THE BLANK FACE OF LOVE: THE POSSIBILITY OF GOODNESS IN THE LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL WORK OF IRIS MURDOCH1

This article explores the value of Iris Murdoch's metaphysical ethics for the theologian. Although, in many ways, Murdoch does appeal to the theologian, a subtle form of nihilism underlies her thought insofar as human goodness—in the form of loving attention—is only possible once the individual has overcome his/her ego by staring into the void and accepting the ultimate meaninglessness of reality. As this article demonstrates, Murdoch's replacement of transcendence with void rules out any form of real love or human goodness: only a dualistic exchange of gazes remains possible. Real, selfless love is only possible when the ego understands itself in the context of theological transcendence.     

LOVE'S ARCHAEOLOGY: ETHICS AND METAPHYSICS BETWEEN IRIS MURDOCH AND WILLIAM DESMOND

Centring on human perception, attunement to others, and a transcendent conception of the good, Iris Murdoch's intervention in moral philosophy remains an insightful and evocative source for ethical theory. Discerning some pervasive dualisms that hamper its coherence and development, I suggest that her work finds a generative conversation partner in the contemporary metaphysician, William Desmond. Desmond's thought offers promising avenues to overcome these dualisms by repositioning the source and nature of value and by theorising an anti-reductive, relational ontology. Staging a constructive encounter between these two thinkers that preserves Murdoch's distinct prioritisation of attention and individuality within a Desmond-inspired metaphysics, I present a synthetic ethical approach that promotes the ideal of attending to an other—in the givenness of its particularity, manifold surplus, and constitutive relationality—as good in itself.     

超越一种分歧：朱利奥·普雷蒂与分析哲学和大陆哲学之间的争论

在哲学研究领域,你经常看到两个方向、两条纲领性路线、两种传统、两种风格之间的对立,这种对立表现为“分析”哲学家和“大陆”哲学家之间的区分。直白地说,在分析这边,就其更近的旁系来说,我们有逻辑学家、科学哲学家、进行语义结构分析的语言哲学家、诉诸神经科学和人工智能发展的作家、康德式道德哲学家、功利主义者、新契约论者、以及回复到亚里士多德的某种新“实践哲学”的捍卫者。在大陆这边,     

PHILOSOPHY AND THE STUDY OF ITS HISTORY

Abstract: This article's goal is to outline one approach to providing a principled answer to the question of what is the proper relationship between philosophy and the study of philosophy's history, a question arising, for example, in the design of a curriculum for graduate students. This approach requires empirical investigation of philosophizing past and present, and thus takes philosophy as an object of study in something like the way that contemporary (naturalistic) philosophy of science takes science as an object of study. This approach also requires articulating a sense in which philosophy might make, or might have made, progress.