ABSTRACT
While most philosophers acknowledge a role for imagination in their moral frameworks, this role has typically been qualified by caution and a deep suspicion that the imagination and the affective domain will lead thinkers away from truth (Kearney, 1991, p. 3). As a result, imagination is banished to a sort of ‘ontological homelessness’ (Seerveld, 1987, p. 43), from whence modern philosophers regard her with scorn, condescension or averted gaze. Her epistemological offspring suffer a similar fate; imaginative vehicles such as narrative, metaphor and irony are seldom acknowledged as essential components of the moral reasoning process. Recently, a growing number of ‘voices in the wilderness’ have acknowledged a role for imagination in critical thought, and interest in the relationship between imagination and moral reasoning is increasing. For over three decades, Iris Murdoch, a contemporary novelist, moral philosopher and critic, has been at the vanguard of this movement. In an early critique of Stuart Hampshire’s Freedom of the Individual, she argued for an active role for imagination in moral judgment, stating that ‘we evaluate not only by intentions, decisions, choices (the events Hampshire describes), but also, and largely, by the constant quiet work of attention and imagination’ (Murdoch, 1966, p. 49).
