Christopher Donald Cordner

The work of Raimond Gaita, in books such as _Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception_, _A Common Humanity_ and _The Philosopher’s Dog_, has made an outstanding and controversial contribution to philosophy and to the wider culture. In this superb collection an international team of contributors explore issues across the wide range of Gaita’s thought, including the nature of good and evil, philosophy and biography, the unthinkable, Plato and ancient philosophy, Wittgenstein, the religious dimensions of Gaita’s work, aspects of the Holocaust, and aboriginal reconciliation in Australia.

I distinguish, describe and explore two different conceptions of love that inform our lives. One conception found its classic philosophical articulation in Plato, the other its richest expressions in Christian thought. The latter has not had the same secure place in our philosophical traditon as the former. By trying to bring out what is distinctive in this second conception of love, centrally including its significance in revealing the fundamental value of human beings, I aim to show the importance of extending our philosophical reflection to acknowledge it.

The idea of attention was brought back into mainstream philosophical thinking about ethics by Iris Murdoch, drawing on Simone Weil. While Murdoch’s use of the idea has been reflected on by a number of recent commentators, I think its deepest lessons have largely been missed. Beginning from a recurrent and revealing misreading of Murdoch on attention, a misreading often articulated through reflection on Murdoch’s example of M and D, I want to bring out some of those lessons. It is well-known that Murdoch links attention with just and loving vision. I describe a common, mistaken account of what she means by just and loving vision, and I then turn to other connotations of attention invoked by Murdoch. These other connotations are mentioned in dispatches by some commentators, but not dwelt upon. While Murdoch herself does not explore them extensively either, I argue that they are important for teasing out what matters most in Murdoch’s invocation of attention. As that way of putting suggests, my interest in Murdochian exegesis is eventually superseded by my attempts to elicit what I think to be some of the most fruitful implications of her reflections on attention.