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Two thinkers, side by side

Life

I
Iris Murdoch

1919 CE – 1999 CE

ModernEthicsNovelist

Born Dublin

She said real love is the very difficult realization that something other than yourself is real, and built an entire moral philosophy on the discipline of truly looking.

Portrait of Plato
Plato

c. 428 BCE – c. 348 BCE

ClassicalPlatonist

Born Athens

He saw a world behind the world. The Forms are real; what we see are shadows.

Connection

Plato the Form of the Good Iris Murdoch — Murdoch wrote an entire study of Plato's imagery, The Fire and the Sun, and built her own moral philosophy on a recognizably Platonic claim: that goodness is real, transcendent, and discovered through attention rather than invented by an act of will.

Shared Ideas

Virtue

Ideas

Virtue
JusticeBeingVirtueReasonLogosChangeThe RepublicThe Virtuous City

Words

“Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.”

— Iris Murdoch

“We are anxiety-ridden animals. Our minds are continually active, fabricating an anxious, self-preoccupied, often falsifying veil which partially conceals the world.”

— Iris Murdoch

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”

— Plato

“The measure of a man is what he does with power.”

— Plato

Key Moments

1954-1995

Writes twenty-six novels alongside her philosophy

1970

Publishes The Sovereignty of Good

c. 428 BCE

Born in Athens

c. 408 BCE

Meeting Socrates

399 BCE

Death of Socrates

c. 388 BCE

First Voyage to Syracuse

Works

The Sovereignty of Good

Apology

Crito

Euthyphro

Protagoras

Symposium

Meno

Phaedo

Gorgias

Republic

Phaedrus

Theaetetus

Atlas of Thinkers

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Volume I · Ancient Greece · 624-262 BCE