（英语语言文学专业论文）艾丽丝·默多克《还算体面的失败》中的人性伦理研究.pdf

iv 艾丽丝 默多克还算体面的失败中的人性伦理研究艾丽丝 默多克还算体面的失败中的人性伦理研究 研究生：李艳 年级：2006 级 学科专业：英语语言文学 指导老师：张叔宁 研究方向：英美文学 中中 文文 摘摘 要要 艾丽丝 默多克是战后英国文坛最具影响力的小说家之一，她一生创作了二十六部小 说，五部哲学著作，五部戏剧和一部诗集。与此同时，作为一位哲学家，默多克对道德伦 理有着独特的见解。她认为人类追求的最终目标是“真实的善” ，求善的道路漫长而曲折。 默多克的小说中运用了一些幽默的手法展现了人类现实黑暗的一面，对于充满幻想和以自 我为中心的人，他们永远追求不到善，也无法过上善的生活。国内的研究大多从存在主义、 现实主义、精神分析和女性主义等角度分析默多克的哲学思想和文本含义，而运用女性主 义理论研究默多克的作品，主要探讨的是文本中女性的出路问题，从女性主义关怀伦理学 的角度分析默多克的作品还不多见，尤其是对她的作品还算体面的失败中道德伦理观 和女性自我价值评价方面的研究。本论文试图从女性主义关怀伦理学的角度探索还算体 面的失败中艾丽丝 默多克对人性的刻画，以及该作品中体现的伦理思想。 论文共分为四章。 第一章是论文的引言部分。该章简单介绍艾丽丝 默多克的生平、作品，以及默多克 作品与还算体面的失败的研究现状，提出该论文旨在用女性主义关怀伦理学方法探索 还算体面的失败中的道德伦理思想。 第二章介绍肖巍教授以及国外学者所倡导的女性主义关怀伦理学的主要观点及默多 克作品中的伦理思想。 第三章是论文的主体部分。本章尝试从女性主义关怀伦理学视角分析还算体面的失 败中的道德伦理思想。首先，论述恶与善的斗争。朱利叶斯是恶的代表，除了塔里斯， 他愚弄了所有的人。而塔里斯是善的化身，他关心每一个人，并且能够抗拒朱利叶斯邪恶 的威力。但是塔里斯的生活一团糟，善的威力太小，无法掌控整个局势。因此，善被恶以 体面的方式击败。其次，从对爱的不同理解论述了人物的道德伦理标准。最后，从分析莫 根和赫达的自我价值中论述了默多克对妇女自身价值的观点。 第四章是论文的结论部分。艾丽丝 默多克在小说中论述了对善与恶，以及对爱的观 点，指出人类追求的最终目标是善，但求善之路漫长而曲折。 关键词关键词：艾丽丝 默多克；伦理；女性主义关怀伦理学； 还算体面的失败 v the ethical exploration of human nature in iris murdochs a fairly honorable defeat postgraduate: li yan grade: 2006 major field of study: english language ethics; feminist ethics of care; a fairly honorable defeat 论文独创性声明论文独创性声明 本人郑重声明：所提交的学位论文是本人在导师的指导下进行的研究工 作及取得的成果。除文中已经注明引用的内容外，本论文不含其他个人或其 他机构已经发表或撰写过的研究成果。对本文的研究作出重要贡献的个人和 集体，均已在文中以明确方式标明。本人承担本声明的法律责任。 研究生签名： 日期： 论文使用授权声明论文使用授权声明 本人完全了解广西师范大学有关保留、使用学位论文的规定。广西师范 大学、中国科学技术信息研究所、清华大学论文合作部，有权保留本人所送 交学位论文的复印件和电子文档，可以采用影印、缩印或其他复制手段保存 论文。本人电子文档的内容和纸质论文的内容相一致。除在保密期内的保密 论文外，允许论文被查阅和借阅，可以公布（包括刊登）论文的全部或部分 内容。论文的公布（包括刊登）授权广西师范大学学位办办理。 研究生签名： 日期： 导 师签名： 日期： iii acknowledgements first and foremost, i want to show my heart-felt thanks to my supervisor, zhang shuning for his constant encouragement and invaluable suggestions in these three years of graduate study. without his kind and painstaking guidance over the choice of the subject, the overall design and the drafting of the thesis, it is impossible for me to finish my research. i am heartily grateful to prof. bai jingze, prof. liu yuhong, prof. wang meiping and all the other professors in the college of foreign studies of guangxi normal university for their insightful lectures at the first stage of my study. i also want to take this opportunity to express my appreciation to my classmates and friends zhang xiufang, deng huiwen, and li jianxia for their suggestions from which i have also benefited a lot. i owe my special thanks to my husband, my son, and my parents for their constant love and support throughout the time. 1 chapter 1 1 introduction 1.1 iris murdoch and her main works iris murdoch （1919-1999） is one of the dominant figures of postwar british literature. she is prolific and versatile as the writer of twenty-six novels, five philosophical works, five plays and one collection of poems. she is a recognizable “name” and her career is “familiar to educated persons, like national folklore” (conradi, 2001:570). she began writing novels when she was thirty-five years old and during the next forty years, she produced at the speed of one novel in about every one and a half years and became the most prolific writer in british history since charles dickens. iris murdoch was born in dublin in 1919 in a scots-irish protestant family, and, though she spent no more than a year in ireland, her anglo-irish heritage remained an important part of her identity. ireland continued to play a large role in her imaginative landscape and two of her novels are entirely set in ireland, the unicorn and, the red and the green. later murdochs parents settled in london, on which she had a deep impression. she made most of her novels take place in london, a familiar city to her, and london was the setting or part of the setting for twenty-four novels all but irish pair (the unicorn and, the red and the green). london is the “city her fictional world is in love with: no earlier novelists apart from dickens and virginia woolf loved london so well, or celebrated it as memorably as she”(conradi, 2001:585). in 1938, murdoch came to oxford and read classics at somerville college. during the war she was an assistant principal at the treasury, and then worked with unrra (united nation relief and rehabilitation administration) in london, belgium, and austria. she held a studentship in philosophy at newnham college, cambridge for a year, and