Iris Murdoch’s Concept of Imagination and Its Role in Moral Life

Abstract

Iris Murdoch situates imagination at the core of moral life, challenging moral philosophy’s preference for abstract universal principles over the particularity of lived experience. This paper reconstructs Murdoch’s concept of imagination by tracing her engagement with Plato’s distinction between eikasia and the Demiurge’s ‘high’ imagination, as well as Kant’s notions of empirical and esthetic imagination. I argue that Murdoch’s imagination is best understood as a hermeneutical capacity essential to moral vision. She distinguishes between egoistic fantasy, which distorts reality, and free and creative imagination, which enables a just and loving gaze upon the world. Through imagination, we can replace obscuring images with truer ones, making moral progress an exercise in vision and attention. Murdoch’s account thus offers an alternative to moral theories that overlook the inner life as a site of ethical transformation.

1. Introduction

The relationship between imagination and moral life is both intricate and fundamental. While mainstream Anglo-American moral philosophy has often prioritized rule-following and rational deliberation, Iris Murdoch recognized imagination’s central role in our moral life well before contemporary scholars turned their attention to this topic¹. In contrast to moral theories that prioritize abstract universal rules or reduce morality to observable behavior and choice, Murdoch emphasizes the moral importance of particularity, contingency, and the rich inner lives of individuals.

This paper aims to recover Murdoch’s concept of imagination and demonstrate its significance within her broader moral philosophy. I argue that Murdoch’s conception of imagination presents it as a hermeneutical faculty essential to moral vision. For Murdoch, imagination is not simply image-making but an interpretive capacity through which we come to understand ourselves, others, and reality. More fundamentally, Murdoch’s account of imagination is inseparable from her conviction that morality is about understanding, not merely about choice. Moral differences, for Murdoch, are not primarily differences in will given the same facts, but differences in vision: differences in how we see and interpret reality. We are always refining our moral concepts, extending our capacity to see, moving toward an understanding that deepens but is never complete. Imagination is the faculty through which this interpretive work occurs.

Murdoch draws a sharp distinction between two uses of imagination: egoistic fantasy, which is the bad use of imagination, and free and creative imagination, which is its good use². I trace her understanding of these two uses through her reading of Plato’s and Kant’s theories of imagination, a methodological decision that illuminates the philosophical context in which Murdoch conceives this distinction and provides the conceptual tools necessary for understanding her own account³. Fantasy, which Murdoch associates with Plato’s eikasia, produces images that captivate and anesthetize us, preventing us from seeing reality. Free and creative imagination, which Murdoch develops through her reading of the Demiurge’s high imagination and Kant’s esthetic imagination, produces images that disclose reality and enable moral progress.

The hermeneutical interpretation I propose illuminates why Murdoch describes moral progress as a pilgrimage consisting of the progressive destruction of false images and their replacement with truer ones. This pilgrimage exhibits a circular structure; we begin always already embedded in images, and through the discipline of attention, we allow reality to challenge and revise those images. The famous example of the mother-in-law M and the daughter-in-law D shows this interpretive imagination at work; M’s moral progress consists not of choosing differently, for her behavior remains unchanged throughout, but of understanding differently, producing images that more truly disclose who D is. Imagination, on this account, is the interpretive faculty through which we engage with the moral dimensions of our world.

Drawing primarily from Murdoch’s seminal work, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, alongside her earlier philosophical essays, I reconstruct her interpretation of imagination and its role in moral life. I begin by examining Murdoch’s conception of fantasy as the enemy of freedom through her reading of Plato’s eikasia (Section 2), before turning to her account of free and creative imagination as the capacity that enables moral vision, developed through her engagement with Plato’s Demiurge and Kant’s esthetic imagination (Section 3). I then address the crucial question of how imagination relates to and differs from perception and thought, clarifying Murdoch’s conceptual framework (Section 4). In Section 5, I develop the hermeneutical interpretation of Murdochian imagination, demonstrating how imagination functions as interpretation through Murdoch’s example of M and D. Finally, I conclude by considering the implications of Murdoch’s account for thinking about moral life.

2. Murdoch’s Conception of Fantasy: The ‘Bad’ Imagination

Murdoch’s famous phrase “We are fantasizing imaginative animals” reveals her fundamental consideration of human nature [5] (p. 323). Imagination is a pervasive feature of human life: we constantly deal with images, picturing and representing the world. This pervasion of images, and our evaluation of reality through them, may be flawed since our nature is a fallen one. She therefore reads Plato’s account of eikasia as an important background for understanding why fantasy is, in her view, the enemy of freedom. Murdoch considers that:

“[H]uman beings are naturally selfish and that human life has no external point or telos…The psyche is a historically determined individual relentlessly looking after itself. In some ways it resembles a machine… The area of its vaunted freedom of choice is not usually very great. One of its main pastimes is day-dreaming. It is reluctant to face unpleasant realities. Its consciousness is not normally a transparent glass through which it views the world, but a cloud of more or less fantastic reverie designed to protect the psyche from pain. It constantly seeks consolation, either through imagined inflation of self or through fictions of a theological nature. Even its loving is more often than not an assertion of self”

[5] (p. 337)

This passage underscores two important aspects of human nature; we are prone to relishing images, and we are selfish in the sense that we tend toward self-absorption. These two aspects are intimately connected. Our consciousness is ‘a cloud of more or less fantastic reverie’ because we conceal our inner selves by producing images that inflate our egos and allow us to forget our miseries and sufferings. Our daydreaming becomes a refuge from crude reality and from our inner life.

