26:24.839 but we can't ignore the politics, because just 00:26:24.839 --> 00:26:26.779 like her love life, her political life went through 00:26:26.779 --> 00:26:29.579 some wild swings. She didn't start out as a quiet 00:26:29.579 --> 00:26:32.779 Oxford don. Oh, massive swings. If you go back 00:26:32.779 --> 00:26:35.859 to 1938, when she started at Oxford, she was 00:26:35.859 --> 00:26:37.859 a card -carrying member of the Communist Party 00:26:37.859 --> 00:26:39.900 of Great Britain. Which, to be fair, was almost 00:26:39.900 --> 00:26:41.579 a fashion statement for intellectuals in the 00:26:41.579 --> 00:26:44.240 30s. It was the thing to do. It was. It was the 00:26:44.240 --> 00:26:46.700 era of the Spanish Civil War, the rise of fascism 00:26:46.700 --> 00:26:48.940 across Europe. If you had a heart and a brain, 00:26:49.000 --> 00:26:51.359 And you leaned left. Yeah. But Murdoch didn't 00:26:51.359 --> 00:26:54.380 just lean. She joined. She was a committed member. 00:26:54.559 --> 00:26:56.680 But it didn't last. No. She left the party in 00:26:56.680 --> 00:27:00.420 1942. Yeah. And her disillusionment was profound. 00:27:01.079 --> 00:27:03.099 She later said that the experience taught her 00:27:03.099 --> 00:27:06.880 how strong and how awful Marxism is in its organized 00:27:06.880 --> 00:27:10.259 institutional form. Strong and awful. That is 00:27:10.259 --> 00:27:13.920 such a specific and telling phrasing. It acknowledges 00:27:13.920 --> 00:27:16.759 the power of the idea. the desire for justice, 00:27:16.940 --> 00:27:20.000 the critique of capitalism. But it condemns the 00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:22.400 reality, the crushing of the individual, the 00:27:22.400 --> 00:27:25.559 dogmatism, the lies. And this haunted her professionally. 00:27:25.779 --> 00:27:28.160 For years, she was denied visas to the United 00:27:28.160 --> 00:27:30.440 States because of the McCarran Act. She was on 00:27:30.440 --> 00:27:32.799 a blacklist. Absolutely. She had to get special 00:27:32.799 --> 00:27:35.819 waivers just to visit. Her youthful radicalism 00:27:35.819 --> 00:27:37.839 had real -world consequences for a long time. 00:27:38.019 --> 00:27:40.299 And then there is the Irish question. We started 00:27:40.299 --> 00:27:43.170 with her birth in Dublin. As the troubles escalated 00:27:43.170 --> 00:27:45.309 in the later 20th century, how did she relate 00:27:45.309 --> 00:27:47.529 to that part of her identity? This is where her 00:27:47.529 --> 00:27:50.210 commitment to truth over tribalism really shows 00:27:50.210 --> 00:27:52.849 up. Her biographer, Peter Conradi, notes she 00:27:52.849 --> 00:27:55.529 had as valid a claim to Irishness as most North 00:27:55.529 --> 00:27:58.289 Americans have to American -ness. But she grew 00:27:58.289 --> 00:28:01.089 to despise the romantic nationalism that she 00:28:01.089 --> 00:28:03.430 felt fueled the IRA. There is a quote in the 00:28:03.430 --> 00:28:04.970 source material where she talks about hearing 00:28:04.970 --> 00:28:07.349 Irish voices. It's from a private letter, and 00:28:07.349 --> 00:28:10.009 it's quite shocking. She wrote, The sounds of 00:28:10.009 --> 00:28:12.210 all those Irish voices made me feel privately 00:28:12.210 --> 00:28:15.750 sick. A mad, bad world. Privately sick. That 00:28:15.750 --> 00:28:18.589 is visceral. That is a rejection of her own tribe, 00:28:18.650 --> 00:28:21.569 in a way. Because she saw what that tribalism 00:28:21.569 --> 00:28:23.970 was doing. She saw that the narrative of the 00:28:23.970 --> 00:28:26.529 cause was being used to justify murder and violence. 