In her essay “The Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts,” Iris Murdoch offers an overview of ethical philosophy and argues that “Goodness is connected with the acceptance of real death and real chance and real transience and only against the background of this acceptance, which is psychologically so difficult, can we understand the full extent of what virtue is like. The acceptance of death is an acceptance of our own nothingness, which is an automatic spur to our concern with what is not ourselves.” Evaluate Murdoch’s statement in concert with the ethical theories we have discussed this semester, especially Aristotle’s account of virtue as it relates to happiness. Does Murdoch offer anything new here? Do death and contingency figure at all into Aristotle’s moral calculus? Finally, what do you draw from Murdoch’s statement? What would an acceptance of death and contingency even look like?
Answer these questions in an essay that is two-three pages, drawing specifically on and quoting at least one philosopher we covered in this class.
In her essay “The Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts,” Iris Murdoch offers
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