The combination of the pervasiveness of images and egocentrism thus creates a moral problem: it inclines us toward a particular use of imagination that Murdoch calls fantasy. Fantasy represents the bad use of imagination, and it blocks freedom. She claims that “[we] would see the enemy of freedom as fantasy, a bad use of imagination: something relentlessly natural to human beings and against which ‘pure reason’ has little chance” [5] (p. 322). Fantasy operates by producing images that captivate and imprison us. Its specific character is egoistic: “[W]e may fail to see the individual because we are completely enclosed in a fantasy world of our own into which we try to draw things from outside, not grasping their reality and independence, making them into dream objects of our own.” [6] (p. 216). This egoistic fantasy is the enemy of the good imagination, free and creative, conceived as the ability to see reality truly.

Murdoch locates Plato’s discussion of imagination in his epistemological proposal of eikasia in the Republic. For Plato, eikasia is primarily imitative, making its function suspicious because it does not relate to truth and reality. In the Figure of the Line in Republic Book VI, the first part represents the lowest forms of cognition, where eikasia is the first state and pistis the second. Both produce mere opinions, doxa, about reality and are therefore far from truth. The function of eikasia is to reproduce shadows and images of our sensible world. Murdoch’s account of fantasy echoes this Platonic account: the ubiquitous images and our selfishness produce an imaginative activity that not only fails to grasp reality but obscures it. She sees then the enemy of freedom as the same phenomenon that Plato analyses under eikasia, which operates at personal and public levels.

At a personal level, eikasia refers to the production of images in one’s soul. By relating the Figure of the Line to the Allegory of the Cave in Republic Book VII, we see that the prisoners are in a state of mere eikasia. They are contemplating shadows cast on the cavern’s wall; they are in a state of illusion, enraptured by the images, without any possibility of leaving. Unless a god, philosopher, or fortune unchains them, they may remain prisoners of the shadows all their lives. The prisoners are not shackled merely by chains but by the anesthetic function of eikasia that reproduces shadows in each soul. Murdoch, interpreting Plato, writes that we may be ‘completely enclosed in a fantasy world of our own,’ turning things from outside into dream objects.

Plato also analyzes eikasia at a public level, where artists produce images that fulfill a social function. Artists are banished from the ideal state not because they are artists, but because their art is a mere imitation of the sensible world and fulfills the same function as the eikasia of the prisoners: reproducing images without questioning their origin or content, thus serving as social anesthetics [5] (p. 12). Murdoch agrees: “the practice of such imitation inhibits the artist and his client from the effort of penetrating beyond appearances” [7] (p. 87). For Plato, this activity is even more dangerous than personal eikasia because art has an educational role. If shadows are taken as true reality, the artist may deceive others and himself, not by intent but through ignorance. This ignorance worries Plato because it makes the artist and others live in a world where appearances and reality are not distinguished. Murdoch carries this critique into her analysis of new technologies. She writes that “What happens every day is important, images can affect the quality of our thoughts and wishes. The damage done to inner life, to aloneness and quietness, through the imposition of banal or pornographic or violent images by television, is a considerable wound” [5] (p. 320). The images of mass media function like the shadows in Plato’s cave and like the deceiving imitation of the artists, dominating our imagination and shaping our moral sensibility.

In both private and public spheres, eikasia functions as an anesthetic, making us prisoners of images and preventing us from perceiving reality. According to Plato, this is a consequence of human nature, which tends to seek comfort rather than truth. Murdoch follows this same train of thought: our nature prefers to be enraptured by images and appearances rather than undertake the painful search for truth. She interprets Plato’s description of the citizens who remain at the level of eikasia:

“These are the states of mind of people who have no critical sense, no sense of reality, who believe what is immediate and easy, judge from appearances, thoughtlessly accept conventions and habits, have convenient, ready-made values, do whatever the priest says, and so on”

[5] (p. 317)

Being anesthetized by these images does not allow us to reflect on them and thus not to search for the truth behind them. Murdoch notes that Plato “connects egoistic fantasy [eikasia] and lack of moral sense with the inability to reflect”

[5] (pp. 317–318)

Recovery from this state, both for Plato and for Murdoch, requires a pilgrimage that involves destroying false images and replacing them with others that bring us closer to truth. Murdoch summarizes the Platonic program:

“[This pilgrimage] as we learn from the Republic, [consists of] a progressive destruction of false images. Image-making or image-apprehending is always an imperfect activity, some images are higher than others, that is nearer to reality. Images should not be resting places, but pointers towards higher truth”

[5] (p. 10)

The moral improvement consists of changing the images that attract our nature with images that bring our soul closer to truth, that seduce it to the Good: “This parable [the Cave] portrays a spiritual pilgrimage from appearance to reality. We turn round, we climb up, we raise our heads. At each stage, we at first see the shadows of what is more real and true” [5] (p. 10). For this, Murdoch claims we need a faculty that can produce these images. Eikasia is not such a faculty because it anesthetizes us and does not allow us to recognize images as images [8] (514a–517a). Therefore, it cannot lead us towards the Good. Our task is to cultivate imagination in a way that, unlike fantasy, liberates us from self-absorbed images and reorients us to reality.

By merging Murdoch’s analysis of fantasy with her reading of Plato’s eikasia, we see how her notion of the enemy of freedom emerges from a tradition that treats certain uses of imagination as hindrances to truth. The moral life involves resisting the natural egoistic fantasies that distort reality and purging the eikasia-like images that dominate public culture. This purgative process begins with acknowledging our selfish tendencies and our susceptibility to images; it continues with replacing them with images that point beyond themselves towards the Good. Only by recognizing the inadequacy of mere appearances and cultivating images that lead us beyond them can we hope to recover the capacity ultimately to see reality truly and thus to exercise genuine freedom.

