Plato’s Friend

Ian Hacking

  • Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals by Iris Murdoch
    Chatto, 520 pp, £20.00, October 1992, ISBN 0 7011 3998 6

I was completely gripped by this astonishing monologue, but the next person to pick up my review copy said it looked like one long run-on sentence. What is it, besides a monologue? ‘How weird your categories are! It’s philosophy, if you like – but what does that mean it’s thinking, and it’s a programme of action.’ That’s Crimond, the high-flyer, in Iris Murdoch’s 1989 The Book of the Brotherhood, replying to a question about his projected book. His envious interlocutor Gerrard asks:

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