The writer explains how Candide gave birth to Richard Dawkins, and why Alain de Botton is more novelist than philosopher
Mind over matter … the philosopher in Murdoch is more forceful than the novelist, says Seán McGrady. Photograph: Jane Bown
One fine Belfast day in the utterly crazy year of 1972, young Marius Moonston, The Backslider, decides to take a fiver from his sister's purse. But, more important, he decides to take a stand. He cannot find a foothold in an utterly mad Ulster "evangelical" world, with his mad evangelical family and madder society-at-large smothering his questioning mind. His crime opens up a new way of looking at the world, and of acting in it, so his feet gradually find solidity in another mental milieu that better suits his questioning consciousness. His transformation through an act of "theft", his newfound ability to see what is questionable, is the nature of his backsliding, and it is what constitutes the philosophical nature of my novel.
The philosophical novel is the continuation of philosophical reflection by other means. To do justice to the nature of ontological concepts, Plato required a mythological approach in order to illuminate the distinction between essences and existence, which resisted conceptualisation. To do justice to the totality of human experience, existentialism denied objectifying knowledge. Justice was eminently done in some cases, their place in history of philosophical ideas assured and their literary merit lauded. Others failed to hit their desired target but were nonetheless notable for daring to articulate the philosophical idea in this form, and being popularly successful, if not philosophically original.
Read the full story at The Guardian.
The philosophical novel is the continuation of philosophical reflection by other means. To do justice to the nature of ontological concepts, Plato required a mythological approach in order to illuminate the distinction between essences and existence, which resisted conceptualisation. To do justice to the totality of human experience, existentialism denied objectifying knowledge. Justice was eminently done in some cases, their place in history of philosophical ideas assured and their literary merit lauded. Others failed to hit their desired target but were nonetheless notable for daring to articulate the philosophical idea in this form, and being popularly successful, if not philosophically original.
Read the full story at The Guardian.
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