3. Murdoch’s Conception of Free and Creative Imagination: The ‘Good’ Imagination

As mentioned in the previous section, for Murdoch, we live surrounded by images and stories that reflect our desires, and we are apt to embellish these images in ways that serve our ego. This propensity to surround ourselves with fantasies is not neutral; it distorts our grasp of reality and impoverishes our moral vision. For Murdoch, however, this is not the end of the story. There is also a good imagination, a moral imagination, which will purify the bad imagination to some extent by critically revising the images produced by fantasy and replacing them with images resembling the Good. She acknowledges that the task of reaching perfection is difficult because we must first grasp the idea of perfection, which “can only go through the thick, obscure tissue of human particularity [9] (p. 259). The process of purification involves the capacity to see beyond our immediate situation, to envision new possibilities, and to understand other perspectives. The free and creative imagination thus comprises the same capacities that Murdoch regards as essential for overcoming egoistic fantasy. It allows us to look at the world as it really is and to change how we think about it, and thereby to change our actions.

Murdoch’s account of moral vision centers on attention, a notion she adopts from Simone Weil, by which she wants to express: “a just and loving gaze directed upon an individual reality” [10] (p. 33). Murdoch uses this notion to describe the disciplined way we must look at the world if we are to free ourselves from self-absorption. Attention involves a patient and careful openness to what is there, and a willingness to let other people or things reveal themselves in their own right. In Murdoch’s view, the kind of imagination that allows us to have this moral discipline is the free and creative imagination. Drawing on both Plato and Kant, she describes this faculty as a restoration of freedom and cognition: “Imagination appears as a restoration of freedom, cognition, the effortful ability to see what lies before one more clearly, more justly and to respond to good attachments and desires which have been in eclipse” [7] (p. 91). The free and creative imagination makes us capable of forming a unity out of the particularity and contingency of our and other’s lives. It works by “searching, joining, light-seeking,” to use her phrase, and it prepares our consciousness for action [5] (p. 323). In this way, imagination is not a flight from reality but a disciplined exercise that helps us to see more clearly, to judge more justly, and to respond appropriately to the Good.

She turns to Plato’s notion of high imagination to understand this faculty. In the Timaeus, Plato presents the Demiurge, a craftsman-god who creates the universe by looking at a perfect model and reproducing it. The Demiurge performs the only true act of imitation [5] (p. 13)⁴. This act of imitation consists of the creation of the world according to the divine pattern, according to the Forms:

[I]t’s clear to all that it was the eternal model [the Demiurge] looked at, for, of all the things that have come to be, our universe is the most beautiful, and of causes the craftsman is the most excellent. This, then, is how it has come to be: it is a work of craft, modeled after that which is changeless and is grasped by a rational account, that is, by wisdom. Since these things are so, it follows by unquestionable necessity that this world is an image of something

[12] (29a–b)

Murdoch reads this myth as an allegory of imaginative creation. When the Demiurge creates the world, she writes, he is “copying the Forms (spiritual Ideas) in order to create the world [and] interprets them into an entirely different medium” [5] (p. 13). The true act of imitation consists of producing images directly out of the eternal models that are ultimate truth. Artists in the sensible world, by contrast, imitate what is already an image and thus move farther from the truth. Murdoch sees in the Demiurge’s act the model of a high imagination that is distinct from the low imagination of eikasia. The Demiurge is Eros, “a restless imaginative creative artist”, who “looking with love toward a higher reality, creates an imperfect world as his best image of a perfection which he sees but cannot express. Virtue is dynamic and creative, a passionate attention directed toward what is good [5] (p. 320). The Demiurge’s creative vision is erotic; he looks with love at the Forms and then produces images of them. The world he creates is not an identical copy but an interpretation of those patterns [13] (pp. 85–86). For Murdoch, this loving attention and interpretive power are essential traits of the high imagination. Unlike eikasia, which produces shadows, the high imagination looks at the real and seeks to reproduce it as faithfully as possible. Its distinguishing feature is the capacity to safeguard truth and reality.

Murdoch’s relationship to Kant is equally important for her conception of the free and creative imagination. Critics sometimes suggest that she opposes Kant’s moral philosophy, viewing him as emphasizing universal laws over moral psychology [14] (p. 253). Murdoch, however, acknowledges that Kant’s ethical theory is “one of the most beautiful and exciting things in the whole of philosophy” [9] (p. 253). She does not reject Kant; rather, she draws selectively from his theory of imagination. In Kant’s critical philosophy, there are at least two kinds of imagination. One is the empirical imagination, which spontaneously but mechanically prepares a sensuous manifold for submission to the understanding’s concepts [5] (p. 316). This imagination is not independently creative or esthetically sensible. The other is the esthetic imagination, which is spontaneous and free and able to create what Kant calls “a second nature” [5] (p. 316). Murdoch accepts that empirical imagination is necessary. It provides the transcendental activity required for us to experience a world. We do not have full control over this image-producing power; it synthesizes our sensory experience into coherent representations. Murdoch does not deny this cognitive function. She agrees with Kant that the empirical imagination is essential to cognition. She seeks, however, an account of imagination that is subject to our agency and relevant to moral development. For this, she turns to Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment, where he develops his account of esthetic imagination.

In esthetic experience, Kant argues, imagination operates differently from ordinary cognition. He speaks of the “free play” of imagination with the understanding [15] (5:240, p. 124). Murdoch comments on this Kantian idea:

“The imagination is an exercise of freedom. We look at leaves and stones, we construct pictures in our minds. In our experience of beauty in art or nature imagination is free to discern conceptless forms, it plays or frolics with the understanding without being governed by empirical concepts”

[7] (p. 82)

Imagination plays freely with the manifold of intuitions and organizes them differently, as it could not do when being guided by concepts. For Kant, however, the activity of the imagination is a ‘free lawfulness’ because it must be under the unity that the understanding demands [16] (p. 57).

