Why Iris Murdoch Matters: Making Sense of Experience in Modern Times by Gary Browning (review)

Gary Browning's Why Iris Murdoch Matters and the collection Murdoch on Truth and Love that he has edited (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) are timely since, notwithstanding the upcoming centenary conference at Oxford, in the two decades since her decease Iris Murdoch has often been seen as dated and her fictional worlds as banal. Why Iris Murdoch Matters examines the contemporary significance of Murdoch's thoughts on metaphysics, literature, morality, religion, and politics. Browning follows, as it were, the Murdochian style of "the indeterminate, the messy and the formless" (Jordan 123). However, as suggested by his subtitle, he maintains a sense of order by focusing on Murdoch's view of the value of experience in a modern world. The book's intertwined yet self-sufficient chapters afford detailed interpretations of Murdoch's notion of "lived experience," as well as of her metaphysics, her novels, and her ethical and political theory. Browning's research not only maps Murdoch's thought but also supports her central arguments. The book addresses issues facing human experience by drawing connections between Murdoch's frequently read works and her somewhat neglected ones.

Chapter 1, "Murdoch and Lived Experience," doubles as the introduction. It argues that we should look beyond the long-lasting clichéd debate on whether Murdoch is a philosopher or a novelist to the "cultural context of late modernity," which is the shared source of her fiction and non-fiction (8). This argument is supported by a case study of Murdoch's debut fictional and non-fictional works, Under the Net (1954) and Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (1953), written in the post-war period. The latter explores the reality and the social context of existentialist freedom, whereas the former is devoted to "her own alignment of freedom" and individual experience (17). Browning's interrogation of the compatibility and the clashes between Murdoch's fiction and non-fiction sets the stage for the ensuing discussion of her dialectics of writing.

Chapter 2, "Iris Murdoch and Metaphysics," aims to situate Murdoch's philosophical works, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992) and the unpublished "Manuscripts on Heidegger," in the modern context. It represents Murdoch's metaphysics as "dialectical and historical" (31). Murdoch experiments with the plurality and unity of experience. Synchronically, she depicts partial experience within modern society, and diachronically, she explores the modern philosophical dilemma regarding past experience. Browning argues, that the historicity of Murdoch's metaphysics not only reveals close connections with philosophers such as Hegel and Heidegger but also carries Murdoch into the world we live in. The nuances of this fusion are best exemplified by Murdoch's fictions, e.g. by a character's being stunned by Heidegger's Being and Time (1927) in The Time of the Angels (1966). Murdoch's novels stage the conflicts between the spiritual void and instinctive pursuit of the Good in a philosophical perspective.

Chapter 3, "Iris Murdoch and the Novel," engages with the modernity of Murdoch's fictions. Working towards "one overarching didactic theme" (55), Murdoch interprets modernity diachronically from postwar moods to contemporary malaise, and the evolution of her thought is revealed in her essays and talks on literature. Browning argues that Murdoch's starting point is her dissatisfaction with the trope of the void that she finds in existentialist novels ("The Existentialist Hero"). She then moves on to explore the contemporary literary imagination ("The Beautiful and the Sublime Revisited") and the bonds between the contemporary novel and its times ("Against Dryness"). "Stripped and solitary" modernity ("Against Dryness" 293), which has been keenly felt in both literature and real life, is the dialectical and historical outcome of the rationalist tradition since the Enlightenment. According to Browning, Murdoch has been successful in orchestrating compatible styles and narrative techniques, juxtaposing comic and tragic scenes, humor and the representation of evil, unreliable first-person narration and complex third-person narration. Murdoch's different narrative techniques foreground her thematic concerns.

A prominent feature of Murdoch's writings, according...