Constrained by reason, transformed by love: Murdoch on the standard of proof

In ‘Constrained by Reason, Transformed by Love: Murdoch on the
Standard of Proof’ Bagnoli concentrates upon the role of love in
Murdoch’s moral philosophy. She reviews Murdoch’s moral philosophy in
the light of her critique of Kant. Kant, for Murdoch, takes moral life to
be overly determined by reason. Kantian reason is held to be abstract,
divorced from emotion and separated from the concrete world of particularity.
In contrast to Murdoch, Bagnoli sees affinities between the moral
standpoints of Kant and Murdoch, observing how they both refuse to
reduce morality to empiricism. Kant and Murdoch take the proof of
morality to be irreducible to that of non-moral empirical conditions. The
proof of morality for both Kant and Murdoch is held to reside in the
experience of morality; more specifically reason in the case of Kant, and
love in the case of Murdoch. Bagnoli also takes Murdoch to accept Kant’s
critique of classical metaphysics. Bagnoli maintains that Murdoch misreads
Kant in exaggerating the differences between Kant’s moral philosophy
and her own. Kant’s use of reason, for Bagnoli, is not overly abstract
in that he is neither seen to deny a role for feeling nor to divorce reason
from emotion.