More importantly for Murdoch, Kant’s esthetic imagination is not only what allows common human beings to judge the beautiful but to make possible beautiful art in the world through the imagination of the genius. Kant’s esthetic imagination goes beyond the appreciation of natural beauty; it encompasses artistic creation. Murdoch notes that the apprehension of beauty involves an individual imaginative synthesis, as when we attend to the shape of a shell or a leaf. But the “grander nature of fine arts” involves a creative imagination of a higher order [5] (p. 314). Artists and their audiences, she argues, exercise an imagination capable of inventing or appreciating far more complex patterns. The figure of the genius is central here. For Kant, the genius “is the exemplary originality of the natural endowment of a subject for the free use of his cognitive faculties” [15] (5:318, p. 195). The genius exercises the free play of imagination in a way that produces genuinely new forms. Kant’s description is as follows:

“[I]f we add to a concept a representation of the imagination that belongs to its presentation, but which by itself stimulates so much thinking that it can never be grasped in a determinate concept, hence which esthetically enlarges the concept itself in an unbounded way, then in this case the imagination is creative”

[15] (5:315, p. 193)

This description underscores the novelty of the genius’s creation. The genius does not merely reproduce nature but gives the appearances of the world a unique unity that did not exist before. Murdoch notes that “The synthetic power of imagination works here in a special way to produce the unique (purposeless, unclassifiable) beautiful object… Genius, or high inspiration, is a spontaneous imaginative power which enables the artist to create new unique original forms” [7] (pp. 83–84). Artists reveal possibilities hidden in the familiar. They provide a ‘second nature,’ new forms of seeing that go beyond ordinary experience. This, Murdoch argues, is the value of good art: it transforms our vision of reality [9] (p. 262).

Murdoch observes that Kant confines this kind of imagination to esthetics. Kant insists that the ability of imagination to invent the unique order of the art object must be distinguished from the compulsory discernment of rational universal principles of action. He separates the creative activity of the artist from the application of moral rules. Murdoch, however, resists this restriction. She believes that the creative, transformative power of imagination identified by Kant is equally operative in moral life. The concept of genius, she suggests, emerges “from an appreciation of the deep and omnipresent operation of imagination in human life” [5] (p. 316). If imagination pervades our experience, then its free play cannot be confined to the creation or appreciation of art. She agrees with Kant that moral judgment requires universal principles, but she argues that we need imagination to see how these principles apply to particular circumstances. For Murdoch, the genius’s ability to show the world in new ways is analogous to the moral agent’s capacity to overcome egoistic fantasy and to achieve a just and loving perception of others.

Integrating these Platonic and Kantian elements, Murdoch constructs her own conception of free and creative imagination. From Plato, she adopts the idea that imagination can produce images that reflect higher reality, that the moral life involves a progressive destruction of false images and an ascent toward the Good, and that such an ascent requires love. From Kant, she takes the view that imagination is free and creative, that it can play with the understanding to discern forms not bound by empirical concepts, and that art demonstrates this creative power in the guise of genius. Murdoch uses these insights to fashion a moral psychology in which imagination plays a central role. Our imaginative life is not merely a source of delusion; it is also the medium through which we can become better. By exercising the free and creative imagination, we can purify our fantasies, reshape our perceptions, and align ourselves with the Good. In so doing, we bring into moral life the qualities that Kant attributes to the artist: originality, spontaneity, and a capacity to create new forms. At the same time, we remain faithful to Plato’s conviction that moral vision requires participation in what is higher than ourselves. Murdoch thus weaves together metaphysics and esthetics, emphasizing that genuine moral progress involves not only following rules but also seeing the world anew.

4. The Problem of Conceptual Ambiguity: Imagination, Perception, and Thought

One challenge in interpreting Murdoch’s account of imagination is that she uses the term in multiple senses, and her treatment, like much of Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, is not entirely systematic. In the preceding sections, we have seen imagination described as: producing accurate images of reality and therefore having an evaluative role regarding this reality, replacing dark and fallen images, perceiving reality differently, enabling consideration of others, and questioning the immanence of the ego⁵. How do these capacities cohere? Are they genuinely unified, or has Murdoch simply gathered disparate mental activities under a single term? I suggest they are unified by imagination’s hermeneutical function. In each case, imagination is involved in the interpretation of reality, the making and remaking of meaning through images. This hermeneutical reading allows us to see Murdoch’s various descriptions of imagination not as a disconnected list but as different aspects of a single interpretive capacity that operates through the medium of images. To clarify this proposal, however, we must first address two questions that are central to understanding Murdoch’s account: How is imagination distinct from perception? And how is imagination distinct from thought?

4.1. Imagination and Perception

Murdoch’s moral philosophy is saturated with visual metaphors. She speaks of ‘moral vision,’ ‘attention,’ ‘seeing’ reality, the ‘just and loving gaze.’ This visual language is not merely metaphorical decoration. It reflects Murdoch’s conviction that morality is fundamentally about how we see rather than simply what we choose to do. As she puts it, “I can only choose within the world I can see, in the moral sense of ‘see’ which implies that clear vision is a result of moral imagination and moral effort” [10] (pp. 35–36). This very passage reveals the complexity: moral seeing is itself a result of moral imagination. What, then, is the relationship between these two?

Gomes helpfully distinguishes two senses of moral vision in Murdoch that illuminate this question. First, there is vision of moral things: our sensitivity to the moral features of situations. As Gomes explains, this “is a sensitivity to the moral requirements which are imposed in certain situations and the deliverances of this sensitivity are a kind of knowledge, one which can spur the sensitive soul to action without any process of inference” [17] (p. 146). We perceive that a situation calls for compassion, or that an action would be cruel, in much the way we perceive that the sky is blue. Second, there is vision that is itself moral: accurate perception that requires moral effort and cultivation. In this sense, moral vision is normative; it is not merely any seeing of moral features, but accurate seeing, the achievement of getting things right [17] (p. 148).

This distinction is crucial because it shows that for Murdoch, moral perception is neither automatic nor passive. The capacity to see moral reality accurately must be developed through the disciplined work of imagination. As Gomes puts it, “we are sensitive to the moral realm and the accuracy or otherwise of that sensitivity is dependent on the displacement of certain egocentric occluders, a displacement which takes moral effort and imagination” [17] (p. 148). Imagination thus operates in both dimensions of moral vision: it enables our basic sensitivity to moral features, for without imaginative capacity, we could not grasp what a situation means for those involved, and it requires cultivation to become accurate rather than distorted by fantasy.