in 1948 returned to oxford where she was until lately a fellow and tutor in philosophy at st annes college until 1963. during the period in which she worked for unrra, she contacted with the desperate plight of displaced persons seeking to get home after the war. her experience of the relocation camps affected herself profoundly, both in her political views and also in her relation with the refugees. these experiences influenced her and she wished to protect and respect the distinctive quality of the individual. in 1956 she married john bayley, who was a teacher and critic. she was made an honorary member of the american academy of arts and letters in 1975 and was awarded the c.b.e. in 1976. in 1987, murdoch was made dame of the order of the british empire. unfortunately, in 1999 iris murdoch died from complications related to alzheimers disease, which she had suffered from and fought with for two years. her death left her family, friends and readers in deep grief, which was also a great loss to the english literature. in 2002, a film called iris, based on her husbands heart-rending memoir elegy for iris (1999) was put on screen in hollywood and met with considerable responses. 2 in addition to the honors that her later works had won the james tait black memorial prize for the black prince in 1973, the whitbread literary award for fiction for the sacred and profane love machine in 1974, and the booker prize for the sea, the sea in 1978, murdoch herself was also the recipient of many esteemed awards: dame of the order of the british empire, the royal society of literatures companion of literature award, and the national arts clubs (new york) medal of honor for literature. as a moral philosopher as well as a novelist, murdoch is centrally engaged with the question of the self and the moral dimensions of every attempt to picture human beings. both her fiction and her philosophy constitute a sustained argument against reductionistic accounts of human life that omit the “valuing” aspect of subjectivity and consciousness. furthermore, murdoch does not use fiction to serve a determined philosophical program instead has in novels what she has called “idea-play”, and she insists in her letter to barbara stevens heusel that her novels “are not connected with philosophy”. however, her novels are full of some deep philosophical ideas. her novels present a darker picture of human reality, although full of humor, in which seeking the good and living the good life is almost impossible for most of her illusion-ridden, egotistical characters; “if her philosophy is lofty, her best novels are merciless and grim, as well as comical” (conradi, 2001:540). therefore, her novels are always received with mixed criticism and remain controversial even today. murdochs characters in most of her novels are drawn from the upper-middle-class society, and almost everyone has enough money, learns latin and greek, and drinks too much whiskey. the quasi-incestuous competition of members of one family for a single beloved is ubiquitous, as is the dispersal of community. the pattern of two siblings involved with a single outsider recurs in under the net, the flight from the enchanter, a severed head, brunos dream, a fairly honorable defeat, an accident man, the time of the angels. mother-daughter competition figures in an unofficial rose, the black prince, father-daughter incest, that venerable literary theme occurs in the time of the angels, brother-sister in a severed head, the bell and the red and the green (conradi, 1986:83-84). furthermore, the theme of murdochs novels is mostly concerned with morality and goodness including the above novels. david. j. gordon claims that tallis in a fairly honorable defeat is similar to murdochs other figures of good, “they live as if their being is quietly compelled by an inner necessity; they face a contingent world without hungering for form and meaning; they lack self-consciousness and a sense of self-importance; their influence on others is so unapparent as to make them seem almost invisible”(john haffenden, 1985:206). as a rule, murdochs good characters or those who aspire to good behavior can turn out to be ineffectual people, moral touchstones which verge on the symbolic. a virtuous character acts in a disinterested way and therefore can become 3 uninteresting. her good character is sometimes