Eros and evil in Iris Murdoch's spiritual vision

This dissertation examines the nature of evil as the manifestation of erotic dynamics of domination and submission through the work of Iris Murdoch. Murdoch employs a semantic field of terms to describe evil as attempts by the ego to protect itself from pain in states of fantasy. These fantasies provide the illusion of a coherent, immortal self in a closed narrative that fixes interpretation and filters experience. Murdoch sees the moral task as a breaking of these fantasies that drive dynamics of domination and submission. The central activity of the moral life for Murdoch, then, is the redirection of erotic energy away from the self toward realities independent of the ego. Her moral and spiritual vision requires a confrontation with the facts of death, contingency and imperfection as found in the high poetic form of tragedy.;Yet, Murdoch does not hold a tragic view of the moral or religious life. Rather she offers a radical comic vision, one where the confrontation with evil, which is so hard for us to do, releases the natural impulse of compassion that is the foundation of all human connection and higher possibility. Murdoch turns to the novel as the best means to reveal evil, because it offers a truthful vision of what we are like as human beings through the particular, detailed realization of the inner lives of characters. Murdoch turns to art to affect a conversion of erotic orientation in the reader and to transform the moral imagination of the age.;In the end, I present a critical challenge to Murdoch, looking at gendered dynamics of domination and submission in conversation with Catharine MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin, and Adrienne Rich. I examine the intersection of political contexts and personal experience in the development of desire. I address the risks of a moral ideal of selflessness and the problem of masochism in a culture that defines women's roles through images of submission and violation. This feminist discussion seeks to show how careful reflection on women's experience can reveal otherwise hidden dynamics in human relationships and the often masked quality of evil in everyday life.