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.     

CHRISTIAN HUMILITY, COURTLY CIVILITY, AND THE CODE OF THE STREETS

Within both contemporary inner‐city street life and early modern courtly civility, persons acquire value through being acknowledged by others. Though dependent on others for a sense of self‐worth constructed by external tokens of respect, they are unable to experience dependency as gift. Humility thus appears as an admission of lack of worth, rather than as a confession of the dependent character of one's worth. What might contemporary Christians retrieve from the Augustinian critique of an ethic of glory in attempting to diagnose and respond to contemporary social dislocations, and how might churches contribute productively to disrupting the zero‐sum competition for respect?     

THE NATURE OF TESTIMONY

Abstract:  I discuss several views of the nature of testimony and show how each proposal has importantly different problems. I then offer a diagnosis of the widespread disagreement regarding this topic; specifically, I argue that our concept of testimony has two different aspects to it. Inadequate views of testimony, I claim, result either from collapsing these two aspects into a single account or from a failure to recognize one of them. Finally, I develop an alternative view of testimony that captures both aspects of the nature of testimony and thereby provides the basis for an illuminating theory of testimony's epistemological significance.