Recent scholarship has reinforced this understanding. Ratajczyk argues that moral perception in Murdoch should be understood as “an imaginative exploration of the particularity of concrete objects of moral reality (e.g., persons, situations, and events), rather than a registration of moral properties” [18] (p. 257). On this account, moral perception is not a passive detection of moral features that exist independently in the world, waiting to be noticed. Rather, it is an active, imaginative engagement with the particularity of persons and situations. We do not simply receive moral information; we explore moral reality through imagination. This is why Murdoch can say that “perception itself is a mode of evaluation” [5] (p. 316). To perceive a situation is already to have imagined it in a certain way, to have produced images that frame and structure what we see. The distinction between fantasy and creative imagination thus concerns two modes of this perceptual activity: one that distorts through egoism, another that clarifies through loving attention.

This account of moral perception distinguishes Murdoch from other influential positions in moral epistemology. Consider, for instance, the problem that Mylonaki identifies: to talk about moral perception is to suppose that we have sensitivity to aspects of the world as the ground of our moral knowledge, and we do not see moral qualities the way we see ordinary sensible qualities [19] (pp. 579–580). This challenges both inferentialist accounts of moral knowledge and reductive views that identify moral qualities with physical facts. McDowell’s influential account attempts to address this problem by treating moral properties as analogous to secondary qualities: to be aware of a reason for action is to be aware of a feature of a situation as giving reason for acting, a kind of practical knowledge [20]. Mylonaki notes a dissatisfaction with this account that illuminates Murdoch’s distinctive position. For McDowell, moral perception is sensitivity to reasons for action. For Murdoch, however, moral perception is fundamentally about clarifying the activity of cognizing an individual reality; it is not about an object to be acted upon, but a person to be understood. The activity in question is inner and oriented toward seeing truly [19] (p. 594).

This difference is crucial. McDowell’s account remains tied to the practical, to action and its reasons. Murdoch’s account is more fundamentally contemplative [19] (p. 594). The ability to see things as they are is, for Murdoch, the ability to face reality, a difficult process requiring attention and the suppression of the self’s natural tendency toward egocentrism. Moral perception, on this view, is not primarily about discerning what to do but about apprehending the reality of another human being in its irreducible distinctness.

Thus, imagination and perception in Murdoch are neither simply identical nor entirely separate. Imagination is the medium through which perception operates. We perceive through our images, through the imaginative constructions that frame and interpret our experience. Perception provides the occasion for imagination; imagination shapes the content of perception. The goal of moral development is to so refine our imaginative capacity that we perceive reality accurately, without the distortions of egoistic fantasy.

4.2. Imagination and Thought

If imagination is intimately connected to perception, how does it relate to thought more broadly? Murdoch’s descriptions sometimes suggest that imagination is simply a form of thinking: it involves reflection, evaluation, consideration of possibilities. She maintains a distinction between them, however. What differentiates imaginative activity from other forms of cognition? To answer this question, we must first examine Murdoch’s account of thinking itself before identifying what sets imagination apart.

In “Thinking and Language,” Murdoch develops an account of thought that resists both behaviorist dissolution and crude mentalist pictures. Against the behaviorist tendency to reduce thinking to dispositions or overt behavior, she assumes, “as we all do when we are not philosophising, that thinking is a private activity which goes on in our heads, that it is a ‘content of consciousness’” [21] (p. 33). She resists the view, however, that thinking is merely the silent occurrence of words. Rather, “the thought is not the words (if any) but the words occurring in a certain way with, as it were, a certain force and colour” [21] (p. 34). Thinking has a qualitative, experiential character that exceeds its verbal expression.

This experiential character of thought is, Murdoch argues, essentially figurative. We experience our mental life “in an imaging, semi-sensible mode”; we do not suddenly adopt the figurative mode when thinking imaginatively but rather “are using it all the time” [21] (p. 40). Both the actual occurrence of words in thought and our conceptual fixing of mental states take place through images. This suggests that thought itself has an imaginative texture: “it is for us as if our thoughts were inner events, and it is as if these events were describable either as verbal units or in metaphorical, analogical terms” [21] (p. 39).

In “Nostalgia for the Particular,” Murdoch further develops this account by attending to the peculiar phenomenology of mental events. Thoughts, she argues, “have, as it were, a life and dynamic of their own. They are not always, or not altogether, under our conscious control. They emerge unexpectedly, they become hazy or clear for no apparent reason. They display a sense of direction which may go beyond what the conscious mind can account for” [22] (p. 48). This elusive quality distinguishes thoughts from straightforward sensory experiences. Thoughts resist precise description; they must be “defined in terms of their intention”, and “described as part of a total process” [22] (p. 48). A thought’s meaning emerges from its context, much as a sketchy drawing reveals its significance only when we grasp its purpose.

This account of thinking has significant implications for understanding concepts. Murdoch observes that “we naturally create metaphors in the context of certain kinds of attempt to describe,” as when we speak of having a bond with someone that remains unbroken through times of difficulty [21] (p. 40). “Such a mode of speech is so natural to us that we might be surprised when its metaphorical character is pointed out” [21] (p. 40). Crucially, this metaphorical fixing of experience in semi-sensible pictures is itself the activity of concept-formation: “such fixing is using, or creating, concepts” [21] (p. 40). Concepts are not abstract logical entities but emerge from our imaginative engagement with experience.

Forsberg’s interpretation of Murdoch illuminates the significance of this account. He argues that what goes on “in-between” choices, deliberate actions, and the proposing of arguments is precisely concept formation: “something which is not deliberated and clear to us, but is interwoven with our practices, history, socio-cultural settings” [23] (p. 124). For Murdoch, “moral differences are conceptual” in the sense of being “differences of vision” [24] (p. 84). Arguments and the weighing of reasons presuppose a conceptual field that has already been set through pre-reflective imaginative activity. To understand moral differences, we must attend to how concept formation happens prior to deliberation [23] (p. 124).

