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.