The Sovereignty of Good is a title very easy to misunderstand: it's a short work by Iris Murdoch, which appears at first glance to suggest that we live in a world where Good triumphs, which is not what she meant at all. What the title actually claims is that Good exists independently of our will: it is something we recognise, rather than something we choose.
This strikes at the root of our contemporary self-understanding. It denies things that we tend to understand as self-evident. For that reason alone her short book is worth reading. But its value goes a long way beyond contrarianism. It's easy enough to find scandalous quotes:
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