Iris Murdoch's Moral Philosophy Podcast

In this episode Miles is joined by Cathy Mason (Central European University, Vienna) to discuss her new book, 'Iris Murdoch's Moral Philosophy: Reframing the True, the Real, and the Good'. https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Iris-Murdochs-Moral-Philosophy-by-Cathy-Mason/9780198940432 Cathy Mason is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at Central European University, Vienna and her main areas of research interest are Ethics, Epistemology (especially Moral Epistemology), Aesthetics, and Iris Murdoch's philosophical writing (particularly at the points where these areas converge). Her previous work has focused on the moral phenomena of everyday life, often drawing on virtue theory. She has written about a variety of topics such as friendship, love, mourning, forgiveness, hope and humility. Prior to coming to CEU, she held a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the University of Cambridge – where she studied for her PhD - and taught at the Universities of Oxford and Birmingham.

In this episode we are returning to our close reading of the collection Existentialists and Mystics. For the third podcast of our mini-series, we’ll be discussing Murdoch's review of Gabriel Marcel’s ‘The Image of Mind’ and her essay ‘The Existential Political Myth’. The first is a review of The Mystery of Being by Marcel from 1951 – the first volume of his published volume of Gifford Lectures. Murdoch’s essay 'The Existential Political Myth' was first published in Socratic Digest in 1952. Joining me today is Samuel Filby who was the guest on the first episode of this mini series. He is currently working on his PhD thesis on Murdoch at Northwestern University, Chicago. His work focuses on Murdoch’s aesthetics and moral psychology.

In this 75th Episode Special, Miles is joined by Daniel Read (Kingston University, UK) to answer questions from the Iris Murdoch Society and via the social media channels. You can find out much more, and join the society, here: www.irismurdochsociety.org.uk The questions sent in are: 1. Could Iris Murdoch drive? 2. How should Murdoch’s philosophical seriousness be reassessed in light of recent scholarship on her as a public intellectual? 3. In what ways did Murdoch’s Irish background shape her imagination, ethics, and sense of exile or belonging? 4. How has Murdoch’s relationship with religion and the sacred been represented differently in scholarship versus media portrayals? 5. How should Murdoch’s private life—especially her complex relationships—be integrated (or resisted) in critical interpretations of her novels? 6. What is Murdoch’s place within post-war British women’s writing, and why has she often been treated as an exception rather than part of a continuum? 7. How do contemporary debates about feminism, agency, and power reframe Murdoch’s representation of women? 8. Murdoch insists on the reality of the Good as something external and authoritative. How might that claim speak to contemporary moral and political life, where moral language is often treated as subjective or unstable? 9. Murdoch’s late novels are often described as difficult, bewildering, even radically alien. How should we read the strangeness of the late Murdoch: as decline, experiment, or metaphysical intensification? 10. What do you think is the most important unfinished task for Murdoch scholarship today?

In this lecture, given on Monday 15th December 2025, Dr Lucy Oulton (University of Chichester), Murdoch's enduring relationship with the figure of Peter Pan is discussed: her talk is titled '‘An Ousted Gabriel’: Iris Murdoch and the Enduring Allure of Peter Pan' Wendy and Peter Pan, a stage adaptation of the J.M. Barrie novel Peter and Wendy, embraces a key detail from Barrie’s own childhood, dealing sensitively with the topic of child loss. The play foregrounds Wendy’s attempts to come to terms with the loss of a (third) brother, while her parents are overwhelmed by grief. Iris Murdoch’s fascination with Peter Pan is well documented. Cheryl Bove and Anne Rowe observe that she ‘most heavily depends on the Peter Pan myth […] in relationships which lack warmth, connections and love’. My talk focuses on three of Murdoch’s fictional daughters who attempt to fathom their own circumstances in a shifting state of adolescence. I explore Murdoch’s ideation of the girls in relation to this cultural icon, and her incisive understanding of what it means to grow up. Lucy is a Associate at the Iris Murdoch Research Centre at the University of Chichester and her first monograph, Iris Murdoch’s Wild Imagination: Nature and the Environment was published earlier this year. She is an editor of the Iris Murdoch Review and has lectured intentionally on Murdoch’s life and work.

In this episode Miles is joined by Frances White and Robert Cremins - both from the Iris Murdoch Research Centre at the University of Chichester - to discuss Murdoch's final novel, Jackson's Dilemma. Frances is the Deputy Director of the IMRC at Chichester and the author of many works on Murdoch, the most recent being the edited collection Iris Murdoch and the Western Theological Imagination (Palgrave, 2025) and Poems from An attic: Selected Poems 1936-1995 (Chatto and Windus, 2025). Robert is a writer and was Senior Lecturer in the Honours College at the University of Houston, and the Faculty Director of Creative Works. A novelist, short story writer and literary critic, Robert has got a lifelong love of Murdoch’s fiction. He has recently co-edited North American special edition of the Iris Murdoch Review, published in November 2025, and is writing his PhD thesis at Chichester on the influence of Henry James on Murdoch.

