Bluestocking Oxford

By Aijia He

Iris Murdoch and Philippa Foot were two women philosophers who spent much of their academic careers in Oxford. Murdoch, born in Dublin in 1919, studied at Somerville College after schooling in Bristol. A year later, Philippa Foot joined her at Somerville. From that point onwards, both their academic and personal lives became linked by their shared ethics of love.  Both women contributed substantially to the field of ethics, as evidenced by Iris Murdoch’s The Sovereignty of Good (1970) and Philippa Foot’s Virtues and Vices (1978). Just as their ethics were concerned with love, so too was their own relationship, and following the release of their correspondence (1940s–1990s) by Kingston University, it has been revealed that they were lovers at some point. Though there has been much debate attempting to categorise the nature of their relationship at various points in time, I find this unhelpful, as every relationship is unique and fluid in nature; hence any label is a description that makes the relationship intelligible to an outside observer, but never a category to which a loving relationship should conform. Murdoch and Foot’s enduring relationship is a testament to their ethics of love. By viewing love as central in morality and agency, Murdoch and Foot treated love as a philosophical practice, conceptualising love as an intentional and willing choice to care for another person.

In Against Dryness (1961) and The Idea of Perfection (1970), Murdoch diagnosed a problematic image of agency in philosophy and literature. She wrote, “Contemporary philosophers …although they constantly talk of freedom they rarely talk of love” and “we have wished to encourage people to think of themselves as free, at the cost of surrendering the background [of values, of realities, which transcend them].”

A dry agent then, lives in an individualistic society with a false sense of freedom and rationality resulting from a broken connection with reality that transcends oneself. This is an impoverished image of agency which does not take into account the nuance of the moral life, since instead of being in an ideal epistemic position, the agent often does not have sufficient knowledge for decision-making. For Murdoch, rejecting dryness means to embrace the idea that every agent is an impenetrable, fluid individual who lives in uncertainty. It is under these limiting circumstances that individuals like us try hard to strive for freedom and responsibility. Such recognition takes Murdoch to a philosophical vision that is interpersonal since its scope includes all people with their own fears and desires struggling to seek the right course of action especially in love: “…there is a place…for a sort of contemplation of the Good, not just by dedicated experts but by ordinary people.”

Foot in her virtue ethics also considers the challenges circumstances may place on morality, recognising flaws in the agent and social environment. Aristotle held that a virtuous person takes pleasure in virtuous action, while struggling through it is second best. This leads to the elitist objection that those who must act against contrary inclinations, such as someone who acts generously despite growing up in poverty, seem excluded from full virtue. From this starting point, Foot develops a context-sensitive philosophy with the example of a poor person tempted to steal; as poverty intensifies the temptation, overcoming it makes the honest act more, not less, virtuous. She offered a similar response to Kant’s argument that only actions from duty have moral worth. Kant argued that the connection between disposition and rightness is accidental, as a person who acts charitably out of sympathy will cease to do so if his mind is “clouded by sorrow.” Foot maintains that the sympathy making charity easier is part of the virtue itself; the dutiful philanthropist who feels no sympathy and acts from duty alone is a case where greater virtue is required. Sympathy, or joy in caring about others, matters for the moral worth of an action for Foot.

For both, how to live well is a general question that attracts no general answer. The standard used in each case must be flexible. This resonates with their own relationship, both being imperfect agents navigating the chaos of love. Murdoch once hurt Foot badly, causing a brief estrangement, but their relation rekindled after serious reflection on both parts.

As aforementioned, each agent is a complex, impenetrable individual. Being sensitive to the context requires being sensitive to the individuals involved; attention is required for the understanding of the moral task. Murdoch wrote, ‘Human beings are obscure to each other…unless they are mutual objects of attention or have common objects of attention.’ Therefore, an attentive lover should strive to see the beloved accurately and justly, as philosopher Vida Lao argued in Grace and Alienation (2020). But one often feels the urge to escape from the gaze of the other, fearing that one’s vices get exposed. Without seeing each other through attention, relationship between agents tend to fall into one of the two categories – tough love and compassion. Both kinds are blind, though in tough love one forces the beloved to change, whereas compassion is accepting all flaws without progress. Alienation follows, where shame operates in the background. The solution is still attention, as we see in Murdoch and Foot’s reconciliation, where they exposed themselves with full honesty, acknowledging and understanding the other’s perspectives.

What makes their work significant today is its relevance to care ethics. In The Care Manifesto (2020), the interdependence among creatures in this world is recognised. Stemming from recognition as a combination of seeing and attending, care is put central in the good life. ‘Caring for’ (hands-on care), ‘caring about’ (emotional investment), and ‘caring with’ (care as a world-changing force) demand love and attention, as each necessarily requires a context-sensitive approach to the needs and wants of others, as well as a sympathy with those who care for you and for whom you care. This naturally leads to Foot’s virtue ethics, where love is virtue and care its most important aspect (Michal Chabada, 2025). Love then, is not merely emotion or mood, but a disposition of the will. This rejects the traditional image of either passion being disciplined under reason, or reason being enslaved by passion; this dichotomy need not exist, if we recognise that both aspects of the mind are in harmony with each other under our will, the epitome of agency.

The attitude of “we care” conveyed by their philosophy suggests that love is not a passive emotion, or mere affect, but an individual’s intentional choice made willingly. Hence, rather than being some fragile, disarming, and ephemeral feeling, love as a disposition of will is part of the foundation of freedom and responsibility, which is precisely why, in ethical discourse, we must not shy away from the discussion of love if we aim to establish the significance of agency in an interdependent world.

Further Reading

Chatzidakis, Andreas., Hakim, Jamie., Littler, Jo., Rottenberg, Catherine., & Segal, Lynne. (2020). The care manifesto: the politics of interdependence. Verso.

Foot, Philippa. (2003). Virtues and vices and other essays in moral philosophy ([New] ed.). Clarendon Press.

Lipscomb, Benjamin J.B., The Women Are Up to Something: How Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch Revolutionized Ethics (New York, 2021; online edn, Oxford Academic, 21 Oct. 2021), https://doi-org.ezproxy-prd.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/10.1093/oso/9780197541074.001.0001, accessed 8 Apr. 2026.

Murdoch, Iris. (2015). The sovereignty of good (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315887524