ABSTRACT
Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals by the late Iris Murdoch is based on the 1982 Gifford lectures, the prestigious Scottish lecture series endowed, in the nineteenth century, by the will of Lord Gifford. Iris Murdoch had already had a few things to say about those who walk up and down the world in this way, for example in The Sovereignty of the Good and in some of her novels. She was sympathetic to many different kinds of schools, and was herself, qua philosopher, a woman with a split personality. For a philosopher to be interested in the connections, the apparent disconnections, and the possible conceptual shifts, are surely no crime. Ludwig Wittgenstein says that philosophy compels to travel over a wide field of thought criss-cross in every direction but his own travellings, though criss-cross, are at the same time intensely focused.