00:28:26.789 --> 00:28:29.690 For her, it was another form of the fat, relentless 00:28:29.690 --> 00:28:32.789 ego, but a collective one. Our side is good. 00:28:32.930 --> 00:28:35.170 Your side is bad. Therefore, we can kill you. 00:28:35.740 --> 00:28:38.359 She hated anything that blinded people to the 00:28:38.359 --> 00:28:40.720 concrete humanity of others. So whether it was 00:28:40.720 --> 00:28:42.839 a jealous mother -in -law, a selfish theater 00:28:42.839 --> 00:28:45.240 director, or a political movement, the enemy 00:28:45.240 --> 00:28:48.099 was always the same. Blindness, self -centered 00:28:48.099 --> 00:28:51.119 illusion. Exactly. The enemy is the refusal to 00:28:51.119 --> 00:28:53.299 see reality clearly. We have to talk about the 00:28:53.299 --> 00:28:55.880 end. Because for a woman who lived entirely in 00:28:55.880 --> 00:28:58.099 her mind, who prized consciousness and attention 00:28:58.099 --> 00:29:00.680 and nuance above everything else, the end of 00:29:00.680 --> 00:29:03.420 her life was a particularly cruel irony. It is 00:29:03.420 --> 00:29:05.019 the most heartbreaking chapter of the story. 00:29:05.299 --> 00:29:08.000 In 1997, after a couple of years of what she 00:29:08.000 --> 00:29:09.920 called a writer's block that was clearly something 00:29:09.920 --> 00:29:12.799 more, Iris Murdoch was diagnosed with Alzheimer's 00:29:12.799 --> 00:29:15.920 disease. The fading of the light. The great mind 00:29:15.920 --> 00:29:18.640 unraveling. She described it to her husband as 00:29:18.640 --> 00:29:22.680 being in a very bad, quiet place. She lost her 00:29:22.680 --> 00:29:25.769 words. She lost her ability to write, to read. 00:29:26.410 --> 00:29:28.670 The woman who had translated Plato and written 00:29:28.670 --> 00:29:31.390 The Sea, The Sea eventually sat in front of the 00:29:31.390 --> 00:29:34.250 Teletubbies on TV, pointing at the screen, unable 00:29:34.250 --> 00:29:36.650 to articulate what she saw. And her husband, 00:29:36.710 --> 00:29:39.589 John Daly, the man who found sex ridiculous, 00:29:39.710 --> 00:29:42.250 the man who stayed in the harbor all those years, 00:29:42.470 --> 00:29:45.269 he became her primary caretaker. He did. And 00:29:45.269 --> 00:29:46.930 he did something very public and very controversial. 00:29:47.230 --> 00:29:50.890 He wrote a memoir, Iris. A memoir later retitled 00:29:50.890 --> 00:29:53.299 Elegy for Iris. He published the first part of 00:29:53.299 --> 00:29:55.160 it while she was still alive, and the full book 00:29:55.160 --> 00:29:57.700 came out shortly before she died in 1999. And 00:29:57.700 --> 00:30:00.259 people had strong feelings about this. Very strong 00:30:00.259 --> 00:30:02.460 feelings. The book was a sensation. It was adapted 00:30:02.460 --> 00:30:04.519 into that famous movie with Judi Dench and Kate 00:30:04.519 --> 00:30:07.539 Winslet. But in the literary world, it caused 00:30:07.539 --> 00:30:10.460 a scandal. Some people felt Bailey was exploiting 00:30:10.460 --> 00:30:12.619 her. They felt he was revealing her indignity, 00:30:12.619 --> 00:30:14.680 the incontinence, the confusion, her vulnerability 00:30:14.680 --> 00:30:17.480 for his own fame and profit. Wow. One critic 00:30:17.480 --> 00:30:19.859 called it mischievously revelatory. Like he was 00:30:19.859 --> 00:30:22.359 finally taking control of the narrative after 00:30:22.359 --> 00:30:25.460 all those years of being the quiet one. The enchanter 00:30:25.460 --> 00:30:27.960 is gone. Now I'm the writer. There is that interpretation. 00:30:28.180 --> 00:30:30.099 Yeah. That he was settling some kind of score, 00:30:30.180 --> 00:30:31.859 but there is a kinder one, and I think it's the 00:30:31.859 --> 00:30:34.640 more accurate one, which is that in those final 00:30:34.640 --> 00:30:37.900 years, Bailey was finally passing the ultimate 00:30:37.900 --> 00:30:41.119 M &D test. How so? Explain that. He was looking 00:30:41.119 --> 00:30:44.119 at her. Not as the famous genius, not as the 00:30:44.119 --> 00:30:46.539 wandering unfaithful wife, not as the intimidating 00:30:46.539 --> 00:30:49.440 intellect, but as a vulnerable, broken human 00:30:49.440 --> 00:30:52.000 being in front of him who needed care. And he 00:30:52.000 --> 00:30:54.440 loved her. He fed her, he dressed her, he sat 00:30:54.440 --> 00:30:57.220 with her. The memoir is a record of him paying 00:30:57.220 --> 00:30:59.259 attention to her when she could no longer pay 00:30:59.259 --> 00:31:01.289 attention to anything at all. That is beautiful. 