The Philosopher's Pupil by Iris Murdoch

January 14, 2026

I read this on my Kindle exclusively in my gym's spa. It takes place in a spa town. 10/10 recommend this reading experience, though reading about someone almost getting trapped in a steam tunnel while sitting in the steam room was a little too immersive.

The novel is largely centered around George McCaffrey, who seems to have peaked in college while studying under the philosopher John Robert Rozanov, and then subsequently ruined his own life in every way he could after being dismissed from philosophy. He spends his life ruminating on his old mentor and considers them inexorably linked to each other. Rozanov comes back to town and all domestic hell breaks loose.

We've got affairs, we've got probably unfortunate portrayals of gypsies (it's from 1983!), we've got an attempt at an arranged marriage, we've got multiple attempted murders, we've got messy family feelings.

There's a dog. The dog does not die.

We've also got deep musings on morality. Is anyone really good? Is anyone really evil, for that matter? What is the difference between who you are internally and who you are actually perceived to be? Which one of those is actually who you are? Can you change people? Do they change you?

I read somewhere, which I cannot find now, that this was Murdoch's novel that champions Plato's philosophy over Kant's. Unfortunately I am too dumb to have really gotten that from this book. I basically understand modern philosophy of the mind schools of thought (like Daniel Dennett), the Stoics, and then have a very rudimentary understanding of what The Good Place covered. So if you're more cultured than me this could be a good read. If you're not, no worries! It's family and small town mess, you'll understand it.

Some quotes

"Her love is like duty, like something sublime, made of idealism and awful self-confidence. She thinks she’ll elevate him. She ought to kneel down beside him."

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"To say he was a narcissist was to say little. We are mostly narcissists, and only in a few, not always with felicitous results, is narcissism overcome (broken, crushed, annihilated, nothing less will serve) by religious discipline or psycho-analysis."

I found this really interesting with the current discourse that claims every bad person is a narcissist. Narcissists exist, yes, but are we just being lazy when identifying flaws?

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"We are in fact far more randomly made, more full of rough contingent rubble, than art or vulgar psycho-analysis lead us to imagine."

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"When we suddenly learn that some unobtrusive fellow is a chess champion or great tennis player, the man is physically transformed for us. So it was with Tom. In the instant, Scarlett-Taylor was a different being. And in the instant too, deep in his mind, Tom made an important and necessary decision. He was interested enough in singing to recognize an exceptional voice and to covet it. There was a quick tiny fierce impulse of pure envy, a sense of passionate rivalry for the world. But almost in the same moment of recognition, making one of those moves of genuine sympathy by which we defend our egoism, Tom embraced his rival and drew him in to himself, making that superb voice his own possession. He would be endlessly proud of Scarlett-Taylor and take what he later called ‘Emma’s secret weapon’ as a credit to himself. Ownership would preclude envy; this remarkable sound and its owner were now his. Thus Tom easily enlarged his ego or (according to one’s point of view) broke its barriers so as to unite himself with another in joint proprietorship of the world: a movement of salvation which for him was easy, for others (George, for instance) very hard."

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"But isn’t religion bound to descend into consolation? You don’t want to change, or to sacrifice anything, but because of some vague experience you regard yourself as excused, as innocent, simul iustus et peccator?"

I had to look up the Latin. It means "simultaneously justified and sinner". This was the most concise and helpful explanation that I could find without going into evangelical podcast land.

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"Truth is impersonal. Like death. It’s a doom."

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"Shun the cynicism which says that our world is so terrible that we may as well cease to care and cease to strive, the notion of a cosmic crisis where ordinary duties cease to be and moral fastidiousness is out of place. At any time, there are many many small things we can do for other people which will refresh us and them with new hope. Shun too the common malice which finds consolation in the suffering and sin of others, blackening them to make our grey seem white, rejoicing in our neighbours’ downfall and disgrace, while excusing our own failures and cherishing our own undiscovered secret sins. Above all, do not despair, either for the planet or in the deep inwardness of the heart. Recognize one’s own evil, mend what can be mended, and for what cannot be undone, place it in love and faith in the clear light of the healing goodness of God."

BLACKENING THEM TO MAKE OUR GREY SEEM WHITE. We really have not evolved at all.