One Judge, Under God

I’ve just re-read one of my favourite Iris Murdoch novels, A Fairly Honourable Defeat. To describe the plot does this astonishing book an injustice, but it mainly concerns the machinations of a scientist, Julius King, who sets out to destroy the marriage of his friend Rupert, because Rupert’s faith in the power of love – his belief that there exists a Platonic thing, love itself – irritates him in its imprecision.

One of the most powerful passages in the book is when Rupert, referring to evil’s “unfathomable depths”, suggests that “good” has “heights” which we should strive to attain. Julius turns on him: “Let’s keep your up and down picture, it’s convenient and traditional. My point is that the top of the structure is completely empty. The thing is truncated. Human beings have often dreamed of the extension of goodness beyond the pitiful level at which they muck along, but it is precisely a dream, and a totally vague one at that.”