ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the Murdoch's moral notion of engaging in a quest, and looks at deliberative encounters as a Murdochian pilgrimage of the soul. It shows that such a move would contribute potentially towards a different understanding of deliberative encounters – perhaps, encounters that are also spiritually motivated in addition to their intellectual experiences. Murdoch's explication of what it means to be morally responsive has particular implications for teachers and students – especially if one considers Murdoch's preference for a morality based on a framework, which transcends the individual, rather than a morality based essentially on the individual. Murdoch posits that transcendence is an act which is synonymous with going beyond one's egoistic self, much like a pilgrimage or human experience towards purification brings the pilgrim supposedly in the closest presence of God. During a devotion to pilgrimage, transcendence becomes an act of cultivating humanity with goodness and purification.
