CFP – Workshop “Situating Murdoch: Between Interlocutors and Traditions”
CALL FOR PAPERS
International Workshop
Situating Murdoch: Between Interlocutors and Traditions
School of Arts and Humanities
University of Lisbon
May 6th 2025
Event organised as part of the activities of Praxis-CFUL
Keynote Speakers:
Silvia Caprioglio-Panizza (University College Dubln)
Evgenia Mylonaki (University of Patras)
One of the many features that constitute Iris Murdoch’s philosophical originality is her ability to navigate different authors, problems and systems of thought, always maintaining an independent position. Murdoch learnt differences and plurality in Oxford, where she got exposed to the battle between supporters and detractors of metaphysics and to a shift in dealing with moral questions. From the very beginning, Murdoch was able to stay in touch with contemporary questions in (especially but not only) moral philosophy and to push back resorting to seemingly unusual authors like Plato and Weil. Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992) (MGM henceforth) can be said to be a statement of Murdoch’s philosophical eclecticism. Her last philosophical work weaves together figures and themes that would be deemed quite distant from one another: to mention a few, we find there some connections traced between the spirit behind Wittgenstein’s and Derrida’s accounts of language and the inner life; extensive considerations on Kant, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer and Buber; and references to liberalism, socialism and exponents of the Frankfurt School. Despite the recent interest in MGM and Murdoch’s intellectual relationships, symbolically signalled by the publication of the anthologies Reading Iris Murdoch’s Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (2019) and The Murdochian Mind (2022), there is still work to be done in mapping out the extension of the connections she traces between authors and traditions.
Thus the aim of the present workshop: to further investigate the relations between Murdoch and her interlocutors in order to be able to appreciate her unique philosophical standpoint and to situate it in respect to other philosophical trends. Contributions can include, but are not limited to:
- Early influences: who (and how) played a significant role in Murdoch’s philosophical education.
- Named references: authors that are present in her philosophical writings as allies and/or opponents.
- Unnamed references: figures that constituted a pole of reflection but were not included in her publications.
- Tracing lines of similarities and differences between Murdoch and philosophical movements in analytic and continental philosophy.
Interested speakers should submit an abstract of no more than 400 words indicating the full name and institutional affiliation to fs18@edu.ulisboa.pt by February 16th 2025. Decision notices will be emailed one week after the deadline. The event is planned as a one-day, in-person event. However, if the number of quality submissions exceeds expectations, a second day may be added. Register and attendance are free for all participants.
For further details or question, please contact: fs18@edu.ulisboa.pt
Organization: Francesca Scapinello (Praxis-CFUL, University of Lisbon)
This event is funded by Portuguese national funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, I.P., in the scope of the project UIDB/00310/2020