00:31:01.430 --> 00:31:03.730 It turns the controversy into a final act of 00:31:03.730 --> 00:31:06.609 love, a final moral act in her own terms. It 00:31:06.609 --> 00:31:09.369 does. It shows that in the end, the simple, ridiculous 00:31:09.369 --> 00:31:11.430 husband was the one who could see her justly, 00:31:11.450 --> 00:31:13.750 who could love the reality of her, not the idea. 00:31:14.029 --> 00:31:16.009 So what does this all mean? We've looked at the 00:31:16.009 --> 00:31:18.650 war, the affairs, the philosophy, the books, 00:31:18.730 --> 00:31:21.569 the disease. When we put it all together, what 00:31:21.569 --> 00:31:24.430 is the legacy of Iris Murdoch? I think her legacy 00:31:24.430 --> 00:31:27.230 is that she built a bridge. She built a bridge 00:31:27.230 --> 00:31:30.000 between the inner life. The secret thoughts we 00:31:30.000 --> 00:31:31.900 have in the shower, the jealousies, the fears, 00:31:32.019 --> 00:31:36.279 our private mental landscape, and the real world 00:31:36.279 --> 00:31:39.259 of moral action. She didn't let us off the hook. 00:31:39.319 --> 00:31:41.240 She didn't let us say, well, my actions were 00:31:41.240 --> 00:31:43.960 fine, so I'm a good person. No, she demanded 00:31:43.960 --> 00:31:47.079 more from us. She demanded that we purify our 00:31:47.079 --> 00:31:50.259 vision. She taught us that we are all pilgrims 00:31:50.259 --> 00:31:52.460 trying to see through the fog of our own selfishness. 00:31:52.740 --> 00:31:56.299 And she gave us the tools. art, beauty, nature, 00:31:56.500 --> 00:32:00.019 love, to help clear that fog even for a moment. 00:32:00.160 --> 00:32:01.640 I want to leave the listener with a final thought. 00:32:01.720 --> 00:32:03.200 It's a quote of hers, and I think it sums up 00:32:03.200 --> 00:32:04.559 everything we've talked about today. She said, 00:32:04.720 --> 00:32:07.700 love is the extremely difficult realization that 00:32:07.700 --> 00:32:11.380 something other than oneself is real. It sounds 00:32:11.380 --> 00:32:13.380 so simple, like something on a greeting card. 00:32:13.700 --> 00:32:16.980 But try doing it. Try really, truly believing 00:32:16.980 --> 00:32:19.339 and acting on that for a whole day. It's the 00:32:19.339 --> 00:32:21.740 hardest work in the world. So here is the challenge 00:32:21.740 --> 00:32:24.519 for you listening right now. Next time you feel 00:32:24.519 --> 00:32:27.480 that flash of irritation or judgment or jealousy 00:32:27.480 --> 00:32:29.960 towards someone, maybe it's your own version 00:32:29.960 --> 00:32:33.119 of the daughter -in -law D or a rival at work 00:32:33.119 --> 00:32:36.200 or just a stranger on the Internet, ask yourself 00:32:36.200 --> 00:32:38.559 a question. Ask yourself, is the problem with 00:32:38.559 --> 00:32:42.339 them or is my lens dirty? Is it a failure of 00:32:42.339 --> 00:32:44.680 my own vision? Can I look again? Can I unself 00:32:44.680 --> 00:32:46.960 just for a second and try to see them justly? 00:32:47.759 --> 00:32:50.059 That's the Murdoch challenge. And it's a lifelong 00:32:50.059 --> 00:32:52.319 project. You never really finish. It certainly 00:32:52.319 --> 00:32:54.759 is. Thanks for taking this deep dive with us 00:32:54.759 --> 00:32:56.880 into the mind of Iris Murdoch. It's been a pleasure. 00:32:57.059 --> 00:32:57.819 See you next time.