Habitations of goodness: Selfhood, reality, and language in the work of Iris Murdoch and James M. Gustafson

Two distinct ethicists, coming from two widely divergent directions, James Gustafson and Iris Murdoch have much in common. Their perception of how we experience life in the daily round, their conceptualizing of goodness and ethics, and their emphasis on the moral significance of the way we use language--on these and other matters they speak in ways that illumine each other's work and, in some ways, correct each other. More than that, their respective approaches imply a defensible understanding of the essentially religious nature of the ethical task.;This dissertation presents two complex theses, each bearing on the other. First, it shows that James Gustafson and Iris Murdoch, beginning at very different points and working in different theological and philosophical contexts, arrive at startlingly similar insights and help us to understand that the moral life is essentially religious. Second, the dissertation shows that two streams of contemporary thought come together in the interests of Iris Murdoch and James Gustafson: (1) the contemporary emphasis on narrative as definitive of human existence and, in particular, moral consciousness; and (2) the postmodernist notion that reality is in some sense a human creation--that human beings invent reality as much as they discover it.;The dissertation demonstrates the viability of the first thesis by comparing the ethical thought of Murdoch and Gustafson in terms of human being, goodness, and language, and by explicating three of Murdoch's novels--Nuns and Soldiers, The Book and the Brotherhood, and The Black Prince--in ethical terms. The dissertation demonstrates the viability of the second thesis by bringing into conversation with Gustafson and Murdoch such contemporary ethicists as Alasdair MacIntyre, Jeffrey Stout, Stanley Hauerwas, James William McClendon, Jr., and Charles Taylor.