Love in Dark Times: Iris Murdoch on Openess and the Void

After situating Iris Murdoch’s promotion of openness to love within
a broadly Platonic ethic, I outline a familiar suspicion about such openness in
the context of grief, where the finding of a new and intimate love may seem
inappropriate. By drawing upon her treatment of spiritual crisis and grief as parallel
instances of the void, I respond to this suspicion by arguing that love in the context
of spiritual crisis offers a way to resist the dangers of the void and that similar
considerations apply in the parallel case (grief). If we accept Murdoch’s overall
position we will then lack justification for rejecting love as a morally defensible
pathway out of grief.