ABSTRACT
Iris Murdoch had long been fascinated with the work of Schopenhauer, but it was not until the publication of her magnum opus Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992) that the true extent of her engagement with his philosophy became clear. She dedicates an entire chapter of that work to his thought and links it to her earlier work in The Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts (1970). This chapter traces her engagement and development with Schopenhauer throughout her life and makes use of her unpublished journals housed at the Iris Murdoch Collections at the University of Kingston, as well as the annotations she made in the works of Schopenhauer that she owned. Schopenhauer and the later Murdoch posit belief in a godless ‘doctrine of salvation’ and account for this by suggesting a complementary dialogue between morality and reality. She finds a kindred spirit for her task of demythologizing Christianity and creating a workable framework for considering ethics and individual autonomy.