placed to the side of main action, such as bledyard in the sandcastle, theo gray in the nice and the good, and brendan craddock in herry and cato, and is sometimes placed at the center, such as ann in an unofficial rose and tallis in a fairly honorable defeat. murdochs novels at best provide a tangential exploration of her philosophical ideas and although at times they help to provide examples of how murdoch envisages the good featuring in the reality of individual lives, they also present a very different, even conflicting picture to that of her philosophy. in the light of this, murdochs novels are always treated with a certain amount of suspicion in terms of discovering murdochs philosophical position. however, despite skepticism regarding the use of murdochs novels in reading her philosophy, her status as novelist is not insignificant. murdoch is far better known as a novelist than as a philosopher. and as a novelist she was prolific, whereas as a philosopher she writes only four books: sartre: romantic rationalist, the sovereignty of good, the fire and the sun: why plato banished the artists and metaphysics as a guide to morals. a collection of her many essays existentialists and mystics: writings on philosophy and literature was published in 1997, although the essays it contains are from a much earlier period in her career. another philosophical work is acastos: two platonic dialogues. these dialogues, on the subjects of art and religion, stand between her philosophy and her literature. as a philosopher, murdochs wish is that philosophy should once again present a picture of the whole of human life and provide succor and insight to all. 1.2 an introduction to a fairly honorable defeat iris murdochs novels have been widely regarded as disturbing, unsatisfying and uncomfortable-making; as resorting to the lurid and exaggerated wild scenes of disaster and rescue, sexual interactions regardless of sex and kin, unrealistic twists, and so on (suguna ramanathan, 1990:2). a fairly honorable defeat has a character of the good, like the sandcastle and the nice and the good; unlike the previous novels, however, this character is “not a minor one who unobtrusively emerges from the wings now and then, but is one of the leading dramatis personae”(richard todd, 1988:85). a fairly honorable defeat told a “satan” named julius, who was an american jewish, he had been imprisoned in the nazi concentration camp at belsen for many years in world war , now as a biologist, he gave up his work and studied on the nerve gas, a kind of anthrax which resisted antibiotics and could be used in the biological war which was financed by the military. meanwhile he departed with his girlfriend and came to london, then, he involved himself into a series of matters. unfortunately, his girlfriend morgan, also returned to london, she met julius and wanted to reconcile, but failed. morgans brother-in-law rupert, was julius 4 friend, and was writing a book talking about humans goodness. however, julius believed in the frailty of peoples relationship and doubted the humans goodness. therefore, julius decided to make an experiment. he bet with morgan for ten guineas to detach simon from his lover alex in three weeks, at the same time he chose rupert who falsely symbolized the goodness and morgan as the experimental subjects. at the end of the story ruperts family was broken: rupert was drowned in his family pool, his book was torn up, and his wife and son left london to america, his son was to have a psychological treatment, morgan lived with them. only morgans husband tallis, maintained the original life, simon returned in good with alex. as the judge, julius also left london, he sat in a french restaurant to enjoy the sunlight. the main plot can be easily summarized as julius boasts to morgan that “i could divide anybody from anybody. even you could. play sufficiently on a persons vanity, sow a little mistrust, hint at the contempt which every human being deeply, secretly feels for every other one. every man loves himself so astronomically more than he loves his neighbor. anyone can be made to drop anyone”(iris murdoch, 1970:233-234). a preoccupation with the importance of good manifests itself with a new insistence in a fairly honorable defeat, though a growing moral seriousness has been in evidence, as most critics agree, since the