If thinking is itself saturated with images and concepts emerge through imaginative activity, what then distinguishes imagination proper from thought? The key, I suggest, lies in imagination’s distinctive relationship to particularity and to what lies beyond the factual. Murdoch characterizes imagination as “a type of reflection on people, events, etc., which builds detail, adds colour, conjures up possibilities in ways which go beyond what could be said to be strictly factual” [25] (p. 198). This characterization highlights several distinguishing features.

First, imagination is distinguished by its object. As Compaijen observes, Murdoch wishes to contrast imagining with “strict” or “scientific” thinking in part because imagining concerns that which “goes beyond the strictly factual” [26] (p. 448). Scientific thought aims at what can be empirically verified, at the factual domain accessible through disengaged observation. Imagination, by contrast, engages with other people’s experiences and tacit needs, future possibilities, evaluative qualities, dimensions of reality that cannot be accessed through scientific method alone [25] (p. 199). As Murdoch writes, “That reality goes beyond ‘mere fact’ and that to reach it we need strength and refinement of the imagination is not an obscure metaphysical doctrine” [25] (p. 201).

Second, imagination is distinguished by its character. Murdoch describes imagining as a matter of “building detail,” “adding colour,” “conjuring up possibilities”; it is “doing,” a “sort of personal exploring” [25] (p. 199). Where scientific thought ideally maintains a receptive stance toward what is factually given, imagination is actively constructive. It builds rather than merely registers; it adds rather than merely abstracts; it explores possibilities rather than merely recording actualities. This active, exploratory character differentiates imagination from the more receptive modes of cognition.

Third, imagination is distinguished by its orientation toward particularity. While abstract thought tends toward the general, the schematic, the universal, imagination moves in the opposite direction: toward the concrete, the detailed, the specific. This is why imagination is indispensable for morality: “Kant does not tell us to respect whole particular tangled-up historical individuals” [6] (p. 215). Abstract moral principles must be imagined into concrete application. The ‘thick, obscure tissue of human particularity’ cannot be penetrated by abstract reason alone; we need imagination to engage with the texture of actual moral situations [5] (p. 323).

Thus, imagination and thought in Murdoch are neither simply identical nor entirely separate. All thinking has an imaginative texture; it occurs through images, in a ‘semi-sensible mode,’ with ‘force and colour.’ Concepts themselves emerge through imaginative activity. Imagination proper is distinguished, however, by its orientation toward what lies beyond the strictly factual, by its active and exploratory character, and by its engagement with particularity rather than abstraction. As Murdoch puts it, imagination is ‘semi-figurative,’ it works through figures, images, and pictures, while also engaging in the cognitive work of understanding and interpretation [7] (p. 91). The distinction is not between imagistic and non-imagistic cognition, but between modes of cognition that differ in their object, character, and orientation. Imagination proper involves the active, exploratory engagement with particular persons and situations that Murdoch sees as essential to moral life.

5. The Hermeneutical Role of Imagination in Moral Life

5.1. Imagination as Interpretation

We have seen that Murdoch distinguishes fantasy from free and creative imagination, tracing the former to Plato’s eikasia and the latter to the Demiurge’s high imagination and Kant’s esthetic imagination. We have also clarified how imagination differs from perception and thought: imagination is the medium through which perception operates, and it is distinguished from abstract thought by its orientation toward particularity and its active, exploratory character. These distinctions prepare us to articulate the central claim of this paper: that Murdoch’s free and creative imagination is fundamentally a hermeneutical faculty through which we interpret and understand moral reality.

For Murdoch, morality is not primarily about choice but about understanding. This claim is central to her critique of the dominant moral philosophies of her time. As she argues, moral differences

“look less like differences of choice, given the same facts, and more like differences of vision. In other words, a moral concept seems less like a movable and extensible ring laid down to cover a certain area of fact, and more like a total difference of Gestalt”

[24] (p. 82)

As Forsberg observes, this means that “we differ not only because we select different objects out of the same world but because we see different worlds” [23] (p. 122–123). Morality, on this view, is fundamentally about understanding, interpretation, and reflection, not merely about willing or choosing.

If we attend to what Murdoch calls “the more complex regions which lie outside ‘actions’ and ‘choices,’” we see moral differences as differences in understanding: “more or less extensive and important, which may show openly or privately as differences of story or metaphor or as differences of moral vocabulary betokening different ranges and ramifications of moral concept” [24] (p. 84). The stories we tell, the metaphors we employ, and the vocabulary we use are not merely expressions of pre-existing moral positions but constitutive of how we see and engage with moral reality. This is why Murdoch suggests that “the task of moral philosophers has been to extend, as poets may extend, the limits of the language, and enable it to illuminate regions of reality which were formerly dark” [24] (p. 84). Moral philosophy, like poetry, works to disclose reality through the refinement of images and concepts.

Imagination is central to this enterprise because it is the faculty that produces the images through which we understand. The function of imagination is pervasive in our lives: even when we are rationally evaluating a situation, we have already employed images. As Murdoch writes, when we “settle down to be ‘thoroughly rational’ about a situation, we have already reflectively or unreflectively imagined it in a certain way. Our deepest imaginings, which structure the world in which ‘moral judgments’ occur, are already evaluations” [5] (p. 314–315). Imagination is not one step in a sequence of moral reasoning; it is operative from the beginning, structuring the very world in which moral judgments take place. Before we deliberate, before we weigh reasons, before we choose, we have already imagined the situation in a particular way, and that imagining is already interpretive.

