ABSTRACT
Peter Conradi, Iris Murdoch’s official biographer and ardent sympathizer, once wrote that Murdoch can be “uneven, over-intellectual or romantic.” He continued:
But, this does not come close to a final assessment of Murdoch. Despite these “frailties,” and thanks in no small part to her attempt to rehabilitate and redefine Platonism for the twentieth century, Murdoch is widely considered to be one of the great English writers and philosophers of the twentieth century. And, as Charles Taylor (b. 1931) once noted, “summing up her contribution is impossible. Her achievement is much too rich, and we are much too close to it.”2
