Moral philosophers should show how ideas are lived, not merely obeyed as rules
Evidence
This notion of ‘inhabited philosophy’ is one I’ve borrowed from the English philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch, who wrote the first full-length book on Sartre and was an early adopter of existentialism (though she later moved away from it). She observed that we need not expect moral philosophers to ‘live by’ their ideas in a simplistic way, as if they were following a set of rules. But we can expect them to show how their ideas are lived in. We should be able to look in through the windows of a philosophy, as it were, and see how people occupy it, how they move about and how they conduct themselves. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 104
Categorization
- DEFINE: Defines Murdoch’s key concept of ‘inhabited philosophy’ — a useful orienting frame for understanding existentialist praxis versus abstract theory.
- QUESTION: Does Murdoch’s ‘inhabited philosophy’ concept have a precise original formulation worth chasing down?
- XREF: connects to: Philosophies are inhabited and lived in rather than merely followed as rules — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 104
Broader Connections
- Philosophies are inhabited and lived in rather than merely followed as rules
#corroborates(0.95) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 104