October 19,2011

I’ve just read a review from Philosophical Investigations of October 1993 by Mary Midgley of Iris Murdoch’s Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. I received an e mail from Wiley-Blackwell with free access to a selection of their publications, and the review of Murdoch’s book was in this issue. So part of my Saturday morning was spent at the storage space happly opening my boxes of books, while searching for the book. And rediscovering all the treasures that were there, and bringing home two boxes of those,  along with the Metaphysics. Then off to the library to finish reading Ms. Midley’s review and to re-read Chapter 9 Wittgenstein and the Inner Life. I read the Metaphysics in 1995 or there abouts and had forgotten what a superb writer Ms. Murdoch was. She was the inquirer and thinker par excellence.

October 23,2011

Just finished reading Chapter 7 Derrida and Structuralism, an engaging, beautifully written and argued critical evaluation of the thought of Mr. Derrida: expressing a faith in the viability of Philosophy to be the legitimate bearer of it’s ethical and moral heritage, without surrender to determinism of whatever variety. Yet she does not engage in mere fruitless polemics but intellectually engages with his thought, as a form of serious inquiry, and in the process gives him his due. I had forgotten how superb a writer Iris Murdoch was, this is a book of great writing on philosophy, a particular pleasure read. To engage with the thought, the writing of such a learned philosopher is to be reminded of the power of lucid and edifying discourse, Hegel remark notwithstanding.

American Litterateur