A Philosophy to Live By

• Puts Murdoch's philosophy into conversation with a wide array of prominent thinkers and debates in ethics
• The book proposes a new theory in the sense that it interprets Murdoch's philosophy as recapturing the spiritual or practical import of philosophy
• Murdoch's work has affinities with recent calls for a "humane" turn in philosophy and with critiques of academic overspecialization in philosophy

Readership: Scholars of religion and philosophy with an interest in Iris Murdoch

Maria Antonaccio, Professor of Religion, Bucknell University

Maria Antonaccio is a professor in the Religion Department at Bucknell University. She is the author of Picturing the Human: The Moral Thought of Iris Murdoch and co-editor of Iris Murdoch and the Search for Human Goodness. Her current research focuses on contemporary expressions and appropriations of ascetic discourse and practice, as well as issues related to the ethics of consumption.

Preface
Introduction: Interpreting Philosophy into Practical Life
Part I. Metaphysics and the Idea of the Individual
1. The Virtues of Metaphysics
2. Form and Contingency
3. The Consolations of Literature

Part II. Religion and the Demand of the Good
4. Imagining the Good without God
5. The Return of Spiritual Exercises
6. The Ascetic Impulse
7. Religion and the Ubiquity of Value

Part III. Liberalism and the Pursuit of Ideals
8. The Liberal Imagination
9. The Lives of Iris Murdoch: An Apologia
Acknowledgments
Index