Iris Murdoch on Metaphor: The Sovereignty of the Good

Iris Murdoch held a singular, transformative perspective on metaphor. In her seminal work, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, she explores how metaphorical thinking does not merely describe our reality—it fundamentally constructs our moral lives.

Murdoch argues that metaphors are far more than linguistic ornaments or “poetic” flourishes. Instead, they are the essential instruments through which we navigate existence. For Murdoch, a metaphor isn’t just a way of speaking; it is a way of seeing. By shaping our internal landscape, metaphors influence how we relate to reality and, ultimately, how we treat one another.

The Moral Imagination

According to Murdoch, metaphors are vital to moral perception. They illuminate the nuances of human experience that literal language often fails to capture. By functioning as tools of the moral imagination, metaphors allow us to conceive of alternative ways of being, helping us bridge the gap between abstract duty and lived empathy.

In her influential essay, The Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts, Murdoch presents “The Good” not as a rigid set of rules, but as an indispensable metaphor. She rejects the sterile reduction of ethics to mere logic, advocating instead for a “moral attention” directed outward.

Attention and Reality

Central to her argument is the idea that goodness arises from a deep, disciplined engagement with reality. Murdoch emphasizes unselfing—the process of turning one’s gaze away from the “anxious avaricious tentacles of the self” to see the world as it truly is. She rejects the idea of the Good as a distant abstraction, insisting on its practical demands within our daily relationships.

By criticizing rigid ethical systems, Murdoch warns against the “ethical blindness” that occurs when we prioritize codes over people. In their place, she proposes a morality of vision: one that requires empathy, imagination, and the humility to see beyond our own internal “cloud of reverie.”

Excerpts from The Sovereignty of Good

“I assume that human beings are naturally selfish and that human life has no external point or τέλος. That human beings are naturally selfish seems to be shown by the evidence… The psyche is a historically determined individual relentlessly looking after itself. It resembles a machine; in order to operate it needs sources of energy, and it is predisposed to certain patterns of activity. The area of its much vaunted freedom of choice is not normally very great. One of its chief pastimes is day-dreaming. It is reluctant to face unpleasant realities. Its consciousness is not normally a transparent crystal through which it views the world, but a cloud of more or less fantastic reverie designed to protect the psyche from pain.”

“I have been speaking of the indefinability of Good; but is there really nothing more we can say about it? … Philosophers have often tried to discern such a relation: Freedom, Reason, Happiness, Courage, History have recently been tried for the purpose. I do not find any of these candidates convincing. They seem in each case to represent the philosopher’s admiration for some specific aspect of human conduct considerably below total excellence… I want now to speak of what is perhaps the most obvious as well as the oldest and most traditional candidate… and that is Love. Of course Good is sovereign over Love, as it is sovereign over other concepts, because love can name something bad.”

“Goodness is connected with the acceptance of real death and real chance and real transience… The acceptance of death is an acceptance of our own nothingness, which is an automatic spur to concern ourselves with what is not ourselves. The good man is humble; he is very unlike the neo-Kantian great Lucifer. He is much more like the Kierkegaard tax-collector… The humble man, because he sees himself as nothing, can see other things as they are. He sees the pointlessness of virtue as well as its unique value and the endless extent of its demand.”

Passages quoted from Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (Routledge, 1970).