Metaphysics and Ethics

Abstract Murdoch’s effort to retrieve a metaphysical conception of ethics in a century that has been, in Franklin Gamwell’s phrase, “so decidedly unfriendly to metaphysics”1 is one of her most significant contributions to contemporary ethical inquiry. Challenging what has been called the “dominant consensus” against metaphysics in modern moral theory, Murdoch criticizes the attempt to sever morality from any normative framework that might determine the agent’s purposes and threaten the agent’s autonomy. Equally, however, she resists the alternative attempt to define the agent’s purposes within a framework narrowly delimited by the conventions and institutions of a historical community or tradition. Against both options, Murdoch appeals to a metaphysical notion of ethics in order to ground moral claims with respect to a normative conception of “the real.” For this reason, understanding the relation between metaphysics and ethics in Murdoch’s thought is essential to understanding her moral realism.