A Philosophy to Live By: Engaging Iris Murdoch by Maria Antonaccio

[Philosophy Now]

Tony Milligan engages with Iris Murdoch’s ethics.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/101/A_Philosophy_to_Live_By_Engaging_Iris_Murdoch_by_Maria_Antonaccio

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One of the main themes which joins the chapters together is ascesis, the idea of the moral life as a discipline of ‘unselfing’, which involves systematically resisting the ‘fat relentless ego’ in order to see the world as it really is and others as they really are.

Hoo, boy.

Iris Murdoch sounds like she is a PC Nazi moralist. Only a PC Nazi control-monger moralist would come out with "let us all get rid of our true natures, for no other reason, but because I demand it." What a beeeetch.

The "fat relentless ego" is part of human nature. Resisting it is unnatural, and horribly restrictive. I resent this sort of a demand.

Seeing the world as it is may be useful, for science, but seeing others as they are is impossible if you impose the rule of unselfing. Because then people will act as they are not; and seeing others will give you a slanted, untrue, distorted view of how others are, no matter how good a spectacle (looking glass) you use.