Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature [Paperback]

Best known as the author of twenty-six novels,Iris Murdochhas also made significant contributions to the fields of ethics and aesthetics. Collected here for the first time in one volume are her most influential literary and philosophical essays. Tracing Murdoch's journey to a modern Platonism, this volume includes incisive evaluations of the thought and writings ofT. S. Eliot, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvior, andElias Canetti, as well as key texts on the continuing importance of the sublime, on the concept of love, and the role great literature can play in curing the ills of philosophy.Existentialists and Mysticsnot only illuminates the mysticism and intellectual underpinnings of Murdoch's novels, but confirms her major contributions to twentieth-century thought.Existentialists and Mystics Foreword
Editor's Preface
Part One: Prologue
Literature and Philosophy: A Conversation with Bryan Magee
Part Two: Nostalgia for the Particular, 1951-57
Thinking and Language
Nostalgia for the Particular
Metaphysics and Ethics
Vision and Choice in Morality
Part Three: Encountering Existentialism, 1950-59
The Novelist as Metaphysician
The Existentialist Hero
Sartre'sThe Emotions: Outline of a Theory
De Beauvoir'sThe Ethics of Ambiguity
The Image of Mind
The Existentialist Political Myth
Hegel in Modern Dress
Existentialist Bite
Part Four: The Need for Theory, 1956-66
Knowing the Void
T. S. Eliot as a Moralist
A House of Theory
Mass, Might and Myth
The Darkness of Practical Reason
Part Five: Towards a Practical Mysticism, 1959-78
The Sublime and the Good
Existentialists and Mystics
Salvation by Words
Art is the Imitation of Nature
Part Six: Can Literature Help Cure The Ills of Philosophy? 1959-61
The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited
Against Dryness
Part Seven: Re-reading PlatolY