The Intersections of Aesthetics and Ethics--- Iris Murdoch's Platonic Approach

The Intersections of Ethics and Aesthetics: Iris Murdoch’s Platonic Approach This research project is one sub-project of the integrated research project “Studies on ‘Aesthetic Perception’in Chinese and Western Aesthetics”. This project approaches the question concerning the relationship between beauty and goodness, art and morality, and, consequently, between aesthetics and ethics from the perspective of the British philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch’s Platonism. In order to broaden and deepen our understanding of the complexity and variety of moral experience, Murdoch understands ethics and moral life as a form of aesthetics, and expands the ethical domain in terms of aesthetic perception and experience, and puts emphasis on the perceptual capacity（αἴσθησις）to discern the moral features of particular situations. The purpose of this project in the first year is to investigate the ways in which the aesthetic and ethical themes intersect and analyze the basis and principles underlying the connection between aesthetics and ethics from Murdoch’s Platonic approach. In the second year, this research will discuss the problems and difficulties which arise from this approach and suggest some possible interpretations. Finally, using the integrated research project as the communication platform, this project will also critically reexamine the meaning and function of Murdoch’s conception of aesthetic perception with reference to the other sub-projects; on the other hand, this project will offer the account of the ethical implications of aesthetic perception from the aesthetic-ethical perspective.

Project ID:PE9907-2207
External Project ID:NSC99-2410-H182-008-MY2