Good, Self, and Unselfing - Reflections on Iris Murdoch"s Moral Philosophy

When discussing Iris Murdoch"s moral philosophy
it is often easiest to start by saying what she is opposing.
Such is the case also in this paper, which concerns
Murdoch"s views of our identity as persons or "selves�. The
good enemy against which Murdoch writes is what she
calls the "current�, the "modern�, or the "liberal� view of
morals. This is a view whose essential features are shared
by such apparently quite different philosophers as, for
example, R. M. Hare or J. P. Sartre, and whose ancestors
are Hume, Kant and Mill (VC, 34). One of the several
critical characterizations Murdoch applies to the picture of
the individual contained in this view is "existentialist�. In
Murdoch"s account, such philosophers as Sartre, who
claims the title, as well as others who do not, are
existentialist when they emphasize the solitary omnipotent
will at the cost of the substantial self, that is, if they identify
"the true person with the empty choosing will� (S, 9, 35).
Murdoch"s objection to this picture might be put as follows:
by making morality a matter of a solitary choosing will, the
view neglects ordinary human moral experience and
instead builds an empty abstraction which it then elevates
into a "man-God�, the moral super hero of modern times.