Sublime

the central concept of morality is ‘the individual’ thought of as knowable by love,

Murdoch believed that one of the core projects that each of us needs to undertake is to “unself”. “The self, the place where we live, is a place of illusion. Goodness is connected with the attempt to see the unself… to pierce the veil of selfish consciousness and join the world as it really is.”

For Murdoch, there is no backstage self. As long as we

Man is not a combination of an impersonal rational thinker and a personal will.

He is a unified being who sees, and who desires in accordance with what he sees, and who has some continual slight control over the direction and focus of his vision.

Mental life is, and logically must be, a shadow of life in public.

Iris Murdoch’s words: “Man is a creature who makes pictures of himself and then comes to resemble the picture.”