This interpretive function distinguishes Murdoch’s account from views that treat moral perception as simply detecting pre-existing moral properties. As Ratajczyk argues, Murdochian moral perception is better understood as “getting a better grip on concrete instances of moral reality” through imaginative exploration [18] (p. 265, 273). The emphasis is on process, development, and interpretation rather than passive registration. We do not simply see moral features the way we see colors; we imaginatively apprehend them through an ongoing process of attention, revision, and deepening understanding. This is why Murdoch speaks of moral progress as a pilgrimage consisting of the replacement of dark and fallen images with those that more truly represent reality. The purifying work of good imagination is not the elimination of images altogether, but their progressive refinement [7] (p. 94).

The various capacities that Murdoch ascribes to imagination, whether producing accurate images, enabling truer evaluation, replacing dark images with better ones, perceiving differently, reflecting, considering others, or questioning the ego’s immanence, are unified by this interpretive function. In each case, imagination is involved in the interpretation of reality, the making and remaking of meaning through images. The images we produce are not mere copies of what is already there; they are interpretive acts through which we disclose reality. As Murdoch notes, the Demiurge’s creative act was not simple reproduction but interpretation; he “interprets” the Forms “into an entirely different medium” [5] (p. 11). Similarly, our imaginative activity interprets reality into the medium of images that allow us to understand and engage with the world. We are always refining our moral concepts, extending our understanding, illuminating regions of reality that were formerly dark.

5.2. The Moral Pilgrimage as Hermeneutical Circle

Murdoch’s conception of moral progress as a pilgrimage reveals a circular structure characteristic of interpretive understanding. Recall Murdoch’s description of the Platonic program: this pilgrimage “involves a progressive destruction of false images. Image-making or image-apprehending is always an imperfect activity; some images are higher than others, that is, nearer to reality. Images should not be resting places, but pointers toward higher truth” [5] (pp. 317–318). In this pilgrimage, we always start already embedded in images, and we progress by refining those images through attention and love.

This structure exhibits what we might call a hermeneutical circle. I use the term “hermeneutical” here in a specific sense: to describe how imagination functions as interpretation in Murdoch’s thought, enabling us to make sense of persons, situations, and moral reality through the production and revision of images. Understanding, on this account, unfolds not from secure foundations but through renewed attention to the possible meanings of our presuppositions. We begin embedded in images, and through imagination, we allow reality to challenge and revise those images. The revised images enable us to see more clearly, which prompts further revision. While the term “hermeneutical” evokes a broader philosophical tradition, I do not claim that Murdoch’s account fully aligns with or develops that tradition. Rather, I employ it as a useful descriptor for imagination’s interpretive work, one that illuminates something distinctive about her conception: the circular, deepening movement through which we come to understand moral reality by producing, testing, and refining images.

Murdoch’s moral pilgrimage exhibits precisely this circular structure. We begin with images, some distorted by fantasy, others partially accurate, and through the discipline of attention, we allow reality to challenge and revise those images. The revised images enable us to see more clearly, which prompts further revision. Understanding does not build ‘higher and higher’ upon secure foundations; it goes ‘deeper and deeper.’ We are always refining our moral concepts, extending our capacity to see, moving toward an understanding that is never complete but always deepening.

This circular movement need not be vicious; it is productive. Murdoch understands perfection as an ideal limit toward which we aspire, the idea of the perfectibility of our moral life. Our conceptions are infinitely perfectible precisely because they are inherently fallible: they pretend to be images of reality, but by definition, they fall short of the reality they represent. There is always a gap between our imaginative construction and the reality we are trying to apprehend. This gap is not cause for despair but the very condition of moral life. Because our images are always inadequate, we must continually focus our efforts on making better images, images oriented toward the Good. The images that imagination produces must be understood, as Kearney puts it, “both in terms of an intentional projection of possible meanings, and a schematizing synthesis of the many under the guise of the same” [27] (p. 148). Imagination responds to “a demand for new meaning, the demand of emerging realities to be by being said in new ways” [27] (p. 149).

Mylonaki’s reading also illuminates this dynamic structure [19] (pp. 595–600). To achieve the truth of another individual human being, we must orient our imaginings toward the Good. The Good functions as an ideal limit, a standard of perfection that our conceptions can approach but never fully attain. The Good serves not as a determinate content that could be captured in any particular image, but as a regulative ideal that draws our imaginings beyond their current limitations. We are called to see more truly, to imagine more justly, to attend more lovingly, and this call is never exhausted by any particular achievement. The pilgrimage continues, the circle of interpretation turns again toward deeper understanding.

5.3. The Example of M and D

To portray this interpretive activity of imagination concretely, we turn to Murdoch’s famous example of the mother-in-law M and the daughter-in-law D. This example crystallizes Murdoch’s distinctive approach to moral life and shows the hermeneutical imagination at work in a specific case. M initially perceives D through images shaped by convention, jealousy, and egoistic fantasy, precisely the distorting eikasia that Murdoch, following Plato, identifies as the enemy of moral vision. D appears to M as “pert and familiar, insufficiently ceremonious, brusque, sometimes positively rude, always tiresomely juvenile” [10] (pp. 16–17). These images reflect M’s presuppositions, her conventions, her jealousy, her ego, rather than D’s reality.

M undertakes, however, the effortful work of imaginative revision. She tells herself, “I am old-fashioned and conventional. I may be prejudiced and narrow-minded. I may be snobbish. I am certainly jealous. Let me look again” [10] (p. 17). The phrase ‘let me look again’ captures the active, deliberate character of moral imagination. M does not passively wait for a new perception of D to arise; she exercises the free and creative imagination that Murdoch contrasts with captive fantasy. This exercise is what Kant would recognize as the ‘free play’ of imagination: not bound by the empirical concepts that have governed M’s previous seeing, but open to discerning new forms in D’s behavior.

