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Considering her fame, Iris Murdoch's presence in contemporary philosophy is surprisingly limited. She is rarely cited and less often discussed. The reasons for this neglect are various, but they include the difficulty of finding definite arguments in her work. This essay attempts to recover The Sovereignty of Good as an intervention in existing and perennial disputes. Murdoch defends a radical internalism about moral reasons that avoids the problem of ethical rationalism and the question "Why be moral?" She derives this conception from a general theory of concepts that has Platonic roots, a theory on which the conditions of concept-possession are tied to the norms of practical and theoretical reason. As well as saving morality from the sceptic, this theory supports an ontological proof of the reality of the Good., Philosopher's Imprint: vol. 13, no. 9, (dlps) 3521354.0013.009, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.3521354.0013.009, This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License. Please contact mpub-help@umich.edu to use this work in a way not covered by the license.

This paper argues from the rationality of nostalgia, affirmation, and regret to a principle of ‘specificity’: it can be rational to respond more strongly to facts that provide us with reasons than to the fact that such reasons exist., Philosopher's Imprint: vol. 16, no. 15, (dlps) 3521354.0016.015, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.3521354.0016.015, This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License. Please contact mpub-help@umich.edu to use this work in a way not covered by the license.

Philosophy can solve the midlife crisis, at least in one of its forms. This crisis turns on the exhaustibility of our ends. The solution is to value ends that are ‘atelic,’ so inexhaustible. Topics include: John Stuart Mill's nervous breakdown; Aristotle on the finality of the highest good; and Schopenhauer on the futility of desire., Philosopher's Imprint: vol. 14, no. 31, (dlps) 3521354.0014.031, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.3521354.0014.031, This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License. Please contact mpub-help@umich.edu to use this work in a way not covered by the license.

Considering her fame, Iris Murdoch's presence in contemporary philosophy is surprisingly limited. She is rarely cited and less often discussed. The reasons for this neglect are various, but they include the difficulty of finding definite arguments in her work. This essay attempts to recover The Sovereignty of Good as an intervention in existing and perennial disputes. Murdoch defends a radical internalism about moral reasons that avoids the problem of ethical rationalism and the question "Why be moral?" She derives this conception from a general theory of concepts that has Platonic roots, a theory on which the conditions of concept-possession are tied to the norms of practical and theoretical reason. As well as saving morality from the sceptic, this theory supports an ontological proof of the reality of the Good., Philosopher's Imprint: vol. 13, no. 9, (dlps) 3521354.0013.009, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.3521354.0013.009, This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License. Please contact mpub-help@umich.edu to use this work in a way not covered by the license.