A Virtue Ethical Approach to Interpretation of the Suffering Other
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7146/qs.v6i1.124455Keywords:
Mental suffering, Interpretation, Ethics, Selfless love, Iris MurdochAbstract
In this article my aim is to take up a thread from an article by Svend Brinkmann, wherein he is anxious to show that mental suffering cannot exclusively be explained within the narrow vocabulary of medical diagnosis systems, but can, an should be, be articulated through a large range of ‘interpretive vocabularies’ (Brinkmann 2014). In line with Brinkmann’s emphasis on the large range of possible interpretive vocabularies, I will engage the moral philosopher Iris Murdoch to show how the exploration of different possible interpretations of a particular client’s situation is in fact an ethical task, which requires the practitioner’s personal development of virtue in terms of selfless, loving attention as the precondition for a realistic interpretation of the client’s situation.
References
Bagnoli, Carla (2011): ‘The Exploration of Moral Life’ in Iris Murdoch – Philosopher, J. Broackes (ed.), Oxford University Press.
_______ (2018): ‘Constrained by Reason, Transformed by Love: Murdoch on the Standard of Proof’ in Murdoch on Truth and Love, Palgrave Macmillan.
Brinkmann, Svend (2014): ‘Languages of Suffering’ in Theory & Psychology 2014, Vol. 24(5) 630–648.
Broackes, Justin (ed.)(2011): Iris Murdoch – Philosopher, Oxford University Press.
Browning, Gary (2018): Why Iris Murdoch Matters, Bloomsbury.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1986): The Idea of the Good in Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophy, Yale University Press.
Martinesen, Kari (2006): Care and Vulnerability, Akribe.
Loidolt, Sophie (2018): ‘Value, Freedom, Responsibility: Central Themes in Phenomenological Ethics’ in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Phenomenology, Dan Zahavi (ed.), Oxford University Press.
Murdoch, Iris (1992): Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, Penguin Vintage.
______ (1997): Existentialists and Mystics – Writings on Philosophy and Literature, Penguin
Books.
______ (1993): Heidegger (Unpublished book manuscript), Iris Murdoch Archive, University
of Kingston KUAS6/5/1/4.
______ (1989): Sartre – Romantic Rationalist, London: Penguin Books.
Tomkinson, Fiona (2019): ‘Murdoch’s Question of the Work of Art: The Dialogue Between Western and Japanese Conceptions of Unity’ in Reading Iris Murdoch’s ‘Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals’, N. Hämäläinen and G. Dooley (eds.), Palgrave Macmillan.
Weil, Simone (2002): Gravity and Grace, Routledge.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright belongs to the author and Qualitative Studies
