Iris Murdoch (1919-1999)
Filed under the name Iris · May 2, 2026
Iris Murdoch wrote novels and did serious thinking about philosophy both, which always impresses me, because I could barely grade papers and can a garden at the same time. She wrote "The Sea, the Sea," which won the Booker Prize, one of the big honors in that line of work, and she spent her whole career wrestling with big questions about goodness and how a person ought to live. I never had the schooling she had — my own degree took night classes and four kids underfoot — but I've always believed the smartest people are the ones still asking whether they're being good, not just clever. That was Murdoch, from what I've read. Makes me think of a former student of mine who went on to study philosophy at the university and used to write me letters full of questions I couldn't half answer. I imagine Murdoch would've liked her. Some minds just keep working at the hard questions their whole lives, and the world's better for it.