Dear Fellow Traveler,
How do you know if you’re seeing clearly? It’s fascinating (and humbling) to consider the notion that we are not seeing clearly, that there are aspects of ourselves (and the world around us) of which we are simply unaware.
The Irish-born British philosopher Iris Murdoch believed our inner lives are too often deluded by a “relentless ego.” However, according to Murdoch, it’s possible to deflate the ego by contemplating beauty in nature and art.
In her philosophical classic, The Sovereignty of the Good, Murdoch explained,
The self, the place where we live, is a place of illusion. Goodness is connected with the attempt to see the unself, to see and to respond to the real world in the light of a virtuous consciousness. This is the non-metaphysical meaning of the idea of transcendence to which philosophers have so constantly resorted in their explanations of goodness. 'Good is a transcendent reality' means that virtue is the attempt to pierce the veil of selfish consciousness and join the world as it really is.
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