nice and the good. tallis browne, the good figure in a fairly honorable defeat, has an authorial centrality that makes him a prototype for the figures that form the subject of this book. the novel, as murdoch has herself said in an interview, is an allegory of the struggle between good and evil, and the title refers to the defeat of good by evil in the world. tallis is the early version of the clearly defined good figure. he is the literary ancestor of brendan craddock in henry and cato, james arrowby in the sea, the sea, anne cavidge in nuns and soldiers, william eastcote in the philosophers pupil, stuart cuno in the good apprentice and jenkin riderhood in the book and the brotherhood (suguna ramanathan, 1990:1). 1.3 the present research on iris murdochs works iris murdochs twenty-six novels, offering a huge world capable of multiple interpretations, move from an early sophisticated inquiry through a dark phase in which little can redeem nature, to a partial reconciliation, and thence, with her latest novels, into a macabre dance and a contemplation of the technological nightmare. the scholars at home and abroad have studied murdochs works for many years, and they focus on her ethical philosophical thoughts and 5 artistic skills. for example, hou weirui, he weiwen, yin tiechao, fan lingmei and yue guofa have published dissertations to put forward many unique ideas, they have found murdochs pursuit for the truth and goodness in the relative and contingency world, the temptation of the linguistic power game and the thoughts on the existential selfness and reality, and so on. moreover, the research on murdoch from the perspective of feminism is the probe into murdochs feminist thoughts, for instance, liu shus a thinker of womens problems: on iris murdochs feminist thoughts. however, the analyses of murdochs novels are rare from the point of view of feminist ethics of care, especially on the womens ethical thoughts in a fairly honorable defeat. many foreign scholars also have studied murdochs works such as a. s. byatts degrees of freedom: the early novels of iris murdoch, megan lavertys iris murdochs ethics: a consideration of her romantic vision, heather widdows the moral vision of iris murdoch, anne rowes iris murdocha reassessment, and so on. furthermore, these researches are mostly the analyses of murdochs philosophical thoughts and her novels meanings from the views of existentialism, realism, psychological analysis and feminism. a fairly honorable defeat is one of murdochs novels in 1970s, it symbolizes a new phase in her career, in which she has often combined the satisfaction of each genre in a single book. a fairly honorable defeat is an elegant open novel which tests out the premises on which the closed novels are based. in a severed head two brothers compete for women; in brunos dream two sisters love the same man but the unmarried sister renounces her claim. in this novel, julius tries to manipulate two sisters into such competition, and partly fails. the sequence is a gradual opening out of the incestuous plot. this novel reflects humans characteristic nature under different ethical principles in the complex relationships. every one has his own desire; every one has his own life belief. different understanding of goodness leads to different life styles, so the ethical standards are not the same. murdoch believes that the final goal of human is to gain the “real truth of goodness”, and the road to the goodness is a long and hard process. murdoch makes a conflict between evil and good in this novel, and with the end of the failure of good. here murdoch uses a negative example to point out humans self-illusion, and the process of recognition and the improvement of selfness. what is more, like the sandcastle and the nice and the good, a fairly honorable defeat has a character of the good. but unlike the previous two novels, this character is “not a minor one who unobtrusively emerges from the wings now and then, but is one of the leading dramatis personae”(diana phillips, 1988:85). and his counterpart is a powerful enchanter, a fantastic figure of evil depicted with more skillful energy than his earlier incarnations, such as mischa fox in the flight from the enchanter or father carel in the time of the angels. therefore, this novel is in many ways regarded as one of 6 murdochs best novels, and