Iris Murdoch · 1970 · EPUB · Calibre ID 2455
Resurfaced in The Probe and the Kestrel (2026-10-09).
Role in the triad
Inheritor: carries Weil’s attention into moral philosophy; names the shared enemy (the choosing will); sides with vision against touch
Why this book
Explicit genealogy from Weil; explicit rejection of Hampshire’s touch-and-movement picture, which is where Polanyi’s probe pushes back.
Quotations
Verified against the book’s own text on the day of the reading.
- “I have used the word ‘attention’, which I borrow from Simone Weil, to express the idea of a just and loving gaze directed upon an individual reality.” (ch. 1, ‘The Idea of Perfection’)
- “I can only choose within the world I can see” (ch. 1)
- “Freedom is not strictly the exercise of the will, but rather the experience of accurate vision which, when this becomes appropriate, occasions action.” (ch. 2, ‘On God and Good’)
- “In the moral life the enemy is the fat relentless ego.” (ch. 2)
- “Prayer is properly not petition, but simply an attention to God which is a form of love.” (ch. 2)
- “There is nothing now but kestrel.” (ch. 3, ‘The Sovereignty of Good over Other Concepts’)
Themes
attention · choosing will · ego · existentialism · fantasy · Hampshire · kestrel · M and D · unselfing · vision vs. touch