Through this exercise, M’s perception of D alters: she finds D “not vulgar but refreshingly simple, not undignified but spontaneous, not noisy but gay, not tiresomely juvenile but delightfully youthful” [10] (p. 17). The same behaviors, the same external facts, take on entirely different moral significance depending on the images through which M apprehends them. This is not a change in what M sees but in how she understands what she sees. The interpretive work of imagination is evident: M reinterprets D by producing new images that disclose D’s reality more truthfully. Her moral concepts are refined; her understanding deepens.

The circular movement is manifest in M’s moral development. M begins with a particular framework for understanding D, her presuppositions about what D’s behaviors mean. Through attentive imagination, M allows D to challenge that framework. D’s behaviors, which initially appeared as rudeness and vulgarity, reveal themselves as spontaneity and youthful exuberance. This revelation prompts M to revise her images, and the revised images enable her to see D even more clearly. The process is circular: each moment of understanding makes possible further understanding. M’s efforts to understand D have no firm foundation; they unfold through interpretive attention to the possible meanings of her presuppositions. Her understanding does not build higher upon foundations; it goes deeper, gets fuller, becomes richer.

The moral of this example is that a great part of our moral life takes place in the inner terrain of our consciousness, the realm that Murdoch insists we must recover against behaviorist and existentialist reductions. While M’s behavior toward D remains impeccable throughout, her inner transformation constitutes genuine moral activity. This is the pilgrimage of which Murdoch speaks: the progressive destruction of false images and their replacement with truer ones. M does not ascend to some Platonic vision of D’s essence; she refines her images through attention and love, moving closer to the reality of who D is. This inner work is the interpretive activity of imagination: the reinterpretation of another person through the production of new, more adequate images. Morality, in this case, is not about M choosing differently, for her behavior remains unchanged, but about M understanding differently, seeing D through images that more truly disclose who D is.

6. Conclusions

This paper has offered an account of Murdoch’s concept of imagination and its role in moral life. I have argued that Murdoch’s free and creative imagination is best understood as a hermeneutical capacity, a faculty through which we interpret and understand moral reality. This interpretive reading unifies the various functions Murdoch attributes the following to imagination: producing images, enabling evaluation, transforming perception, reflecting on others, or questioning the ego’s immanence. In each case, imagination is involved in the interpretation of reality through the making and remaking of images.

I began by examining Murdoch’s conception of fantasy through her reading of Plato’s eikasia. Fantasy, the bad use of imagination, operates by producing images that captivate and imprison us. Its character is egoistic; we fail to see individuals because we are enclosed in a fantasy world of our own, making others into dream objects rather than grasping their reality and independence. Like the prisoners in Plato’s cave, we are anesthetized by images that prevent us from perceiving reality. I then turned to Murdoch’s account of free and creative imagination, tracing her engagement with Plato’s Demiurge and Kant’s esthetic imagination. The Demiurge’s high imagination interprets the Forms into a different medium, producing images that reflect a higher reality. Kant’s account of the free play of imagination in esthetic experience provides a model for imaginative activity that is not bound by empirical concepts but open to discerning new forms. Murdoch draws on both to articulate a conception of imagination as free, creative, and oriented toward truth.

I addressed the conceptual ambiguity in Murdoch’s account by clarifying how imagination relates to perception and thought. Imagination is the medium through which perception operates; we perceive through our images, through the imaginative constructions that frame and interpret our experience. Imagination is distinguished from abstract thought by its orientation toward particularity and its active, exploratory character. While all thinking has an imaginative texture, imagination properly engages with what lies beyond the strictly factual: with other people’s experiences, future possibilities, and evaluative qualities that cannot be accessed through scientific method alone.

The hermeneutical interpretation I have proposed illuminates Murdoch’s distinctive approach to moral life. For Murdoch, morality is fundamentally about understanding, not merely about choice. Moral differences are differences in vision, differences in how we see and interpret reality. We are always refining our moral concepts, extending our capacity to see, moving toward an understanding that deepens but is never complete. This ongoing refinement exhibits a circular structure characteristic of interpretive understanding; we begin with presuppositions already in place, and through attentive imagination, we allow reality to challenge and revise those presuppositions. Understanding does not build higher and higher upon secure foundations; it goes deeper and deeper. The example of M and D shows this interpretive imagination at work; M’s moral progress consists not of choosing differently but of understanding differently, producing images that more truly disclose who D is.

Murdoch’s account of imagination thus offers an alternative to moral theories that neglect the inner life as a site of moral transformation. Against behaviorist reductions that identify morality with observable action and existentialist accounts that locate moral reality in isolated moments of choice, Murdoch insists that our inner life, what we think, imagine, and how we see the world, is an essential part of our moral life. The quality of our actions depends on the quality of our inner vision; moral progress occurs through the patient refinement of our images long before it manifests in behavior.

Murdoch’s account also challenges the assumption that morality consists primarily in the application of universal principles to particular cases. Abstract moral rules, however valid, cannot by themselves generate adequate moral responses. We must imaginatively apprehend the particular situation, the particular person, the particular context. Abstract universalism must be supplemented by imaginative attention to human particularity. The interpretive work of imagination is precisely this engagement with particularity: interpreting the reality of this person, in this situation, through images refined by attention and love.

Finally, Murdoch’s emphasis on imagination as a moral discipline suggests that moral development requires cultivation and practice. We do not automatically imagine well; we must learn to do so. This learning involves cultivating the capacity to attend patiently, to suspend egoistic projections, to remain open to what the other might reveal, to revise our images in light of new understanding. Murdoch suggests that such cultivation might require a kind of cultural transformation: teaching people to contemplate reality as artists do, to practice the loving attention that clears away the ‘fat relentless ego’ and allows others to appear in their own right [5] (p. 337). These ideas open a horizon for thinking about moral life in relation to our daily existence. The moral pilgrimage she describes is not an esoteric ascent available only to philosophers or saints. On the contrary, it is the ongoing work of attention and imagination through which any of us can come to see more truly, understand more deeply, and respond more justly to the reality of others.