Progress in vision, in this alternative view, is tested through progress in the virtues of daily life that effect such transformations. This is not the only rival standpoint from which critical disagreements with Murdoch's Platonism will emerge. Yet it is important not to allow such disagreements to distract attention from what is to be learned from this book, both from its central theses and from an impressive range of topics related to those theses, among them the relationship of artistic to moral experience, the relevance of deconstructive arguments and the nature of political morality. Iris Murdoch has once again put us all in her debt. It may be that the best model for all thought is the creative imagination. . . .
Novels moreover exhibit the ubiquity of moral quality inherent in consciousness.
This is an important kind of literary criticism. Indeed the judgment passed upon the moral sensibility of the artist is a primary kind of esthetic judgment. . . . Artists are famous for not knowing how it is done, or . . .