对善的追求

魏兰亭

【摘要】Iris Murdochs combining of literature and philosophy makes her novels more profound than those of her peers. This paper explores her moral concern for the pursuit of goodness in The Unicorn. In the novel，Hannah is considered as the embodiment of goodness by peoples subjective conjecture because of their egoism and blurred vision. So，the key to human goodness is to “gaze out” and develop a clear vision of the reality that is never a given whole.

【關键词】Unicorn Goodness Hannah Moral concern

【中图分类号】I561 【文献标识码】A 【文章编号】2095-3089（2016）33-0031-01

In the Gothic novel The Unicorn（1963），Iris Murdoch （1919-1999）focused her deep moral concern on the pursuit of goodness through her unique philosophical perspective. As a mature philosopher and novelist，she was known to plot everything out before she put pen to paper. In this way，she controlled the stories in a moral philosophical frame.

In Murdochs moral philosophy，which is enlightened by Plato，men are enslaved by egoism，holding the false belief，and lost in illusions. If they want to pursue their own moral goal，they have to cast off their distorted belief of the false truth，in order to see the world and others for what they are in the light of the sun. Here the sun represents “the Form of the Good in whose light the truth is seen” （Murdoch，Fire 4）. Moral life is the pilgrimage away from the egoism of the self toward human goodness，and redemption only lies in striving for the knowledge of the Good.

In this novel，after Hannahs husband，Peter the libertine discovers Hannahs love affair with Pip，they have a quarrel and she pushes Peter off the cliff accidentally.But her husband survives，and then Peter confines Hannah in the Gaze Castle with his gay lover Gerald and his relatives watching her. Hannah starts to endure the suffering of confinement and expiate the guilty sin quietly，so in other peoples eyes，she is somewhat the incarnation of the novels title——“unicorn”，which is “an emblem of purity and the suffering Christ” as well as the embodiment of goodness（Cosenza 176）.To them，Hannah is not seen as a true victim，but only as a symbol of Jesuss experience of torture.

People around her dont “gaze” at her with a loving heart or without subjective conjecture. They interpret Hannah as “God” illusively according to their own moral needs. In fact，people want to save themselves in the way of them saving others，and thus obtaining goodness in their heart. However，they cant find a concrete image in real life as “God”，so they saw Hannah as “God”. Hannah turns herself to be a “false God” who is living for worshippers and other peoples “gaze” （Murdoch，Unicorn 219）. Everybody is concerned about Hannah，but they are just concerned about her in their own needs instead of treating her as a blood-and-flesh person.

The author named the castle that confines Hannah as “Gaze”，whose suggestive meaning is that the pursuit of goodness is “a pilgrimage of perfecting people through attention to what is real” （Schweiker 222），so the “gaze” should “move consciousness away from the self toward a larger reality，for Murdoch，the immediate reality around one and，ultimately，the Good” （Baker 286）. Although all people in the novel “gaze” at Hannah，the direction of their “gaze” is looking inward with their own illusion instead of “gazing” at the outside world. This kind of “gaze” that is not with a loving heart only leads to distortion. So，people can never obtain goodness without “gazing” at what is real.

Murdoch intends to present a universal fable implying a quest for human goodness. It is about peoples journey toward becoming virtuous. The quest is a progress from self-indulgence to reality and otherness，from ignorance to knowledge，and from self-loving illusions to the destruction of self-delusion.The first step of pursuing human goodness is to develop a clear vision of the reality. The sources of peoples dilemma are their egoism and their blurred vision. They are trapped cave prisoners and reality deformers who always distort the contingent reality and other people to their own needs. They live in the universe of their own，other people and the world are “mere extensions of his own emotional and philosophical bias”（Heyd 140）.

In conclusion，Murdoch presents us a picture of men，who are always stuck in the dilemma of either falling into the self-centered ego，or fleeing from the reality of the world. The only way to discard this dilemma is to pursue goodness by “gazing out” and to develop a clear vision of the reality that is never a given whole and from which we have much to learn. In this way，Murdochs novels to us are lessons，which teach us how to change from self-centering to outward-gazing，and ultimately teach us how to obtain goodness.

Bibliography：

[1]Baker，J.Robert.“Christian Sensibility in Our Un-Christian Age：Two Approaches to Iris Murdochs Moral Depth [EB/OL].”Christianity and Literature 57.2（2008）. .

[2]Cosenza，A.Joseph.Murdochs The Unicorn [J].The Explicator，50：3，175-177.

[3]Heyd，Ruth.“An Interview with Iris Murdoch [Z].” University of Windsor Review 3（1965）：140-146.

[4]Murdoch，Iris.The Fire and the Sun：Why Plato Banished the Artists？[M].Oxford：Clarendon，1977.34.

[5]—The Unicorn [M]. New York：Penguin，1986.

[6]Schweiker，William.“The Sovereignty of Gods Goodness [A].” Iris Murdoch and the Search for Human Goodness[C].Ed.Maria Antonaccio and William Schweiker.Chicago：University of Chicago Press，1996.209-235.