From Ethical Reflexivity to Value-Sufficiency

Abstract

In adherence to an objectivist notion of value and a rejection of moral reflexivity, Iris Murdoch presents a Kantian perspective that deals with many such ethical issues. Dissatisfied with the prospect of subjective moral values simply created by choices, Murdoch supports the view that values are objectively fixed in relation to external reality through such experiences as beauty, honesty, humility and death. In her popular book 'The Sovereignty of Good,' she endorses Plato’s belief that beauty could be the starting point of the good or moral life, and compares morality to other human universals such as honesty in art and other disciplines which reveal the detail of the world and are rewarded with a knowledge of reality. In her opinion, the necessity of the good is an aspect of the necessity involved in the technique of exhibiting fact. Yet there is a problem here that stretches from Plato and Descartes into the modern world. Murdoch’s argument is predicated on the view that the authority of morals is founded on the authority of ‘truth’.