Spirituality in Iris Murdoch’s the Bell: the Self and God

초록

English Spirituality has witnessed an interesting occurrence since the Enlightenment. People began to criticize the traditional Christian idea of a personal God, and to endeavour to substitute ‘something’ for it. Iris Murdoch is one of the thinkers who contributed to the occurrence by replacing the traditional notion of God with the Platonic idea of the Good. That is, traditionally the Christian spirituality had been approached by the absolute Otherness of God, but Murdoch suggests what matters in spirituality is the self-knowledge in the Bell. This essay is going to argue that Iris Murdoch’s the Bell refers to a significant shift of the focus from the Otherness of God to self-knowledge in spirituality. First, it will be discussed what kind of spiritual values and insights the Bell describes in relation to the issue of recognizing what is real against illusion, referring to the dynamics of the community, sexuality, and love. Second, it examines how recognition needs to be understood in terms of the relationship between the self and God in our contemporary society which has changed in various senses since the Enlightenment.

키워드