Iris Murdoch, Autism, and the Importance of Recognising Otherness
While it may not be productive to diagnose a writer you have never met or communicated with, it is clear that Murdoch was aware of mental illness and mental difference as a psychological concept. Not only this, but she dealt with it as a subject in her fiction in a highly nuanced way. Perhaps progressively, mental illness and mental difference is not, for Murdoch, something which excludes you from the world of moral philosophy. It, in fact, not only includes, but requires you. The act of recognition of others as being other, and loving them truly for it, is at the centre of Murdoch’s philosophy, and thus her fiction. And is that not the fundamental principle of neurodiversity?