In this episode Miles is joined by Anne Rowe (University of Chichester/Kingston), Rachel Hirschler (Kinston University) and Rosanna Hilyard (Chatto & Windus) to celebrate the publication of 'Poems from An Attic: Selected Poems 1936-1995', published today by Chatto and Windus. https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/470920/poems-from-an-attic-by-murdoch-iris/9781784746124 ANNE ROWE is Visiting Professor at the University of Chichester and Emeritus Research Fellow with the Iris Murdoch Archive Project at Kingston University. She has published widely on Iris Murdoch, including The Visual Arts and the Novels of Iris Murdoch (2002), Iris Murdoch in the Writers and Their Work series (2019) and most recently is Co-Editor of Poems from an Attic: Selected Poems 1936-1995 by Iris Murdoch (2025). Rachel Hirschler works at the Kingston University archives and is lead transcriber for Murdoch’s poetry and much else besides. Rosanna Hilyard is Assistant Editor at Chatto and Windus, and has been shepherding Poems from an Attic to publication. Her fiction and non-fiction has appeared in The Isis Magazine, The Northern Echo, and several anthologies including Tactical Reading, Adrift and Outside Of Me.

In this episode Miles talks to Andrea Delaune (University of Canterbury, New Zealand) about her new book, 'Iris Murdoch and Early Childhood Education: Enhancing Attention and Moral Vision in Pedagogy' (Routledge, 2025). https://www.routledge.com/Iris-Murdoch-and-Early-Childhood-Education-Enhancing-Attention-and-Moral-Vision-in-Pedagogy/Delaune/p/book/9781032886169 Andrea Delaune is Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood Education at University of Canterbury (Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha), New Zealand, where she conducts research at the intersection of ethics, pedagogy and early childhood practice. Her scholarly work explores how moral philosophy—especially concepts of attention, care, and moral vision—can illuminate and revitalise the everyday practices of early childhood teaching, care and policy. One of her central studies draws on the work of Iris Murdoch, applying Murdoch’s ideas of attention and the moral imagination to early childhood contexts. Beyond her research, Delaune is actively engaged in the professional community: she serves as Co-President of OMEP Aotearoa, New Zealand (the local chapter of the World Organisation for Early Childhood Education), where she is involved in advancing children’s rights, well-being of early childhood educators, and ethical dimensions of educator-child relationships. Iris Murdoch and Early Childhood Education: Enhancing Attention and Moral Vision in Pedagogy (Routledge, 2026), argues for a reconceptualisation of teaching as a lived philosophical practice rather than purely a technical act.

In this episode we discuss Murdoch’s conceptualisation of virtue and what it might mean to be virtuous. We’ll range across her philosophy, of course, but we’ll also have time to visit her fiction and consider if she embeds some of her ideas about virtue into her novels. Joining Miles to discuss this fascinating topic is Tony Milligan. Tony is a Research Fellow in Philosophy of Ethics in the Theology and Religious Studies at Kings College, University of London. And his current research, as part of the KCL (China) team and the University of Manchester (Russia) team within the Cosmological Visionaries project, takes in the ethical aspects of dialogue building between local scientists, indigenous peoples and national minorities in Russia and China in the face of climate change. The key theme uniting his broader areas of research is otherness and our shared future. This works its way into various publications on Space (other places), philosophy of love (other people), and animals (other creatures). Tony is also an Affiliate of the Lau China Institute. For many years he’s been fascinated by Murdoch’s philosophy, indeed his PhD thesis at the University of Glasgow was titled 'Iris Murdoch’s Romantic Platonism' and he’s gone on to publish widely on her work.

Welcome to a new season of the Iris Murdoch Podcast! In this episode we’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of the publication of one of Murdoch very best novels, and one of the six first-person male narrated novels, A Word Child. This is a revisit as we discussed this wonderful novel way back in 2021 – it was our ninth podcast and this episode is our seventieth! – so if you might want to catch up with that one if you love this novel. As you might expect, we also discuss a wide range of Murdoch's other novels. Joining Miles is Frances White. Frances is the Deputy director of the IMRC here at Chichester and the author of many works on Murdoch, the most recent being the edited collection Iris Murdoch and the Western Theological Imagination (Palgrave, 2025) And joining Frances and Miles is Liz Whittome. For many years she was the Chief and Principal Examiner of English for Cambridge Examinations. She has published several books on studying English at A-Level with Cambridge University Press. She is currently writing a monograph on Murdoch and Shakespeare.

In this lecture Miles Leeson, Director of the Iris Murdoch Research Centre at the University of Chichester, discusses Murdoch’s reception by her contemporaries and look at the lighter side of how she was lampooned, both directly and indirectly, in the work of H.E. Bates, Malcolm Bradbury, Brigid Brophy, Barbara Pym and Ian McEwan, as well as the reception of her work by Philip Larkin and Monica Jones. Whilst a good deal of this was affectionate, and some even complementary, there was also a streak of jealousy and cruelty present. As Murdoch grew in popularity, and as a public intellectual figure, this became commonplace and is part of the mythic figure of ‘Iris’ that was played out in the 2001 film, but has now has begun to fade from the public imagination. Miles’s lecture asks what it might mean for us to admire her work today in the light of these texts.