Iris Murdoch and the Ancient Quarrel - (Bloomsbury Studies in Philosophy and Poetry) by Lyra Ekström Lindbäck (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Lyra Ekström Lindbäck revisits the crucial distinction between literature and philosophy in Iris Murdoch's work to make a convincing case for understanding the particularity of literature and her insistence on the separation between the two.

Iris Murdoch and the Ancient Quarrel makes a break with existing scholarship on Murdoch's philosophy and literature that ultimately re-states the philosophical value of literature, alongside literary aspects of philosophy. This book differs by deepening Murdoch's insistence on the differences between the disciplines, providing a consistent and polemical argument for the distinction between literature and philosophy more generally. Engaging thinkers such as Plato, Kant, Hegel, Sartre, Weil, and Cavell, Iris Murdoch and the Ancient Quarreldelves into the aesthetic characteristics that distinguish philosophy and literature. Through a discussion of the illusion of sense, the role of conceptual thinking in literature, the clash between epistemology and fiction, the artifice of tragedy, and the ambiguous morality of artistic inspiration and experience, this study reveals literature as essentially other to philosophy.

Review Quotes

A bold and beautifully written work of scholarship. Taking Iris Murdoch as her guide, Lindbäck vigorously defends the idea that literature and philosophy are fundamentally different enterprises and helps us to see why this is a good thing for philosophy and for literature. Through subtle expositions of Kant, Plato, Hegel and a host of other thinkers, she shows how literature can be deeply meaningful and occasionally revelatory without being essentially about, or for, the furthering of understanding. A prominent trend in Murdoch scholarship reads Murdoch's novels as an extension of her philosophy despite Murdoch's repudiation of this idea. In illuminating contrast, Lindbäck appeals to Murdoch's novels to remind us of what it is normally like to enter into a literary work of art-how sensuous, immersive and pleasurable the experience, how very different from what we experience when engaged in conceptual clarification. This is an exceptionally engaging book that perhaps only a novelist who is also a philosopher could have written. Anyone and everyone with an interest in the relationship between philosophy and literature, the nature of aesthetic experience, or the writings of Iris Murdoch should read it.
Professor of Philosophy, University of Montana, USA

Lindback's Iris Murdoch and the Ancient Quarrel: Why Literature Is Not Philosophy reconsiders the central question at the heart of Murdoch studies: how far, and to what extent does Murdoch literature and philosophy interact, and should they be consider distinct modes of thought? This book provides a crucial intervention in the field to insist on their separateness, as well as bringing a variety of philosophical voices to bear on the debate which, through Lindback's careful discussion, becomes more wide-ranging and necessary. An essential work for those working in Murdoch studies, and in interdisciplinary studies more widely.
Director of the Iris Murdoch Research Centre, Reader in English Literature, University of Chichester, UK

Lyra Ekström Lindbäck is an award winning Swedish novelist. Her book, whose project is argued for with the conceptual clarity that is philosophical in orientation, seeks to establish why literature and philosophy need to be held apart. This is both an astounding and important work. Lindbäck has stepped outside the realm of the novel to establish the novel's significance. Centred on the writings of Iris Murdoch she uncovers at the heart of Murdoch's works a literary undertaking which, while having a relation to philosophy, is nonetheless always distanced from it. Literature can present differing worlds precisely because it can maintain its distance from conceptual determination. To have such a book by a writer of the significance of Lindbäck is as important to philosophy as it will be to literature.
Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Monash University, Australia

About the Author

Lyra Ekström Lindbäck is a novelist and critic.